bruceintucson

Called the Dealer, they just came in. Appt. is for Thursday morning. Will let the Forum know how it goes.

Took my VIN (2015) down to the closest Ride Now (Dealer I bought the bike from) and mentioned the Yamaha Bulletin on the CCT's. He was unaware of it (!?) but looked it up & printed out the "recall." He said my VIN was on the list and ordered the new re-designed tensioner. We'll see how long it takes to get it in; and no he didn't need to see the bike or listen to the CCT.

Here's my take. The rear shock is junk, spring is too soft unless you weigh 120 lbs & there is too much compression damping. It will not follow the road no matter what you set it at, sends the road shock back into the chassis and upsets it (and the heavier you are the worse it is as it gets the light front end even lighter). Spend the money, get a quality shock sprung for your weight #1 priority.The rebound on the front forks is waaay more than you need; Yamaha kind of went overboard when everyone (rightly so) bitched about the soft springs and lack of damping on the FZ-09. While waiting on the tool from Traxxion to be able to take the springs out and install the .85 Sonic/Traxxion springs (same spring) I decided to replace 250 cc of the 5wt oil in the right leg with 2.5 wt. The fork compression circuit is pretty rudimentary and there is plenty of adjustment for rebound so figured it would take some of the hit out of the compression side of the fork. It worked wonders, and I only went from 9 turns out on rebound to 7 turns out with the lighter oil so still plenty left in adjustment. The front wheel now tracks the road better and doesn't just bounce off bumps. Set your rider sag to 35-40mm.Raise the forks 3-5mm will put more weight on the front end and it's not enough to make the FJ oversteer. After I got my flash back from David at VcycleNut on Saturday we went for a quick rode Sunday early AM before the 115 degree day set in. Flash is wonderful, Penske from Traxxion makes the stock shock laughable even if it needs some fine tweaking, and I got it to indicated 128 and it was completely stable! It starts to hit a wall above about 125 but still pulls, just not as fast.Spend some money & time. You've got a truly great motorcycle that needs $1k-1.4K worth of parts/work to make it amazing.....or quit bitching! :-)

The Adventure Tech 2" extenders are damn near perfect. Figured out it would cost me about $15-18 in mat.to build them, then another hour drilling, tapping; and another 1/2 hour prepping for paint & painting. A $29 they are a steal, look like they came with the bike from Yamaha and improve rear view. What's not to like?

Scissor jack and a piece of wood between it and the headers. Won't hurt them, you're not lifting much weight.

Raise the forks in the triple clamps 4-6mm, set the rider sag using preload adjusters to 35-38mm, start with the rebound 7-8 clicks out from full hard. You can go higher with no issues up to 10-12mm (try 2mm at a time). Set the rebound to where it tracks the road, not so much that it's bounces off the top of every road irregularity; that will cause a wobble/headshake for sure. The springs are too soft, especially the rear (the spring has sooo much preload on it that even in the softest setting the rear of the bike has no free sag. So under hard acceleration you have too much weight transfer to the rear, (especially if you have some weight on you), the front end gets light (it's got too little weight on it from the Factory with the forks in the stock setting), the front wheel with virtually no weight on it is skimming the pavement, worsened with too much rebound damping, your arms are acting like sails/wings....ya it's going to headshake! :-)

Was wondering as the manual lists TB sync at 600 miles. Contacted my buddy in TN who was SM for a large multi-line Dealership for 12 years. He said he always made the mechanics check the sync at 600 miles and he can't remember a Yamaha that really was out enough to need adjustment. 4K miles sounds like a good mileage to check.