RIDING
1999
IMPRESSIONp-- YamahaYZ125
By Kit Palmer
Photos by Kinney Jones
44
ports, and filled a new exhaust pow er val v e asse m b ly . The new cy li n d er
resulted in a new an d lighter exhaus t
pipe, as well.
.
On the inta ke side of things, the '99
YZl 25 features a new, red uced -in-size,
TMX36 Mikuni carburetor, which
is lOrnm shorter fron t to back and
9.5mm sho rter top to bottom. Plus,
th e in take path of th e cra nkcase
has been cha nged slig htly to meet th e
carburetor and cylinder changes.
As you can see, Yama ha made some
significant cha nges to an already wellliked motor.
The pr aises for the '98 YZ125 d idn't
s to p at th e
m oto r - no t
even close. Suspe nsio n
a nd
handling w ere
------.J
A number 01 rel inements to the motor
resulted in increased accele ration in the
middle 01 the powerband and more
ove rrev.
just as impressive as the user -friendly
mo tor, a nd , on ce aga in , Yamah a s till
wasn't content with w hat they had and
mad e a number of refinements to these
areas.
Up fro nt , th e inverted Kayaba fork
took on valving cha nges, as well as new
oil s e a ls, pi st on , a n d s li d e me tal to
reduce stiction. In ad dition, the taper of
the out er fork tube near the lower triple
cl am p ha s been cha nged to inc re as e
rigidi ty.
Out ba ck, the shock is now 15mm
lon g e r (m e a s u re d fro m mount to
m o u nt ) and th e g as capacit y of th e
shock bod y has been increased to help
combat fading. Like the fork, the
s hock ·ha s been reva lved. As a
res u lt of the longer shock and a
new mounting position (slightly
lo w er in t h e swingarm) , th e
relay arm on the linkage syst em
has been changed - bu t not the
ratio.
As for th e sw ing arm, it has
been ma de lighter, and the sealing struc tu re of the pivot section
ha s been modified , as have the
end sectio ns, mu ch of which has
to d o with a larger -d iam eter nxie.
The rear hub is also lighter and has
