Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/125697
E YAMABAXS-IBiexhaust note, though fairly loud, is apparently not loud enough to be offensive. The many cops that we passed paid us no heed. By Saturday night there was 607 miles on the speedo and 1 had to return the bike on Monday, so 1 had a lot of riding to do on Sunday. Figuring 50 miles on Monday, 1 had to ride 350 miles on Sunday. At 7 am Sunday it was fairly cool and the Yamaha took 5 or 6 kicks to start and about 4 minutes to warm up enough to be ridden, which was about the same as other mornings. Once ~e machine was warm, 1 could take bets on being able to start it on one kick. 1 tied my knapsack to the passenger rail, which is one of those nice little features at you don't notice until you have a bike with9ut one.. To warm up a bit 1 took the Dike up over the Griffth Park Mountain Road. This is a rough, asphalt-surfaced road with tight hairpins, and off·camber turns, that is often wet because they water the shrubbery alongside the road. It's a good place for checking handling on a racing level. The Yamaha is not a race machine and doesn't particularly like being treated as one. Over bumps the rear wheel hops, pegs and stands grind on the tums, and the Dunlop K·70 on the front doesn't inspire great confidence. It will get around fairly well however and if you don't get too carried away, you can play racer to your heart's content. Leaving the Griffith Park Grand Prix circuit, 1 headed toward a more suitable area for touring, recreation-type riders, the Angeles Crest Highway. This road also has lots of tums, but they're smooth, banked the right way and of fairly large radius. It's the kind of road where you just swing lazily back and forth, in fourth and fifth gears, with a sensation womewhere between skiiing and flying. The Yamaha loved it. With the turns banked the right way, nothing dragged at any reasonable speeds, the brakes worked well without any indication of fade and the motor sang happily. Even the altitude which has many bikes sputtering and losing gobs of power, had virtually no effect on the Yamaha. Almost before 1 realized it, I was in Wrightwood and turning North toward the desert. On a long stright road that I knew, I decided to see how fast the Yamaha would go. 1 wound out in fourth and fifth and stuck my chest down on the tank. ,The speedometer needle crossed the 100 mph mark and moved slowly up to 108 mph. It was still going up, but very slowly, when 1 shut down. A little bit of that kind of speed goes a long way with me. The bike handled well with no tendency to wander, but you kind of wondered, what would happen if you hit a rabbit, a beer car or a chuck hole with that ultra-stiff suspension. 1 didn't want to find out. The bike will do 100 mph. If you want more than that you're on your own. 1 am sure that the bike 1 had would not do IIO mph (true speed - the speedo on this bike was a good 10% fast). The bike was by this time fairly well broken in and in reasonably good tune. At a more leisurely pace, I rode out toward Hiway 138 playing on some of the dirt roads near Lancaster. As a good all round bike should, the Yamaha handled okay on the dirt .road and for once'1 was glad to have that fat K-70 on the front. While not the ultimate on either dirt or pavement, it works pretty well on both. Along here, I had to gas for the secon.d time. The bike gets reasonable mileage, but the tank is a bit small for a bike this size. ~ Soon I drove the Yamaha fairly hard down Bouquet Canyon road. This is a twisty road and there was lots of traffic on it. Lots of opportunity for check acceleration in a meaningful way: passing cars where there is very little room to spare. The Yamaha shines at this sort of thing. It has lots and lots of power and the gears it needs. At this point 1 was sure that the Yamaha was an ?,cellent bike for the type of person that I thought would be interested in it. It could handle almost anything in a oompetent fashion. 1 had already ridden 200 miles since breakfast and 1 wasn't tired, which says a lot for any bike. The bike looked like it was easy to service, with the points and the carburetor adjustments right out in the open, quickdetach rear wheel, accessible air cleaner and so on. Since my original troubles which were due simply to abysmally bad preparation by Yamaha International, there had been no indication that the bike would need very much attention. I" was going to run an accurate check on the speedometer, meet my wife-for a photography session and call it a day. The bike had 830 miles on it and by the time I got home there would be another 100 on it. Only I never mad~ it. As I accelerated up to 60 mph to check the speedo, there was a loud metallic sound from the primary side. 1 looked down to see what happened just in time to notice lots of oil coming out of the primary in front of the rear wheel. Shortly thereafter 1 was too busy to notite anything because the bike was going sideways down the center lane of the freeway at 60 mph. For some ~ w Z W ..J (J > (J The Yamaha has a nice big tail light/stop light and signals that can be seen from a long distance. strange reason, 1 didn't go down. Apparently after all the oil was gone, the tire cleaned itself and I was able to bring it under control and coast over to the side of the road. (About the time I regained control, the engine quit). Thus ended the test of the Yamaha XS-l. I th umbed a ride for me and the bike back to L.A. and took it back to Yamaha on Monday. Somehow the chain had hit the clutch rod, virtually destroying it, and the badly bent rod tore the oil seal and allowed the oil to be pumped out. How this could happen 1 don't know and no reasonable explanation hasheen offered. Ths chain was quite loose as a result of the long ride, but it was not loose enough to DIMENSIONS OVERALL LENGTH .85.4 in. OVERALL WIDTH . .35.6 in. OVERALL HEIGHT. .. .45.3 in. WHEELBASE . . . . . .55.5 in. MINIMUM GROUND CLEARANCE 5.9 in. NET WEIGHT (Dry) 406lbs. ENGINE TYPE A·stroke gasoline, Air-cooled Single Over Head Cam Shaft. BORE & STROKE 2.953 in.X2.913 in. DISPLACEMENT 39.85 cu in. COMPR£SSION RATIO 8.7:1 MAXIMUM HORSEPOWER53Bhp/7,OOOrpm . . . . . . (rated) 011: CAP'AClTY '(Qu'arts) . . . . 3.2 U.S. qts. CLUTCH TYPE Wet, multiple-disk PRIMARY DRIVE SYSTEM Spur gear PRIMARY DRIVE ~T10 2.666 TRANSMISSIQN TYPE . . . Constant mesh, 5.speed forward Reduction Ratio 1st 2.214 31/14) 2nd 1.588 27/17 3rd 1.300 26/20 4th . . . . . 1.095 23/21 5th . . . . . 0-956 22/23 CHASSIS :.... Gary Satterlee, sales manager of World Cycles, Hollywood, shows the limits of lean. Stand grounded at this point. .....;.. FRAME TYPE . . . . .Tubular·Doubleloop FUEL TANK CAPACITY . . . . 3.3 US gal. GAS MILEAGE . 37 mi./gal. (approx.) jump the sprocket (and it didn't). Someone at Yamaha suggested that the chain migh t have picked up a twig or rock and carried it around the sprocket, but this seems far-fetched. One thing that .l do know is that there is very . little shock absorption in the drive train. This coupled with very ligh~ flywheels puts rather enormous stresses on the drive train. In practical terms, you can feel a sizable jolt when you shift gears, even at low speeds. I recall thinking at the beginning of the test when this jolt occurred shift after shift that the drive train would have to. be awfully robust to take that kind of strain. What happens is that with the light flywheels, the engine speed drops so quickly that by the time the shift is completed the engine is running too slow for the bike. When the clutch is engaged, two mechanisms running at different speeds are essentially bolted together and a severe jolt is the result. How does this affect my evaluation of the bike? It doesn't really. 1 haven't heard .of other Yamaha's having this problem and I don't really know what happened. I suspect it was something freakish in nature and that it took out the "weakest link" _ the drive train. The weakest link of most big bikes is th d' . h'" thi 1 e nve tam so t IS 15 no ng new. t just happed that instead of breaking a primary chain (which the Yamaha doesn't have) it rendered the clutch inoperative. The Yamaha XS-I is a good bike and probably a rather depc;ndable bike, though my test does not substantiate this. It's fun to ride and fairly good at everything, though not really spectacular in anything except looks. The guy who rides everywhere will like it. I am deeply indebted to the people of World Cycle, Yamaha dealers in Hollywood; for much assistance during the course of this test, including the loan of one of their bikes for the photography,.accompanying this ~ l ........__iIIIII