VOL. 53 ISSUE 7 FEBRUARY 23, 2016 P83
easily. The FX's starter is strong and
quickly brings the bike to life, and we later
found that to also be the case with a hot
motor and the bike still in gear.
The YZ450F is a fantastic motocross
bike. For the second straight year, in
fact, it was the top dog in our 2016 MX
shootout, but this bike is a monster on the
trail, so we were quite surprised by how
well the FX behaved the first time we got
it on the single-track. All those changes
Yamaha made to it certainly made a differ-
ence and all for the good.
The FX, however, is still a beast, there's
no getting around that; after all, it started
out life as one of the most powerful bikes in
motocross, but it's now a much more tam-
able beast. Power delivery is far smoother
than the YZ's and a lot more usable, which
is what you want when you're threading the
needle on a tight, zig-zaggy, single-track
trail that offers no room for error.
First gear is very low and extremely use-
ful in the ultra-tight stuff, but second and
third gears are the ones you'll be spend-
ing the most time in. Second is quite low
and will do a lot of the work that first gear
would normally be doing, but since there
is so much bottom-end power and torque,
you really don't need to visit first gear all
that often—just leave it in second and life
will usually be good. This is also nice be-
cause it cuts down on the actual process
of changing gears by the rider, so less
energy is being spent. Third gear is prob-
ably the most useful on the FX; it's plenty
wide and makes it easy to keep your
momentum up on the twisties and while
climbing long hills. Fourth and fifth gears
are reserved for the really wide-open stuff.
And, yes, this bike is very, very fast. Is
anyone surprised?
But most of our time so far on the FX
has been spent in the slow-going stuff
