leedavis

I read that the Niken is for Millenials because only having 2 wheels is scary.

I ride with a group that has a few guys out of Charlotte and 3 of us from other towns are FJ-09 owners. There's a forum where we arrange rides - http://cofsta.com/ Though it's Carolina Old Farts Sport Touring the ride pace is quick. I think you can be added to the forum from the web page. There's another group, The Knobbies, that meet sunday mornings off I-40 between Hickory and Morganton. http://knobbies.org/Site/Home.html They ride at a more stately pace.

Yamaha does quite a bit of high end concept stuff - even a sports car that I would love to have. https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-shows/tokyo-auto-show/news/a27175/yamahas-latest-concept-is-asports-car/ The Niken seems to me to be another one of their concepts and should have stayed that way.

If you do sporty riding on curvy roads the weak suspension needs to be remedied. Replacing fork internals and rear shock is preferred but at least get proper springs. Stoltec Moto has them and no doubt there are other vendors. https://stoltecmoto.com/product-category/yamaha/fj-09/

If all you want is commuter tires I'd go for long lasting like a Metzeler Z8. I used them for long distance cross country because they last "forever". The trade off is if you also want sporty traction to challenge the twisties Z8's aren't the tires for that.

I've done valve shims on both a 2004 FJR1300 and a 2015 FJ-09. The FJ-09 is a lot easier.

Did the tire wear out more on the sides? The centre? Evenly on both? In the twisties are you varying speed a lot with acceleration and braking? I've ridden many of the little roads in western NC, I love them! 8-) Double Island is one of my favorites. Somewhat even with a bit more wear in the middle from acceleration and braking. About the only people wearing out the sides 1st around here are wearing knee pucks and i'm too old and lazy for that.

1640 miles to clean off the rear and that's fairly typical for a performance tire on the twisties where I live in western North Carolina. The front is still OK at 2500.

My backup laptop computer lives in my shop since that's where it gets used all the time. It'd be nice if one could buy the manual and get both hard copy and PDF versions for the reasons mentioned above.

I ordered mine Saturday (Jan 24) at my dealer. He said it would be in in about week to 10 days, and claimed they are printed when ordered. My dealer is small, although they also sell Suzuki and MV Agusta. That seems odd. Unless the manual is in something like a loose leaf, 3 ring binder format I don't get how they could print copies on demand...but what do I know. Please describe what you get.

Anybody heard when service manuals will be available?