[:es]Yamaha XS500 Street Tracker de Relic Motorcycles[:en]Yamaha XS500 Street Tracker by Relic Motorcycles[:]

[:es]La Yamaha XS500 no tiene la misma fama que su hermana mayor, la Yamaha XS650, pero si tienes la oportunidad de probar esta bicilíndrica en paralelo de 30 años verás que no tiene nada que envidiar. Es una obra de Tommy Rand, Co-Fundador de Relic Motorcycles de Aarhus, Dinamarca, que vio un gran potencial cuando se enteró de este modelo particular de la Yamaha XS500 de 1.977 que estaba en venta en Copenhague. Él debe tener una gran imaginación creativa, porque la moto había sido reconstruida de una forma un poco rara, ya que había sido pintada con una extraña pintura amarilla, sin asiento y parecía a un puesto de perritos calientes. También había estado en venta durante más de un año, nadie se atrevió antes a comprarla y crear esta Cafe Racer a la que Tommy le devolvió la vida.

La Yamaha XS500 es una moto barata tanto para comprar como para modificar, aunque eso depende de qué transformación quieres hacer y la calidad de las piezas que quieras ponerle pero tiene un gran potencial.

Donde más ha sobresalido la moto es en su estructura sencilla con esas líneas tan cuadradas de la Yamaha XS500. Se han elegido los colores de la pintura y asiento de forma cuidadosa y sutil realizando un gran trabajo. El color principal de la pintura es «Dakota Gris Metálico», el color favorito de los diseñadores de Audi. El depósito lo adorna el logotipo de Yamaha en color Oro.

Para conseguir una posición más deportiva, han bajado las horquillas un poco. En la parte trasera se han puesto unas gomas Vee algo más grandes, pero gracias al espacio que tenían para jugar esto no ha sido ningún problema. Los amortiguadores traseros se han dejado los que llevaba, aunque ajustándolos un poco y pintándolos.

Especificaciones Técnicas de la Yamaha XS500

Tiene dos hermanas pequeñas, la Yamaha XS400 y la XS250, pero la Yamaha XS500 tiene un motor distinto con su motor bicilíndrico de 498cc con un ratio de compresión de 9.6:1 que produce una potencia de  50cv a 8.500 rpm,.

[:en]Tommy Rand, Co-Founder of Relic Motorcycles from Aarhus, Denmark, saw when he found this particular 1977 Yamaha XS500 for sale in Copenhagen. He must have a great creative imagination, because the bike he came to see had been subjected to a terrible rebuild, strange yellow paint, no seat and it half resembled a hot dog stand. It’d also been on the market for over a year. Clearly, no other prospective buyers saw the possibility of a perfectly built Nordic Cafe Racer that Tommy and the boys envisioned and then brought to life.

The reason that the Yamaha XS500 is important in motorcycle history is Yamaha’s use of their contra-rotating balancer that allowed them to produce a parallel twin that was silky smooth and stilled made good power while being cheap to produce. It was a time of the 2-stroke decline, new multi-cylinder machines which all cost companies a lot to develop and the consumer paid. But the Yamaha XS500 was cheaper to make, cheaper to buy, performed more than adequately and Yamaha used the money they’d saved to make the XS far better appointed than any of its competition. To sweeten up the little twin cam Relic have stripped the engine and given it a nice coat of paint and a thorough polish. Extracting some extra ponies are a set of K&N pod filters, heat wrapped and shortened pipes and finished out with a neat pair of chrome shorty mufflers.

Where Relic Motorcycles have really excelled in this build is the look, the clever body work and the challenge that is dealing with the XS500’s rather square lines. Rather than fight them or simply fit another tank Relic have used clever colour selection and subtle paint work to bring out the best in the Yamaha design. The primary colour is Dakota Grey Metallic, a favourite of Audi designers, that is broken up with the finest of gold pinstriping. A brilliantly laid down gold Yamaha logo adorns the tank while the side covers feature matching paint work with the Relic logo finished in the same gold hue. At the rear the subframe has been relieved of much of its metal that originally supported a truly horrific two up seat and in its place an up-swept rear hoop has been welded in. Sitting on the new rear end is a custom seat with leather from a 1970’s Danish designer sofa and gives a period correct finish and an ultra comfy ride.

To get the stance right and create that cafe racer feel the Yamaha XS500 needs to get much closer to terra firma and Relic have achieved that by lowering the front forks through the trees, with gators and polished legs for a clean finish. The rear uses the factory mounting points top and bottom but tucks the tyre heavily thanks to height adjustable progressive rate shocks. The wheels have been powder coated in a tough matte black and are wrapped in Vee Rubber tyres. Now here is the clever bit, look at the bike from the rear and the centreline of the tyre is directly inline with the seats centre stitching that is then in line with the tanks pinstripping. It’s millimetre perfect and something that not only shows the level of thought and design in the build but is an incredibly difficult thing to achieve.

Written by Martin Hodgson.

Yamaha XS500 Specs

Although looking like the smaller XS400 and XS250 bikes, the Yamaha XS500 has a different twin-cylinder engine which features twin-overhead camshafts and four-valves per cylinder.

Although such an engine would be ideally suited to a sports motor cycle, Yamaha instead have used it in a state of tune for a bike they classify as a tourer with enough engine power to enable it to keep up with larger capacity machines.

The oversquare power unit displaces 498CC and with a compression ratio of 9.6:1 produces 49bhp at 85oorpm, just one brake horsepower down on the company’s 650CC twin.

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