Yamaha on Nanikore

New Sprocket and Chain

Tue, 07 Jun 2022 10:58:23 +0000

Inevitably with all chain drive motorcycles, there comes a time when we need to replace the chain - the two most common reasons are because even with the best care and attention, it’s stretched with wear, and even following adjustment it’s not performing well, or the lubricated linkages begin to fail and the links begin to stick. In my case it was the latter; a couple of links were sticking, resulting in a small noise and vibration at certain chain speeds.

It’s also considered good practice to replace the front drive sprocket, as well as the rear sprocket, so I’d need to make a decision on new ones for those too.

Chain-wise, I’d already chosen the chain I wanted to upgrade to, an X-ring chain by noted Japanese chain manufacturer, D.I.D. In the end, I ordered a 120 link D.I.D 525 VX3 chain. The MT-09 Tracer takes 110 links by default, so that worked, and the X link reputably offers even better reliability and wear than O rings. Also, I got the plain ‘steel’ finish - you can spend a few more yen and get the gold finish, and had it been for my old gold rim wheeled CB400, I might have gone that route, but for my Tracer, the steel look fits in more, and saves more than enough money to pay for that coffee.

For sprockets, I took a look at a few possible candidates such as Sunstar and Superlite. Sunstar are well stocked in NAPS here in Japan and look well regarded.

On the other hand, site favourite TougeExpress shared this video of a Superlite rear sprocket with a fairly bad wobble from new - have a look at the video below, and whilst it was a few years ago, it put me off.

Courtesy of TougeRider

In the end I took another experienced friend’s advice and went with sprockets from Japanese company, ISA. After receiving them, I have to say, they’re very nicely made, and come with a free sticker! You can’t argue with that. I ordered from their online store and delivery was quick, and nicely, before you complete your order, they ask what model/year of bike you have - I’m suspecting that’s a quick check to make sure you’re not ordering something completely wrong for your bike.

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The Tracer is a fairly standard design - 16 teeth on the front socket, 45 on the rear. I got a quote for having the work done at my local garage (Red Baron) - I really don’t have the tools or the amount of time for this job - and the garage also had new sprocket nuts and bolts on-hand, and a new front drive nut which should be replaced also, so it made sense to get them to do the work, and the quote was quite reasonable.

In the end I was only left loafing around in a coffee shop for about 90mins, and the work was done.

So there we are. I can say in the 700+Km since I got them changed, they sound and feel so much smoother, so yes, there are very tangible benefits, and the feeling that I should’ve gotten then done 1,000Km or so sooner.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

TougeRider — 2022-06-07

Good stuff G. Nice having a new smooth chain humming away the miles.

Five Years with the Tracer

Sun, 23 Jan 2022 13:23:00 +0000

It’s difficult to believe it’s been five years for me with the Yamaha Tracer. I only really realised when I had to get the shahken done on it. The shahken is Japan’s road suitability test (like an MOT in the UK), done after the third year of a vehicle being on the road, and then every two years after that, so yes, it passed its second with flying colours.

So how has it been? Overall, it’s been excellent as a bike. However, those five years have been a bit odd to be honest - I had a shoulder issue in the first half of 2019 which reduced my riding ability for about six months, and of course COVID, even here in Japan, has limited things in some ways too, and yet despite all that, the bike has been great fun to ride and own.

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To be specific, my model is a 2016 model MT-09 Tracer in a nice shade of red. The model line then went on to become a Tracer 900 and then a Tracer 9. It also gained a GT model, and a smaller sibling in the Tracer 700 in some countries, though sadly not here in Japan.

I think it ended up this way because when it launched, it was trading a little on the MT-09 name and that association of design attitude and the engine, whereas it quickly evolved into its own thing as a well received midsize sports tourer in its own right, distinct from the edgier (‘dark side of Japan’) themed original model. Good for it.

So let’s talk about that engine. No matter how many times I go out on this bike, that engine is pure fun every time. On a run to the shops, around town, on the expressway, deep into mountain touge, it’s just a pleasure from beginning to end. That CP3 triple has that wonderful balance of grunty torque and enough at the top end to make a 6th gear roll on overtake on an expressway a breeze. No complaints - it’s great.

I should probably mention the fueling. Of the three modes, I mainly stay in the standard (‘STD’ - stop smirking at the back) mode though I have ventured into the softer ‘B’ mode for some heavy rain and bad road condition times to just smooth things out - also when I first started carrying a passenger. I have used the ‘A’ mode for some more decisive riding on expressways, but it’s very ‘immediate’ which is what the early MT-09 fuelling was sopmewhat known for. You can certainly tell the difference between the modes, but honestly you could also spend your whole life in standard and not really be too fussed.

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As is obvious, I really like the bike. However, in interest of balance and fairness. I feel like I should point out some quirks:

Firstly, changing the coolant. Sure, it’s not difficult, but why so many washers and small plastic fittings on the two mounting bolts of the tank? I suspect this is a result of the many variants of the platform (MT-09, XSR900, Tracer etc.) and trying make sure it could fit each.

Secondly, I like to remove the chain guard when I’m cleaning the chain or adjusting the tension - I don’t need to, but it makes it easier. It’s held on with two bolts and a fastener. The bolts are easy to remove, but that fastener is a true pain, and I don’t see what the benefit of the design is against a bolt, or perhaps they never intended me to remove it for the work I’m doing.

On the subject of the chain, that tension - 5 -15mm deflection - still feels very tight, like a guitar string to me, but hey, that’s the spec, so that’s what I do. It gets a chuckle from the mechanics at the shop too.

I think previously I’d mentioned initial issues with the mirrors, just not being high or wide enough enough for my chunkiness, and also their propensity in the first year to start spinning loose, which whilst novel, isn’t something I want to happen when changing lanes on the expressway. The positioning I addressed with some 30mm risers, which helped enormously. The spinning I addressed by simply tightening them up a bit more, and since I put the risers in, I haven’t had the problem again.

I haven’t done much in the way of mods to be honest. I fitted my own frame sliders, which wasn’t too difficult, and then about 18 months ago I fitted the mount for my Givi top box, which whilst it took some time, wasn’t difficult really and has proven very sturdy - and incredibly useful, and made multi-day tours much easier to do than having my dry-bag strapped to the pillion seat, and it means I can have a pillion and some storage, which has proven useful on many occasions.

As for future mods, the only thing I have planned is LED indicators since the ones on there just look oddly rounded compared with the rest of the styling, and potentially some additional front lighting. Up in the mountains at night, the very urban street oriented headlights don’t give much light into tight corners. It’s not really the bike’s fault, it’s just a reflection of what it was intended for.

That’s all matter of fact though; let’s talk about what I’ve been doing with it. Firstly, everything I’d been doing with previous bikes! I also took it on multiple Twistybutts, both the coast to coast and Kantou loop versions. It’s been great on those, where the torque pushes easily through some of the most insane goat track inclines and twists Touge Express has on his list.

Some of that comes from having that Aux/USB power point to power my smartphone navi RAM mounted to the handlebars - meaning that I’m not stopping to dig out my paper map, or get my phone out of my pocket, with my old one being.

That reminds me of a feature I didn’t value initially on the bike - the riding time on the dash display. Time vanishes on a good ride, and sometimes it’s good to have a reminder of the last time you stopped and turned the engine off. It can often be a lot longer than you think, and reminds you that you might be more fatigued than you thought.

As you can probably tell, it’s been a mostly positive five years. In fact the only mechanical issue I’ve had was as weird ECU/throttle issue where the bike wouldn’t start again after it’d been running for a while, and ultimately cut out at low RPMs after a bit of time on the road. I took it in to the dealer who had it all working again within about 30mins and said they’d seen similar issues with someMT-09s and MT-07s which share the same throttle assembly, so not a sticking throttle as such, but somehow the throttle wasn’t sending correct data back to the ECU which got more incorrect the longer the ride (…).

So there we are, five very happy years with the Tracer and I suspect quite a few more to come!

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2017-c2c-bike07.jpg" alt=“Coast to Coast 2017 - time for a tea break” caption=“Coast to Coast 2017 - time for a tea break”

Baby Face Frame Sliders

Wed, 08 Nov 2017 05:56:47 +0000

I’ve been looking around for some frame sliders for the Tracer, and indeed found quite a few which seemed to fit the bill with it being based on the fairly popular MT-09 and all. However, I did find something decent from Baby Face. Read on…

As you could expect, the two two main types for my model were the ‘single bolt and puck’ type, and those which used two bolts per side with the slider puck somewhere in the middle on a bar or mount. Despite being a little more expensive, I decided to go for the latter two-bolts-per-side type as I think they’d disperse any impact force a little better, and frankly I quite like the look of them. I also thought it’d be something different to install, as I’d only had the single bolt type on previous bikes.

Truthfully, I’ve been lucky over the years not to drop or slide my bikes too often, but the Tracer is quite tall for me, and I’ve felt it almost go when doing some slow, tight U-turns down mountain roads which had suddenly stopped being roads, so once more I thought I’d get some sliders on, just in case.

After a bit of thinking, reading, more thinking, and several cups of tea, I’d narrowed it down to either a set from German manufacturer SW Motech, or some from a Japanese company called Baby Face. The Motech ones look nice, they’re well made and angular like the Tracer. The Baby Face ones look more traditional, with the more tubular style puck but the two piece bar is a very nice piece of engineering. Partly because they looked chunky, and partly because a friend is a distributor who tends to only represent decent kit, I thought I’d give the Japanese manufacturer BabyFace a go. Price wise here in Japan they’re quite similar.

The sliders arrived in a well packed box with the contents shown above - all in a kind of vacuum bubble wrap, and with some very basic instructions. Very. Basic. Those instructions had an odd blowup diagram of the assembly, some generic warnings (‘don’t fit these when the engine is hot’), some general torque guidance for their bolts, and a request to consult your bike’s service manual for specific mounting bolt torques. There’ s also a parts and spec list, but none of the parts themselves have numbers on them, so be sure to measure and know which part is which.

I dry assembled them, and beautifully labelled them with premium masking tape, in an attractive shade of pink. You can see the two parts which form the bar are quite chunky, but they’re light, and even when only lightly tightened, they feel incredibly rigid.

Next up was fitting them to the bike.

Per instructions and experience, I’d need some threadlock, for which I defaulted to Loctite Blue 243 which hasn’t failed me yet. The rest are the usual hex bits and the required torque wrenches.

The BabyFace bar bolts just require 5 & 25Nm torquing, with the engine bolts requiring 45Nm.

The instructions recommend an engine jack, but since I don’t have access to a specific motorcycle one, I simply put the bike on its centre stand, then a car jack under the engine until I could feel it taking some weight, and the bike didn’t move.

From that I just went one bolt at a time, doing first the left, then the right slider. It was actually simpler than expected. Only one of the original Yamaha bolts had any threadlock on it, but for scale I put a small drop on each of the four engine bolts. Each bolt I removed I labelled and put in a ziploc. Force of habit.

Basically, remove a bolt, clean the theads and washer (as it would be re-used), thread the new BabyFace bolt through the slider assembly and washer and into the hole, hand tighten, then do the second bolt for that side and then torque them both down. No problems.

As you can see, they suit the style and colour of the Tracer, so I’m really pleased with them, and despite the sparse instructions, fitting was a breeze likely thanks to the quality engineering.

As expected, they feel incredibly solid on the bike, fit in to the design and in a good way, disappear.

Pros:

Look and feel well made
No installation issues

Cons:

Instructions are very generic, and not immediately clear so spend some time absorbing them.