I picked up this bike because I wanted a sport standard type of bike, and I think the styling is pretty good for such an old bike. Plus, I love Yamaha's, and I love old bikes. This is a pretty fast bike for it's age and technology. The engine itself was ahead of it's time. It's an inline 4 with 20 valves. The tranny is a 6 speed. The combination is pretty fast! I think 0-60 time was supposed to be around 3.3 seconds…not too sure. It is fast off the line though! And with the six gears, it has a high top speed. Drag limited to around 140 I think.

My fazer came with a ripped up vinyl seat cover. It was the original. I couldn't have that, so I bought 1.5 yards of marine grade vinyl and recovered it. It was easy to do! You will need a staple gun, quarter inch staples, heat gun (blow dryer might work), and some duct tape. The trick to making this look good and last is to stretch the vinyl while heated to get a nice smooth tight finish.

First, remove the old cover. It is stapled on, and this is probably the hardest part. Many of the staples were rusty, and didn't want to come out of the plastic base. I recommend taking it slow, or risk a blister and hand cramps. Be sure to remove and save the plastic bushing around the seat lock. If you need to repair the foam, do that now. There are sites on the net that show this.

Once the old cover is off, you can cut and place the new cover. Cut a rectangular piece out of the vinyl that is larger than you need. You will want it to hang over the side by a good bit, because you will want something to grab a hold of as you stretch.

Start at one end, center the vinyl, and put a staple right in the center of the vinyl, right on the edge under the seat lip (place the staples in the same area as the old ones). Heat the vinyl at the end, and stretch to one side, put another staple. Stretch to the opposite side, put another staple. Do this until to reach the edge. Can't have too many staples! Well, maybe you can…so don't go overboard. When you get to the corners, you will have to really heat and stretch to get a nice corner without a fold showing. You will have some folds under the seat though. Don't over stretch in the corner or you will rip the vinyl.

You should have the whole end stapled now. Heat the rest of the vinyl, stretch it lengthwise down the seat, and attach it with duct tape to the underside. You can even let the seat base bend a bit. You want it to be tight! The vinyl will be raised way up off the seat at this point, but that will change.

Now, heat a small section near the stapled end, stretch and staple to the side. Repeat on the other side. Continue to do this all the way up the seat, pulling the vinyl tight and down to the foam as you go. Be sure to watch out for wrinkles developing. Use the heat gun liberally, as it will be MUCH easier to stretch when it is hot. When finished, trim the excess off. Cut an X at the spot for the seat lock smaller than the hole, heat the area, and insert the plastic bushing.

I did this swap because I blew the head gasket, and it seemed like a good time to upgrade the engine. To do this swap is pretty straightforward, but there are a few gotchas that I found along the way, so I'm documenting them here.

First, you need to find the engine out of an fz750. Shouldn't be too hard to find.

Next, remove the old engine.

Finally, install the new engine. Done! Ha ha…

Actually it is almost that simple. But a few things need to be addressed:

1. You will have to swap the shift shaft from the fazer engine into the fz engine, as the fz shaft is too short to clear the clutch cylinder housing. This isn't hard, just have to remove the clutch basket from both engines to remove the shafts and swap them. Or, buy an extra fzx shift shaft and just swap out with the fz shaft. You're gonna need a clutch basket holding tool to remove the basket. You can get them on ebay for around 25 bucks.
2. You will have to swap the water pump. The outlet port is at a different spot on the fz. Easy to do.
3. You will have to fabricate or deal with the hard coolant lines that go from the thermostat housing to the engine block. The brackets on the fzx coolant lines will not mate up to the fz engine. I dealt with it by cutting the fz line into two pieces. The left piece can be simply cut out and the soft coolant hose can be made to fit on it pretty well. The right hose however will need to be cut and bent down so that the very short soft hose will mate up from the thermo housing to the line. There are several differences between the fz and fzx thermo housing to engine block setup:
   1. The fzx lines are two separate pieces, and are held in place by one screw near the base, toward the middle of the engine.
   2. The fz line is a one piece deal, and are held in place by two bolts, one is one of the intake port bolts (towards the outside of the engine), the other is closer to the valve cover and just screws into the block.
   3. The fzx thermostat housing has two outlet ports, the fz has one outlet port.
   4. You could try to use the fz thermostat housing, but you will still have to deal with getting it all to fit under the frame, mount up, and mate up to the fzx radiator. The fz thermo housing has a radiator cap built in, so you'll end up with two of them if you go that route. I didn't so I can't really speak to how much easier or harder it is.