Dallara said:
That's the problem with magazine journalists...
Believe me, if Yamaha could meet their design goals on strength, reliability, durability, performance, maintainability, cost, market pricing competitiveness, etc. and make the bike even 10 lbs lighter then they would. There is no logical reason to even remotely suggest they wouldn't as it could only help them in the marketplace. Worrying over the weight of the bike is a bit of an exercise in frustration
Indeed, all this metal and meterial costs money, why do you think the 1200GS was 30kg lighter than the 1150, for the good of BMW's customers, or because they needed to buy 20% less stuff to build them :question:
Then look at all the FD failures and lack of durability compared to the 1150's.
I could not notice any weight differential between my old 1200GS and the Yamaha, at low speed it feels lighter and better balanced, even pushing it up my drive (quite a slope) it seems no worse than the lighter GS, I think where the weight sits is easily as important.
As for Journo's, well they read the spec sheets and write conclusions based on the stats, so when they see a bike weighs close to 250KG they say it is heavy, they would probably not want to say it feels light in case someone pointed out the weight is quite heavy and implied they could not deduce this from riding it.
After years of Sportsbikes I was expecting to be horrified at how unmanageable these types of bikes are, to be honest with the riding position and everything else they seem far easier to ride, you can shove your sun 200kg bikes