Ownership Verified: Even More Mainstream - 2019 Yamaha Tracer 900 GT

DanRoM

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Joined
Feb 27, 2009
Messages
10,378
Location
Ruhr Area, Germany
Car(s)
MX-5 ND, Tracer 900 GT & two bikes
Last year I decided to sell my old motorcycle, because.... no reason really, I just wanted to try something a bit different. So I did a few test rides last year and after I managed to sell the CBF faster than I anticipated, went on a search for a new bike this winter. After careful consideration, of course I ended up with the bike that was already my favourite nearly a year ago. I could have had that easier... :D

So, here it is: a 2019 Yamaha Tracer 900 GT.

Waiting to go home from the dealership:
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It's basically an updated and slightly better equipped version of the bike that @RdKetchup (thread) and @altoid (thread) also have, hence the thread title.

So, data:
  • 847 cm³ 3-cylinder engine
  • 85 kW (115 PS)
  • 210 kph max speed according to the papers, I will test this as soon as I can :D
  • 18 litres fuel tank
  • only 215 kg with a full tank
This particular bike was a dealer demonstrator last year, so it comes pre-abused and well run-in at 3500 km as you can see on the picture of the lovely screen. I found it on mobile.de at a dealer an hour away from my town, so after a test ride and the subsequent decision to buy it right there and then I had to wait two weeks for all the paperwork and a bit of work on the bike to be done before I could actually get it home.

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As evident in the lower right corner of the screen, it has heated grips. Together with the protectors in front of the grips, that makes cold-weather riding much more comfortable. :)

As the bike even came with a nearly full tank, I didn't want to wait any longer and rode home the quickest way possible - meaning 50 km of Autobahn. :D Sadly, other commitments prevented me from riding it more that evening, and the weather ever since so far.

So, some pictures from when I arrived at home:
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The side cases come as standard in the GT version, and I ordered the topcase (and the luggage bridge to mount it... and the blue covers to make it fit the rest of the bike...) as an option because top cases are just the most practical thing on a bike.

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Fat ass, but hardly visible from the front.

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Close-up of the cockpit. The GPS system is my old one, I had the dealer install it.
Also, left of the screen you can see a 12V outlet that's apparently also standard on this model. And on the left side of the handlebar, to the right of the high beam switch, there's the cruise control. Also a very nice comfort feature for Autobahn runs.

I took off the luggage, now it looks much slimmer. The luggage bridge looks a bit ridiculous without the top case on it, I must admit. I still have the original grab handles, of course.

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Today I had a bit of time, so I managed to do the first item of the to-do list: Install the phone mount (for details on the system see the post in my old thread). On the picture, I just put on the phone case for illustration. Next up: buy a 12V-to-USB adapter and another charging cable for emergency charging. I realize that having a USB cable on the phone while it's mounted on the handlebar might not be the best thing to to, so maybe I'll invest in the wireless charging module for the phone mount to eliminate the USB plug connection from the moving handlebar.
While I was at it, I also changed the position of the GPS from the lower to the upper screws for a bit less angle looking down at it.

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And last bit for the beginning: fill the bike up with my stuff for emergencies and other unexpected situations. Just for the heck of it, try if all of it fits. Yes, it does, with a bit of squeezing. :D To elaborate:

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  1. First aid kit (under the front seat)
  2. High-viz vest and a cable lock for tying a helmet or jacket to the bike
  3. luggage net for unexpected shopping or something. Under there, paperwork
  4. brake disc lock
  5. the cable for securing a helmet on the bike while parking (was provided with the bike)

The next thing to do is.... taking a proof picture. I totally forgot that. :D May take me a few days though...

After that a tank bag is in order. This time with a tanklock system. I'll have a look at the Givi solutions at the Louis store, because they are significantly cheaper than what Yamaha themselves offer.

Now, what am I missing....? Right, spring weather.

Edit: Now with proof picture:
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Love the colour, smart and subtle and goes nicely against the contrasting forks.

Congrats.
 
Yay on the new bike! Congrats!!
 
Thank you. :)

I've still haven't ridden it yet. The weather has been shit...

I've updated the opening post with a proof picture. All is in order now!

@MWF - Yeah, the colour is absolutely brillant. I especially love the matching cases. :D Looks so much better than a third-party solution.
 
Meh not that nice.


Just kidding, that's my jealousy talking. The extras on the GT seem very nice, and the color is awesome. At least the shorter wheelbase of my non-GT makes it easier to wheelie.
 
I'm still getting used to the bike, notably setting off is not my strong suit because the clutch feels totally different than on my old bike. And the other thing, I'm sometimes a bit confused by all the buttons for my left hand. I don't understand why the traction control has such a big and prominently placed switch, for example. And the engine mode switch is exactly where the headlight flasher was on the CBF. Well, I will get use to it in time.

In other news, someone gave me the idea that due to this Corona shit, the roads might just be a bit empty, so today I set off to see how fast the Tracer can actually go. And, to my surprise, it goes exactly 210 kph, as promised in the papers. And that's GPS-measured 210, with the speedo hovering at 223, occasionally flicking to 224.
So onto the Googles, and yeah, the Tracer comes with a limiter. On the one hand I'd like to remove that as a matter of principle, on the other hand why bother? I'm not planning on riding that fast anyway.

But I am annoyed that apparently Yamaha managed to somehow make the bike very precisely know its speed at 210 kph and yet, the speedo is off by 13 kph there, and also about 5 kph already at city speeds.
 
Count yourself lucky you don't have the north American 185 kph limit.
 
A month ago, I ordered the original Yamaha tank bag after all, after I had a look at what Louis and Polo had to offer. Ended up paying about €60 to 80 more, but the bag is nicer.
So, this Thursday, it was finally ready for pickup at the local Yamaha dealership, so I decided to pick it up in proper style, meaning by bike. It was a bit hot that day for inner-city rush-hour riding:
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Usually the coolant temperature rarely exceeds 70°C.

Anyway, I brought this home: tankbag itself plus a tank ring, for ease of use. The rain cover and the shoulder strap found their places in the side pockets of the bag, which are useless for anything else anyway...
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Of course, that means I had to install it, which I did today. Installing the tank ring:
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Putting the mounting plate on it:
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And trying out how exactly to place the bag on the tank. As far back as possible:
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Hm, no. The opposite, as far forward as possible:
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Much better. Testing full lock in both directions:
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No problem to the right, but to the left, the phone touches the bag. But nothing to worry about unless I'm charging the phone while riding. And then I can rotate the phone to landscape mode so that the cable sticks out to right, not to the bottom.

After that cleared up, I had to install the mounting plate to the bag. That required some drilling.
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I didn't have enough suitable pieces of wood to place underneath the drill, so I sacrificed a really shitty book: :D
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Putting the mounting plate in and securing it with the screws provided:
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And covering it on the inside of the bag.
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And, final result:
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Now I have a nice place to put wallet, a bottle of water and some other stuff while riding. :)
 
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I have the same brand (SW-Motech) tank bag on both my wife CBR and my own FJ09.

I think it's the best tank bag solution, even if the installation is a bit annoying, specially when you install the plate slightly crooked ?‍♂️
 
Nice mod.
 
So, end of season (probably) update. Some things happened in the last four or five weeks, because I did the first big trip with the bike.

Chapter 1 - Preparation (Sort of)

To be able to to that without range anxiety for my phone battery, I decided to upgrade my phone holder with a QI charging module. For the trip itself that was unnecessary because I didn't plan to use the phone for navigation or GPS tracking which sucks it empty within a few hours, but six hours of music streaming take their toll, too, and I wanted the charging module anyway. So this was as good a time as any.

So, I dismantled the fairing to see what's the situation:

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There's lots of electrics hidden under the left-side fairing - the dealership had installed the GPS power there, too.

Because I lack the tools and the skills to work on electrics, I enlisted the help of a friend who has a PhD in physics. :D Also, I had helped him moving to a new place a few days prior, so this was my payment. ;)
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Stealing power from the GPS, but both devices still work perfectly.
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And low and behold, the QI charger.
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Chapter 2 - The Trip

At the end of September, I went to Berlin (and thereabouts) to visit @Dr_Grip. I combined this with making the awesome roads of the Harz mountains, which I had learned to appreciate during the recent FG mini roadtrip, unsafe through my presence. So, here are a few pictures.

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First snack break in some tiny village somewhere. Nice village square. While I was eating my apple, the local bus arrived and stopped in front of my bike. I thought I had parked badly and blocked the bus, but no, the bus driver just wanted to have a look at my bike and we had a nice chat. :) And afterwards he crept past the bike with like 5 cm to spare... :oops:

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Funny place names - this literally means "salt of the heroes". Whatever... perhaps @calvinhobbes can explain it. :D

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The Söse Reservoir, somewhat epic looking.

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Going past the Brocken mountain before making an overnight stop. The forest looks sad. :(

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Next day, crossing the plains of Saxony-Anhalt. These two stripes of concrete is rather typical of how they built agricultural access roads in the GDR, I think. Luckily, I only used it as a rest stop.

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I'm on a boat! With fitting paintjob!

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After thoroughly testing my rain gear that day, @Dr_Grip and I arrived at the location of his bachelor party, where the local parking attendant immediately took charge. :D

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The way back, some nice little Harz valley.

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And the last stop, at the rest area near Büren on the A 44. This is a remnant of a former cold war highway strip, hence the unusual form.

The trip was very fun, this bike drives beautifully. But it was also very taxing because as usual, I put a bit too much of daily mileage on myself. This led to....

Chapter 3 - Aftermath

The very last maneuvre on day 2, putting the bike onto the centre stand for the night just because I prefer it that way, ended with a broken indicator. Because the bike was resting on it. :cry:
Additionally, the side bag has major scratching and its mounting point is bent. As it still works perfectly and repairing it will only lead to another incident ruining it again (I am a bit superstitious about this), I will leave that as is.

Anyway, the indicator had to be replaced. From working on the bike a few weeks earlier (see above), I at least knew what had to be done. So, after buying a replacement part from Yamaha (much cheaper than upgrading to a full set of LED indicators, that's why I didn't do just that), I got it done this weekend.

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This is how it looked before. Thanks again for the duct tape, @Dr_Grip. :)

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Getting the fairing part off.

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And.... replacement installed. After figuring out how the indicator is fixated in the hole, which took a few minutes of wrangling and ony then proper looking, it wasn't really hard to do.

Unfortunately, while working on the thing, I noticed that the fairing itself consists of an inner and an outer part, and the weight of the bike resting on it broke most of the plastic parts connecting the two. Well.... fuck it. See above.

With November approaching rapidly and the weather being really shit these past days, I may put the into winter hibernation soon... :(
 
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Today I received a letter from Yamaha Germany informing me about a product recall for my bike. Something about oxidation on the front brakelight switch, potentially causing cruise control malfunction and constant brake light. I shall make arrangements for getting it fixed at a Yamaha dealership.

Given that it's winter time here and my bike will be due for a service in February or March anyway, I consider just waiting until then and have them fix the issue when the bike is brought in for the normal service anyway.
 
Beginning of season update!

After I surprisingly found out that the bike was due to be TÜVed this March (I mistakenly had thought I had one more year still), I book a service, TÜV and the handling of the product recall mentioned above for the beginning of March.
The weekend before, I put the battery back in and went for a short ride, including some exercising on the big empty parking lot of the local convention centre. Slow slalom, small circles, and emergency braking. On several tries, I consistently managed to lift the rear wheel. Good to know...

Anyway. As I stood at the dealership door waiting for the guy to finish the paperwork, I noticed that the (external) TÜV examiner had put the wrong TÜV badge on the bike - dated to one year from now instead of two years. ?‍♂️ Long story short, I'll have to bring in the bike again next Thursday (or the Thursday after that, or...) to get the correct badge. Because the TÜV guy is only there on Thursdays. Due to my own work constraints, this means I'll have to leave the bike there for a day. Well, at least they assured me they'll give me a loaner bike free of charge so that I don't have to get a friend to drive me again...
 
Long time, and nothing much has happened until it was time for this year's FG roadtrip. I've barely used the bike last season, neglected to have it serviced at the beginning of this season, and noticed only two weeks before the trip that my tyres were down to the legal minimum. So, I quickly found a tyre place that also does motorcycles - not many of them do around here - and had some fine Pirelli Angel GT2 mounted.

Then it was time for the roadtrip. Before doing that, I set up the suspension a bit harder, and for the first time, I did so also on the front. It was a good decision, as the bike was a bit soft for my taste anyway - the standard setup is probably calibrated for the standard 75 kg rider.

So, all loaded up and ready to go:
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600 and change kilometres of mostly Autobahn, but also country roads later, I found some friends:
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Most of them followed me around:
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:D

Which not always proved to be such a good idea:
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Well, that wasn't so much fun.

But the bike also got me to many places with awesome view, so I chose one to show here. Please excuse the bike obscuring said view. :p
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Anyway, at some point the bike passed 10,000 km:
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And I managed to complete 3,000 km on the roadtrip just as I entered the Ringmeet campsite:
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So, in less than two weeks I've ridden the bike twice as far as during the 1.5 years before. And it was good. Comfortably enough on the long stints, also agile enough and plenty fast for mountain roads. My best riding day was on day 2 of the roadtrip in Austria, where some passes with long sweeping curves suited me far better than the narrow serpentines with tight hairpins we encountered later. Anyway, both foot pegs now have scratch marks and the chicken strips on the tyres are suitable small. :D
The engine dealt with the heat without problems, though going through traffic in towns at over 30° and blistering sun meant coolant temps rising to above 100°.
For the roughly 3,200 km including ringmeet, I used about 150 l of fuel, giving me an average of 4.7 l/100 km. Which is actually slightly below my all-time average with this bike.

Negative points: The fuel consumption display is utterly useless. I've seen it too optimistic by 20%. And the rear view mirrors are far from optimal because they are mounted on the handlebar rather than on the front fairing/wind shield where they belong. But I knew that since I'd first ridden it.

On the first ride without luggage - to wash and fuel up the bike after the trip - the suspension felt noticeably too hard, as expected. I dialed everything back two notches when I got back home, but may soften it further depending on what it feels like on the next rides.
 
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Did I say "next rides"? Well... since Ringmeet I've ridden it a total of 170 km. And now it's in winter hibernation.
So, I did about 3,850 km this year, and only about 500 of those were not within a certain ten day window in August.
It seems that I should just buy a bike for roadtrip, then sell afterwards. Repeat every year. :D
 
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