FIRST RIDE
P70
2014 YAMAHA YZ450F
ALL THE
RIGHT MOVES
Yamaha rewrites the books again
with the all-new YZ450F
BY THE CN STAFF
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT PALMER
F
rom its extreme mass centralization, straight-shot air
intake system to its out-ofharm's reach airbox, there's a lot
about the YZ450F that just makes
sense. Put it all together and you'd
think you'd have the ultimate motocrosser, at least that's what Yamaha was hoping for when it completely redesigned the YZ450F in
2010. With such radical changes,
expectations, however, were
very high for such a revolutionary machine and for many of us
those expectations were not quite
achieved. The new YZ was, in
fact, an excellent motorcycle but
ended up having some quirks. As
a result, not everyone who rode
it loved it, thus the YZ didn't become the game-changer many
had thought it would. On paper,
the radically different YZ looked
awesome, but on the track, it
was just another very good moto-
crosser, one that pretty much fell
into that either you love it or hate
it category.
For 2014, the YZ450F got its
first major overhaul since 2010.
With the intentions of getting rid
of those quirks, Yamaha went
through the YZ450F with a finetooth comb and pretty much
tweaked and re-tweaked every part on the machine. Even
though it looks fairly similar to
last year's YZ, it truly is an all-new
motorcycle. Something like less
than five components are interchangeable with the previous
model. However, Yamaha stayed
true to its primary concept.
The 2014 YZ450F retains its
reversed motor (though the motor really isn't reversed, just the
head), rearward slanted cylinder,
forward-mounted airbox and under-the-seat fuel tank configuration, all for the sake of lowering
the bike's center of gravity and
tightening up mass centralization
for improved handling. But, look-
ing back, Yamaha engineers felt
they didn't go far enough with the
previous model.
Yamaha's primary focus with
the 2014 YZ450F was to improve
mass centralization even further
and to achieve this they did many
things, like lowering the already
low fuel tank (while giving it more
capacity - 1.6 to 2.0 gallons) even
further and rerouting the exhaust
system. It still exits out the rear
of the cylinder but instead of immediately coiling up in front of
the shock (aka "tornado"), it now
