Hi all I have just joined the forum and though that I should introduce myself.
I recently bought a 1982 FT500, however, I must admit that I am a 500 Yamaha fanatic and have 12 XT/TT/SR500s in my collection, but I also have 19 1960's and 1970's Hondas so I am not all bad. Even though I have owned and ridden 500 Yamahas since the late 1970's, I worked as a mechanic for a Honda dealership through the mid 1980's and had the opportunity to ride a few FT500s back then and found them a nice bike to ride and I also liked the Flat Track style. Over the last 25 odd years I have kept a bit of an eye out for a FT500, but they are not that common here in Australia. It was purely by chance that I typed FT500 into Gumtree and found this one up for sale fairly close to home, just 400km away. So a deal was done and now I finally have one. The bike is a bit rough, but not to bad considering is age. From the registration label it was last registered in 2007 so it looks like it has been off the road for a while. My plan is to sort out some of the issues with it and get it back on the road over the next few weeks (probably months in real life). Once I have had a chance to ride it a bit and find out if there are any bigger issue, I will pull it down for a bit of refresh / minor restoration replacing the damaged, missing and incorrect parts to bring it up to a reasonable but not concourse standard.
