We did our best to explain the complexities of the new Yamaha R1’s electronics package. Now, Yamaha has put a simulator on the internet that will allow you to play with the settings available on the new R1, such as different throttle maps, traction and slide control settings. Follow this link to the simulator. Hit start to begin your simulation.
I’ll never come close to being able to use the capability of this thing but it is nice to know it exists. Looking forward to the day when self-driving bikes can take you on a full-tilt ride-along just to know what that kind of speed feels like.
The long Wisconsin winter is the only thing ruining my motorbike happiness. Come on Spring!
Amen to that.
Happening here in CO too. I’d also add “I can’t afford one of each of the fascinating bikes coming out lately… like V-Strom 1k apparently knocking it out of the park, BMW RT that is almost as fast as the inline-6, Yamaha getting the FJ09 right, the R1 taking it convincingly into the ring with the S1000RR, it just goes on and on.
These are good times.
this is a special bike, with a LOT of power, so that is why they have the myriad of electronics to let the rider use as much power as they think conditions warrant. Get it right, and you have an amazing ride! Get it wrong, you can still crash like a convention bike ridden too hard.
I doubt this level of electronics will trickle down to “ordinary” bikes any time soon. But parts of it will. Purists used to lament the use of Fuel Injection (carbs are just fine, and you can fix them easy). Liquid cooling, too complex and heavy, air cooling is just fine they would also say. Antilock Brakes?? More things to break!
Personally I love my FI, Liquid cooled bike, and will likely upgrade to Antilock brakes on the next bike. 13 years, and 50k miles with no trouble from the FI, and just coolant changes like a car. Lovely! These have proven themselves over many years, and allowed most new riders to wonder what that little “choke” lever is on some bikes.
On the other hand, most of the R1 technology IS already quite proven, and will likely not be a service issue, but a rather steep LEARNING curve for the rider of such a machine!
re: “I doubt this level of electronics will trickle down to “ordinary” bikes any time soon.”
wait, this IS an ordinary bike, innit…? (ordinary relative to what)
I mean so long as you have a valuing mentality, you can actually walk with the pocket full of quid you saved up down to a local dealer, and then return home that same afternoon parking this in your garage, shed, living room or wherever.
try that with a grandprix bike and they’ll arrest you.
ordinary…as in for sale at your local dealer
Also, ordinary in terms of within the reach of consumers. This isn’t a $40k Ducati. If having a fast bike is a priority, this is affordable for those outside the 1%
re: “this is affordable for those outside the 1%”
FISTPUMP…!!!
re: “carbs are just fine, and you can fix them easy”
define “easy”. I still have a set of R6 carbs sitting in a box waiting to be cleaned. been in that box going on a year now. 🙁
(God help ya with VFR carbs).
Again, the R1 and the R1M are intended for the track. They just so happen to be street legal.
All this tech is intended to get the rider around the track faster, not to the corner store faster.
Re: “All this tech is intended to get the rider around the track faster, not to the corner store faster.”
All this tech is intended to get the rider’s checkbook out faster. The track story is a good marketing pitch but you can bet the factory guys will have different electronics and the number of privateers who adopt this platform will depend more on what Yamaha’s contingency program looks like compared to the other brand’s.
The majority of these that are *sold* will never see the track or be ridden to within a fraction of their performance potential.
Re: “The majority of these that are *sold* will never see the track or be ridden to within a fraction of their performance potential.”
Thats part of the deal. Race sanctioning bodies requiring a certain number of these unit be “regular” production models has always been in racing as far as I can remember back in the 90’s when I started following as a kid.
I don’t know what racing organization will allow the R1M to compete same as the Kawasaki H2 and H2R.
I’m not arguing that most will never see the track, but the engineers designed these with the intention of racing not looking “cool” out at a bike night.
I’m sure the dirt poor privateers would welcome the upgrades that are available to them on these bikes right out of the crate. Not the guys that try to race for a living but the guys that do the odd track day any chance they get.
That’s true about homologation rules but without the rule book in front of me I couldn’t tell you where electronics fall in terms of production requirements. We know that these rules exist for WSBK but the bikes have equipment that doesn’t come with the bike. Honda’s use of a throttle by wire system comes to mind, as does the varying levels of traction controls used by Suzuki since the early 2000’s in both AMA and WSBK.
re: “I’m not arguing that most will never see the track, but the engineers designed these with the intention of racing not looking “cool” out at a bike night.”
can’t we do both…? 🙂
Oh most certainly Norm both can be done.
I do agree with Dave that most of these units will never see a track in their lifetime. More of these units will be destroyed on the street in silly incidences rather than on the track in true combat.
re: “The track story is a good marketing pitch”
not to Josh Hayes it isn’t.
ps: he’s ‘Merican.
He also won the title a few years in a row with no traction control while others had it. Do you think the T/C he has now is inferior to what’s included with this bike for racing?
re: “Do you think the T/C he has now is inferior to what’s included with this bike for racing?”
prolly not much different in any way that would matter to him since he likely only uses it on a low setting. can’t see him going from ZERO to whole hog.
everybody’s under the impression that there’s some kind of “fancy algorithm from the Gods” for effective TC but there really isn’t.
it’s been basically the same principle since the beginning, all’s they’ve done is update it over the years by adding additional sensors (think accelerometer) to the feedback loop.
same as the computer world mantra “garbage in, garbage out”, so it goes for TC. the magic all starts with quality sensors sending “quality data”.
Motorcycles, by their nature, can be simple, fundamental machines. I find joy in that. Why did manufacturers have to ruin it?
How did they ruin anything? This isn’t the only bike Yamaha makes. Simple is great, check out the SR400, doesn’t even have electric start.
Bamm!
Yeah, but fuel injection? I’m just a curmudgeonly old dinosaur that likes to adjust fuel curves with a screwdriver and set points with a business card. lol! Don’t take me seriously. I bitch about lots of modern stuff. It’s what grumpy old men do.
The irony: Yamaha says that it is fuel injection that makes the bike kick-start reliably enough for a modern consumers. lol
My bike is carb’d too. Nobody has produced anything new yet that beats my SV650 for what I want in a bike, though I may have to try that FZ07, just to be sure. 😉
Maybe you should get on your rotary dial phone and call Yamaha.
I sent them a message by Pony Express. Telegraph lines are down because of all the snow.
LOL
Q: Why did manufacturers have to ruin it?
A: ’cause our insatiable appetite for technology ASKED them to ruin it.
tail wags the dog. at some point we’re going to have to stop pretending like it’s all the OEM’s fault and the consumer doesn’t have a role to play. we would be the first to “devalue” this bike if it DIDN’T come fully kitted.
Does seem rather strange that we need 200 hp and then a switch to turn it down!
Thanks, but no thanks. Life is complex enough. Call me old fashioned (66 years young), but I like my rides (2003 Interceptor, 2004 FJR) simple and unencumbered.
Can’t even get the clock set on my ds1000 ducati thats ten years old! Just ride the mucker.
You lay on the B button until the clock flashes. The adjust by using the A button, using the B button to bump from hours to minutes.
Or maybe it’s the other way around. It just took my eight months of non-use to get my Dutch DS turning into a French DS. I’ll be setting my clock when I get back from Minnesota, where I have another DS.
Lol I rode around for months with the clock on my ST wrong because I couldn’t remember the procedure. It was driving me nuts so I finally dug out the manual and fixed it. can’t remember the exact procedure though, so when DST rolls around this weekend I will probably ride a few months with the time off an hour until I dig out the manual again.
Tried doing it asd the manual says but didn’t work for me so abondoned the whole system!
One day we can hop on our bike, hit the auto pilot button and it will do the rest- auto steer, auto throttle, auto brake. No rider input required.
re: “One day we can hop on our bike, hit the auto pilot button and it will do the rest- auto steer, auto throttle, auto brake. No rider input required.”
and when that day comes, we will be equal with this guy…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE3XsZaL-zo
and this guy…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp8O5suerjU
but not until then.
This is why I just bought a mint-condition 2006 Honda CBR600 F4i; simpler is better.
more is always better….everyone knows that
Hell, I had a hard enough time programming my VCR back in the day, now we’ve got to this point? Please tell me it’s still one down and four (five?) up.
It is but it’s easy to change to GP shift too.
That’s just cool and not so cluttered up that you can’t read it.