ZigMerid

Yep. Made a big difference to my '23. I can now see past my shoulders and top box. Recommended. They are also cheap and easy to install, so it's an easy experiment to try instead of looking for relatively expensive alternatives which may not offer much difference from the originals.

Are we talking urban riding? One possibility is that your bike is picking up oil and other goop that lifts off the roads during light rain. Your handle implies Canadian so no one needs to tell you want rain does to a city street. Maybe hose down your bike at the end of the ride and see if that makes a difference? And yes, in Canada it's perfectly normal to stand out in the rain hosing off your bike. Just say "sorry" and you'll be fine 🙂

As an aside, as a consequence of this thread, I was contacted by another member on this forum who lives not far from me. They had not heard of either of the shops that I use and were looking for a good mech, so I punted them in their direction. I hope it works out for them. Yeah, I could have kept it a closely guarded secret because they are both super busy, but isn't that attitude just sending business back to a crappy dealer? Why would anyone do that?

Your balanced opinion is a good one. I will only clarify that my experience with the official service departments of dealers has been crap all round - for multiple brands. My positive experiences have all come from independent shops who live and die by word-of-mouth. I agree that I am super lucky to have not one but two good indie shops within range and I completely understand that there are plenty of places where that is not the case.

But I did that five motorbikes back. I don't care to revisit that rather boring process with every motorbike that comes into my garage. I know for certain that I will learn nothing new about my Tracer if I do the oil change. It's the same ol' same old. And as for improving riding skills. Again I go to the pros. For training sessions and track sessions on how to actually ride. But "elementary" is not what I get when I go to my service crowd. When I put my previous motorbike in for a service with them for the first time, they found a number of things I didn't notice relating to suspension and brakes and an alignment issue with the rear wheel. They noticed all this in their routine inspection and ride check. Once they pointed them out to me, it was fairly obvious and nothing was seriously wrong, but they just weren't things I was looking for or necessarily had the skills to recognise as being abnormal because I don't service 20 motorbikes a day. How much do you spend a year on fuel, insurance, tires, chains, rego and depreciation? The marginal difference between what a professional service costs and how much you can do it for yourself really is chickenfeed if you look at total cost of ownership. And of course having a professional service your machine doesn't preclude you giving it a good once-over before riding or when giving it a tub - which is what I do. It's not an either/or situation. Heck you could even get a professional service once every couple of years and do the in-betweens yourself. Granted, finding a trustworthy service mob can be hard. I found my indie service crowd thru a local riding group and now all of us send all our business their way which makes them happy and profitable and us happy and riding. I certainly don't begrudge them charging enough money to pay their mechanics well and keep in business.

Well, it's not a first oil change, it's a first service which happens to include an oil change. I'm going to disagree with the prevailing opinions here because they haven't bothered to ask three questions: First, what is your level of maintenance competence, second how valuable is your time and third how much do you know and trust your service mob? I've invested a ton of hours in motorcycle maintenance - particularly when I was starving-student-poor - including top-end rebuilds but I'm still just an amateur compared to a good pro. And fortunately my service crew are pros. They see things I routinely miss because they work motorcycles 24/7 and I work motorcycles once every six months. These days I'm not starving-student-poor and my time is valuable so you know what? I get a trusted pro to service my Tracer. And they do a great job and often observe things that I never think of. I also see little point in learning details about your bike such as removing panels and chasing wiring and replacing air filters. A good manual or a bit of intuition and I can get it done, so I don't need to practice. More importantly, why is that skill important? If my bike breaks down out in the boonies, it's likely to be far more serious than something that can be fixed from knowledge gain by doing an oil change. For example an ECU failure or a cracked radiator or a fuel pump failure. So sure, tinker around if that's what you like to do and tinker around if you want to save a coupla bucks servicing $20,000 worth of complex machinery and also tinker around if you don't trust your service crew but when it comes down to it, a good pro is going to see a lot more on their worst day than you will ever see on your best day. Of course the one caveat is finding a trusted service pro. But even if you are a highly competent home-servicer I would still hunt down a pro to take a look every year or two.

As would the Postie Challenge folk. Not *quite* a race, but still... https://www.postiebikechallenge.org

No, No and no. The only reason to wrench a write-off is a love of wrenching and a total disregard for the hours you put in to bring that tracer back to life. If you vaguely feel that wrenching a write-off might save you a coupla bucks then you will hate every minute of it, resent every purchase of parts and will likely be unsatisfied with the end result or the sale price. There are only two good reasons to wrench on a write-off. You are a professional wrencher who knows exactly what they are getting into or... you are wrenching for the love of it. If you don't fit into either of those categories then take the insurance money and buy another Tracer. Life is too short to do otherwise.

Did the dealer make any adjustments at the 26K valve check? Any possibility of overheating or oil-feed starvation? It seems pretty bizarre that all three cylinders *suddenly* have compression loss. Unfortunately without a previous compression test, it's only speculation that compression has been lost very recently. It may have been slowly getting worse over time.

How new is "new"? On my 9GT I found the clutch took quite a while to "run in". Take-offs in 1st were quite hard to do smoothly at first as the transition from no clutch to 100% engaged happened almost instantaneously. I figure the surface of the plates were simply a little rough from the manufacturing process and it took a bit of usage to mate the surfaces nicely. I would say it took a good 1,000+km for my clutch to come good, tho that was with a lot of country riding, so not a huge number of changes.

Yep, the clutch is pretty twitchy when new. I found the clutch to be much smoother after around 4,000km or so (2,500miles). Just give the clutch plates a bit of time to smooth out and bed in.

The main problem I have with phone-based apps is that smart phones don't treat the GPS app as the most important thing going on. On my phone at least I can get popups and alerts for things like phone calls or overtemp warnings or low battery or calendar reminders and all sorts of other guff that randomly pops up on top of the GPS app. One time my BT helmet kept thinking I wanted to play music and the music app player control kept popping up on the screen. Boy was that annoying. I'm also not sure how wise it is to have a $500+ smart phone exposed to all manner of weather and vibrations over the long term. (Yes I know about the anti-vibration mounts). I also find that the touch-interface on a smart phone is very hit and miss. Mostly miss, when you're wearing thick winter or wet-weather over-gloves. Now if you're just cruising down the hwy with some of those fancy touch-sensitive gloves on a pleasant sunny day, with time to burn if your smart phone has a bit of a glitch, then I'm sure a smart phone app is fine. But if you're in inclement weather or in situations where it's hard to stop, such as being part of convoy or in the middle of a busy city or on a "no stopping" expressway or on a dark country road with high-speed traffic whooshing by, then you could find yourself riding without a functioning GPS app at the most inconvenient of times. So yeah, the apps are great, but a smart-phone platform is definitely sub-optimal when you absolutely rely on the GPS working in challenging situations.

Do you ride it to the redline? If you're puttering around below 6-7,000rpm you're missing out on wheelie material. I also presume you've selected D-Mode 1? If you can't get a wheelie out of a standard issue Tracer, something is wrong. PS. I do not recommend wheelies on public roads. Only stupid people do that.

Considering exchange rate of course, it's still a better deal than @roadwarrior suggests is available in the US at $18+K OTD. That 27.6K AUD converts to a smidge under $18K USD at today's exchange rate. So yeah, certainly expensive, but I give some credit to Yamaha as they are offering a comparable price in different markets.

Eucalyptus oil is also a good solvent of glues and other gunk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_oil#Cleaning - just make sure to get the concentrated stuff. I use it for all manner of annoying sticker removal. Gentle warming with a heat gun or hair dryer to peel off the sticker follow by a gentle soak and rub with the oil normally does the trick. Just be careful to start with low heat as excess heat will damage the paintwork.