Your Collection: Yamaha GT80
This weeks collection comes to us from Brian McGuire.
Back in good old 1977 my brother & his friend found a 73, gt 80 hidden in the bush near his friends house they brought it back to our house & both went out again I looked at it for a while & decide to teach my self to ride it I was 10 &in love. Latter my dad came home & was up set , he said it was stolen & we had to report it to the police, so off to the police station they impounded it ,they said if nobody claim it in 3 months the bike is legally ours. I went home & marked the calendar to count the days off, with in a month they rang & said it was in the way, no ones ,claimed it pick it up .We got it pack but for only a year as my bother & his friend decided to sell it & split the money I was heart broken. Fast forward 32 years later 1 buy 1 from a friend for a case of beer & find out its a 73, pulled out the old photo from 1977 & I am in love again, start stripping it, but the frame was broken badly around the back of the engine & the bash plate was missing, a lot of kids had learned to ride this bike so with a lot of help from Steve a great panel beater & friend ,we remade the broken bits in the frame with 3mm steel instead of the original 2mm.Norm another friend of mine had just rebuilt a 1984 Honda z50 & polished the engine cases that really inspired me it looked great. But I soon found out the the gt80 cases were a lot rougher castings so I spent about 2 month grinding, filing, sanded & polishing to get them squared up so the were flat between the 2 t case halves & covers .the cylinder was 5th over size the clutch basket finger had 10mm groves in it but I got a lot of good parts form the USA on eBay . Steve & I again with "easy beat dent machine" spent about 6 Saturday nights on the rear guard welding up the rear light holes & 14 dents in the fuel tank ,lead wiped it & filed it then off to the paint shop the colour is 2006 Yamaha 50th anniversary R6/ R1 yellow without the pearl . the only other drama I had was the front wheel I couldn't buy a 15inch front tyre so I went to a 17 inch rim, I polished & re-chromed a lot of other parts .When I ride it a I dream I am Kenny Roberts at the Indy mile ha ha .The old photo of me out the front of my parents house trying to wheelie 1977,the white bike is how I got it what a heap of junk in 2009 & me again doing wheelies 34 years latter out front of the same house & the finished bike
Thank You,
- Brian
