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/990347
2019 YAMAHA NIKEN FIRST TEST P98 the similarities between the two sports, they shoved us down a 9000-foot glacier with our feet strapped in the latest and great- est ski setup from Salomon on our day off. Trail braking into turns isn't as critical as its two-wheel brother, since the weight and balance of the machine naturally collapse the front suspension. In fact, the Niken almost performs better if you don't trail brake. The triple disc brakes have adequate power to get you stopped, and always-on ABS ensures that there will be no drama during a panic stop. Our only gripe is the front brake master cylinder is a tad wimpy feeling. A radial-mount component would no doubt make for added brake feeling and overall performance. Road feel at lean is a tad muted, so it takes some seat time to gain confidence in the machine's capabili- Yamaha has employed a parallelogram linkage system to help control the front end's four fork legs. Inside NIKEN One could assume that Yamaha envi- sioned a three-wheel motorcycle right from the get-go. But as Leon Ooster- hof, product planning manger for Yamaha Motor Europe points out, the addition of another front wheel came as an engineering solution, to a simple problem: "The target was to create a motor- cycle with more grip, so it can corner better," says Oosterhof. "A leaning three- wheeler came out as the solution." The Niken stripped bare. If you played with model bikes as a kid, the Niken will be your jam. That, in a nutshell, is how Niken was born. (In case you're wonder- ing, in Japanese, "ni" stands for "two," and "ken" refers to "sword.") But just adding another front wheel, with its own independent suspension, is easier said than done. Yamaha engineers went to work over a greater part of a de- cade, finally settling on the Niken's unique front end. "To create something which really has a huge advantage—and one you can immediately feel, that is the hardest part. We've been through many, many, prototypes— most of them, no one has even seen," he reveals. The system is underpinned via a "parallelogram" linkage, that's positioned out of sight, above the two 15-inch alloy front wheels. It controls the lean of the front sus- pension and ensures that both fork legs remain in alignment. It does