Back In Black
BACK IN BLACK
CW EXCLUSIVE
2009 STAR V-MAX
Mr. Max's Grand Reopening
DAVID EDWARDS
IT HAS BEEN A LONG TIME COMIN', LORD KNOWS. BUT AT last—at last!-there's an all-new V-Max. The original badass musclebike, which performed its first smoky burnout in 1985, is all set for a second act. Some of us, quite frankly, wondered if this would ever happen; it the moto-world of the 21 st century was prepared to welcome back a hoary old anachronism that was basically as big and powerful a motor as could be wedged between two wheels, everything els a distant consideration. And, it so, could It live up to what we so breathlessly wrote 23 years ago about that first v-Max?
To quote the May, 1985, issue: “From the don ’t-mess-with-me snarl of its exhaust to the way its massive V-Four literally dominates the hike s appearance, the V-Max is power distilled to its purest, rawest elements. The V-Max doesn 't even have to go fast to prove that it is fast; somehow you and everyone else who sees the hike already knows it ’s fast. It doesn ’/ use the guise of a roadracer-replica or a high-tech canyon-carver as an excuse to have power; it has power for the sake of power. The V-Max is power.”
Well, fear not, Maxist/', the 2009 version of your favorite motorcycle has bypassed sensitivity training. It makes no apologies for its masculinity. It is neither kinder nor gentler. It still lights up.
Here’s all you need to know: While Max 1 displaced 1198cc and produced a claimed 143 crank horsepower, Max II packs 1679cc and lays down a whopping 197 hp! That, friends, makes it the most powerful series-production motorcycle to roam the Earth.
So, how come it took this long? Why did the V-Max go two decades and two years with only minor upgrades before being unceremoniously dumped from the lineup last year?
Let’s go back to 1996, when Yamaha decided to investigate the feasibility of a new mega-Max. Unfortunately, this timeframe coincided with The Great Cruiserfication. The Japanese Big Four, tired of seeing Harley hand them their lunch with a simple, aircooled, 62-horse V-Twin that had design roots stretching back to 1936, had all decided to build Ameri-cruisers. I lorsepower was out, styling was in. The V-Max project, looking decidedly out of phase, was shuffled to the back burner, heat turned down low.
Years passed. Oh, there were some explorations. At some
point, a monster-motored test
mulemaybe 2000cc, nobody
will say for sure was lashed together. Proved so bloody unrideable that it was immediately shelved lest the liability lawyers get wind of it and shut things down.
Then, on the 20th anniversary of the V-Max, some hope. Rolled out in the Yamaha booth at the 2005 Tokyo Motor Show was a concept Max. “Medieval-looking,” we said. “Dark and evil like something out of Lord Vader’s garage.” The bike was curiously unfinished no lights, no seat padding, no instrument faces and the sparse press kit offered no useful information. “It’s just a design exercise to see how a future VMax might look,” was the smokescreen put out by a PR-type, but here, unmistakably, was the new V-Max.
It’s that Tokyo showbike, with the blanks filled in and one major change, that will be delivered to waiting customers starting this October as the 2009 Star V-Max.
A V-Four was the only choice for power. “The motor is the essence of the V-Max-as the centerpiece of the bike and for its power characteristics,” said an insider.
The similarities with the old Max mill end with configuration, though. Vee angle has been tightened from 70 degrees to 65. While both engines share a 66mm stroke, the new one has a much wider bore (90 vs. 76mm), yielding the 481cc displacement boost.
One big concern with the bigger powerplant was its physical size. Engineers wanted to be able to place the engine where it was best for handling, so it had to be as compact as possible. The dohc valvetrain-much of its weight up high-came under scrutiny. Instead of a chain traveling up one tunnel, over two cam sprockets and then down another tunnel, the V-Max drives only its intake cams by chain; exhaust cams are geared to the intakes, no extra chain needed.
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat, or to drive a cam,” noted Senior Editor Paul Dean upon seeing the innovative setup. The recently announced Aprilia V-Four World Superbike racer will run a similar system.
In all, the new motor is about an inch shorter front-to-rear than the previous one, and only about a quarter-inch taller.
It’s also “smarter” than before. “This is the most intelligent motorcycle we’ve ever made,” noted a Star product planner.
That intelligence starts at the twistgrip, an electronic, ride-bywire device just as on the Rl and R6 supersports. It’s connected to a quartet of 48mm fuel-injection throttle bodies that live inside the airbox/dummy fuel tank. These run YCC-I variable intake trumpets-again, as seen on the R l. Below 6650 rpm, the two-piece intake tracts each act as single 5.9inch runners to aid torque production. Above 6650, a servo motor pops the top third of the tracts up, leaving 2.1-inch runners, better power producers at high rpm.
If this sounds akin to the V-Boost system on the old Max-where a butterfly valve opened at 5700 rpm allowing two carbs to feed each cylinder-well, the similarities are not coincidental. “That huge rush of acceleration had to be part of the new engine’s power characteristics, too,” we were told.
At this point, a Yamaha test rider who wasn’t supposed to tell us anything, nodded affirmatively and smiled knowingly.
While the rider remained mum, the V-Max’s onboard computers give clues as to the bike’s performance. Top speed is electronically governed to 220 kph (about 137 mph), probably not a bad thing for a rocket that knocks on 200 horsepower and whose only aid to aerodynamics is a big round tach/speedo/shiftlight jutting into the breeze.
But, get this, the black boxes are smart enough to recognize a full-on dragstrip run and allow an extra 10 kph on top in the quarter-mile before easing things back down. If we figure a 143-mph terminal speed, then the V-Max will certainly be a low 10-second performer and maybe, just maybe, even get into the 9s given that its length and weight should allow it to be hammered off the line without fear of looping. “Dyno” Don Canet awaits that chance.
When it came to styling and running gear, Yamaha was in a quandary. Obviously, the new V-Max had to keep a familial resemblance to the original, but after 20 years it had to be fresh-looking, too. Some in the company were convinced the new bike should have chain final drive instead of a shaft. That would make the extended-swingarm and custom-wheel crowd happy, and permit easy gearing changes for drag-race tuning. It would also be lighter. But focus groups, including many previous V-Max owners, insisted on the driveshaft as part of the bike’s character. It stayed.
The swingarm that incorporates said shaft is an all-aluminum affair, 26 inches long, which helps minimize chassis-jacking effect. Gone is the touring-bike-derived rear gearcase, replaced by a purpose-built unit with a smaller ring gear (29 teeth, 7.4-inch diameter) and shrink-wrapped externals. The effect is all very toolroom. A fat 200mm rear tire slots between the arms, with what looks like enough room left over for a 240 to fit.
Also part of the drivetrain is a rampstyle slipper clutch. Transmission is a five-speed.
Front suspension was another cause for hot internal debate. Upsidedown forks were tried but ultimately rejected as “too modern” for the VMax. Instead, it gets the mother of all conventional forks, running 52mm titanium-oxide-coated honkers of stanchions. Held firmly in place with a forged-aluminum bottom tripleclamp and a cast upper, it’s adjustable for preload, compression and rebound damping, and works through 4.7 inches of travel.
A pair of Sumitomo six-piston, radial-mount calipers lives at the south end of the fork tubes, putting serious clampage on 320mm wave-style rotors via a radial-pump Brembo master cylinder. Another example of Max I Is newfound smarts, anti-lock plumbing is standard equipment for the brake system. The ABS is not linked front to rear.
Engineers got some payback with the rear suspension. When the concept bike was shown in Tokyo and a year later at the 2006 Cycle World show in Long Beach, it wore a pair of piggyback shocks, per the focus groups. In testing, though, these were found to be feeding wonky forces into the chassis, upsetting handling. A monoshock was the answer, but how to fit it and its links into an already dense-packed chassis without a costly and time-consuming total redesign?
Well, the shock, running northsouth, was laid down at what looks like about a 30-degree angle and fitted into a bay carved into the swingarm.
It just fits into the space prescribed by the arm’s front pivot tube and the curved crossmember ahead of the rear tire, half of the shock above the sw ingarm, half below. Remote adjusters handle preload and damping fine-tuning as the shock-sheathed for protection from road grime-is all but inaccessible by hand. Travel is 4.3 inches.
A visual walkaround of the V-Max shows details not mentioned in the press materials. Headlight is one of those soap-in-the-shower deals, smoothed over and laid back parallel with the fork tubes. Twin, linked radiators hint at the power within the engine cases-one just wasn’t enough to keep things cool. Seating position, thank goodness, is more standard than cruiser, footpegs almost directly beneath the rider, compact reach to the low-rise handlebar, a useful bolster at the seat’s rear to keep clenched cheeks in place during acceleration. And, yes, the bolster flips forward just like the old bike’s to reveal the filler for the underseat 4-gallon fuel tank-and, yes, that’s still a hassle if you have things bungeed to the rear pad.
Looks like those meaty siamesed exhaust cans, definitely one of the new bike’s signature pieces, won the battle with the rear footpegs:
Wanted: Adventurous co-rider with short inseam and ability to hang on tight for romantic
midnight blasts. Must have own helmet. And whoever hung the horn in front of the front-left header, next to the lower radiator, needs to go to Afterthoughts Anonymous.
But the overriding impression is how much like the old
bike the new one is and at the same time how exaggerated it’s become; beefier, brawnier, more bullish. No need to call the Origami Abuse Hotline. Between those who bought the 1985-2007 V-Max new and the pass-along rate among usedbike buyers, there are hundreds of thousands of Friends of Max out there. They will be very happy with this bike. Yamaha is counting on pent-up demand to drive sales for the new Max but it is hedging that bet. For one thing, suggested retail on the bike is $ 17,990, not an insubstantial sum-that first 1985 V-Max sold for $5299 (of course, unleaded premium cost $ 1.30 a gallon back then, too). So, like the FJR1300 sport-tourer, V-Maxes will be built to order. Plonk down a $ 1000 deposit between now and October 3 1, you get a bike when deliveries start in
late October/early November. The catch is that U.S. production will be strictly limited to 2500 units; after that number is reached you’re out of luck ’til next year. Okay, who’s first? □
