I've had several requests from my motorcycle friends to tell them what worked (gear) and what did not. I am going to continue to use this Blog address to accomplish this plus eventually a final summary of what I would do differently. I'll only send out an announcement for this first Gear Review entry so if you want to read them all you will have to come back occasionally till I state that I am done in the last blog entry. I will probably do them all today.
The first item of course is the motorcycle:
2013 Yamaha Super Tenere (S10) XT1200Z
Twin cylinder, water cooled, 1200 cc
(You can Google the specs if you want more)
I can't say enough about this bike. I rode this bike hard (real hard) and it always delivered. I selected this bike over several contenders including the BMW GS1200 and the Suzuki V-Strom 1000. No other bikes on the market fit my needs. Of course there others that would do the job as well and even better but here were my requirements:
1 Reasonable price (eliminated BMW)
2 Available dealers on my route and at home (eliminated BMW again)
3 Shaft drive (eliminated V-Strom)
4 Good reviews on several adventure bike forums (all met this)
5 Able to ride thousands of miles at highway speeds (70-85 mph) yet still ride the bad roads and road construction expected enroute (Only one I had doubts about was the V-Strom for the highway speeds)
I had no mechanical problems with the S10. Everything worked from day 1 till the end. It has lots of power and I could pass cars/trucks without downshifting even while riding at 70+ mph. I never took it out of Touring mode so the Sport mode may have even performed better.
When I had enough time to come to a complete stop before hitting dirt I would go to setting 2 on the traction control but a number of times we would be in the bad stuff so fast I had to ride it in setting 1. I never had a problem either way. I would get on the pegs while riding real bad roads but the Dalton Highway is too long to stand all the time while on gravel so rode it on the seat except for what I saw was worse than normal.
The seat is comfortable enough to do the Iron Butt; 1037 miles in 16 ½ hours. Is it an easy chair; no. You get used to after a couple thousand miles.
The handle bars are more dirt bike (straight) than cruiser (pulled back). This makes you ride in a more forward stance. It wouldn’t let me lean back on my bag and put my feet out front like on a Harley Davidson. I did add some cheap pegs on my crash bars at the Yamaha Dealer in Washington and this helped a lot. I could lay my leg on the peg to give it a rest and could even put my foot on them one at a time for a change in position. I can’t stress how important it is to have several seating positions so you can get the pressure off your butt. This is the only thing that let me make the miles each day.
The bike carried the load with no problems. I put the heavy stuff in the saddle bags but my red bag on top was still pretty heavy. The way I tied the bag on worked great. I could it on/off in 10 seconds and I could also tie my rain gear on the back. I’ll talk about the hard bags (saddle bags) in another review but they were big enough for what I needed.
With the red bag on back and the big hard shell bags on the sides I could not swing my leg over while getting on/off like most other bikes I’ve had. I finally used this process:
While the bike was on side stand I would stand on peg (left side) and then I could get my leg in front of the red bag and over to the right side. You have to make sure your body stays on low side until your right foot is ready to be put on the ground. This puts a lot of strain on the side stand but it handled it fine. Warning – the one time I dropped the bike was because I was tired and while mounting, my right foot caught on the red bag and I let my body move over to the center. The bike started going to the right and I couldn’t get my right foot down to stop it; CRASH!
The only other thing I will say is this bike really has a strange sound compared to all my other bikes. When I did my test ride before buying I noticed that as you accelerate hard the engine sounds like it is grinding accompanied with slight vibration. I thought something was wrong. After riding this bike for 10,000 miles I’ve determined that it must be how they restrict the performance in the touring mode to make it more docile. They either adjust the fuel flow or the ignition and this makes the engine sound like it isn’t running right. It doesn’t impact how the bike performs but it is strange to open the throttle and hear this sound.
Would I recommend this bike to my friends;
absolutely. Would I buy it again; absolutely.
If you have any specific questions let me know.
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