bwringer

That looks amazing, but that's part of the problem -- the VAST majority of available training opportunities in North America are in the US West coast states. I think the OP is in Hamilton, ON. That said... badass rider and trainer extraordinaire Clinton Smout offers some excellent dual-sport classes in Ontario, through his SMART Adventure Programs. They're held at the Horsehoe Resort, just outside Barrie, ON, so quite close to the OP. https://www.smartadventures.ca/ You can use their bikes, too, and overall learning off-road riding skills makes an immediate and massive difference in your street riding chops. Even if you're not all that interested in dirt riding, it's well worth consideration.

Thanks for the real world use and abuse report!

Available classes are severely limited here in the midwest US, so I slurp up whatever I can. The Total Control Riding courses are fantastic and will make you a better, safer, faster rider -- if you apply and practice what you learn. I haven't seen a drop in these, but they can happen. I've also lucked into a great dual-sporting class that was in Indiana, the Tom Asher Adventure Riding Academy, and it was transformational. Drops are part of the game in dual-sport riding, but there honestly weren't very many for as hard as we were pushing the limits. I'll be doing my first track day on my FJ-09 this summer as well. It's a track day organized first and foremost for safety, so we don't really expect any crashing. So far, I haven't been interested in the "police" style courses, but in any training class, there is a significant risk of a drop, so I would absolutely make sure I had crash bars, etc. so that the bike could continue after a low-speed fall. The main benefit is more that you can put one worry out of your mind and focus on the class. For that matter, I think crash bars and hand control protection of some sort (even bar ends are helpful) are nearly mandatory for any traveling bike; even a stupid hotel parking lot knockover far from home could take out the radiator or an engine case far too easily on the FJ/Tracer.

Searches within any forum have to be rate-limited, and are generally set up so that words three letters and smaller are ignored. Otherwise, bots and legit users would pound your database into dust. A better option would be to use Google and limit it to this site by using site:www.tracer900.net So go to Google and type in this: garmin gps site:www.tracer900.net Google is semantic, so to oversimplify, it will look for the concept of GPS, and won't get tripped up by the fact that it's a three letter acronym. You can also look for specific phrases by enclosing the search term in quotes, like so: "garmin gps" site:www.tracer900.net The disadvantage, of course, is that you'll only get results that have been indexed. So you probably wouldn't pick up anything from the last few weeks, just Google's last crawl. Click the "Tools" button on the results page to narrow down by time, or use the advanced search. Switching to image search can be handy, too.

Yeah, this is my first Yamaha, and Mama Yama's friendly parts pricing is a significant and unexpected benefit of ownership over the other Japanese OEMs. Before you drop the coin, it would be a good idea to get in there and inspect everything closely for wiring, connector, and other physical damage, or corrosion. I think the manual gives some ohmmeter readings for these sensors, so with an old-school analog meter with a needle, you could work the mechanism and see whether the output seems jumpy.

Look in the Yamaha parts diagrams; Googlery and fleaBay will do no good here. It's on the "intake" fiche. This is the online parts sales arm of one of the dealers local to me, and where I most often buy parts. There are several others around the US. https://www.onlinecycleparts.com/oemparts/a/yam/546a26cbf87002164cb28018/intake #11 on the diagram (13S-85885-01-00) is the TPS, which reads the actual position of the throttle shaft (controlled by the ECU). #13 ( 1MC-85884-01-00 ) is the "Accelerator" sensor, which reads the input from the rider and sends it to the ECU. Perhaps we need to back up a little. Which one do you think is bad, and why?

Agreed. A lot of gray-bearded harrumphing gatekeepers in motorcycling scoff at budget gear like Bilt/Sedici and Icon, but I maintain that these have saved untold acres of skin, gallons of blood, and thousands of lives by putting riders in gear who otherwise wouldn't buy or wear it at all. If you're of a certain age, you might remember when Icon burst onto the scene with a whole new "street/urban/punk" vibe and outrageous designs and marketing, and actually made wearing gear cool. One of their magazine ads (remember magazines?) absolutely shocked the riding world by depicting a crashed sportbike on its side, with the rider, shaken but intact, sitting on the sidewalk collecting his wits in scuffed-up Icon gear. The Joe Rocket brand was similar, if more low-key, and their Phoenix line ushered in the era of mesh; yes you gave up some protection, but you gained huge in wearability and greatly reduced the chances of hitting the ground in the first place due to heat stress. Gear must be worn to do any good, and that expensive black leather the harrumphing oldsters insisted on added its own brand of significant heat stroke danger to the equation as temps climbed. Inexpensive gear is still infinitely better than the alternative, which is all too often no gear at all. With more money you might gain a lot in things like durability, waterproofness, and comfort, but you get 90% or more of the protection even with cheap stuff. For example, we've proven over and over that cheap full-face helmets protect just as well as expensive helmets. And yeah, I'll agree that the clickbaity "don't even bother wearing your armor" crap was uncalled-for and bordering on irresponsible. But maybe not... the odds are significant that they're just trolling to get people talking about protection and armor. There's a not-that-old saying that the best way to get the correct answer on the internet is to outrage everyone by posting an incorrect answer. I wouldn't put it past this bunch...

Thanks for doing the digging into that "horse girl" crack, @jthayer09 . And yeah, that last bit about selling airbags is a little problematic. Just go in with your eyes open as to his motivations; at least the Helite airbag system is legitimately a very good bit of kit. He's selling, but he's not selling snake oil at least. Still, there were a lot of useful points, so let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. Yes, better armor from the factory in riding gear sure would be pretty darn nice, and you can't deny that airbag gear can be pretty dang useful. However, there is better armor available through the aftermarket (he sort of skips over this fact), and high-end brands like Klim often include better armor in their gear. (My Klim jacket uses D30, for example.) He also made the point that armor should be sized to the person, which I definitely agree with. The CE regs don't seem to adequately address this; as an XXL sort of person, I'd certainly like to buy armor that is sized for my limbs and weight, and the greater forces with which I hit the ground. Aerostich gear includes armor they developed long before CE standards, and it's interesting to see their take on it: https://www.aerostich.com/protection It's interesting that some of their armor does not technically comply with CE standards because there's a hard shell where the armor exceeds the standards, but the portions of softer foam beyond the shell do not meet the letter of the standards. Which I suppose is a problem with the way the standards are written. FWIW, I find Aerostich's armor to be extremely unpleasant, hot, and bulky. It is, undeniably, very effective, but it's damn near unusable for me and a lot of riders. Some people are fine with the stuff, or at least find a way to get used to it, but I never could.

Yeah, that one-take was EPIC. The core of this video was expressed in this near-throwaway statement at about 1:09: "Horse girls get body armor certified to that 4KN threshold, so why is our motorcycle stuff two to four times weaker?" Start at about :52 for context: He makes an excellent point that there could and should be a far better standard (standards for impact and fit, among others), but no one will spend the money to make anything better than the "legally safe" minimum. And that's probably because they believe that very few will buy and wear bulkier, more expensive armor. His conclusion that the armor we do have is useless is complete nonsense. It helps, a lot. Yeah, it could and should be better. The expectation that armor can prevent fractures, is also deeply flawed. Armor can prevent or lessen the severity many types of injuries, and it's possible that better armor could prevent more fractures and things like joint damage. But short of an Iron Man suit made from exotic metals and force fields, pads would not have prevented my three broken femurs and two broken wrists, all of which happened while wearing full armored gear. That said, the gear and armor did a fantastic job of keeping everything else intact; my undamaged knees, for example, and my entirely undamaged torso and arms, were a source of near-constant wonder to passing ER personnel. Here in Indiana, land of the black t-shirt and hanky in lieu of helmet, most had never seen an accident where the victim was wearing gear. So yeah, those accidents were terrible... but they would have been far worse without the armor. And better armor could not have done anything to keep my femur and wrist from snapping. Anecdotes aren't data, of course, but "preventing all fractures" is not a realistic expectation. "Preventing some fractures and reducing joint damage" is a lot more realistic. There is somewhat better armor out there -- I have a Klim jacket that came with D30, for example, and I've purchased D30 armor pieces for some other gear. The stuff is legit, and after a vicious off-road biff in my Klim jacket, I directly nailed a good-size rock with my shoulder and came away with an ugly bruise but no fracture and fairly light joint damage. Overall, advocating for better armor is a good thing, and pointing out that the standard is way too light and a little silly is also good. But expecting armor to prevent a lot of long bone fractures just isn't realistic.

It's sooooo blue... I mean, I like my red one, but that blue is just plain downright purty! Good luck with the sale!

The cables are lined with plastic slickum, and you shouldn't lube 'em. And as noted above, a new cable set from Mama Yama is pretty dang cheap; $32.31 for my 2015, for example: https://www.onlinecycleparts.com/oemparts/a/yam/546a26cef87002164cb28030/steering-handle-cable

The plugs may be slightly cheaper ($7.05) at Yamaha dealers that offer online parts ordering. This is one near me, where I order tons of Yammie bits: https://www.onlinecycleparts.com/oemparts/a/yam/5bc0adc187a8661154278a0b/cylinder-head I usually order "will call" and when they call to pick up my goodies, it's a nice opportunity for a ride and to go slobber on new machines and gear for a while. Poke around locally and see if there's a dealer like this around.

Innnnteresting, very interesting. I replaced the clutch basket on my 2015 with a new one a few years ago; I dubbed the noise/vibration the "GRONK" a while back and documented that journey in another thread. My reasoning was that there was an updated part number, and perhaps it had been improved. I also did the slipper clutch upgrade before replacing the clutch basket, because the clutch basket was backordered for a few months. The slipper upgrade didn't affect the GRONK, but it was still well worth it. After somewhere around 15,000+ miles since, hints of the GRONK may be returning... not sure yet, maybe I'm being paranoid. If you hold the old basket and move the gear, you can get the parts to move relative to one another, so it's definitely the cushions. I might disassemble the old basket and prep for this repair as a plan "B". This thread is old, but a couple of questions: 1) Are the Hinson cushions proving to be any more durable than whatever's in there OEM? Are there other sources of quality cushions? 2) Which Hinson kit, exactly? Is it CU216, and does it come with all eight cushions needed? I've chased this around the intarwebz quite a bit, and it's still a little unclear. The usual photo shows six, but that might just be a generic photo. 3) Are the bolted repairs holding up well long-term? This to me is the part I'm most uncomfortable with. 4) Speaking of which, what the heck are the stock rivets riveted to, anyway? 5) Someone mentioned polyurethane cushions a few years back. Is there actually a source for these, or was this speculative?

Interesting thread revival! Seems worth some added discussion. Since last summer, I've signed up for a subscription and started using Ride With GPS to plan routes. They have the best browser-based route planning options I've ever seen. https://ridewithgps.com/ The app, however, does not work well for my particular and possibly peculiar use case. If you want to follow a single route, exactly as planned, the app is great. (And/or if you want the app to keep track of the route you ride for later use.) The RWGPS works one certain way, and it does an amazing job, but it's just too damn bad if you think and ride in a different way. If you have speakers, for example, you can set up voice prompts for turns and even add your own. It's all pretty deluxe, but it just doesn't work for me. I may be the weird one here, but I usually prefer to have several routes in an area loaded up and give each track a different color. I also tend to wander off and explore other roads that look interesting as I go, so I might not always be on a track. For this usage, Locus Pro is fantastic (although I would like the ability to make overlapping tracks more perceivable, or control the stacking order somehow). RWGPS simply can't be used in this manner; if you're off the planned track, the screen blinks and flashes a gigantic warning in a most distracting and uninformative way, and tries its best to route you back to your planned track no matter what. You cannot display multiple tracks (if you combine tracks, then you get one track that's all the same color) and the app cannot cope with riding a track or a section "backwards", as you might with looping tracks. So I use RWGPS to plan routes on a computer, then export the GPX tracks and put them into Locus Pro on my phone (I use Google Drive to store and move these files). FWIW, Locus Pro is Android-only; Osmand has iOS and Android versions if that's important to you. I know some folks have grabbed a cheap older Android phone for use as a GPS; Locus Pro doesn't need the latest and greatest hardware, and you may not want to risk your expensive and delicate primary phone on the handlebars.

K&N filters aren't my bag (the OEM is $21 and requires no scrubbing, drying, exotic elixirs, or arts and crafts) but if you feel you must, then use the proper K&N cleaner and oil. So far, no one's beat an OEM filter for fit, performance, convenience and flow. The K&N cleaner and oil aren't exactly cheap, so cost savings are minimal, and you're certainly not saving any time. Leaving aside what I think of the filtration, I have seen more than one K&N that simply doesn't fit right and lets dirty air through (or even warps or cracks the airbox), and there are a few bikes where the shape of the filter means that a K&N is seriously compromised in filter area and doesn't flow nearly as well. There's a lot of variation in airbox/filter design, and not all K&Ns are well designed or well made. I have no idea whether the FJ/Tracer version of the K&N suffers from these issues or not, but it's worth watching out for.