nabendubasu

^^Exactly...
ie what we call blending.

MavericK46

AFAIK.. The '08 runs pefectly well even on plain ol 95/93 octane without any kinda knocking etc..
Im going out on a limb here..
But the ECU manages to compensate for the dip in octane rating right..? That's the reason the R1's shipped to India don't have reduced compression ratios..

And Sunny bhaiya.. The teaser pic was enticing..
How about a 5 min trailer now

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rossiter

You don't get 93 or 95 octane. You only get 91, and then 97 octane, so the choice of fuel is pretty clear.

MavericK46

Speed 93 was available right..?
And i stand corrected.. 95 octane isn't and never was available...

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DriftKingNT

Sunny are the bikes coming to aurangabad?

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Yamaha YZF-R15 is Here

Carlton Figueiredo

Hey Sunny....waiting for the dates & the route.
Best wishes to you & the rest of the team!

Old Fox

Old Fox coming down to Nahargarh forton the R1

Old Fox and Sunny



The Toddler first...

The Delhi-Jaipur run seems to be the right mix of good roads, varied traffic, acceptable facilities enroute and availability of high-octane fuel in Jaipur. So deciding to do this distance to run-in the bikes and ourselves nice and proper was pretty natural.

The R 1 and the R 15 make for an odd couple. Both human but that’s where the commonality ends. While one is a strapping athletic 25 years old, the other a 2 year-old toddler. DNA alone is no substitute for growth. Let’s get over with the R 1 first. Mere mortals cannot comment on it. They can feel blessed enough to be riding it. Raw, harsh, brutal, responsive, precise, hard, devilish and relentlessly powerful. All attributes and adjectives there. Neither of us is qualified to go beyond that. (Will pen down a first-hand experience of the ‘1 on the open road a little later)

The R 15 is something we can wag those tongues about and wag them we will. The bike confuses and confounds me. Is it a track-tool adapted for the typical urban biker? Or the urban bike aspiring to be track capable? Or a multi-faceted bike trying to be equally at home in city, on track and on the highway? I haven’t ridden it on track so cannot comment on that. But in city and on the open road, but for its superb suspension and excellent handling, it is just another 150cc. Nothing special on the power and performance front to even mention, what of raving and ranting about it. The six-speed box is good but the power flowing through it is anemic. The engine needs to be kept on the boil; above 7k rpm’s to get some semblance of motive power out of it. And the rev cut-off is at 10.5 k rpm. A bike with just some 3500 useable rpm’s and with its almost 17 horses seemingly on a perpetual slow-drip of morphine is definitely not what we imply by top of the class. Technology per se does not justify the price being paid for it unless it delivers what is expected of it. And exotic alloys, amazing castings/forgings, wonderful plastics etc etc do not make up for the absence of the essence of a motorcycle, which is pleasure in motion. The suspension/frame combo allied with the brakes and lights are a wasted/grossly under-utilized lot, all together begging, nay, clamoring for some 5 extra horses at the very least.

This first-hand ride experience isn’t written with the purpose of recommending/not recommending the R 15. To each his own.

This is about what I realized I would get in return if I end up spending over a hundred thousand INR to buy this bike. And I definitely am not getting VFM (value for money) here. The support technology’s asking price is way too high and I would get a better deal with either the P-220 or the ZMA. Now before you crucify me for having shown the temerity of comparing a 150cc with 220cc engines, read here my rustic n humble reasoning for this apparently lop-sided comparison. If the 150cc is costing almost 30% over and above what I am paying for the best of the 220 ones, then on the functional front, it’d better perform at least equal to or better than them. When I need the power to overtake a roadways bus doing 80 kph and I find the punch missing, I have to eat dust till the bus slows down for some traffic element in its way and only then can I get past it. True, those 17 horses are there for the taking, but with the tall ratios, one needs to ride on built-up inertia rather than the torque curve. Fine for the track but pretty frustrating in the quick-changing heavily trafficked highway scenario. On a number of occasions, both of us had to give up overtaking a faster cruising vehicle because it would have taken too long to get past it and the situation could turn from safe to unsafe in that time. Getting past was easier when we had already piled up speed but rarely does one have the luxury of a couple of kms of stable and predictable traffic on our congested highways. Flexibility for adaptation is the rule, not an exception here.

On the plus side, the bike has superlative handling. The sticky tyres do play their part but their grip would have been brought to a naught without that amazingly rigid frame and near-perfect suspension. The bike is remarkably flickable, almost telepathic, and totally composed through the quickest of direction changes. The climb to Nahargarh Fort was a revelation, not for the engine but inspite of it. The handling inspired supreme confidence even on gravel-strewn and ripple-ridden corners.

The seating and general ergos felt fine to me though that constant wringing of the throttle takes its toll on the right wrist. Clutch and gearbox assuaged precise shifts and the couple of clutchless upshifts that I tried in the top 2 gears as an experiment were butter-smooth too. Heavy braking does transfer a LOT of weight to the front and one has to be careful about over-using the rear disc. The lights are good on both the fronts i.e. illumination and spread.

Great poser value there though, especially as it was with our bike in Castrol colours. People would look at the R 15 first before realizing there was a growling beast in black following it. And from a distance, front up, it looked very similar to the R 6. The bike seems to be going fast even on its side-stand. Wish it could actually do that rather than be a sheep in wolves clothing.

Riding the banshee

Yamaha R-1: First Long Ride

We finished breakfast at the Aravalli Resort near Dharuhera and it was time to hit NH-8 again for Jaipur. I had been wringing the R-15’s neck from Mehrauli till here and now it was my turn to ride the ‘one. It was hot in that riding gear but knew it would be all right once we were on the move.

The black R-1 was waiting in shade, dwarfing the white and red R-15 parked alongside in girth and presence. Jacket, gloves and helmet on, I swung a leg over the saddle and got into pre-flight mode. Ignition key switched to ‘ON’, a brief wait for the tacho needle’s self-test swing and for the other indicator/warning lights to go off, check for neutral ‘green’, engine ‘kill’ switch to run, pull in the clutch as a precaution and thumb the starter. A short cranking sound and the heart of the beast comes alive. A low reverberating rumble, that almost sounds like a large muted diesel, tells you the game is on. Blip that throttle and the rpm’s rise as fast as you flick your wrist. Clutch lever already pulled in, left foot pushes on the gear lever and with a firm, almost harsh thunk, you are in first gear. Try and co-ordinate the simultaneous release of the clutch with the twist of the throttle for pick-up as you would do on any of our desi bikes and inevitably you lead with the throttle. So, my recommendation, feel for the clutch bite-point at idle and get the bike moving with a little slip of that clutch. Upshift to 2nd at as low as 15 kph and gently ride through the gears till you’re doing somewhere above 60 kph in top. The amazing thing is that this bike picks up in 6th from as low as 40 kph without any chain-snatch. Smooth in top – all the way from 40 to 240. Wow!

Physically maneuvering the bike with the engine switched off, say in the parking lot, makes it quite a heavy handful. It’s not just the weight but the combined resistance of the front tyre’s wide contact patch and the steering damper which makes it difficult to handle. But once on the move the weighty sluggishness just vanishes. At first the bike appears to be resisting steering inputs. It is not sort of twitchy like our low capacity ones. But it is actually just a matter of grading your physical inputs. It took me a couple of miles to settle in and try out some gentle weaves, just to gauge how the bike responds. Both the throttle and the steering are delightfully crisp and precise. In a little time, I could easily steer around small tarmac patches that I selected as practice targets. It was getting fun by the moment. Get me those ‘targets of opportunity’ now guys!!

Another recommendation: Get that helmet on real snug or rather tight. This bike came with a low-screen up front and one has to really crouch to get behind it. Riding with a normal posture means the wind hits the helmet smack in the middle and induces both buffeting and lift. Not much you can do about the buffeting but the lift is going to virtually hang you by the neck at speeds approaching 150 kph. And yes, the jacket needs to be zipped up right to the stops. Wind gets in there too and starts shaking you up as speeds build up.

With the passing of miles I was getting into the rhythm of the ride. Took a while but beneath the aura of a superbike, I soon began to relate to the R1 as a bike. Albeit a very powerful one but a motorcycle nevertheless. And found out that this was the first vehicle I’d driven or ridden whereon I loved to apply the brakes. No, not just because the brakes were so damn precise and effective but for the need to accelerate thereafter. The punch is heady, hits you below the solar plexus with a rush and a howl and you want to get hit again and again. Traffic seems at a stand-still around you, so rapid is the acceleration in any gear and at any speed. Just roll that throttle and you pass others like point and shoot. I did not attempt very high speeds considering 1) it was my first long ride on the ‘One’, 2) it was being run-in and 3) out of consideration for that poor soul following me on the R 15. I cruised mostly around an indicated 120-130 kph at anywhere between 4000-4600 rpm in 6th. But with just a tiny twist of the right wrist, I could get up to warp speeds breathtakingly fast.

In city traffic or through crowded streets with bumper to bumper traffic, ones initial focus is pretty intense on the throttle handling. Low gears and excess throttle is not forgiven by any superbike. But the brain and the muscles learn fast and adjust. The first few minutes in heavy traffic are troublesome but soon the clutch and throttle become friends again. Taking full-lock u-turns is a chore and a pretty dicey chore at that, what with that huge turning circle these bikes have. I was not ashamed at sticking both my legs out on the sides, like out-riggers, to catch that sudden deadly drop if I happened to kill the engine mid-turn. Didn’t happen thankfully but was always on my mind. Better still, walk it around the turn.

Crowds are another issue when you are on such a bike as the R-1. You’re riding a celebrity and get repeatedly mobbed. People just don’t pass you by anymore. They stop and stare and come up with the usual questions; which company? for how much? mileage? how fast? etc etc. A pain after the first few times but has to be endured. Leaving the bike parked while stepping in somewhere for a bite or stay in a hotel is again an issue. You’ve got to secure the ‘celebrity’ first before anything else.

But all this is forgotten when you ride the rumble. Roll that throttle and feel the shoulder-snapping acceleration. Take those long sweepers at absurd speeds without a twitch from the bike. Flash those dazzling projector lamps and watch even the best of SUV’s give way. And if some moron in a Civic or a Corolla thinks he is the speed king, smoke him in 6th itself. But remember, the banshee does wake up the devil in you. Beware and ride it in check.

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Aryan

Wonderfully written experience there Old Fox! It's as if I was riding the One myself; relieved my first ride on the One, for sure! Thanks!

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archistar

very nice report and comparison....

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naman

A beautiful write up of emotions and experience by you sir.

Thank you