texcollect
Crotchety Old Fart
Yesterday I played hooky (it was OK because my boss came too!) and spent the afternoon at a demo day at my local Yamaha dealer. First I rode an FZ1 (beautiful red colour), then and FJR1300 and then just for a bit of diversity a Warrior.
FZ1 - Arrived a little late so I jumped on and went. Felt comfortable right from the start, right up until I tried to change from 1st to 2nd ! I am 6ft6 and have size 12 feet. It would appear that the shifter was adjusted for someone with feet around a size 8 !! Shifting aside the difference in torque was pretty obvious. We took a blast up the freeway and "kept up with traffic". On some mildly twisty streets on the way back to the dealer it felt just as nimble as the FZ6, just a little wider. It may have been my imagination, but I would swear that the 1000cc engine was "buzzier" than my 600.
FJR1300 - Silver (only color for 2010) and smooth as silk to drive. I didn't realize it was only a 5 speed so got a little confused when I went looking for 6th !! Tried out the electrically adjustable screen. With the screen in its highest position slow speed (<60) was pretty quiet, but it raised the airflow just high enough to put the top of my helmet into the dirty air so it was really noisy above 60. I always thought that gear indicators were for people who couldn't count to 6, but I may have to look into getting one for my bike.
Warrior - What can you say about this ?? The FZ6 red lines at 14k, a warrior red lines at 5k !! The first 3 or 4 red lights had me looking for the foot pegs in all the wrong places. It was getting late in the day and we had started to hit the rush hour traffic on my run with the FJR so the ride leader decided to take a shortcut. Well the short story is we got lost and spent about 15 minutes riding round a sub-division in a convoy of 10 or so bikes (R1, R6, FZ6r, FJR, Raider, FZ1 ......) so I can't really comment on it''s performance at speed but thanks to an amber light I did get to play catch up and boy will it will get up and go, just remember to change up at 5k.
So what's my verdict at the end of the day. Given unlimited cash I'd probably trade the FZ6 in for an FJR1300, but since I have limited funds I'll just stay where I am and ride the **** out of it.
Many thanks to Houston Motorsports Yamaha for hosting this event. It was a BLAST !!!
I am scheduled to take a Can-Am spyder out for another demo day on the 24th. I'll let you know how I get on.
FZ1 - Arrived a little late so I jumped on and went. Felt comfortable right from the start, right up until I tried to change from 1st to 2nd ! I am 6ft6 and have size 12 feet. It would appear that the shifter was adjusted for someone with feet around a size 8 !! Shifting aside the difference in torque was pretty obvious. We took a blast up the freeway and "kept up with traffic". On some mildly twisty streets on the way back to the dealer it felt just as nimble as the FZ6, just a little wider. It may have been my imagination, but I would swear that the 1000cc engine was "buzzier" than my 600.
FJR1300 - Silver (only color for 2010) and smooth as silk to drive. I didn't realize it was only a 5 speed so got a little confused when I went looking for 6th !! Tried out the electrically adjustable screen. With the screen in its highest position slow speed (<60) was pretty quiet, but it raised the airflow just high enough to put the top of my helmet into the dirty air so it was really noisy above 60. I always thought that gear indicators were for people who couldn't count to 6, but I may have to look into getting one for my bike.
Warrior - What can you say about this ?? The FZ6 red lines at 14k, a warrior red lines at 5k !! The first 3 or 4 red lights had me looking for the foot pegs in all the wrong places. It was getting late in the day and we had started to hit the rush hour traffic on my run with the FJR so the ride leader decided to take a shortcut. Well the short story is we got lost and spent about 15 minutes riding round a sub-division in a convoy of 10 or so bikes (R1, R6, FZ6r, FJR, Raider, FZ1 ......) so I can't really comment on it''s performance at speed but thanks to an amber light I did get to play catch up and boy will it will get up and go, just remember to change up at 5k.
So what's my verdict at the end of the day. Given unlimited cash I'd probably trade the FZ6 in for an FJR1300, but since I have limited funds I'll just stay where I am and ride the **** out of it.
Many thanks to Houston Motorsports Yamaha for hosting this event. It was a BLAST !!!
I am scheduled to take a Can-Am spyder out for another demo day on the 24th. I'll let you know how I get on.
