1984 Yamaha FJ1100
Putting the sport into sport-touring
September/October 2008
Story and photos by Robert Smith
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1984 Yamaha FJ100.
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The 1984 Yamaha FJ1100 certainly caused a stir in its freshman year: “The best large displacement sport motorcycle of 1984, and maybe even the best in its class in the history of motorcycling,” said Rider magazine. Cycle Guide made the FJ1100 its Bike of the Year, while Cycle magazine raved, “All hail Yamaha’s FJ1100, King of the Superbikes … class champ, no contest.” So what was all the fuss about?
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It’s sometimes difficult to remember there was a time before faired sportbikes. Nakedness was the norm until BMW kicked off the trend with a small, factory-made handlebar fairing on its 1974 R90S, and Ducati launched the street version of the 750SS — complete with fairing — in the same year. It was another six years, though, before streamline became mainstream on bikes with sporting intentions: think Suzuki’s Katanas and GSs, Kawasaki’s GPz and Ninja range, and Honda’s new V4 Interceptors.
But the bike with the most bodacious bodywork of the early streamlined sportsters was the 1984 Yamaha FJ1100. In fact, its frame was designed with front-end fiberglass in mind, and its shape made the FJ the slipperiest supersport of its day. Along the way, the FJ1100 effectively drew the blueprint for a generation of sport-touring motorcycles — a line that continues today with the FJR1300.
Evolution and revolution
The FJ1100 that came to the U.S. market for the 1984 model year was a completely new motorcycle. Unlike Suzuki’s entry in this market, the GS1100, Yamaha chose not to simply revise its Seventies-era XS1100 engine, starting instead with a clean sheet of paper. Somewhat surprisingly, Yamaha opted for an air-cooled engine with five gears, when both Kawasaki and Honda chose liquid cooling and six cogs for their new supersport bikes. Though simpler, air-cooling inherently limits the engine’s output potential because of inconsistent operating temperatures. That didn’t stop Yamaha engineers from extracting a claimed, class-leading 125hp from the airhead, inline four-banger. Though still an all-new engine, unlike the contemporary Honda V-4, the FJ1100 was evolutionary rather than revolutionary.
In some ways, the FJ bridged the gap between the air-cooled, 8-valve DOHC fours of the Seventies and the new liquid-cooled, 16-valve engines of the Eighties. The FJ also marks a split in superbike development, paving the way for a new class of liter-plus sport-tourers, leaving the out-and-out sportbike competition to the under 1,000cc bikes like the more frenetic Kawasaki ZX9 Ninja of 1984. The split in the superbike market into these niches was new in 1984, and the motorcycle magazines weren’t quite sure how to evaluate them: Were they touring machines, track tools or drag bikes? Or a little of each?
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