ZigMerid

18 hours ago, robzilla said:

Here the 2" extensions I used

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. 

On 12/27/2023 at 11:57 AM, canadatracer900 said:

After riding when its wet out the bike has a fairly pronounced oil or rubber burning or hot coolant smell

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 🙂

13 minutes ago, ZigMerid said:

independent shops who live and die by word-of-mouth

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?

On 12/27/2023 at 1:59 AM, bwringer said:

Zig has had mostly very positive experiences, and so the expense is well worth it. Apparently the Yamaha pros in Australia really are pros

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.

17 hours ago, 2and3cylinders said:

one cannot put a price on the feeling of self confidence, accomplishment and pride gained with development of of the process of becoming "one" with your machine; including concurrently improving one's riding skill sets!

 

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.

4 hours ago, betoney said:

In addition to paying $120-$130 an hour for basic elementary level maintenance

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.

4 hours ago, betoney said:

$400 for labor, plus their 30% markup

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.

10 hours ago, Hamilton Tracer said:

Just wondering what you guys think about the first oil change on a brand new bike

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.

7 hours ago, theog said:

The droves of fans who came out to resurrect road racing in the US would disagree

As would the Postie Challenge folk. Not *quite* a race, but still...

https://www.postiebikechallenge.org

On 11/4/2023 at 4:04 AM, larolco said:

Problem is I'm in no shape to be wrenching right now. Otherwise, I think it could be a viable option

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.

On 10/9/2023 at 6:17 PM, Bytio said:

got a new 9 GT+ all is ok but notice a small judder

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.

12 hours ago, DHDad said:

Bad: Only one comment, seems super finicky clutch starting from a stop especially a hill start

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.

On 9/6/2023 at 8:15 PM, Paddy01 said:

I’ve begun using Calimoto which is a biker-specific gps on your phone

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.

5 hours ago, dazzler24 said:

Just one word from me for the OZ pricing of this new beast.....  OUCH!

I paid AU<$15K for my base model back in 2016 and sure, have added many bits over time to bring it up to GT specs but just OUCH to the price of this one.

I know that it's a completely, well somewhat, different beast to my 'antique' but ..... did I say OUCH?

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.

On 1/19/2021 at 4:19 AM, petshark said:

the glue was not budging. Then found a video that said to use isopropyl alcohol.

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.

56 minutes ago, Rdecae81 said:

they could not read the ECU.  So they got nothing.  They said their laptop would not show anything

And what did they recommend as next steps in the diagnosis process? Or did they stick their hands in the air and say "too hard for us?"

1 hour ago, Rdecae81 said:

the Dealer connected to the ECU but could not read it  i.e. NO codes

This is a very confusing statement. Are you saying that they could not read anything? Or that they could read just fine and no errors were indicated?

Also, did you ask them to diagnose your original errors or just to see if there were any error codes?

I ask because it's hard to imagine a competent dealer saying there is nothing wrong (which I interpret "NO codes" to mean) when you have ABS and engine fault lights on. Surely you asked them about those error lights and what they mean? What did they say to that?

4 hours ago, 2and3cylinders said:

Bottom line for me is I'm a cowboy through and through.

 

Well, you could try mounting from the other side. That would place the load closer to the centre and thus place less strain on the side-stand. Fortnine has a good demo of this and other more outrageous mounting techniques.

20 hours ago, etex said:

My bike reads about 2 - 3  MPH fast

Mine reads about 8% fast. I don't think it's a fixed amount that the speedo is off, but rather a ratio.

If you're worried about trip time while staying within the speed limit, that 8% is adding about 5 minutes per hour to your trip or about 15-20 minutes per fill-up.

6 hours ago, Ride365 said:

To bad the current OEM isn't plug and play for the previous gen GT's.  

On the surface, this seems like a reasonable wish, but...

I wonder how much of a compromise to the current gen Tracers that implies?

A highly-integrated QS presumably needs a different computer, different/more sensors such as the gear-shift sensor, ABS mods, possibly physical mods to the gearbox and casing, additional signals to the dash, additional dash lights, config controls to manage the rev-change settings and more.

To design a QS in such a way that it can be retrofitted to earlier models without it looking like a 3rd-party add-on to the newest model seems like quite an engineering stretch.

The other problem you have is that Yamaha would want to sell it to you for 2-3 times the price of an aftermarket job.

I for one am glad they went for a tightly integrated QS rather than something that could easily be mistaken for a re-badged 3rd-party unit.

Which brings up the final question. Would a Yamaha after-market add-on be any better than the ones that already exist?

For those who don't know, a wigWagger is an electronic unit which causes a set of lights to alternatively flash. I'm guessing that wigWagger is a brand name, but here's a link to a typical unit: https://stop-alert.myshopify.com/products/wigwagger-72-led-electronic-wig-wag-alternating-flasher

For those who know better, I'd love to learn the generic term for these things.

Anyway, I did convoy work on my previous moto where I installed a set of LED lights with a wigWagger and I want to do the same with the Tracer 9GT.

My question is, should I go for the Yamaha installed fog lights and simply place a wigWagger downstream of the fog light relay or is that impractical? If impractical, I'll do it all from scratch, but if I can avoid that, that would be nice.

Since the wigWagger takes a single power supply in and presents two power supplies out, it obviously has to be located at the point at which the fog-light circuit splits out power to the two lights. But the inscrutable service manual is completely silent on where that split point is.

So my question is, where does the fog light power split into two? Is it near the relay or embedded somewhere downstream on the wiring loom? Importantly, what's your assessment as to whether a wigWagger can be placed at the split point?

Actually, I'm also curious as to where the fog light relay is located. I'm presuming it's up with the other major relays, but it would be good to know for sure.

I know this is an oddball question, but my local dealer really doesn't have a clue that I trust, so any help from the brains trust is greatly appreciated.

7 hours ago, 2and3cylinders said:

But I do agree with you mostly

Me too. It's a topic that has been over-done to death and is probably engine-specific. But we do know that E10 et al are lower in energy density. Less HP per litre.

As an anecdote on my old V-Strom I used to go cheap and fill with E10 all the time, but when I switched to 91, which is about 10% more expensive here, my range increased by probably 20% The difference was very noticeable.

The manual said both fuels were fine and the bike ran just as well on both so I have no clue as to whether there were any internal consequences (build-up, etc) but simple arithmetic led me to conclude that buying the cheaper fuel compatible with my engine was more expensive.

As a consequence I did the same thing with my car and got much the same results, so now I avoid E10 whenever I can.

6 hours ago, betoney said:

that is why ECU flashes are so popular

I'd get an ECU flash too, but I do wonder whether they compromise the environmental conformance. After all, if a 3rd party mechanic in a back-alley garage can reprogram an ECU to make the bike perform better *and* stay within conformance, then why can't a billion dollar company like Yamaha with a truckload of PhDs and Engineering specialists do the same?

I certainly don't like all the laws of my country, but right-minded people don't pick and choose which laws to comply with based on convenience or a trivial desire to have a better motorbike experience.

5 hours ago, KrustyKush said:

This trait of engine management must be a requirement of emissions, sure can’t be safety. It doesn’t help a bit with riding the bike, and is actually irritating to me. I wish the new bikes weren’t like this. But they are. 

Agreed. I have certainly noticed this on a V-Strom as well. I think you're correct that it's a consequence of emissions management in which the computer is just shutting down all/most fuel to the engine.

As we all know, emissions management is a big issue for ICE manufacturers these days and I'm sure solutions are going to continue to "intrude" on the riding experience. Just wait until some bright spark decided to put engine stop/start on the next motorbike or shutdown a couple of cylinders during low power requirements! Or when we open up the throttle and the computers says "I'm sorry Dave, I cannot do that".

I'm not really complaining about the need for better emissions control - particularly as motorbikes have lower requirements than cars - but sometimes the manufacturers seem to be a bit more focussed on letter-of-the-law solutions rather than rider-experience solutions.

The reality is that we riders are going to have to adapt just as much as the manufacturers are.

2 hours ago, betoney said:

in the winter

I must admit I often forget that winter is unrideable for large parts of north America. Which makes it inexplicable that new models are announce just ahead of the next winter. Quite weird to announce something that no one wants to buy for the next six months.