My name is Alistair Tassie, friends call me TAZ, I started racing in 1984 on a Suzuki GT750 (waterbottle) powered sidecar, and raced various incarnations over the next 24 odd years, including VF1000 powered and CBR1000 powered sidecars, at one stage actually owning 2 outfits, but then decided I'd had enough, that was 2008 when long time passenger Pete Hanley retired.

I wasn't quite ready to hang up the leathers just yet and a friend was racing in the fledgling period 6 class and had just upgraded from his FZ750 Yamaha to an FZR1000, a deal was struck and I was the owner of the 750. Period 6 is classic class for road based motorcycles built between 1983 and 1990. What a lot of fun this thing is, we did the first few races as it was (stock standard) including the horrible 16" front, and skinny little 18" rear. Well first job was some better tyres, picked up an FZR1000 front wheel (17") and brakes a 1000 rear wheel (still 18") but at least it was wider. Cast some adaptors to fit the FZR1000 4 spot calipers to my forks and it was much nicer. I then milled up a set of rear sets, cause boots are expensive.

Next job was an even better rear wheel, managed to source a couple of YZF600 Thundercat rear wheels and another FZR1000 front, finally 17's front and back, plus spare wheels for wets. Well, that showed up major deficiencies in the rear suspension big time, not being flush with money, I looked around for something I could adapt to the rear, finally settling on an 2002 R1 rear shock and relay arm I cut out the top shock mount and fabricated a new one to get the top of the shock where it needed to be, and a few spacers later, and after fabricating an adjustable dog bone, the shock was in, not exactly OHLINS, but a much better shock than the original and at least some adjustability. As luck would have it, it came up pretty close, especially as the old girl had shed some 50 Kg's in the mean time, but the front springs were still past it, they have now been changed, and I have modified some fork caps to incorporate preload adjusters, and next I want to make some cartridge emulators to go in the forks with shim stacks to make them more adjustable.

As for the power plant it has been changed since I purchased the bike for another one I knew the history of, it was out of my wife's brother in laws road bike, which was written off by a tin top, who much to his dismay found out he had just run over a Victorian SOG police officer. The engine is stock apart from a set of radial flat slides from a 1000, the Lawson replica exhaust system I fabricated from photos, and also a water to oil, oil cooler from a 600 Thundercat. The next job on the list is a new 4 into 2 into 1 exhaust to help the mid range a little on some of the tighter tracks (most of ours) and possibly back to the smaller carbies for the same reason. I have a flowed head still sitting on the bench waiting to be CC'd to work out the compression, them maybe I'll get round to assembling the other engine I have sitting in the rack.

In the mean time I have also built another FZ750 for a mate, setting it up pretty much the same as mine, with the R1 rear shock etc.