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Motorcycle Investor mag

Yamaha SR500

A singular decade

The bumpy road of Yamaha SR500 ownership

(Travels with Guido #380, Guy 'Guido' Allen, May 2025)

Pics by Ben Galli & GA

There was a little quiet contemplation over a glass of cheap and cheerful shiraz, in the 1950s 'portable' site office nailed to the back of our house – which has for decades been my writing den. The topic? Pondering the single-cylinder motorcycles that remain in the fleet. There are just two: the recently-acquired 2013 Suzuki DR650SE and the mighty 1978 Yamaha SR500.

While digging through some pics of the latter monster, muggins suddenly realised it's now a decade since the much-loved Cousin Russell passed away and we bought his SR and towed it from Naracoorte in South Australia to home in Melbourne. That's it behind the 1979 Kingswood (above) and to this day I'm unsure who put the mini Dr Who-style Tardis replica in the nearby paddock, or why.

No matter. By that stage I had long been a member of the astonishingly successful Australian SR500 Club. Just as an aside, legendary motorcycle magazine columnist Peter 'Mister' Smith was a catalyst in its formation.

According to the club: “The SR500 Club was co-founded by Paul Newbold and Chris Manhal. Paul had previously written to SR owner and Two Wheels columnist, Peter Smith, suggesting he start an SR500 register. Smith wrote back in good humour stating he had no wish to become a clerical assistant for a motorcycle gang and suggesting Newbold do it himself."

That's Smith, above, posing with the DIY SR500 assembly kit he kindly sold me many years ago. I never did get it together and would like to think that someone else has. He passed away in 2009, leaving behind a trail of SR500s (which he loved) in various stages of completion along with a brilliant body of written work, some of which you can unwrap via the Classic Two Wheels website.

Back to my current SR500, which has been (since it landed in the driveway) referred to as the Russell-mobile. It sat languishing in his shed for several years, thanks to the fact it ended up being a bastard to start. There is a legendary story of him and his mates tag-teaming to get the rotter going during a Naracoorte-to-Phillip-Island-GP-and-back pilgrimage.

Cousin R worked hard and put together funds for bigger, easier and faster machinery such as his beloved Honda VTR1000F – so the SR ended up hosting spider webs. He always intended to revive and maybe even restore it one day, but was sidelined by building a business, a family and then dealing with health issues.

So there we were, back in Melbourne, unloading his old single, wondering how much work it will take to bring it back to life. Newbold rolled up more or less the day it got home, and has been an important source of support ever since. That's him, above, trying to get it going, with fellow SR victims Jeff Gillman and Dave Morley supervising.

This was not going to be a quick fix. Paul generously offered well-qualified advice and parts throughout the long and tortuous path of getting the thing running properly.

In the end, I recruited Dave Edgecombe from Dynobike in Melbourne and he, through Jack at City Auto Electrical Services, discovered the bike was running the wrong flywheel. Believe it or not, they had to be matched to the correct engine batch, otherwise you were facing a long and descending spiral of issues.

Newbold, incredibly, dug a correct flywheel out of his metal recycling bin the day I called for help – thereby rescuing the project.

With that sorted, we went crazy (in SR500 terms) by replacing the stock 34mm carb set-up with a flatslide Mikuni HS40 (above). Once it was dialled in, we scored a monster 31.5 horses at the back tyre – more or less what a stocker claimed at the crankshaft and so a great result.

(Ed's note: Dave now concentrates on late fuel-injected machinery and no longer does 'old school' bikes like this.)

You might like to know the real mission wasn't horsepower (there are much more scary options in the shed) but to have something I could bloody well start. Every sodding time. This machine had given Cousin Russell, and later me, absolute hell.

The result? It works. You have to use the right technique from cold: open the fuel tap long enough to fill the carburettor, then shut it. Full choke and zero throttle. Find compression on the kickstarter, use the decompression lever to ease it over – then give it a boot. It generally runs in one to three kicks.

Once hot, it's much the same story – minus the choke.

Despite its modest specs, the SR500 is a hugely influential member of the home fleet of bikes currently numbering about 25 and including some far more glamorous machinery. How so? I reckon it's for two reasons.

Number one: it has such a rich bank of memories tied to it, including friends and family – the line between those groups is blurred;

Second: an old air-cooled single that's light and easy to ride is just so much damn fun. Really. Enough power to play a little, light and responsive steering, plus a standard naked bike upright ride position – almost instinctive.

I think of Cousin Russell every time we go for a ride. He would love it...

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