One month ago I picked up the 2020 Yamaha YZ450F. Due to the laws put in place to keep us all safe during this Covid-19 ordeal, I have only had the opportunity to ride a handful of times. Luckily enough, one of my good mates has a small track just down the road from my place. It’s not much, but it’s more then enough to get through these times.
Being a small tight track, the 450 was a bit of a handful to ride. This presented the perfect testing conditions to play around with the mapping. I installed the power tuner app on to my phone, and logged into the bikes wifi. The code to do this is behind the left side number plate on the little black box. Not being the best with this side of things I had a quick Google and found some maps to copy.
I then went onto the Keefer Testing website (the guys there are wizards) and found some of the maps they have developed, and started transferring them over. I know what some of you are thinking. No, you can’t destroy your engine with the mapping. It’s kind of like jetting an old carby, but the plus side is Yamaha have designed it so you can go as rich, or as lean as you want, and it wont cause any harm to your bike.
As soon as I hit the track again I swapped it over to the TP3 map from Keefer and was impressed straight away. Not only did it change the engine characteristics, but also it freed the bike up and made the handling a lot nicer, as the bike was less of a handful. Not that the stock suspension hasn’t worked great so far.
With all this down time due to no motocross complexes being open, I’ve had plenty of time to go over everything on the bike and re grease the bearings, and making sure everything is free moving.
Even though it’s a brand new bike, every manufacturer puts a minimum amount of grease on their bikes from production. The time it takes to re-grease your headset, linkages and shock bearings is next to nothing. Without spending the time, you could be rocking up to the track and having to go home early with seized bearings. Let’s face it, that then leads to having to spend money on new bearing kits that could easily of been prevented.
“Aint Nobody Got Time For That….”
Hopefully, while you haven’t been hitting the track every weekend, you’re giving your bikes some much needed love as well. .
The rules are starting to get lifted around dirt bikes and some local tracks are starting to open again. So, I’m really eager to put in some hard hours on, and see how good this bike really is. If you guys have any products you want to see on this already great bike drop us a message on the @dirtactionmag instagram.