Cycle News Staff | September 18, 2018
Lucky for us, Yamaha chose South Carolina—just before the hurricane—to give the media its first taste of the company’s top dog in its off-road off-road lineup: the 2019 YZ450FX. And it wasn’t just anywhere in South Carolina but where its off-road racing team spends much of its time testing, tuning and training their race bikes at Randy Hawkins’ private riding facility in Union, S.C. Yamaha felt that this was the best place for us to sample their all-new YZ450FX—in the same environment that the bike was designed to terrorize. Hawkins, a seven-time AMA National Enduro Champion, GNCC racer and Hall of Famer, now spends his time at the helm of AmPro Racing, which runs and operates Yamaha’s off-road racing program, which focuses on GNCC racing.
2019 Yamaha YZ450FX First Impression
Yamaha’s all-new YZ450FX features more adjustability.
Photos: Kit Palmer
And, even luckier for us, Yamaha brought along the 450’s cousins–the 2019 Yamaha YZ250X two-stroke and YZ250F four-stroke–to ride. These two aren’t changed, but it was nice to get reacquainted with them again and ride them on trails that they were actually designed to be ridden on. Yamaha calls their X and FXs: “Pure Closed Course Competition, Cross Country Racers.”
Hawkins was also responsible for laying out the 12-mile loop that we would be testing the bikes on during our two-day visit. And he didn’t baby us; the trail he laid out was 99.9-percent twisty single track in tight woods that was filled with ruts, roots, uphills and downhills. And, for added measure, it rained before we got there and you know what happens when that eastern clay gets wet—it gets slippery! (And it’s your riding gear’s worst enemy.) All good stuff, though.
Here is a quick rundown on all three bikes.
2019 Yamaha YZ250X ($7499)
The YZ250X two-stroke is unchanged for 2019 but still an exceptional off-roader.
The YZ250X is Yamaha’s lone two-stroke wolf in its off-road competition lineup and for some, very likely, their best—if lightweight, snappy power and agile handling means the most to you. It’s powered by a spunky and powerful, yet very manageable, 249cc, liquid-cooled, reed-valve inducted two-stroke engine with a five-speed wide-ratio gearbox and cable-operated clutch. A Keihin PWK38S carburetor handles fueling. It’s all housed in a proven aluminum frame that made its debut on the YZ250 in 2005.
Fully adjustable suspension is KYB all the way, which includes its beloved Speed-Sensitive System (SSS) front fork that is found on all Yamaha full-frame off-roaders and motocrossers. It has an 18-inch rear wheel, and both front and rear wheels come fitted with Dunlop’s cross-country-spec AT81 tires.
Niceties include a gripper seat cover, tapered aluminum handlebars and adjustable mounts, a standard side stand, a sealed O-ring chain, skid plate and a reserve fuel petcock. You’ll find these things on the FXs, as well. One thing you won’t find on any of them is hand guards. Ours, however, were fitted with aftermarket guards.
Light and agile makes the YZ250X perfect for tight trails and technical terrain.
We started out aboard the 250X and quickly started questioning Yamaha’s decision to bring it along on this trip. How could anything be better than the YZ250X? This long-time fan favorite is surely going to upstage the new 450FX, we first thought. When the going gets tough, there aren’t too many bikes we’d rather be on than the YZ250X. It’s ultra light, super maneuverable and just plain fun to ride. Then engine has decent torque that snaps when you twist the throttle but not so much as to wear out your arms or the rest of your body before the end of the first lap. We love the YZ’s light weight but it can make the bike feel a little busy; it tends to deflect off hard objects more than the heavier four-strokes, but it’s a small price to pay in the long run.
We absolutely loved riding the 250X, especially after going to a leaner position with the carburetor’s needle jet to ease a slight rich feeling off the bottom. But, really, the only few things that would make this motorcycle better would a six-speed transmission and electric starting; unfortunately, we don’t see these things coming anytime soon, but that’s not a game-changers for us.
2019 Yamaha YZ250FX ($7999)
The 2019 Yamaha YZ250FX four-stroke at home in South Carolina.
Just when we thought things couldn’t get any better than the YZ250X, we rode the YZ250FX. Our first comment after our first loop on the YZ250FX was: “This is exactly what this motorcycle is designed to do.”
Both the X and FX are amazing woods bikes but are completely different animals. The FX does some things better than the X, and vice versa. The FX is noticeably heavier than the X and wears on you a little quicker, but it is distinctively more stable and predictable on the trail, which could in turn make up for the X’s hyper-activeness in the long run, depending on your riding style. But the FX tends to stay put over the bumps and roots; it doesn’t deflect or wander around as much as the X, which is crucial when aiming for a certain spot on the trail. If your front wheel misses that target point, even by an inch, when setting up for a technical stretch of trail, it could mean difference between working hard or hardly working at all through that section. Aiming for and hitting your mark is massively important in cross-country racing on trails like these and few bikes, if any, do it better than the YZ250FX.
Everything about the 2019 Yamaha YZ250FX is smooth, smooth, smooth.
It almost goes without saying that the 250FX has a much smoother power delivery than the 250X and, via its six-speed transmission, hooks up a little better, which certainly reduces the fatigue factor a bit on the FX. But you can’t ignore the fact that the FX is, based on Yamaha’s numbers, a full 20 pounds heavier than the X. Weight is weight.
The FX’s electric start is wonderful; not only is it a nice conveyance but it can save you a ton of time in a race if you stall the engine, especially on the side of a big hill, compared to a manual-starting bike like the X.
Bottom line: There isn’t much not to like about the YZ250FX on trails like these.
2019 Yamaha YZ450FX ($9499)
The 2019 Yamaha YZ450FX is tamer than before but no less effective.
And now, the bike we came to South Carolina to ride—the 2019 Yamaha YZ450FX.
And why all the fuss? Because the 2019 Yamaha YZ450FX is all new. Remember all of the changes that the YZ450F motocrosser got last year (2018)? They’ve now been applied to the 2019 YZ450FX. If you don’t remember, click here for a quick refresher.
In a nutshell, just about everything is new with the 2019 YZ450FX—the frame, chassis, suspension, engine, bodywork, etc. It’s slimmer, lower and, according to Yamaha’s specs, six pounds lighter than before. Yamaha’s goal with the new-generation YZ450s was to make them easier to ride and more tunable. They certainly reached that goal.
The YZ450FX is a lot of motorcycles on the trail, and we again started to question Yamaha’s choice of venue to introduce such a…well, large and extremely powerful motorcycle, which we figure pumps out approximately 55-plus horsepower. And we just got off the ultra manageable and trail friendly YZ250X and YZ250FXs! What were they thinking?
At first, the YZ450FX did indeed feel bit overkill on these trails—it was somewhat of a handful to say the least. But this is where one of the 450FX’s newest tricks comes into play—that wonderful Yamaha Power Tuner Smartphone App they introduced last year for the YZ450F. It’s now available for the YZ450FX–for free–and is probably the single-best thing that happened to the 450FX from last year to this year; the app is even more useful for the FX than it is for the motocrosser. Off-road bikes tend to see a much wider range of terrain and conditions than most motocross bikes do. It’s not uncommon for an off-roader to compete in a wide-open desert race one weekend and a GNCC-type of race the next weekend, so having the ability to tweak and massage the power delivery from one extreme environment to another is invaluable. Sure, power-tuners aren’t new but the simplicity and the zero cost of the Yamaha power tuner app are new.
With the new smartphone tuner app, you can easily adjust the 450FX’s power characteristics.
As we said, right out of the box, the 256-pound YZ450FX was a handful on these tight and technical trails. It wasn’t exactly easy to manage all that power and keep the motorcycle moving along at a smooth, controlled and consistent pace. And since you were often fighting the bike, it would wear you out quickly. Luckily, the easy-to-use power tuner app came to our rescue.
We made changes to the mapping to tone down the hit at lower rpm, to smooth out the power delivery from bottom to mid, and to just make the bike easier to ride overall. The difference was dramatic. We nailed all these things after just a few minutes tinkering with the app. Now, we could ride the bike at much lower rpm, which made it far easier to hit your lines and keep your momentum up without spending a lot of energy. You could really scoot along zigzagging from tree to tree. But when the trail allowed, you could certainly hammer the throttle and really let the bike rip! It was the best of both worlds. And making things even better, you could adjust mapping on the fly via the two-way handlebar map switch. The power app really improves the YZ450FX versatility.
Small trails and big bikes often result in engine stalling, but this really wasn’t the case with the FX once we got the bike tuned to our liking. The FX chugged along nicely, as fueling was clean and precise, but when those occasional flameouts did happen, the starter button was right there to quickly bail us out.
The YZ450F’s five-speed wide-ratio transmission works well, but first gear is still a little too low for our tastes.
Handling is typical YZ—rock solid. And suspension is really, really good, but we did stiffen things up a bit to get a more consistent feel over the smaller bumps.
The new YZ450F motocrosser now has a smaller 1.6-gallon fuel tank, which wouldn’t fly on the FX, so Yamaha designed a larger 2.2-gallon tank specifically for YZ450FX.
Our first day on the 2019 Yamaha YZ450FX revealed a lot of things but the most import was that it is indeed a much more trail-friendly motorcycle than the previous model. It’s not nearly the beast it once was.
Check out a future issue of Cycle News magazine for a more in-depth test of the 2019 Yamaha YZ450FX.
2019 Yamaha YZ450FX
