1999 YZ400 – first riding impressions

Well, I've spent 2 days riding the YZ now and I'm...stumped. It doesn't do anything badly, I'm just a little underwhelmed.

In fairness; I ride mainly on gravel roads and off road tracks. Flat out stuff with a turn here and there, no jumps or anything of that sort. Most probably I'm being unfair to this bike by rating how it performs on tracks like that but I reckoned if it could handle full on motor cross, this should be easy. I've ridden a few bikes before, the last being a 1981 Honda XR500. That bike, with the exception of its brakes, was absolutely perfect for my purposes. I flipped it doing a wheelie and sold it, a decision I now regret. If I had the choice, I would rather be riding that bike than the YZ.

You ask why, here are a few reasons:

• The technique to kick start the YZ differs from day to day. Yesterday I had to pull the choke out, open the throttle just a little bit and kick it. That worked great for the whole day, regardless of whether the bike was hot or cold. Today, no choke. If you touch the choke, it doesn't want to start. So today, it started no problem all day with the choke in. Before I came to the farm (where I'm riding now), you just HAD to use the hot choke to start it when it was warm. Tomorrow will probably require a new technique...
  

  The XR was pretty simple in comparison – push the kick start till it locks, decompression in, push kick start from top to bottom, decompression out, kick, it starts.
  

• This bike is heavy. It's supposed to be 20 kg or so lighter than the XR was. To me, it feels the same. It didn't bother me on the XR and in honesty, doesn't bother me that much on this bike. But, geez, the XR is known as a heavy bike and this is supposed to be a motor cross machine. I can also tell you that this bike is WAY, WAY heavier than the KX125 I used to ride.
  
• This bike, I swear, makes less or the same power as the XR. Again, I must mention that the gearing on the XR had been dropped to 110 km/h or so flat out by fitting a larger sprocket, but still this doesn't make sense. This part puzzles me the most and I'm still not sure what to make of it. Read reviews on the YZ and most of them mention mad power with wheelies in any gear etc. etc. Well, it does accelerate strongly but I'm not shitting myself or anything like that. I can't decide if it's because I'm just getting too much wheel spin or if the bike is just not that strong. Having said that, I took it out on tar a few weeks ago and it seemed crazy fast, it must be the wheel spin issue then. Weird... The XR must have hooked up a LOT better then.
  
• The bike isn't very stable, I'm getting "headshakes" accelerating, and sometimes just riding normally. I'm not getting this behaviour consistently though, it's like the lotto. When you least expect it, there she goes! This is very disconcerting, is this even normal?
  
• The engine on this bike gets extremely hot, and I'm not doing slow riding so the engine is definitely getting enough airflow. I've checked and all the fluids etc. are fine. If the engine was crazy powerful, I would understand. But comparing it to the XR, it is water cooled and has 2 radiators in its favour. Surely it should be running cooler.
  

My logic is telling me that I've just forgotten what the XR was like to ride. Probably if I ride it and the YZ together now, the XR will feel ancient. Maybe my expectations were too high. This bike is just not giving me a buzz...at all.

I'm either going to take it in for some tuning to see if that makes a difference, or I'm going to sell it. At this stage, I'm leaning towards selling and buying a 250 2 stroke.