ZigMerid

It's probably only an issue when riding two-up. Grumpy Goat's example - which at first seems extreme - is still probably much less weight than a full sized pillion, so no big deal. But if you have a big pillion and a top box and panniers all full of gear, then you're talking some pretty serious weight on the rear end of the bike.

Pretty much the same graduated licensing here in Australia. But the dealer attitudes wrt test rides are much closer to the US experience than the UK/EU one by the sounds. IOWs getting a test ride on a new bike here is very hard excepting on when they run a "test ride" day - which as best I can determine has never happened for the 9GT. Very odd since any car dealer will let you take pretty much any car for a spin. The other minor matter is that 9GTs are pretty rare here, so at least in my area, there's none to test ride anyway (sad face).

Ahh. I see. Quite a crappy situation. Hardly unique to Yamaha, but I think across the globe we're all experiencing a decline in dealer capability and availability over the last few years. I guess we never knew how lucky we were... I will say that, at least in my area, good independent mechanics have survived and are now picking up a lot of work that previously went to dealerships. I know this doesn't helped Bernard because he is already into indi mechs, but regardless of how mechanical you are (or not), finding a good independent mech and getting them to do some work on your moto will pay dividends down the road.

Agreed. I've ridden in a few places around the planet, but the west coast from LA north to Portland is certainly some sweet riding. From weaving thru Redwood forests, Pacific coast Hwy 1, isolated communities such as Sheltered Cove and the wrassle thru the SF Bay area which has its own delights in its own way if you don't mind a ton of traffic... So Psy, where do you ride now that gives you a buzz?

One of the beauties of this forum is that we really focus on the Yamaha Tracer. Even if we occasionally let a Suzuki S-1000GT fan come in and taunt us with an admittedly fantastic machine... Anyway, point being we're a global group that aren't really interested in American tribalism, or any other country's tribalism for that matter, so if you want to prognosticate about California vs Arkansas can I suggest you take it up on Facebook or some other forum? That being said, I'd love to hear about the bike culture that you liked. What part of it appealed to you?

I guess my first question is, why are *you* trying to solve these problems rather than getting the dealer to look after it? You're implying a 2021 9GT so I presume it's still under warranty. Yes? If you have a crappy dealer, can you not find another? You don't need to go back to the dealer you bought it from. Failing that, I would go to a trusted local mechanic to at least diagnose what's going on and take their report back to the dealer. That will cost you some money as your local mechanic obviously needs to be paid, but it's valuable ammunition against dealers wanting to avoid helping you.

This does it for me. 1999-2000 K1200RS. Photo taken circa 2008.

I imagine that's pretty hard to do with a rear brake. What with weight transfer and ABS, getting a rear pad/rotor hot could be quite a challenge. I guess you could "ride" the rear brake for a while, but ug.

I recently saw this technique on a trusted youtube channel (South Main Auto). Although it was for high quality brake replacement on an auto, obviously the same theory applies. I confess to never thinking much about it before then, but it makes sense that the rotors and pads need some sort of bedding in. I imagine that front brakes get bedded in one way or the other anyway, just thru regular use. But, I'm wondering whether it's possible that rear brakes may need specific bedding in as they otherwise may rarely, if ever, experience this sort of heavy braking in the normal course of use. Perhaps just regular use over time has the same effect, but maybe not?

This site claims they peel off. https://underwater.com.au/shop/diveoptx-hydrotac-lenses.html One imagines you apply them to the bottom half of your visor so as to turn your visor into bi-focals. Well, with the top lens being unmagnified 🙂 Seems like it might be useful for those who can't focus on the display. Something I presume is harder for digital displays than the old steam-gage variety where a blurry speedo needle still tells you something.

I'm not sure a weak rear brake is a bad thing. Given that a rear brake is predominantly for control + adding maybe 10% to total breaking capability when applying the front brake, it must be extraordinarily weak to be noticeable. Exactly how weak is the rear brake? Do you have to really stomp on it to get any braking effect? I would think that if a rear brake works well enough to help you control slow speed manoeuvres, then it's pretty much doing its job.

2021 was the last big change for the GT. There were only minor tweaks to the 2022 model, see: I'd say there's too many variables to even guess what Yamaha plan to do for 2023. Supply chain issues and the pandemic have completely messed up sales, so it's hard to say whether there have been enough sales of 2022 GTs for Yamaha to even form an opinion of the market. I know 2022s are still almost impossible to buy in my neck of the woods. Someone also mentioned that Yamaha tend to run in three year cycles. If that's true, then the GT in its current guise has at least another year to run. In any event, we probably won't hear pronouncements from Yamaha until much later in the year.

Exactly. Around these parts the radar systems automatically issue a ticket if you're less than 13km/h over a 110km/h limit. That's a little over 10% First time you hear about it is a letter from the government stating you owe them ~ USD150. So yeah, LEOs aren't even part of the process. As has been mentioned here before, speedos purposely display a higher indicated speed than actual to protect the manufacturer from lawsuits. Imagine a bazillion people challenging speeding tickets because their speedo reads low and how many challenges would flow on as calibration lawsuits to the manufacturer? It's simply strategic and sensible for manufacturers to err on the side of caution as there are far fewer legal consequences. Further to that, different tyres with different inflation levels are going to have slightly varying circumferences which will also affect speedo accuracy, so again, manufacturers are going to err on the side of caution and assume max tyre size at max inflation. All in all, it comes as no surprise that virtually everyone reports their speedo reading high and that we rarely, if ever, hear of speedos reading low.

Ergo, when the computer detects the first drop of the float, it knows precisely how much is left in the tank - 60% As I understand it, fuel flow meters are generally pretty accurate, so once a tank drops to 60%, the computer should be able to accurately measure the flow, and thus fuel remaining. Of course, by necessity DTE is nothing more than an estimate, but "Quantity To Empty" should/could be reasonably accurate.

Ok. You'all have convinced me it's worth a shot. Just to be sure, I'll mask out the screen that would be obscured and go for a few rides to see if it bothers me. If it doesn't, a new mount may be in my future. Thanks for the feedback.

Do any of you find that such a high mount obscures your view at all? I was thinking of doing a similar mount on another bike but I was worried about how it would affect my view when I was looking at the road immediately ahead, such as dodging pot holes or snakes (a common problem where I come from 🙂 ) Not that one looks in that area much, but there's probably a reason why bike manufacturers keep their instrumentation as low as possible.

Backing up for just a moment, I noticed: I guess my question is, why are you so focussed on suspension if most of your riding is around town and motorway riding? Is it that your "around town" roads are really crappy and you need superior suspension to compensate? I'm asking because most people focus on after-market suspension because they are either carrying larger loads, running two-up or are something of a boy-racer who wants superior suspension when making a high-speed run thru twisty roads. Entirely up to you of course, but if most of my riding was around town with a bit of ho-hum motorway, the last thing I'd be concerned about is replacing the stock suspension.

Not to belabour the point, but sitting on a dumb speed limit when you're controlling the throttle is way more frustrating than setting the CC and just watching the world go by. There's something psychologically different about CC and speed limits. I just zen out with them. But if I'm forever managing the throttle manually to stay under what feels like a frustratingly low limit, I'm anything but zen. So it's not so much that CC is magic at controlling speeds, it's that it helps with your mind-set as you ride thru painful speed-limit areas. Ok. Ok. I have belaboured the point. My awful 😇

Everyone I speak to reckons that once you have CC you never go back. As @photoal says, speeding tickets, boredom and being able to stretch your right arm/wrist on longer rides are benefits not to be underestimated. I've been on three longish rides in the last four days with three more to go, and boy, what I wouldn't give to be able to get the circulation back into my right wrist at times! While a new Tracer is on my Santa list, even if I go with something else, CC is a must. So I wouldn't discount CC simply on the basis that you might be able to add an aftermarket version.

Fuel taps with reserve are an even more reliable mechanism. Too bad they've disappeared. Best of all, the BMW R80 (and perhaps other models) had *two* fuel taps. Switching to reserve on the first side told me I had 50km left, switching to reserve on the second side told me I had 25km left. The physical orientation of the taps unmistakably told you exactly what you had left. Bullet-proof. Reliable. Simple. Probably the reason it got upgraded it to a costly digital sensor that is more or less useless. Bah humbug. Don't get me wrong, I like most of the modern doodahs, but unreliable fuel gages aint one of them.

Thanks for the update, @GeeAndTea I almost wonder whether it'd be worth it to try and rank the mods people make to see which are the most popular. For example screen replacements seem pretty common as best as I can tell. I don't suppose this forum has some sort of survey capability does it? It might be a nice way to summarise the hive-mind. On a related question. I know people get this because it sounds better, looks better and reduces weight. But does it affect performance? And if so, does Mr Yamaha do an ECU mod to accomodate it? Finally, I presume this exhaust does not impeded the use of the standard panniers?

Perhaps you could tell us how many times a day you're saying this to yourself? Then we'll tell you how long it'll be before you give in.

I just did a side-by-side comparison of the 2021 spec sheet vs the 2022 spec sheet. Both from the Yamaha US web site. Apart from the $100 price bump it appears unchanged from the 2021 model. Even the colors on offer are the same! The 2022 spec sheet cleans up some of the text and rearranges a few things, but otherwise it appears identical. Methinks they asked their intern to apply a global change-all /2021/2022/ to their marketing material to make it seem fresh. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's a bad thing to have a stable model, but not even a new paint job suggests that they, like many of us, are just trying to pretend that the year 2021 never existed! I'll try to remember to start a new thread on the 2023 model in about 11 months from now 🙂

Take your money back and go for a '22? I did much the same for a mountain-bike. After repeated promises, I ended up waiting over 9 months for delivery, only to have the newer, upgraded model announced the week of my delivery. I know it's mostly psychological, but waiting all that time and spending all that money to be delivered a "year old" model didn't sit quite right with me. This of course assumes that supply lines and production heads back to normal soonish. No guarantees on that front I guess but it surely can't get worse than it already is. It also assumes Mr Yamaha announces a '22, but I bet they will, even if it's only a paint-scheme change.

A year or so ago we all worked a thread pretty hard on this forum regarding the 2021 Tracer. We all had fun speculating but nonetheless I think quite a few of us were surprised by the 9GT since it was quite a significant chance from the previous model. Which brings us to now. It's getting close to that time of year in which manufacturers traditionally announce their models for the upcoming year, so it occurs to me that a thread on our speculation on 2022 models might be of interest. Two complicating factors are of course C19 which has severely limited sales and the chip shortage which has affected a lot of vehicle manufacturers including Yamaha. So my first question is, will there even be a 2022 model of the Tracer? I have my doubts. But if there is, surely it will be an incremental change, in which case what bugs and features will Yamaha change? The Display? Better smart-phone integration? Increased range? Or is someone out there brave enough to predict a radically new tracer? If so, what will it be?