Collector Alert! 1989 Yamaha FZR400 with 815 Miles!

Location: The Dalles, OR

Miles: 815

Price: Currently $3,050 with Reserve in place

Update 5.12.2012: This listing was ended prematurely at $3850 and is back on eBay. Links updated. -dc

That’s right ladies and gentlemen, up for sale here is the cleanest and lowest mileage FZR400 I have ever come across. If there is a cleaner one out there, I will gladly eat my words. To me, the FZR400 is one of the coolest bikes that the U.S.has seen. Back in the day, these bikes had superior frames to the 600 of the same year and were renowned as a better handling bike. Considering that the 400cc sport bike market never really caught on in the States, these are rare for sure.

Let me just first thank the seller for listing this bike the proper way. A detailed description of the bike history, any imperfections, a ton of photos (see the photbucket page here), and even a video of the bike while running. It is hard to say much about the bike’s condition. The seller states that there are two very small chips in the paint as well as a rub mark on the tank. Also, the bike has a Yamaha factory shift kit installed by the dealer at the time of original sale and 2 fairing fasteners on the bottom of the fairing. He also notes that the tank on this bike was swapped from another FZR400 he owned at the time.

From the seller:

The FZR400 is one of the best handling bikes ever built, even compared to more recent bikes. Incredibly light, agile, and fast.
They were only imported to the US for 3 years, sold like lead balloons because they were priced higher than the FZR600.
Few people realized that the 400 cc class was the premier class in Japan, so the components were top notch, much better than those of the 600.
It was common to swap the 600 motor into the much better 400 frame to race them.

This bike has never been modified (two exceptions, see below). It has always been stored inside. It has never been in the rain. It has spent most of its life a an expensive decoration in a collector’s house. It has never been registered, so it will come with a bill of sale.
When I got it, it had 600 miles on it. I had the fluids changed, new tires put on. The tires still have the center nubs even.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with this bike. Needs nothing. Nothing. Still needs breaking in!
The exceptions to never having been modified are that the original owner had the Yamaha Factory Shift Kit installed at the dealer when he purchased it, and I put 2 Dzus fasteners on the bottom fairing connectors. I have the original parts. This is my third FZR400 and I found that on my first one, the bottom fairing screw fell out and the fairing was damaged by wind, and on the second fzr I had, it was just a pain to get to those screws.

The only flaws I can find on the bike are 2 chips in the red paint, one on the left side of the front fairing, about 1/4 the size of a dime, and the other on the seat fairing behind the seat, much smaller than the front one. There is also a rub mark on the tank cover on the left, about where your knee rubs. Please see the pics, and especially the Photobucket pics which are higher resolution and more of them. For the sake of completeness… The tank cover is not the original, but is actually off my second FZR. I managed to knock a paint can onto the original tank cover (dented, not spilled), so I swapped it for the other bike’s nearly perfect one (that bike only had about 3k miles).

Even the insides of the fairing and inner swingarm are clean, and I didn’t clean them.

The bike will come with a ton of extra parts, some new, some used, a bunch of “no longer available” spares that I collected with the other two FZR’s I previously had.

See the auction here for the complete description and list of parts that will come with the bike

Let me just say that I love seeing bikes like this pop up for sale. A bike of this caliber is a true market-tester and I will be following the auction very closely to see where it ends up when bidding is done. I would suspect that the Reserve for the bike (plus all of the parts) is somewhere in the $5k+ range. If you are a collector or have been looking for the cleanest possible FZR400 around, now is your chance to own one. Would you ride it or have it as a pure collector? Jump over the the auction here and check it out!

-JS