Trial By Alps
Trial by Alps
CW RIDING IMPRESSION
From the flatlands of Holland to the highest Alpine passes, we sneak a ride on Yamaha's Europe-only FJR1300 über-sport-tourer
MARK HOYER
PULLED OUT OF AMSTERDAM AT ABOUT NOON AND HEADED FOR GERMANY singing, "The pills are alive, with the sound of music..." Contrary to how it might appear, I wasn’t whacked from a late-night visit to the city’s notorious red-light district, but rather was singing the praises of some righteously potent over-the-counter decongestants picked up at the airport pharmacy to combat the symptoms of a lingering cold.
Everything was loud and clear by the time I reached Deutschland, and it sure was nice to be able to breathe. Cruising at 135 mph on the autobahn requires the brain to get some oxygen. You want to feel sharp.
I thought I was on my way to meet a German guy named Bosenberg to hook up with his 11-day tour of the Alps. But the Bosenberg is actually a big mound of dirt that’s had grapes growing on it for, oh, about the last 1000 years or so. It’s near a town called Bad Kreuznach, a few quick klicks from Frankfurt, and its sort-of suburb, Mainz, launching point for the Classic Alps and Dolomites tour put on by Bosenberg Motorcycle Excursions (www.bosenberg.com). A man named Leon Heindel runs the show, and after I got off the phone with him the first time, I thought his English was pretty good for a German. But since it turns out he’s a retired U.S. Army guy from Milwaukee who expatriated himself some 20 years ago, his English ought to be pretty good. Perhaps I still wasn't getting enough oxygen...
Europe seems big because a lot of big things have happened there. A couple of world wars, and something about some Romans. But once you’re there, you realize it isn’t really that big. I made two countries easy before dinner, and I only started at lunchtime. Perhaps the distance was somewhat compressed by the Yamaha FJR1300 I was winging along in the top of fifth gear. This bike’s a pretty big thing in Europe right now, judging by the five I saw on the road in just my first day on The Continent. Big in Europe, yes, but not here in the States, because Yamaha U.S. can’t decide if it wants to bring the all-new sport-tourer here or not. It was, after all, developed specifically for the Euro-market. So we decided to have a fly over and give this big piece of verboten fruit a try in its natural habitat, to see what we were missing. 1 left contrails over more than a dozen of the best alpine passes, ripped holes in the rarified atmosphere, left ripples in the pavement, stripped paint from the sides of lumbering tour busses and tore giant, smoking holes in the company gas cards, all in the search for answers.
The tour angle made it even better since everyone who’d signed up was American, and we could let a few of them try the bike to see what they thought. An added bonus was that the Bosenberg outfit rents a large number of different bike brands, from Harley-Davidsons to Hondas to BMWs to Ducatis. So if I had to ride the odd Gold Wing 1800 or RI 150RT or VFR800 along the way, well, 1 was willing to make the sacrifice.
Speaking of sacrifices, I had to give up two whole weeks of sitting in front of my computer at the office for this fairytale first trip to ride the Alps and Dolomite mountain ranges. The Bosenberg package took our 11-bike group through six countries of stunning scenery and incredible roads, punctuated by excellent hotels, great beer, fine wine, fabulous grappa and some really wonderful food. Some of the best eating, in fact, was the soups. Made our American stuff seem like lumpy dishwater with too much salt.
But I’ll save the rest of the food critique for a future article in Gourmet. Because the tastiest thing on my plate was this freshly prepped Yamahablue FJR1300. The bike was bom of the spirit of the old FJ1200, but shares little aside from being a big, comfortable motorcycle with a big, torquey motor.
It was the engine, in fact, that told me right away that the overriding theme of this motorcycle was effortless velocity. The powerplant is a new liquid-cooled, 1298cc inline-Four with fuel-injection and a pair of balance shafts. Yamaha’s specs say it makes 93 foot-pounds of torque at 6000 rpm and that there’s 145 horsepower at 8000 rpm (redline comes a thou later). And while at the big-power end of the rev range you do feel the engine working through the bars and pegs, calling it “vibration” would be incorrect. It’s more like the suggestion of moving parts, and simply seems to indicate that there’s a lot going on in this powerplant.
So, combine this kind of power with the FJR’s claimed dry weight of 522 pounds (figure a real 575 lbs. without gas in the 6.6-gallon tank) and you’ve got yourself a reasonably light touring motorcycle with a serious amount of go power. More importantly, these figures suggest the FJR’s power-toweight ratio is not dissimilar to Honda’s CBR1100XX Super Blackbird.
Which is another way of saying this thing’s a freakin’ rocket! Holland disappeared in a blur, Germany in the blink of an eye, and the 200-mile day trip I scheduled for myself to visit the Nurburgring (cool museum, fun go-kart track, but the long track was closed for a car school) turned into a half-day trip. I was back in time for a late lunch in the biergarten overlooking the Rhine. Ja, baby!
But that was all freeway, pin-it-to-win-it junk riding, except for a few oily peg-scraping comers just before getting to the track. Diesel was everywhere, as indicated by the scary front-end slide that made me think I’d be writing the dreaded “short story” or facing the difficult question from the Editor-in-Chief as to why we only had photos of one side of the bike. I did not crash, however, which was a most satisfying turn of events. Luck makes me a hero once again! I hoped the Alps would be better. They were. But first we had to tough it out on this utterly fabulous string of sweepers and stunning scenery through the Black Forest on a road called the Schwarzwald Hochstrasse (Black Forest High Road). It was a beautifully wide and smooth strip of twolane that encouraged absolutely ridiculous velocity. The only police I saw were a pair of BMW R1OORS biker cops parked at the side of the road, who calmly and somewhat disinterestedly watched me arc by as I used up all of third gear and clicked into fourth-probably knew they had no answer for the FJR. It was this type of road that seemed most suited to the Yamaha’s incredible engine performance and stable, easy-steering chassis. I’d be inclined to say it was motorcycle heaven, but I didn’t hear any angels singing. Maybe they couldn’t keep up?
To my surprise, the riding did get better. After staying the night in a lakeside town called Titisee (not nearly as risque as it sounds), we headed for Switzerland and some really big mountains.
The first guy I let try the bike was Mike Jagielski, a 39-yearold, large-brained software engineer and mainframe artist from Minnesota who spends his spare time as an MSF instructor or cruising with his fine-riding wife, Jen, who was piloting a BMW Ri 100R on the trip. At home Mike rides a Honda STI 100, and rented for the tour his self-proclaimed "dream bike," a VFR800. Overall he was pretty pleased with the FiR, particularly with the engine. "For a while, I wasn't shifting at all. All you need is 3000 to 7000 rpm. It's really nice power. Overall, it's definitely sportier than my ST, but I could feel the weight in transitions. It feels a little more top-heavy than my ST, and much more than the VFR I've been riding."
He was quite right about the difference in handling between the VFR and FIR. But two-up work loaded with luggage wasn't in the VFR's design brief. The FIR, on the other hand, was made to seamlessly accom modate such duty. So the wheelbase is 59.7 inches on the Yamaha, while the Honda's is 3 inches shorter. Also, the FiR's rake and trail measure 26 degrees and 4.3 inches, which are pretty relaxed num bers by sportbike stan dards, but necessary to ensure high-speed stability even with the bike fully loaded.
So while the FiR is nominally slower-steering than your average sportbike, the plus is stability, even at fully flicked, peg-dragging lean angles (excellent cornering clearance, by the way). Certainly, chassis geometry has much to do with this, but the top-notch suspension also deserves attention.
The stout 48mm fork is ftilly adjustable and well-damped, with a sweet balance between comfort and control. Plus, the adjustments worked over a useful range. Likewise for the shock. The non-adjustable compression damping was right Keeping in mind that she just got off a Gold Wing, perhaps the most comfortable passengering bike around, Lyn was not totally enthused about the FJR’s accommodations. “I’m not sure I’d want to do this tour on this bike, but that sure was fun and it’s really fast,” she said, adding that she also loved the throaty engine note.
on, while the two-position spring preload (soft or hard with the simple flick of a subframe-mounted lever) and rebounddamping adjustment did their duty, as well.
Which brings us to our next guest riders, Gary Depp and Lyn Andersen, a couple from Oakland, California, who were riding two-up on a maroon Gold Wing 1800 identical to the one they have at home. He’s also got a ‘96 CBR900RR for solo riding, and seems to like the WFO end of the riding spectrum. The 58-year-old firefighter was unreserved in his judgment of the FJR: “Awesome power! I was blowing right into the rev-limiter because the power just kept building. It
was extremely stable at high speed, too, and felt really planted. On the throttle, off the throttle, on the brakes, whatever, it just carves through comers. This is a fabulous motorcycle.”
He was totally stoked on the YZF-R1-sourced brakes, too, especially after somebody changed into his lane while he had the FJR spinning up at 130 mph (yes, two-up) and he needed to slow down now! The twin 298mm discs at the front do have excellent performance. The 282mm rear disc is a real standout, as well, resisting lockup and offering a lot of extra stopping power. Over the whole of the trip and in the heaviest of use, the brakes never faded or faltered in any way.
Gary rated the front-seat ergonomics as excellent (as did everybody else), and thought the “broad, flat seat had plenty of room to move around on,” and was the second-best he’d ever sat on behind his old ’81 Suzuki GS1000G (nostalgia is a great drug, eh?).
Since Gary was busy catching the speed buzz, he didn’t
touch the rocker switch that adjusted the electric windscreen. I, however, had plenty of time to play with it. One hopes that such adjustability would allow for a serene pocket of air and wind protection for riders of all sizes, although almost everybody complained that they couldn’t find a sweet spot that offered still or simply smooth air. Fully retracted, the turbulence was right at neck level, so while your head wasn’t really buffeted, there was a lot of wind roar. And in the higher positions, pressure was generated at your back and your head got knocked around by turbulence. I settled on keeping it fully down except in the rain when it was pretty nice to be able to protect my torso from the weather and speeds were lower so there wasn’t as much knockabout. This is an earplug bike, for sure.
Did 1 mention that we were headed for some really big mountains? Yes, they’re called the Alps, and holy cow (usually Swiss Browns with bells around their necks), what a place to ride a motorcycle! The roads were impressively smooth, the beauty of the scenery unparalleled in my life experience and there was always a place to get good coffee when you reached the summit. And...people move over to let you pass! On our “rest” day in Brienz, Switzerland (another hotel overlooking a beautiful lake), 1 leapt up the Susten, Grimsel, Furka and St. Gotthard passes and made it back in time for a delicious gorgonzola-and-prosciutto pizza at Bino’s, a hole-in-the-wall within walking distance of the hotel. It was a good time to reflect on the fact that after about the 987th hairpin at full lock while slipping the clutch in first gear, I’d had it with the low-speed handling test that day. It had revealed a few weaknesses in the FJR, however.
First, the throttle response: It’s delayed, yet abrupt, and everybody who rode the bike commented on it, particularly those who rode it on slower roads as 1 had this day.
Tourmeister Heindel said, “When you first turn the throttle there’s nothing, then it comes in like a jet.” Yep, and it really stands out on what is otherwise a highly refined engine package. In these tight switchbacks it was a real bear, and the problem exacerbated the shaft-drive-induced chassis jacking. Generally, the latter is pretty well-controlled, but makes itself felt most with abrupt throttle movements. Of course, even when you were smooth with the throttle midcomer, more often than not the EFI would make it abrupt for you, and.. .kaboing! The bike even stalled a couple of times as I went to leave red lights while riding in town. Smooth out the EFI and any shaft effect would essentially become a non-problem. Hopefully, if Yamaha decides to bring the FJR here, its U.S. R&D department will have the opportunity to spec a better fuel map. You’d think with the twin catalyzers and air-injection they’d have enough latitude with the fuel flow to make it right.
The second downside to the slower going was gearbox shift quality in the lower gears. Those who rode the bike on highspeed stuff came back with nothing but praise for the fivespeed transmission. Greg “G-man” Hillyard, a 30-year-old real estate investor from the Denver area, said he loved the shift quality, as had Gary. But between first and second in either direction, it was pretty rough, although to the tranny’s credit it never rejected a shift on the whole trip. Smooth out
the low-gear stuff, and we’d join the cheering section.
Greg had rented an R1150RT for his excellent Euro-adventure, and owns an R11OOGS and brand-new Yamaha WR426F back in Colorado. ‘I’ve been really impressed with the bikes Yamaha’s been turning out recently,” he said, adding the
FJR 1300 to the list. “I really felt ‘centered’ in the bike. It was really easy to tum, and it felt more neutral to me than the BMW. Riding was more of an activity on the Yamaha-I wasn’t into sightseeing as much.” He then summarized his ride with this: “It is totally thinkless riding, you just get on and go. It seemed all-around right.”
After 2300 miles of riding in 11 days, that was pretty much the overriding impression of this motorcycle. From the centerstand to the excellent, large-capacity hard saddlebags to the comfy seat to the incredible power, the FJR 1300 is an impressive entry into the sport-touring market. It’s comfortable enough for sedate freeway tours, but aggressive and capable enough to spend the day roosting at max lean. And nothing with saddlebags accelerates this hard.
Yamaha U.S. had no answer to our queries about whether it would bring the bike to the States, other than to say they were “studying it, for sure,” and that there was already a tremendous amount of interest in the bike.
Count us among the interested, because as far as we're concerned, Yamaha's done it again. We can only hope they'll do it for us here in the States.
