Page 1 - May Whaler
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Company Name Publish Date
THE WHALER
MAY 2022
YZF-R7 “OW02” 1999
The YZF-R7 was Yamaha’s answer to the World Superbike Championship.
Built with exotic materials and engineered based on the YZR500 Grand Prix
racer, the company called it a racer out of the box. It had flat slide carburettors,
titanium conrods, titanium valves, Öhlins suspension and weighed only 189 kg,
dry. It was delivered with 106 hp, but a second race kit would bump that up to
162 hp. And it had Yamaha’s signature 20-valve Genesis head, too.
The bike did win a number of races but never won a championship.
Only 500 were ever built at an astronomical price of USD 32,000 circa 1999
