payneib
Member
Those who ride the canyons and lots of curves are more likely to notice the suspension and throttle chop issues. Those who commute and ride flat lands are far less likely to have issues as you have no need to be on and off the throttle loading and unloading the suspension.
Depends where you commute. In a city there's no point even owning a bike over 300cc. For me, I'm running 40-50 miles of twisty country back roads each way, day in, day out. I'll engine brake on a closed throttle in third, scrub the last MPH or two off with the brakes as I clutch in for a down shift, drop the front brake as I tip in, then balance clutch and back brake for the tightest of turns, or just roll it on in second. No dramas. Do what you're supposed to do, and it's not even an issue. It's almost as though they designed it that way.
As for the other issues raised, I think it's a lot to do with perception (maybe marketing?) Over here the fz6 is seen (and bought) as a standard style bike, jack of all trades. It appears that in the US it is seen as a semi-sports bike. That difference makes us expect very different things from the bike.
That's how you sell things in the states. Write "sport" or "XL" (or even better, "sports XL") on something and everyone loses their minds and parts with their money. I've seen numerous posts on here showing that the Yamaha US website puts the FZ range in the "sports" section, so they MUST be sports bikes. This is the reason the Nissan Micra Sport exists, which is such an oxymoron the mind boggles. Which leads in to the type of, "why doesn't my not-a-sport-bike compare to sport bikes, even though I think it should be a sport bike?" type of discussion we see here.
American laziness? On other forums you'd be blasted out of the water over that comment, but here we are nice and polite.
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Have a pop, watch me not care.