1978 Yamaha XS1100E Eleven - 8-Page Vintage Motorcycle Road Test Article

Description

1978 Yamaha XS1100E Eleven - 8-Page Vintage Motorcycle Road Test Article
Original, Vintage Magazine article
Page Size: Approx. 8" x 11" (21 cm x 28 cm) each page
Condition: Good
“This isn't a motorcycle. It’s a time
machine! Just turn that thing on the right
end of the handlebar and everything else
seems to slow down and freeze.”
The subject was the new Yamaha
XS1100E, a phenomenal motorcycle
which Yamaha has chosen to call the
“Eleven.” It is a lot of motorcycle with a lot
of attractions, and if you are a seasoned
big-bike rider with the experience to direct
and appreciate them, those attractions are
exciting and impressive. The speaker was
describing the Eleven’s most exciting,
heart-pounding quality: It's astonishing,
relentless horsepower.
Take this new four out on the street . . .
and rearrange the street if you wish. Gel
away for a weekend trip on the Eleven and
discover new meanings for the terms
“torquey” and “mid-range power." Ride
through the valley of the Kawasaki
KZ1000 and fear not. for the Eleven is, as
the saying goes, the meanest sonofabitch
in the valley.
We hasten to point out. though, that the
XS Eleven is more than just a device for
warping time and shriveling pavement. It’s
a complete, refined motorcycle. Yamaha’s
bike-shapers saw the unrestrained super-
bikes built by other companies a few years
ago arrive with a lot of fanfare, then
quickly and quietly disappear, so they
learned the lesson without having to pay
for it: pure speed is not enough to make a
motorcycle successful. Power and speed
draw buyers to showrooms. But comfort,
styling, reliability, detail features, handling
and ease of maintenance are the consid-
erations that, over the long haul, open
more checkbooks.
So the bike Yamaha built was to have the
biggest motorcycle engine ever to cross the
Pacific East-to-West. The 1100 was to be a
motorcycle big enough to bruise egos in
any crowd of motorcyclists, but able to
accept the compromises necessary for the
realities of day-to-day riding. The finished
product is truly an astounding motorcycle.
THE BIKE: Although very contempo-
rary, the construction of the Yamaha
XS1100E Eleven holds few surprises. But
one is the rubber-mounting of the entire
engine unit to provide the rest of the
chassis with an effective isolation from
engine vibration. The 1101.6-cc four-
stroke looks very much like Yamaha’s
dual-overhead-camshaft XS750E triple,
but with a 3.5-mm increase in bore diame-
ter and an additional cylinder. Both en-
gines have 68.6-mm strokes, although the
1100 has a 71.5-mm bore, and both use 36-
mm intake valves and 31-mm exhaust
valves with shim-type adjusters. The
Eleven's compression ratio is 9.2:1.
Like the XS750E. the XS 1100 is fed by a
bank of 34-mm Mikuni constant-velocity
carburetors. All four of the Eleven's carbs
are controlled by a single throttle cable.
Unlike most Japanese multis, the Eleven
has no cable to pull the throttles shut. The
carbs plug into an airbox which includes
internal velocity-slack-type intake tubes,
so changing the air cleaner arrangement
may have an adverse efl ecl on intake tun-
ing.
The Eleven’s lower end follows the pat-
tern of the “universal Japanese four.” The
crankshaft rides on plain beacings. and a
single-row chain loops around the center
of the crank and up through the cylinder
head to drive the camshafts. A Morse Hy-
vo primary chain, driven by a sprocket next...
11935-7801-09
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