How To: Source parts for your Yamaha

[Roosty]

Gidday All, here's a few tips I've learnt from restoring my bikes, please feel free to add any tips of your own.. basically a quick guide to finding all of the parts needed cheaply.. I used all of thes ways to build my 465's

motorcycle wreckers.

do a ring around of all of the ones in the yellow pages, most wreckers still have good supplies of mechanical parts, cosmetics may be a bit harder but it's well worth asking. be prepared for a laugh and 'yeah good luck' line but within reason do as many as you can and you will be surprised as new bikes are always added

there's 571 motorcycle wreckers in australia...

http://www...=0&y=0


Try your local dealership

obviously not the cheapest of options but certainly a solid source of parts.. especially as it's a network of dealerships that may have parts on hand, they're also experts, most likely raced them 'in the day' they may even have a minter sitting in their own personal collection... I can't stress this more... get to know your local dealership. 9 times out of 10 you will buy new and genuine cheaper than through ebay where something is claimed to be rare NOS (new old stock) or NLA (no longer available) it may just be the seller claiming that for sales and it is still available.

Ebay. well yeah.. ebay. last resort. if you have to try other region ebay sites.. the UK and US ones link to other countries that Aussie ebay doesn't, ...sometimes cheap sometimes not... minefield if you don't know if something is available first...



Yamaha-motor.com
http://par...s=sport%20

that's the official yamaha parts diagram site, US spec only, but invaluable for a resource of part numbers.. also a great way of knowing how parts go together to make your bike.. it's all layed out in diagrams.

grab a part number stick it into an internet search engine...

Google, Yahoo ect search engines...

simple. copy the part number from the yamaha site into the search bar.. stick it in "" and have a surf... and remember there are older less well known search engines from years ago still going.. use them too.

here's a prime example.. part # "4V5-84521-00-00" (H model tailight lense) gave 87 hits in google.. not all of them a good hit, but I found a lense for $21... I've seen the same lense labelled as NLA and go for over US$80 through ebay.


http://www...it.com.au/

there's this site too obviously but chances are we'll only find the part for you through the above ways... 


that's my tips what are yours??

Cheers!
Leslie

[Wyogoose]

Obviously, there are those that use this site as brokerage to gather parts for resale.

 Good tutorial on parts sourcing Les. Being in the US there are usually parts available on ebay but as you say, they get spendy. The parts that hold me up (I am not done searching yet) are things like the inner mud flap inside the swingarm. Or the original rubber grommet out of the mag housing. I haven't had much clutch or intermediate drive problems but there are manufactures for such items like clutch discs and fibers, clutch baskets, pipes, silencers.... Now these are not OEM but they get you on the road and in many instances improved on stock. There are several bearing manufactures that make equivalant or better bearings and seals that can be sourced through local auto/equipment dealers. I have a handwritten list of a lot of these suppliers that I will try to get posted up here to benefit. The challenge comes with plastics of which are anyones guess/luck of the draw for anything decent. I will try to get together a "line sheet" of my manufactures and suppliers and hopefully we can talk Jock into having an edited sort of note board that can be rated and added to as members find new outlets.

What do you's think???

[dalesween]

pays to look around, i got a US spec taillight lens shipped to my door for 21 euro from cms in the netherlands, and thats genuine yamaha with 4 screws also.