SECOND
OPINION
TOM
BUXTON
T
o be completely honest, like Jock, I
wasn’t expecting much when I swung
a leg over the Yamaha’s YZ125X. Not
because of the brand, but because of the
small displacement and I was envisioning
being left with a sore clutch finger and foot
from changing gear the whole time. This
bike is a new addition to Yamaha’s line up,
being adapted straight from the motocross
version, with slight changes to the engine,
gearbox and suspension to make it at home
in the bush.
Kicking the small YZ into life isn’t tricky as
there isn’t a lot of compression, with less
than the MX version. Sitting there warming
it up, I had an idea it was going to be fun.
Although I’ve never really ridden 125s before,
it didn’t take too long to work out that when
you think it’s time to change up... you just
have to rev it a bit harder instead.
Traction is surprisingly easy to find even
though the 125 needs to be kept high in the
rev range, which normally causes bikes to
break loose. This is mainly due to the fact
it’s not making huge amounts of power, but
also because the power comes on very
smoothly thanks to the Yamaha Power
Valve System (YPVS). This being said, I
found it is very easy to stall in more technical
scenarios. However this is nothing to do
with the cable clutch, which is very light
and smooth and even after a lot of abuse
there wasn’t much fade at all, which I
found pretty impressive.
Probably the first thing I noticed when
riding the little blue bike, was just how light
and nimble it is. It almost feels like you are
on a mountain bike with an engine, and you
could hop and put it anywhere you’d want.
Having been adapted from an MX
machine I expected the forks to be quite
firm, but they were actually pretty plush –
with enduro specific settings. Initially I
thought they would be too soft for a cross
country environment but with the bike
being so light it actually worked really well.
56 KIWI RIDER