| -------------1987 YAMAHA YSR50------------- |
| In 1987 I was 18 and working at a restaurant. One day I showed up early to a work meeting. Our cars were the only ones in the parking lot. I had just bought my first car a 1987 Suzuki Samurai. I loved that car! when I pulled into the parking lot my heart skipped a beat. there, parked right in front of the restaurant was a bike I had never seen, a YSR50. I didn't even know the bike existed. It turns out not many people did because this was a 1986 model. Apparently a few were sent out to a few dealers (one to each dealer?), in California only, as a market test?? The guy I worked with had some kind of connection to someone at a Yamaha dealership and ended up with one of these bikes (I know it was not a 1987 model because I had to wait for the first of these bikes to come in before I could buy one). I was always a big fan of small bikes and this one was like no other. I know these kind of bikes were old news in other countries, especially Japan, but not around here. I got my dad to cosign for a loan, put my order in and was promised a bike from the first batch to come in. |
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This is my red and white 1987 and my best friends black 1988, we rode those bikes all over town. our favorite time to ride was at night. we would go to all the big parking lots around town and try out different "track" configurations. we also use to ride on some wide twisty sidewalks that ran through a park/walkway between houses. I have never ridden a bike that was as fun to ride as the YSR50. the fun factor grows exponentially as you add more friends on YSR50s, riding this bike was fun but riding all over town with a swarm of tiny screaming 50cc bikes is a blast. One thing I really liked about this bike was that we all had the same bike and except for the occasional pipe-swap, the bikes were stock and all ran about the same speed. to go fast you had to keep the gas on and get very familiar with how much traction your wheels had in the turns. the only advantage was the weight of the driver. I was about 170lbs back then but my friend was the feathery 140lb range. He could outaccelerate me at the start, but I would always catch him in the turns ( he didn't trust his tires as much as I did ). those were some good times.
Here is my YSR50 as of 4-17-2010, I took it out of the garage where it has sat unridden for the last 10 years or so. Miguel and I took all the bodywork off and cleaned every inch of it. it looks about as good as it did the day I rode it home. Those are the original tires.
Some other YSR 50cc & 80cc bikes and race parts
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