Monday, November 16, 2015

My new bike for the day

The front right fork seal was leaking oil on the new R1 so I'd taken it down to Teammoto to get it sorted before the snowys ride. This is what they gave me for the day whilst my R1 was getting fixed.





Saturday, November 14, 2015

2015 R1 Yoshimura Alpha1 3/4 Exhaust System


 I excitedly ripped open the Yoshimura box to drool over the lovely goodies inside. I was not disappointed. I've always wanted a Yoshi system and now that I finally have one I'm rapt. The quality of the pipe is outstanding. I'm very impressed. I want to hear the sound of it within minutes of opening the box.


However I have to wait, why do I have to wait? I want to hear it now damn it. It's late to put it on so I have to wait a night then I can rip into it. However I can weigh the exhaust to see what the difference is between the new system and the stock exhaust with that big cat box underneath. I reckon that there's 10kg in that thing. The new Yoshi can is 2.31Kg and the link pipes weigh in at 2kg for a total of 4.31Kg.

Thursday I get home from work and get all my tools together to pull out the stock system and put in this work of art. After quite some time of dismantling bits an pieces it all comes together. I put all of the bits of the stock system on the scales and it comes in at a massive 8.95Kg. That's a 4.64Kg saving on the stock system. Quite a bit of lard in there.

Stock Exhaust

Yoshimura 3/4 Alpha Stainless/CarbonCap
I got some isopropyl and gave the system a nice clean up before starting it up so that none of my dirty finger prints get burnt into the lovely link pipes or exhaust can. 

























So here is my beautiful 2015 R1 with 3/4 Yoshimura Alpha 1 system installed. I hear you say what's it sound like? Let's not keep you in suspense any longer, listen to this bad boy in all it's glory. Watch for the flames.....




Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Time to make some noise

A couple of weeks back I'd decided that I wanted to make my bike sound like the super sic crossplane mofo that it was born to be, like the Yamaha MotoGP M1 that had spawned this super sexy machine. I had finally ordered an after market exhaust for my new R1. Well today I got my new Yoshimura 3/4 system from the nice people at MCAS.  So this is what it looks like. Picture blatantly stolen from Yoshimura's website.


Friday, November 6, 2015

That F#*king seat?

Well if you'd been following my ass kicking ride to Phillip Island then you know that I have had a few issues so to speak touring on this R1. Yeah I hear you say it not a touring bike so why did you buy it. Well to start with I do very little touring these days more like one day or two day rides so the touring was a 17th consideration on the list when I purchased the bike. But I still need to tour on the thing, that is certain so how can I keep my track bike suitable for riding on the road and riding long distance. There's plenty of options out there like Taping some plastic bubble wrap to my seat(thanks Geoff James) or I could get an Airhawk seat cover, buy a comfort seat from Yamaha for $500 or get the seat re-upholstered.

Here is the offending item. This fucking little bastard has caused me no end of trouble on my MotoGP trip.


15mm of foam, sit on that and it's probably more like 5mm
Ah what to do what to do. Well one thing is for sure if I'm riding more than 2 days I can't ride on this little torture device. So it was ripped off the day after I got back from MotoGP and taken to a re-upholsterer so I can get a gel pad insert and some extra foam put in. Hopefully this will relieve the sore ass on the long distance rides. Only time will tell. I can always buy a seat from a wreckers to replace this one if needed but some how I don't think I need to torture myself any longer.



From the pictures above you can see how much extra padding is now in the seat. The padding is about 25-30mm thick in the centre which is double what it was. Only thing to do now is go and try it out. Hopefully this is the fix I've been waiting for. I'll soon report on how it goes.