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----=:;,;;;jjjjjjjijiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii;;;;::::--..--------.::;-------,;;:==i.. - ,,1/ Yamaha Roadstar Hop Ups / By PETER JONES PHOTOS BY KEVIN WING amaha's got balls. Big, heavy medicine balls. It calls them the Speedstar Stage IV kit. These balls are designed to cure the too-mild cruiser blues. They're all about rock and roll with a wrought-iron soul. Yamaha's got soul. Yamaha held a press event to introduce the Speedstar Stage IV kits for its Road Star line of cruisers, and it did it right. The kits are designed for use on the dragstrip, and so Yamaha held the event on a dragstrip. Most usually and generally and oftenly, when a manufacturer hosts a test of its products for the press, competition among journalists is informal, unsanctioned, uninvited and disdained. Guys in suits who own big houses frown at such things. But not with Yamaha's introduction of these Speedstar performance kits. True to the culture of the quartermile, Yamaha didn't just have us each do some candy-ass journalist solo runs; it made it into a smackdown, trash-talk'n competition with a prize for the winner. And the losers all got to take something home with them, too. An ass-whoopin'. Knowing that, I found myself sitting in the pre-race press conference trying to size up the competition instead of listening to the words coming from the mouth of the Yamaha PR guy. Like when sitting down to play poker, I was busy looking for the fool and . hoping I could find one, because - as common wisdom has it - if I couldn't find one it would mean the same thing that it does at the card table: it was Y 64 MAY 7, 2003ยท cue I e me. I figured I could take most of those present, but professional drag racer Larry Laye was definitely the clear favorite. And Cycle World's Mark Cern icky is fast on any bike on any type of track. That's when I started thinking, "You know, maybe those two will be trouble, but I bet I could take Mike Tyson. Not in the ring, sure, but on a Speedstar-kitted Warrior I'd send him home with hurt. Where are you Mike? Scared, huh? Aren't you, huh? I bet your momma's faster than you. I'd hurt her too, you big baby." And then self-doubt crept into my thoughts. How much throttle could I use? How hard should I let the clutch fly? What was the traction like? Could I adjust quickly to each bike's different performance? Maybe I should have stayed as museum director? How'd I get here? I hope I don't drop one of the bikes. Where's my mommy? Somehow, through this pathetic emotional wrenching from bottomless doubting to swaggering confidence, I did manage to take a few notes. Yamaha has leaped in front of the competition in the performancecruiser market, first with its involvement in the AMA/Prostar Hot Rod cruiser class, and now with the introduction of its accessory performance parts for its line of Road Star cruisers. If you don't know, Yamaha won last year's Hot Rod Cruiser championship with Mark Underwood piloting the Patrick Racing Yamaha Warrior. Underwood also set records at 9.8 seconds and 133.51 mph. Um, that's fast for any bike. For a 700-pound cruiser that's nuts fast. Balls. Yamaha is the only Japanese motorcycle manufacturer to offer pern e "'" s formance parts for its line of cruisers. But the company wants to make it clear that these parts are for off-road use only. But then again, aren't all performance parts for off-road use only? Leading the list of Yamaha's cruiser performance parts are the Stage IV kits for the Road Star, hereafter referred to as the Road Star, and Road Star Warrior, hereafter referred to as the Warrior, and ridden by me, hereafter referred to as me. The Stage IV kits each include a pile of parts conveniently listed separately somewhere else in this article. As you can see, the Road Star starts out as a much milder bike, and so the kit is more costly and has a number of additional parts unnecessary to give the Warrior impressive performance. Once kitted, the Road Star boasts a claimed 83-percent increase in peak power and a reduction in quarter-mile times of two seconds, depending of course on the rider's ability. The already-powerful Warrior gets a 25-percent increase of peak power and about a one-second reduction in quarter-mile ET. Of note is, Yamaha fully warranties all of its Speedstar parts for 90 days while all of the original parts maintain their original full warranty that came with purchase of the bike. This is significant, considering that all other aftermarket performance parts void warranties. Yamaha invited the press to test the stock and Stage IV-kitted versions of its Road Star and Warrior at the California Speedway dragstrip, located in Fontana, California. For the test it provided two of each version of the bikes, allowing us a number of runs on each. First, we were each given time on the totally stock Road Star. Nice cruiser, and cruiser it is, and down a dragstrip, cruise it does. I posted a 14.385 quarter-mile time at 89.32 mph. And that professional dragracer Larry Laye guy, who was there for some "urban-performance" magazine, whatever that means, was the only one faster, with a time of 14.361. Mark "Super" Cern icky was right there and third fastest with 14.409 at 88.86 mph. Ooh wee, I was all confidence after that. Next up we moved to the Stage IVkitted Road Stars. And yes, I dropped about two seconds off my times, just as Yamaha claimed. My best run was 12.515 at 107.27 mph. With the Stage IV kit the Road Star has for-real power, and our runs were limited because the rear OEM tire was no longer the match for the bike's performance. Launching the kitted Road Star required a gentle throttle; otherwise the bike would just sit there burning rubber all day long. Which is fun but probably not the point of most owners' performance upgrades. With a sticky tire, more than a full two seconds could easily be removed from the bike's ET. This time, Laye and Cernicky were both faster than me at 12.402 at 104.88 mph and 12.508 at 106.29 mph, respectively. Damn, I was slipping. The Road Star not only woke up with the kit but also woke up everyone near by. The pipe is for performance, and since it's for off-road use only, it provides little in the way of muffling. It's loud. If loud pipes save lives, Road Star owners will live very long and happy lives. And it's also a nice sound, something like that of a big-bore V-8. Between your legs. We then moved on to the stock Warrior, on which I posted a best time of 12.845 at 100.33 mph. The most significant difference between the Stock Warrior and kitted Road Star was the rear tire. The OEM fitment on