wessie

tank protector fitted - had to trim it to two thirds the length to fit between the seat & filler cap due to the plastic skirt. Cheap Ebay job someone will now tell me it is a very rude oriental character...

Great stuff Pilgo. Mine generated a lot of interest today as well. The local IAM group run to Grafham water, I think at least one rider will be going to arrange a road test at a local Yamaha dealer. Yes, it does seem to be a bit of magnet for gentlemen beyond a certain age to come to have a chat. The last time I rode a bike with that sort of magnetism was when I had a Triumph 955i Sprint courtesy bike for half a day whilst a bike was being serviced.

Depends on who you ask. Some people are surprised to be hit with wind when riding a motorcycle. Some people get a motorcycle to feel the wind. Some even remove the the screen on their bike. Buying and riding bikes was so much easier before the days of internet forums cause we didn't know what was wrong with our bikes, we just rode the piss outta them. and who's fault is it that the world is spammed with loads of motorcycling forums, eh?

We are all different. You will only find out if you ride the bike as there are many variables including your physical dimensions, your helmet choice, your riding style, your choice of ear plug, your tolerance of noise and your tolerance of wind. Many are happy with the stock screen. Others have found another type more suitable. You just have to suck it and see.

Fitted some grip puppies and went for a ride - review here

I think you have just volunteered to solicit owners for the data, collate and analyse the data and publish the results in tabular form. Congratulation. You are now the official Screen Monitor. Could you please work to 31st May 2015 as the deadline for this project. On behalf of the Forum Staff I thankyou for your commitment to support the community.

One dealer offered to print some stuff off for me, but of course I can do that myself at home; but being an old-fashioned sort of bloke I do like to have crisp paper in my hands! And a decent brochure can always be used to adorn the garage wall! L and the last part of your comment may be what Yamaha found i.e. most brochures end up on the coffee tables of tyre kickers or the walls of teenage Rossi fans and have little impact on actual sales when the majority of buying customers are already well informed before entering the showroom from the myriad of online and print media we are bombarded with. You seem to be a prime example of this type of buyer with your micro-analysis of every aspect of the bike from multimedia resources, even before you actually saw one for real!

Perhaps people could arrange some sort of gathering locally where people could try the screen options on their bike. It takes but a minute to swap a screen. At the meeting in Oxford, UK we had bikes with the stock screen, the Powerbronze and the Ermax. I would be more than happy for someone to borrow my Powerbronze screen for an hour or so to test it in a variety of conditions.

Yamaha will try to direct customers to their website to look at pretty pictures as printed media is very expensive and goes out of date quickly. Whilst most customers will have an internet connection there will be a proportion that do not. My local dealer will happily print off a pdf of an accessory catalogue for example, which is what I would expect any dealer to do. It's a shame if your dealer wasn't able to do this for you LofS.

The French tried having a 105PS limit for a while. It had no effect on road casualties as most of them involve their teenagers on motards and scooters. I think they have abandoned the limit now, just like all the other crazy nanny measures like compulsory reflective clothing etc. What I like about the French motorist is that their politicians think up ever more crazy things on the grounds of safety or the environment but the French motorists just ignore the legislation.

lawyers, always blame the lawyers although, it would be nice to able to get away with saying Americans just aren't man enough but it would be disingenuous to do something like that, directly anyway

the fitting instruction on that ebay link have some lovely pictures of the locations of the spare wiring leads for the accessories. I'll do a separate post and I have saved it as a pdf in case the webpage disappears

Just got back from a spirited ride in the warmest weather of the year so far at 13C/55F in the Wye Valley, Forest of Dean & Cotswolds. On the private, closed road adjacent to Gloucestershire International Airport, lets call it A40 for brevity, I saw an indicated 130mph. No sign of any wobbly bars at this speed with me, 200lb and about 15lb of topbox. I would need a less windy helmet to go any faster as the XR1100 is very well vented and I now understand why a mate won't use one on his Gixxer Thou for a track day. I did manage to provoke a good waggle of the bars when exiting a corner and giving it some hard acceleration whilst still leaning a bit. The bike kept it's line and came upright to disappear down the long straight quite rapidly. The was in standard mode. This was the second time this week I have experienced something similar. I can see why some people might find a steering damper useful. I'll see how it goes as it all seems controllable at the moment and it's not often I'm riding quite so hard. Perhaps having a warning like that is a useful thing as a damper might encourage one to keep pushing harder until it's the tyres that begin to protest...

So, an update on the Powerbronze screen (as reviewed here) after a longish ride yesterday. I find this screen very good still. There is one annoyance, not so much for me but might be significant for others. I have the screen in the upper position. As you get towards 50mph the screen starts to oscillate. At 55mph this generates a noise which begins to dissipate at 60mph. By 70mph the screen is pushed back by the airflow and stops oscillating. Not a big problem for me. My journeys are around town and on single track mountain roads at lower speeds or in open countryside above that range. If YMV so that you spend a lot of time in the 50-70 range, perhaps on a commute over urban dual carriageways with speed cameras, then this might annoy you.

It was the noise that bothered me more than anything. Some airflow is good especially if it's warm as my helmet has loads of vents that won't work if your head is not in the breeze. I do like to be able to turn my head to one side when it rains and watch water zip off which needs a decent air flow.

I've not had any real wobble at speed and after my mate's comment about how I ride the thing when he was following on his R1100RS I think I ride quite fast at times. There again, I'm used to big Adv bikes and don't get worried by bikes moving around when you are hustling them along over bumpy terrain. Perhaps I just have the intuitive steering responses to nip the wobbles in the bud. Perhaps I'm a riding god. Who knows. However, I agree with your 2 points. When I learned to relax my grip and arms many years ago I became a better rider. Your arms can be very good steering dampers and you have to learn this on an Adv bike as the bars will flap about due to their length and leverage. Learn to control this and use the leverage to your advantage and you are winning. I also agree with your comment about the windrush from the standard screen having an effect as you get buffeted about. Now with the larger Powerbronze screen fitted I can get out of the airflow when giving the throttle some abuse just by dropping my head & shoulders towards the tank. Of course, what I am also doing is exactly what scruff says, putting more weight over the front. I am finding that for a given road I am now running quite a bit faster as there is less noise and less buffeting. Ultimately it comes down with being comfortable in both physical and psychological terms. If you are cold, wet, getting buffeted, have a numb arse etc then your concentration will drift. If you are worried the bike is going to react badly to a bump, go into a tank slapper if you wind it on too hard then your concentration will also drift. This is when you take your eyes off the road and miss an apex or miss that car pulling out of a side road.

If you want to cut down the noise at motorway cruising speeds and are under 6 foot (1.83m) tall then the Powerbronze screen I have is the one to go for, set in the high position. As stated in that thread, if you can adjust a screen so the top is around 7" (18cm) below your eyeline then this may be the height to get optimal airflow. This is only a hypothesis based on a single datum, so some way to go before it can be called the wessie Law of Physics...

I do know it well but as it was a mile from my house when I lived over there, I rarely stopped there! If I am riding back from the coast I usually stop at Glanusk as I would normally be with a friend from near Caerphilly so we stop for a drink and then take a different road home from Sennybridge.

I lost my knob

I have a Powerbronze tall screen now - works well. Review British made but they have an international network

fitted & reviewed a powerbronze screen - very impressed

stuck some neoprene muffs on - details here

600 mile service today

I have been riding ADV bikes for 15 years, like you LoA. A R1150Gs then a Super Tenere XT1200Z. I didn't go down the R1200GS route due to woeful reliability problems with the early models. Things have improved but BMW still get far too many warranty claims considering the price premium you pay on purchase. Like you, I made the decision to try a lighter bike as a recent illness made the XT1200 feel too heavy, especially getting it out of the garage. This decision was made after riding a loaner MT07 when the XT was being serviced last October. The MT07 was a great bike to ride locally but it's not a bike for me to take on longer trips so I waited for the MT09 Tracer to arrive and took the first demo ride from my local dealer and was first to place an order once he had stock confirmed. A friend has been thinking along your lines with the BMWs you mention to replace her Triumph Sprint. She took a test ride on a Tracer last weekend and has placed an order! So, I predict you will test ride a Tracer and then place an order. It's a great bike and when you compare it to others it is often better, almost certainly lighter and most definitely cheaper, being almost 50% of the price of some other sports tourers you could compare it to.

You need to remember the bike is a built to a very low price so the components aren't going to give you cutting edge handling. If you want a bike to handle well at 180kph, go buy an R6.