Yamaha YXZ1000 Side by Side

[hppants]

Took a few crappy cell phone snaps of this beast last week at Friendly Yamaha in Baton Rouge. Don't know much about it, except from my observations. It appears to have a sequential gear box that is not integral to the engine. Different than the snowmobile clutch used in most side by sides. Plenty of suspension travel to go around. It's much wider than the maximum "trail friendly" specification at most public properties around here. G-Squared tells me that it is computer governed at 80 mph!!!! Holy cow!

At well north of $21K, that's about as close as I will ever get to it. But wow....

https://www.yamahamotorsports.com/sport/models/yxz1000r-se

 

[El Toro]

My dealer has two, and he said 90 mph, but what's 10 mph among friends. He also said it could be registered in our state.

I thought this was one of the coolest side by sides I've seen.

But when you stop and think that you can buy many cars for that price tag, it puts the folly of some of our hobbies, including things like BMW K1600GTLs in perspective.

Of course a new FJR would definitely be worth the money

.

 

[DesignFlaw06]

Of course a new FJR would definitely be worth the money

.

What new FJR?

Used to work on Arctic Cat's ATV instrumentation. Since the gauge is the only thing that knows the speed, they wanted me to implement a governor at 50 MPH. Then they changed their minds to 70 MPH, then 80. After that, they said why bother? So it was scrapped. I spent days running a 1000 cc quad up and down our road hitting all those speeds. Some versions of my firmware damn near caused me to go over the handlebars and an ATV handles for **** at those speeds, Never rode an ATV with full motorcycle before. I would imagine the YXZ handles better than an ATV.

I did come up with a working prototype gauge that had an RFID coil. Then we had a few keys made up that had RFID chips in them. The governor set the speed based on what key you had in the ignition. The idea being you could give your kid a key that would only allow him to go 20 MPH or some other set speed limit. Arctic Cat said no.

 

[El Toro]

I'm with them on the "why bother" idea. If Ralph Nader got ahold of one of these, he'd declare it "unsafe at any speed."

Nader was one of the earliest harbingers of what our society has become (see Beemerdon's B&W TV thread and remember Nader's harangue against the Corvair).

If the gauge is the only thing that knows the speed, you could just have a Hall effect or maybe even optical driving axle rpm sensor, and feed the ECU a "rev limiter" sort of spark killer. That could be reset to different levels in software, as required by wheel size, and wimpiness (or value to the society) of the expected operator.

It would be fun to have a job where you could work on projects like that. Very cool.

 

[Cav47]

Took a few crappy cell phone snaps of this beast last week at Friendly Yamaha in Baton Rouge. Don't know much about it, except from my observations. It appears to have a sequential gear box that is not integral to the engine. Different than the snowmobile clutch used in most side by sides. Plenty of suspension travel to go around. It's much wider than the maximum "trail friendly" specification at most public properties around here. G-Squared tells me that it is computer governed at 80 mph!!!! Holy cow!
At well north of $21K, that's about as close as I will ever get to it. But wow....

https://www.yamahamotorsports.com/sport/models/yxz1000r-se

As someone stated, you can buy a car for that kind of money. And a decent car........kinda like the one your daughter just purchased.

The 2016 Honda Civic EX lists for 22K and it will go faster than 80.

I certainly would like to take it for a ride in the woods........The XYZ thing, not the civic.

 

[gixxerjasen]

That thing looks like it wants sand and dunes, not woods trails. And I bet it'd eat them up. Be fun to play in the sand along the Red River up in Muenster.

 

[El Toro Joe]

Went for a ride in one last week...it is fast, and very smooth. IMHO much better for wide open spaces than single track through the woods. But not $21k worth of fun...unless I win the lottery

 

[AVGeek]

tl:dr - this is on my short list!

I am a life-long duner; I made my first trip when I was 3 years old. Back then, it was all about home built dune buggies (except for a few manufacturers like Bruce Meyers and his Manx), and the Honda ATC had just been introduced. During the economic boom years, when everyone could pull ridiculous amounts of equity out of their homes, custom builders were charging well into 6 figures for what were essentially race cars, with long travel suspension, big V-8 motors and insane custom paint jobs. After the bubble burst, the sand rail builders mostly went out of business, while the Yamaha Rhino had already kickstarted the side by side craze that was eventually taken over by the Polaris Rzr. The CPSC has already been involved in this newer class of vehicles, so they are limited to 1000cc (but that hasn't stopped manufacturers from adding turbos to certain models to satisfy the power needs of certain buyers). The weakest part of the design of these is the belt used for power delivery; they can get really hot, which has resulted in a few vehicles burning to the ground. Yamaha's solution of a 5 speed, direct drive gearbox alleviates that one!

I did see a bunch of these at the Sand Sports Super Show, and I expect to see more running around the dunes on Thanksgiving ( I had hoped to rent one, but was too late to get it for the dates I wanted). I'm also hoping Yamaha has demos during the holiday!