RaWarrior
Well-Known Member
One of the local dealers had an open demo day last weekend, I had nothing better to do, so I went out to ride someone else's brand new stuff for free. I was somewhat interested in the new Bolt (the answer to the Sportster), but they give you 3 rides, so I also tried the R1 and went for another rip on a gen2.
'14 Yamaha Bolt (mine was the R-spec variant)
This is a neat little bike. I find the styling fairly striking, it has a raw, old school mechanical look to it. While it's aimed at competing with the Sportster, it definitely has it's own look...not a HD styling copy like some metric cruiser. The pamphlet plays up it's "urban" credentials pretty heavily, and the overall look and feel of the bike agrees.
It has a fairly low seat height, at only 5-8 I could still easily flatfoot it. Reach to the bars is neutral giving you a fairly upright riding posture. The pegs were likewise kind of "just right", at least for my smaller frame. Not too far forward, not too close you hit them when you put your feet down. I had a slight bend at the knee, though I could see 6'+ riders being a bit cramped.
After finding the key (hidden on the right side in front of the tank), the 950cc v-twin fired right up with a tap of the starter and settled into a perfectly smooth, even cadence with virtually zero vibration. The kickstand is easy to stow and deploy also(something a lot of bikes manage to screw up on).
The clutch action is light, and the gearbox has a cruiser-ish "solidity" to the shifts, but without feeling harsh, clunky or loose. I like it. The neutral detent was easy to find as well. The clutch is well modulated through the travel of the lever with a progressive, linear feel. It's very user-friendly, and makes launches a breeze.
Out on the road, as you might expect, the engine definitely prefers to hang out in the mid-range where the meat of it's torque is. Even by cruiser v-twin standards, the top end is disappointing. It quickly feels out of breath and falls on it's face shortly before hitting the limiter. Short-shifting and lugging it around definitely works best, and it has a satisfying surge of mid-range torque that gives brisk, though hardly thrilling acceleration in traffic.
The bike is rock-steady underway and through corners. Handling is similarly confident, but the pegs touch very easily, even at moderate speeds through intersections and on-ramps. On the highway the engine has sufficient power to merge in without drama and held 80mph easily, I got it up to an indicated 92, though by then it was starting to feel out of breath again.
Instrumentation is minimal. There is one round "pod" on the handlebar that has a digital dispay of speed, odo or trip or time, and the usual idiot lights for neutral, high beam, low fuel, ect. The problem is this pod has a smoked lens so it's blacked out when it's turned off. This also makes it very difficult to see in sunlight, it glares like crazy, and even when it's not, the contrast is low and not easy to read at a glance. It's white/grayish numbers on a black background behind a smoked lens. The idiot lights are similarly very dim and also very small. Yamaha still hasn't leaned their lesson about "low fuel" lights that are hard to see, since the Bolt doesn't have a gas gauge and the smaller trip odometer digits are impossible to see while underway.
Brakes were quite good, echoing the rest of the bike they had a smooth, linear, feel. Initial bite was strong with easy to control power from both front and rear. Dive was minimal under braking, overall very good.
There were a couple problems with it though. The R-spec version I rode (which comes with piggyback rear shocks and some cosmetic differences) had a very stiff and jarring ride. I hit a small pothole and got a "shiver" up my spine it was so harsh. The fork absorbed it without fuss, the rear snaps your back. The location of the key is idiotic, you cannot see it while on the bike and have to reach around the tank and bend your hand at an awkward angle to turn it. The gauge pod is hard to see in sunshine, and the mirrors are a useless blur at much more than 40mph.
Still, with the regular version going for $8k (the r-spec is $300 more), it's a cool little bike for not a ton of money. It runs and drives better than a Sportster, has fresh styling, and plenty of power(provided you use the torque and forget about redlining) to handle freeway duty in addition to hopping around town. If you're in the market for a beginner-friendly mid weight cruiser, this is a good choice. Go for the regular version instead of the r-spec, which has a better ride.
'13 R1
It'd been a while since I'd ridden a pure sportbike, and that was a Ninja 636. The clip-ons get some getting used to after living with handlebars for years.
Anyway, I actually wasn't hugely impressed. Granted, a bike like this really needs a track to experience what it's capable of, but even on a 20 mile test drive several faults came up.
First, it's hard to start when hot. It was a warm day, pushing 90. It took me probably 30 seconds to get it going. It would sputter, cough, start then instantly stall, start then die when you touch the throttle, ect. You had to jiggle the throttle around while cranking to "coax" it into life. I stalled it a couple times in traffic (more on that later), and I was sitting there in the intersection trying to start the damn thing up again. For a brand new EFI bike, this is pretty lousy.
Second, the clutch is incredibly grabby. I'll admit I don't have much time on sportbikes, but others I have ridden weren't like this. All the action is in about the middle 5% of lever travel. As you let it out...nothing, nothing, nothing, lurch, stall. I stalled it like 4 times in the first couple miles, I haven't stalled a motorcycle in years. I finally started to get the hang of at least not stalling it, though I was still lurching it around like a retard.
Third, this thing is like sitting on an oven. At stoplights the inside of your thighs get hot to the point of pain. It's awful, the vmax is nothing in comparison. Even underway, you're constantly getting hot air washed over your legs coming out of the fairing.
Fourth, I got the gearbox stuck in a false neutral three times. Usually happens if you downshift more than once without letting out the clutch in-between, say, like coming to a stoplight. Shifts once or twice then the lever gets floppy and doesn't do anything, carefully let out the clutch, get a bang as it goes into one gear or the other, then try again.
The crossplane motor has a unique personality, torquier than most inlines and with a burbling, even exhaust note, you can hear every pulse of power. It sounds good as well. I got a couple brief chances to wind it out, and I have to say for a modern literbike, I was kind of disappointed. You expect the power to build to an insane top end, but this doesn't really. It's pretty linear, and honestly not as fast as I expected. It feels pokey compared to the BMW S1000 I rode last year, which evoked scenes from Star Trek warp drive when you hit the powerband, and the BMW had a solid gearbox, great clutch, didn't cook it's rider, and didn't start like an old carbureted Harley.
The gen2 was pretty much the same bike I rode at Americade last year, though I did notice one of my complaints...an abrupt, touchy throttle response at low speeds, has been softened up. It's much easier to drive smoothly around town now. You can almost feel there's a level of damping to the throttle with small position changes, that vanishes when the throttle moves past a certain point....smooth, smooth, smooth, then a kick in the ass of brutal acceleration. There's lots of fast bikes out there, but the way it delivers the power is just so violent it's really something to experience.
'14 Yamaha Bolt (mine was the R-spec variant)
This is a neat little bike. I find the styling fairly striking, it has a raw, old school mechanical look to it. While it's aimed at competing with the Sportster, it definitely has it's own look...not a HD styling copy like some metric cruiser. The pamphlet plays up it's "urban" credentials pretty heavily, and the overall look and feel of the bike agrees.
It has a fairly low seat height, at only 5-8 I could still easily flatfoot it. Reach to the bars is neutral giving you a fairly upright riding posture. The pegs were likewise kind of "just right", at least for my smaller frame. Not too far forward, not too close you hit them when you put your feet down. I had a slight bend at the knee, though I could see 6'+ riders being a bit cramped.
After finding the key (hidden on the right side in front of the tank), the 950cc v-twin fired right up with a tap of the starter and settled into a perfectly smooth, even cadence with virtually zero vibration. The kickstand is easy to stow and deploy also(something a lot of bikes manage to screw up on).
The clutch action is light, and the gearbox has a cruiser-ish "solidity" to the shifts, but without feeling harsh, clunky or loose. I like it. The neutral detent was easy to find as well. The clutch is well modulated through the travel of the lever with a progressive, linear feel. It's very user-friendly, and makes launches a breeze.
Out on the road, as you might expect, the engine definitely prefers to hang out in the mid-range where the meat of it's torque is. Even by cruiser v-twin standards, the top end is disappointing. It quickly feels out of breath and falls on it's face shortly before hitting the limiter. Short-shifting and lugging it around definitely works best, and it has a satisfying surge of mid-range torque that gives brisk, though hardly thrilling acceleration in traffic.
The bike is rock-steady underway and through corners. Handling is similarly confident, but the pegs touch very easily, even at moderate speeds through intersections and on-ramps. On the highway the engine has sufficient power to merge in without drama and held 80mph easily, I got it up to an indicated 92, though by then it was starting to feel out of breath again.
Instrumentation is minimal. There is one round "pod" on the handlebar that has a digital dispay of speed, odo or trip or time, and the usual idiot lights for neutral, high beam, low fuel, ect. The problem is this pod has a smoked lens so it's blacked out when it's turned off. This also makes it very difficult to see in sunlight, it glares like crazy, and even when it's not, the contrast is low and not easy to read at a glance. It's white/grayish numbers on a black background behind a smoked lens. The idiot lights are similarly very dim and also very small. Yamaha still hasn't leaned their lesson about "low fuel" lights that are hard to see, since the Bolt doesn't have a gas gauge and the smaller trip odometer digits are impossible to see while underway.
Brakes were quite good, echoing the rest of the bike they had a smooth, linear, feel. Initial bite was strong with easy to control power from both front and rear. Dive was minimal under braking, overall very good.
There were a couple problems with it though. The R-spec version I rode (which comes with piggyback rear shocks and some cosmetic differences) had a very stiff and jarring ride. I hit a small pothole and got a "shiver" up my spine it was so harsh. The fork absorbed it without fuss, the rear snaps your back. The location of the key is idiotic, you cannot see it while on the bike and have to reach around the tank and bend your hand at an awkward angle to turn it. The gauge pod is hard to see in sunshine, and the mirrors are a useless blur at much more than 40mph.
Still, with the regular version going for $8k (the r-spec is $300 more), it's a cool little bike for not a ton of money. It runs and drives better than a Sportster, has fresh styling, and plenty of power(provided you use the torque and forget about redlining) to handle freeway duty in addition to hopping around town. If you're in the market for a beginner-friendly mid weight cruiser, this is a good choice. Go for the regular version instead of the r-spec, which has a better ride.
'13 R1
It'd been a while since I'd ridden a pure sportbike, and that was a Ninja 636. The clip-ons get some getting used to after living with handlebars for years.
Anyway, I actually wasn't hugely impressed. Granted, a bike like this really needs a track to experience what it's capable of, but even on a 20 mile test drive several faults came up.
First, it's hard to start when hot. It was a warm day, pushing 90. It took me probably 30 seconds to get it going. It would sputter, cough, start then instantly stall, start then die when you touch the throttle, ect. You had to jiggle the throttle around while cranking to "coax" it into life. I stalled it a couple times in traffic (more on that later), and I was sitting there in the intersection trying to start the damn thing up again. For a brand new EFI bike, this is pretty lousy.
Second, the clutch is incredibly grabby. I'll admit I don't have much time on sportbikes, but others I have ridden weren't like this. All the action is in about the middle 5% of lever travel. As you let it out...nothing, nothing, nothing, lurch, stall. I stalled it like 4 times in the first couple miles, I haven't stalled a motorcycle in years. I finally started to get the hang of at least not stalling it, though I was still lurching it around like a retard.
Third, this thing is like sitting on an oven. At stoplights the inside of your thighs get hot to the point of pain. It's awful, the vmax is nothing in comparison. Even underway, you're constantly getting hot air washed over your legs coming out of the fairing.
Fourth, I got the gearbox stuck in a false neutral three times. Usually happens if you downshift more than once without letting out the clutch in-between, say, like coming to a stoplight. Shifts once or twice then the lever gets floppy and doesn't do anything, carefully let out the clutch, get a bang as it goes into one gear or the other, then try again.
The crossplane motor has a unique personality, torquier than most inlines and with a burbling, even exhaust note, you can hear every pulse of power. It sounds good as well. I got a couple brief chances to wind it out, and I have to say for a modern literbike, I was kind of disappointed. You expect the power to build to an insane top end, but this doesn't really. It's pretty linear, and honestly not as fast as I expected. It feels pokey compared to the BMW S1000 I rode last year, which evoked scenes from Star Trek warp drive when you hit the powerband, and the BMW had a solid gearbox, great clutch, didn't cook it's rider, and didn't start like an old carbureted Harley.
The gen2 was pretty much the same bike I rode at Americade last year, though I did notice one of my complaints...an abrupt, touchy throttle response at low speeds, has been softened up. It's much easier to drive smoothly around town now. You can almost feel there's a level of damping to the throttle with small position changes, that vanishes when the throttle moves past a certain point....smooth, smooth, smooth, then a kick in the ass of brutal acceleration. There's lots of fast bikes out there, but the way it delivers the power is just so violent it's really something to experience.
