We are up in the mountains enjoying the end of the summer holidays and the phone rings for the first time in more than two weeks.
It’s Ian McLaren, the team principal of last year’s ASP Rope/McLaren Race Team.
“Hey Glenn. When last did you ride as real race bike?”
Hmmm – been a while – what do you have in mind.
“Well – I’ve kept Tristan Tamsens Roof YZ250X (8th overall Gold class)…
would you like to take the bike for a ride.”
You don’t need to turn your nose up at an invitation like that – and a few days later we met him out at the Wild West track for a lap or two and to have a chat about what the bike is like.
Before we start, we need to explain that there is very little that is standard on this bike, so it’s not a traditional new bike test.
And we need to pause here. When my youngster Tristan asked what bike we were going to ride, I told him – and I mentioned that it was YZ with had a happy button, his eyes went wide – and with a perfectly straight face he said “Gee Dad. A starter motor! In 2023!”
Very funny.
Anyway…
We got to chatting about the bike to Ian – you can watch the vid up on out You Tube channel – and asked him what had been done to race prep the bike.
He was a bit Cagey – it’s all about trade secrets you see.
“The bike has been rebuilt from the ground up by Steve Thompson, one of Yamaha’s most famous spanner swingers… and I can’t tell you all his secrets, but it’s a very different bike to the standard machine.”
And guess what – he was quite correct.
We could see a Lectron Carb fitted and some protective stuff but other than that, the bike looks pretty standard.
Kyle and Glenn took turns in the saddle in the blistering summer’s heat, rode it up and down the rocks up in the mountains and they were, quite frankly, blown away…
Reasons:
The bike does not stall. Climb that hill, she finds traction and just when you think that she’s going to stop, she climbs further. Linear power in the tech. And by linear, it’s pretty remarkable. This is closer to a TPS machine than any carbureted bike should be. Light. Like an aluminum framed bike should be. We know that the stock suspension was set up and the bike handled everything that we threw at it and tracked beautifully on the slightly faster stuff.
Compact and tight – that’s what the YZ-X is like. Happy button. It makes us happy and we wish that Yamaha Japan would fit one to all bikes.
After riding the bike – it’s easy to understand part of the reason why Tristan was so successful this is a small, light bike that is easy to ride. And that makes a huge difference.
Kyles words when he came in from a loop:
“I’m blown away! I can’t believe the tractability this bike has compared to the standard model. awesome chugalug and it just – goes! You put it in second and just blip it and she climbs without the big punch that you sometimes expect. To use the word tame is incorrect because when you open the throttle she really goes – but it’s very easy power delivery – and I reckon that they have found extra horsepower for sure. It feels closer to a 300 than a 250!”
We headed out again – this time on to the red loop where Ian stopped at the climb. “Boys, I want you to just ride up this hill and let me know what you think.”
Glenn (Who weighs a bit more than Kyle), climbed on, took a run back just to get accustomed to the bike and tackled the climb. Not seriously technical, but rutted with a few step-ups and its pretty steep. The little bike made it really easy, no spinning, no stalling and – no need to rev… It climbed beautifully. U-Turn at the top and down again. Fun to ride and – well easy.
“This thing must have a flywheel the size of a dinner plate!” (Turns out that it hasn’t!) Do it again – this time don’t cheat – take the more difficult line – and so the day progressed… Both riders came away mightily impressed with the race X – and despite the heat, lack of riding over Christmas and the technical terrain, we both still felt pretty fresh. That’s testimony to the bikes ease of use.
How did they do it?
Later that week we phoned Steve himself and asked him what he has done to the bike. He was also pretty vague… “You’ll know that the standard bike can be a bit lazy when it gets going until the revs pick up? Well we needed to sort that – and make the power more linear.” Said Steve. “That’s an inexpensive exercise, we have the bike figured out and know exactly how to get more user friendly, stronger, reliable power out of it.”
“But, with a bike like this, for racing hard enduro we go the whole hog. In addition to the fitment of the starter, we strip the engine, upgrade the gearing in the box and take special care with the reassembly. We opted to fit the Lectron Carb. The Lecton Carb for those of you who do not know eliminates the need to change jetting at altitude races like the Roof of Africa. It smooths things out and is more fuel efficient than the standard fare. It will also not flood and leak should you fall over.”
“In terms of suspension setup, this is the standard fare that comes with the bike, we just do a little bit of set up. We did a lot of development on the on the bike in all terrain, MX, Offroad and then hard enduro when Luke Walker won the 2021 National Enduro Championship on. You might remember that Wild Will rode a similar machine at Roof in 2021?”
“I can’t tell you exact details of what we do, but we are glad you like it so much.” And now we know why Ian was Cagey – even he was not too sure of the detail. But the result is an better bike and one heck of a competitive 2-stroke machine. And, Ian’s decided to keep it as his own personal bike. If you are the proud owner of a YZ, You can get yours down to BT Racing for the guys to get it all sorted.
They have a great reputation for prepping all brands.
bt-racing.business.site
btracing@gmail.com
0836614605
