Introduction

Seven years ago I started to search for a motorcycle after moving to Sweden just a few years before. I had been a long time biker having started riding my first at the age of 15 and wanted to continue this favourite pursuit.

Me, many many years ago...

Having only ever owned Yamahas and loving the fact that I had never ever broken down with a single one of them in 37 years I knew that I would be getting another Yamaha. But which one this time around?

On my Yamaha XJ550 Seca back in the 80's.

After some research and contemplation I decided that I would like to have a cruiser, probably the XVS1100 but nothing certain... until a friend heard that I was looking and informed me that he was selling a 2000 Yamaha XVS1100a Classic. I went for a look and was hooked right off. It was a great looking bike with only 12000km´s on the clock. I made him a cheeky offer and he accepted straight away. Score!

First time I saw her.

As you can see from the above pictures she was pretty much stock standard, except for a noisy pair of Cobra slip-ons that made an awful racket and did nothing for performance. Fortunately the previous owner still had the OEM exhaust so that was eventually reinstalled. Those terribly naff dangly leather strips on the handlebar ends came off immediately too. Why would anyone have them and what are they for?

What she looks like today.

I have made a fair number of changes to this bike over the last seven years, mostly quite subtle and if you know the V-Star/Dragstar then you should be able to spot most of them. I will be covering a lot of what I have done and how I've done it over the next while on this blog and I hope that it may be helpful to you or at the very least somewhat entertaining.