RSD YAMAHA TMAX HYPER MODIFIED
TEST
P66
weight with oil, water and a full
load of gas in the aluminum tank
whose filler is now located in the
seat hump.
The tank holds three gallons
and has been remade by RSD.
It's also been re-positioned be-
neath the tail section of RSD's
aluminum dual seat, which in turn
has been upholstered in chest-
nut leather with beige stitching
by Bitchin Seat Co. in Menafee,
California. The paint comes from
Olympic Powdercoating in Santa
Ana, together with the hand-beat-
en aluminum license plate car-
rying the single PIAA projector
beam headlight.
The radiator's been flipped
sideways with new mounts with
a shroud built to duct air into it,
while the swingarm looks like it's
been extended. But it hasn't - it's
stock. Ditto for the wheels – even
though they look aftermarket.
One mild irritation is that the
ignition switch has been trans-
ferred to the side of the bike
down behind your left leg,
and it's all too easy to knock
this off in moving from side to
side on the seat. And you will
move around as you ride the
bike through hairpins at the
improbable angle of lean that
the sticky Dunlop Sportmax
GPR-100 rubber (mounted on
the stock 15-inch rims) will al-
low you to obtain.
You can't help but get a
kick out of the sheer improb-
ability of TMAX's power-up
performance, as well as of its
efficacy. Finding yourself on a
winding road in a line of traffic
that you can quickly dispatch
one by one by simply opening
the throttle wide open is defi-
nitely addictive.
Midrange pickup is espe-
cially brisk, once you've got it
up and running – versus the
turbo-like pickup lag when
you open the throttle, presum-
ably caused by the CVT tak-
ing its time to deliver the extra
power that you've just dialed up
to the wheel. The best way to
counter this is the time-honored
scooter practice of holding the
back brake on while accelerating
into a turn, letting you effectively
preload the throttle and so cut
out 'turbo lag.'
The TMAX's low build makes it
excitingly easy to flick from side
to side through a faster series
of bends, and especially so in
