Back from the dead twice: Rebuilding the YZF-R6 track bike

The surge of adrenaline started moments before the crash as I attempted, vainly, to lift the bike, knowing it wasn't going to end well leaned all the way over on the marbles at the edge of the track. Then, as the front end began to fold, from recognizing it was going, to accepting my fate, felt long enough to compose the e-mail describing my stupidity. Essentially, an apology to all the people who had helped me turn a crashed, abandoned, and low-value Japanese middleweight into an immaculate, stock-looking, track-ready motorcycle.

Thankfully, once I'd stopped doing the old earth-sky-earth routine, an initial assessment revealed the damage to yours truly was mostly to my pride, and some safety wire and a roll of duct tape got me through the rest of the track day. Unfortunately, as the weeks turned into months at home, the damaged leathers, broken bodywork and scuffed parts served as a constant reminder that chasing a BMW S 1000 RR on racing slicks was a bad idea on a basically stock 2005 Yamaha YZF-R6 on street tires. So back in the corner it went.

Where it started: The first build

Originally, a couple of years earlier, the idea had seemed simple enough. Take an old, abandoned, middleweight sport bike and turn it into a low-cost track bike. Notice I am carefully avoiding the word "cheap" here, as it's not encouraged in most circles. Having grown up in England on Welfare for an extended period of time, and then having started my motorcycle riding career while on the dole, I think "cheap" is actually one of my middle names. Or "thrifty," for the sensitive among us.

The R6 came to me from an acquaintance. The story involves a crash, a divorce, and a need to get rid of the damaged bike, but that's not important. In deciding what to do with it, I got some help from a good friend of mine, Harry Vanderlinden, who was part of International Motorbikes at that time. As I'm something of a Muppet when it comes to mechanical things, he deemed it dangerous for me to be left alone on such a project, and with the now-defunct e-zine, MotorcycleUSA, offering to chronicle our adventures, it was off to work we went.

On first glance, the R6 didn't look too bad. A broken exhaust pipe, clip-ons, footpegs, levers and lightly road-rashed bodywork on both sides. The damage did put the bike in an interesting place, however. Returning it to a street-legal machine with stock parts would have cost more than the bike was worth. And with 600 cc sport bikes evolving and improving at a good clip since 2005, it wasn't a highly desirable track bike, either — unless, like us, you were on a budget.

The gas tank had survived unscathed and we were able to save the stock bodywork, with help from some good friends in the car and body business. Harry is a racer and ex-Schwantz School instructor, so he safety-wired the drain plug, brake bolts and a couple of other items, just in case. We changed fluids and filters and eBay yielded a stock exhaust pipe, foot pegs and brake lever. Continental tires provided a set of Sport Attack IIs. We did have to source some new aftermarket clip-ons, but the grand total for all of these parts was just a few hundred dollars, and with my friends doing an amazing job salvaging the bodywork at a bargain price, the R6 was looking better than new.

Looking at the newly finished machine, I had a flashback to Willow Springs, 2005. Riding an identical machine, I had run out of skill going into turn one, totaling the bike and costing me a collarbone. A decade later I was hoping that was not going to be a bad omen.

With the R6 back together and running like it should, Harry and I took it to our local track for the weekend and had an absolute blast. While neither of us set any lap records, we did enjoy plenty of laps and a good, solid machine that performed flawlessly all weekend as we put it through double duty. Loading it back on the trailer, throwing the tools, chairs and cooler in the back of my wagon, we headed for home well satisfied with our budget track bike. We both agreed the stock suspension had to go, though.

Over the years one of the constants for both Harry and me at track days has been pitting with our friend Rick Tannenbaum and his family, who all ride with us. As owner of Cogent Dynamics in Asheville, N.C., Rick is a well known local suspension guru and has helped me out too many times to mention over the years with various test bikes. Rick built me a new rear shock, sprung for my 180-pound weight. At the time, the price was around a grand, but I knew it could be serviced locally when needed and would last the life of the Yamaha. And it's a beautiful-looking bit of kit.

With the new suspension and a fresh set of Sport Attack IIs, my next track weekend at Roebling Road Raceway in Georgia was one of the best in memory. Rick had the suspension perfect for me with just the minimum of tweaks trackside. The easy nature of the inline four, super grippy, predictable tires and the new suspenders combined to produce some fast, fun laps. Now, I've been around Roebling Road on a real Aprilia 250 GP bike and a full-on BMW S 1000 RR race bike, so "fast" is a relative term. But riding a whisper-quiet machine with confidence-inspiring handling and braking was just what we were looking for on our budget build.

Other track days went by in similar fashion and of course the discussions inevitably started about the next steps, such as cutting weight, increasing the power, and changing the gearing. But all of these plans got shelved when some idiot ran out of skill and turned the immaculate R6 back into a project bike again.

As mentioned earlier, the R6 got unceremoniously shoved in the corner of the garage, my leathers out of sight in a closet and I told myself I'd get around to fixing it later. Well, later stretched into months, then years and finally in early 2020 the world changed for all of us with the outbreak of COVID-19. For me, the first weeks were challenging, as my business instantly evaporated and I found myself home, unable to travel for work, with time on my hands but very little income. So, when I decided to finally fix the R6, part of my thinking was at least I'd have something worth selling once it was finished. I just knew it had to be done on a budget again.

Build number two: Getting the R6 back on track

This time, my good friend and painter Greg Pettigrew heavily advised throwing away the bodywork and purchasing some race plastics so he could do a nice job with paint for me. I had to agree, but the pandemic had shut down that option. As my mother always used to say, "Elbow grease is free," and a bag of sandpaper, a few cans of primer, some bondo and glue came at a fraction of the price of race plastics.

Over the next weeks, I scraped off all the factory decals, glued and applied bondo to all the cracks and breaks, and burned through my bag of sandpaper. Slowly, slowly, sanding and priming I managed to get the bodywork into semi-decent condition, or at least where I felt brave enough to take it to Greg to see if he would paint it. After inspecting it, he didn't beat me with any blunt objects and agreed to apply some high-gloss black. I had decided to put some of my Neale Bayly Rides decals on, so a base black was the obvious choice.

While the bodywork was curing in the garage, I took the R6 over to a good mate of mine who goes by the name of Stones. He has a number of motorcycles, all built from wrecks, and he helped me find a cheap slip-on from eBay for under a hundred bills, cut the pipe and fabricated a hanger so the new pipe fits tighter and closer to the bike, fabricated some nice brackets for the windscreen and installed some appropriately colored rim tape on the freshly painted wheels. Continental Sport Attack IVs went on and it was time for the bodywork.

It took a mixture of drilling, cutting and cajoling, but in the end we got the twice-crashed bodywork in place. Then I had another bright idea.

Putting in a call to my graphic designer buddy Chris Parker, I asked how difficult would bit be to create my own custom graphics, little knowing how frustrating this leg of the journey would prove to be. With no graphic kits or templates existing for a bike of its age, Chris had to do it all from scratch and then take a stab at the sizing to accommodate the curves and get the vinyl wrap printed. For the application he brought in a local expert, Dan Patton, and we set about the installation. The first session went better than we both thought, with Dan able to apply most of the pieces. We just needed a few panels re-designed, necessitating more visits. Leaving Dan's place with the bike finally finished, though, I thought it looked fantastic and I owe a huge thanks to Dan and Chris for their patience.

So right as I thought I was finally finished, my buddy Nate from our local independent European motorcycle shop says, "Why don't we do some dyno tuning on that thing?"

Nate rarely works on Japanese bikes anymore and told me to keep it quiet as we installed a Dynojet Power Commander. After a few pulls on the dyno and some adjustments, Nate settled on 106.5 horsepower at the rear tire and then set about fine tuning throttle response and mid-range performance. This prompted me to leave the stock gearing as I figured with these gains I might not need to lower it as Harry and I had originally wanted.

Now, with the bike home, I needed one last favor from my friend Todd McNabney at Heroic Racing. My Alpinestars were the last evidence of the previous crash, and while Todd is usually far too busy making custom leathers for customers, he agreed to fix my stupidity and re-conditioned them while he was at it. The result, like the bike, is fantastic.

At last, the R6 rides again

Finally being back on the track was a dual-edged sword. Firstly, the response to the R6 was fabulous, with much appreciation for the clean old Supersport. And secondly, the bike ran, handled and stopped like a dream. With strong useable power from the mid-range to redline (Thanks, Nate!), powerful brakes, predictable and grippy Conti tires and of course dialed suspension, the only issue as we circulated the pristine Barber Motorsports Park race track was the idiot in charge of the Go Handle. I just couldn’t seem to figure it out after the long layoff and spent a few sessions that first day seriously questioning if I should be out there. All this work, the bike running like a charm and I'm riding horribly.

Thankfully, a good sleep, a fresh approach and a few more laps and it started to come back. Getting the right gears, actually hanging off the bike a bit, I was able to put away the hourglass and use a stopwatch to check my lap times.

And then it happened. Heading out for my last session of the weekend, warm air, grippy tires and smooth track beneath me, something clicked. No longer was I stressing about the corner workers passing me in the golf cart on the grass. I even overtook a few people and found that place where everything is magic. The R6 was faultless and it felt as if I'd never been away from the track.

It might not be the fastest, most sophisticated or newest motorcycle out there, but for a cheap old track phoenix risen once again from the ashes, it did a pretty darn good job. And doesn't look too bad, either, in my humble opinion.