Reversed but not backward
By TMX Archives on 16th Sep 09
Yamaha unveiled their new ground-breaking YZ450F just after we went to press last week and it's quite a leap forward... in reverse! THE worst kept or best leaked secret of the year was unveiled last week with Yamaha unveiling its ground-breaking 2010 YZ450F with Sod's Law stating that the story broke and pictures were released just after T+MX had gone to print. Not to worry, you can see the new model in this week's paper and it will be around for quite a long time to come. It is quite a leap for Yamaha who, to be fair, have always been innovators rather than followers and good on 'em for being different.
It's not that different though, is it? And who shouted Cannondale' from the back of the room.
A reverse head is not new technology, its been around since the beginning of time but the marvel that is fuel injection (which was fitted to the V12 Mercedes engines in Messerchmidt 109 fighter planes around 70-years ago!) allows it to be employed much more efficiently than a carb.
Basically, as Yamaha can explain much better than I, it allows a nice downdraught induction through a straightish inlet tract. Much more efficient than the 90-degree jobbie with a normal' layout. Yam have canted the cylinder rearwards to aid that induction system. The fuel can then be bunged under the seat lowering the centre of gravity and aiding the mass centralisation' which is everything in current off-road design.
It does leave you with a short exhaust pipe though and Yamaha have overcome this with a bit of under-seat snake-charming. As will Vertemati when they turn their computer model, which we featured on page 3 recently, into metal reality as indeed will anyone else who eventually goes this route.
As I said, I congratulate Yamaha for once again having the nerve to convert a concept into reality. The Japanese factories are terribly tight knit' when it comes to producing models and we have often said that if you produce silhouettes of all the MXers currently on offer even their own designers couldn't tell one from t'other.
Cannondale? Don't you remember the reverse head, fuel-injected MXer that was to revolutionise the sport but which, due to a variety of problems, almost spelt the death knell for the American manufacturer of fabulous mountain bikes? The idea was, and it wasn't a bad one, that couple their MTB design genius with some blue-sky thinking in the engine department and the result would be an off-road model that would move MX into a whole new dimension. It didn't!
But that's not to say that they were fundamentally wrong. Yamaha has a whole lot better grasp of motorcycles than did Cannondale and we are several years further down the line.
Timing can be everything, and just as Yamaha was right on the button with the original YZ400F back in 1997 their time could just have come again...
************************
BELIEVE it or not, and I really don't mind if you don't, I am occasionally invited to attend the odd soiree, that means night on the booze' in common or garden English, and one such recent evening of merriment concerned my mate Chris Myers' 50th birthday. So yes, for anyone that knows Chris, he has reached the big five-oh! And just for old time's sake the commemorative evening was conducted in a public hostelry which we used to frequent back in the day.
As you'd expect, the evening soon degenerated into much taking of the pi** with Chris, sensing that he was in for a pasting, getting his retaliation in first! Only recently he recalled that great master of the one-liner, trials legend Dave Thorpe, telling him, passing time whilst sitting in a trials section queue: I remember when you were a young up and coming rider Myers. You were the next big thing weren't you. You never made it, did you!
I settled for reminding Chris how he once jumped out of a Transit van onto the hard shoulder of the motorway while still doing 40mph, desperate to avoid someone being sick on him. Despite the heroic leap, Chris failed, was covered in spew and we made him change his trousers on the motorway banking, to much joyous honking of horns, while we drove away...
Nigel Birkett came up with the best tale though from back when Chris was an actual Italjet factory rider in the early 1980s. Now, it's fair to say that the Italjet was never looked on in the best light by most riders, the all-over lime-green paint scheme of the early models putting most people off the brand for life. Whatever, Birks recalled staying in a hotel somewhere while overnighting between two British National trials when breakfast was interrupted by the sudden loud braying of a donkey outside. Quick as a flash, Stanley Bakgaard, then the Canadian Trials Champ over here on his Euro travels, swallowed his egg and bacon and quipped: Hey Myers, that donkey's trying to communicate with your Italjet!
It was funny back then and it was funny again the other night although admittedly we were all slightly lubricated by then...