BIKE OF THE MONTH

1963 Yamaha YG1

Congratulations to Ray Anderson of Gardena for winning Bike of the Month with his 1963 Yamaha YG1. Ray usually rides his Victory Vision Sidecar motorcycle to our group. Today he brought something a bit smaller.

Ray first bought a YG1 when he was 15 years old with money he'd saved from delivering newspapers. When he got older, he thought it would be great to find and restore the same model. It took him three years of looking and 15 years ago he found this one at Century Motorcycles in San Pedro. He bought this bike on the same day he and his wife had their first date. Happy Mother's Day! She was with him today for it's unveiling.

With 6,000 miles on the clock it was pretty rough when he bought it. It took 14 years of gathering parts until he started the restoration about two months ago. The engine is an 80cc rotary valve two-stroke single.

Ray told me the hard parts to find were the front badge and the tank pads. The tank pads came from Australia and are the only ones he's ever seen on EBay. The paint was done by Fine Line Auto Body in Hawthorne. The exhust system is NOS but many of the other chrome bits were replated.

Ray pointed out one missing piece that may deduct from it's points in a Concours event, but I'm not going to point it out here. To me it's perfect, maybe you can spot it in the photos. Good luck!

Thanks Ray for bringing it to our meet. See all the photos in our May Gallery.