The other shoe drops! New Pegs for the Yamaha FZ1.

After doing the pegs on the Ninja, I wanted a way to get some extra ground clearance on the Yamaha as well. I haven't come close to scraping a peg or boot just yet, but I want to get ahead of the curve for when I get my riding skills to that level. I looked into getting some rear sets, but there aren't too many choices out there for first generation FZ1s. While cruising eBay I found a happy medium that just might work for the track and give me the comfort I want for longer rides. Scroll on down to see what I did.

These are the pegs I found. The brand is nonexistent as they came from mainland China. There are a multitude of options for pegs like this out there. They are knurled aluminum and best of all, adjustable. In this pic you can see them on the high setting (top) for the track as well as the low setting for the street (bottom). There is about a 2 cm change in height. For those stuck on the imperial system that is just over 5/6 of an inch.

Here you can see the way the pegs adjust. The peg is offset from the peg pivot that mates to the frame. I have four options for the peg with this system. I can mount it forward, backward, up or down all in that 2 cm increment. The pivot point also has a pin top mount it to the offset which keeps everything from rotating and coming loose. There were no instructions or specs of any kind included with the pegs. I will probably mount them with somewhere around 15 ft-lbs. of torque and blue lock-tite to keep them secure.

In this pick you can see the rivet pins that secure the stock pegs to the OEM Yamaha foot control assembly. I very carefully ground these down with an angle grinder to remove the pin and pegs. I measured the OEM rivet pin and compared it too the new pivot pins to ensure that they were of comparable sizes. I didn't want the new pins to be too big or too small and not be able to fix the issue. They were exactly the same diameter and length.

This is just after I punched the old OEM pin out of the foot control assembly with my hammer and punch. I ground down the pin until the washer fell off on its own. From there it took just a couple quick taps of the punch to knock the pin out of the assembly. The spring and OEM foot peg dropped right out. I cleaned the peg mount with a little soapy water and a rag before sliding the new foot peg into its slot with the OEM spring. Everything went in perfectly unlike the Ninja's pegs which required me to grind them down a bit. The OEM springs bind up a bit with the new pegs, but not in a way that keeps my boots from being able to plant firmly on the peg. Both sides took just under 30 minutes to do and the whole project from start to finish was about an hour to get the tools and clean up after. I finished just in time for dinner.

The pic above is the before pic on the left hand side of the bike. I put the bike on the center stand to measure the distance from the floor to the bottom of the OEM peg feeler as well as the distance e from the floor to the top of the peg. Floor-to-feeler was 360 mm and floor-to-top of peg was 405 mm. This was my baseline for any changes that the new pegs gave me. Ideally I want to get more ground clearance on the bottom of the peg and a bit more legroom from the top.

And here is the after photo on the right hand side. The after measurements were 380 mm floor-to-feeler and 400 mm floor-to-top of peg. I got what I wanted. I gained an extra 20 mm of ground clearance and 5 mm of legroom. With the angle of the OEM foot control assemblies, I can't rotate the peg to be perpendicular to the floor. If you think of the new pegs like a compass, mine are mounted in the North-East position (right hand side, North-West for the left hand side). If I rotate them to the North-West (right side case) I can get the same height, but it moves the peg farther back. I can rotate both pegs to either the Sort-East or South-West position to get some extra leg room at the expense of the extra ground clearance. This might be a good choice for longer distance sport-touring rides or long freeway runs.

I took the bike out today after cutting out of work early to make a run to the hardware store. I was able to test out the pegs and get a feel for them. So far I like them. I do feel like they are higher underfoot than the OEM ones, but this may be because of some new gear I was also testing that restricted my leg movement a bit. They felt fine under my boots as I didn't get any additional slippage from the knurled aluminum versus the stock rubber topped pegs. On longer rides I might get more vibration coming through the pegs. The inline 4 engine does a good job of eliminating most of the vibes so I'm only worried about potential harmonic buzzing. I like knowing that I can get a couple of extra degrees of lean out of the bike with the extra ground clearance. The new pegs still pivot, unlike the Ninja's pegs. For now I'll call it $27.00 well spent.

More My Motorbike Obsessions action will be coming soon. I've got a gear review, a quick camera project and a track day happening all in the next two weeks. Things will slow after that due to work, but I hope to have a second big track-track day coming in May and I'm trying to line things up to attend California Superbike School for my Level 2 training in June. Thanks for sticking around and come back again!

Blue