Yamaha WR450
 

Hi there,

I saw a rallye version of the Yamaha WR450 in the Dakar rallye. Does anyone have more info on this bike? Any experiences on long trips on a 450 bike?

We just did a long trip on a AFrica tWin and a XT 600. The AT is a bit too heavy an has too much plastic, the XT was perfect, but lacked a bit of power...

Cheers,
Corne

Hey there. I assume that you are refering to the 2wd model. From what I understand it is a prototype model and wont see production. Hopefully that will change. With a decent finsih in the Dakar perhaps the Yamaha gurus will see fit to place this bike into production.

There was an article on the WR450 2-trac in the dec 03 issue of MCN. According to this it is a production model, although at a cost of £8,500 (this includes £3,000 of ohlins suspension). Possibly a bolt on kit will be developed in the future to fit any bike.

There is a good article on the 2-trac here:
http://ymedc.introweb.nl/en/archive/...50_2trac.shtml
With some great pictures too.

Perhaps Yamaha should get together with Kawasaki and put together a diesel 2-trac!

^

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/ubb...ML/000109.html

Great minds eh?

I'd be happy if Yamaha would take the XT back to the air cooled, optional kick start, big tanked Tenere days and got Öhlins to make a 2-trac system for it. Or maybe Touratech will make loads of goodies for the WR450F. I might be able to afford them by the time I've finished my PhD and worked for a few decades.

John (probable grey nomad at this rate)

The 2-trac system mentioned is very much ready. Half a year ago I visited a local dealer that mounted one of these systems onto a WR450. It was done in a couple of hours and to me it looked very much like production parts. No signs of early development there.
BTW: The system was developed using a Yamaha TT600R, but I have no idea which models will be targeted in the end, other than the obvious Yamaha-link (they own Öhlins).