Really? with Greg Yager

This entry is part 13 of 18 in the series Adventure Rider Issue #52

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Tour leader and head honcho at RideADV, Greg ‘TB’ Yager, has seen and done pretty much all there is to see and do in the trail-touring world. He’s been pivotal in Yamaha Motor Australia’s development of a couple of generations of Ténérés and the WR250R over many years, and he’s a bloke with an enquiring and engineering frame of mind. We’ve been chatting a bit with Greg lately and invited him to share a few thoughts and ideas. Here’s what he’s been thinking about this issue…

In my spare time, because of my business, I tend to cruise a few forums and cast my eye over social media. I mean, every ’s a school day – there’s always something to learn. But sometimes I honestly dojust shake my head and do a double take after reading something where I say to myself, “Really?”

‘It runs lean from the factory’

I love hearing how a bike is too lean straight from the factory.It was all I ever heard about WR250Rs, for instance. If you fitted a slip-on exhaust, it supposedly became even worse.

A lean mixture means a high combustion temperature which can result in a piston-to-bore seizure. No manufacturer in its right mind would make a bike run lean.

They’d make a bike run rich. Why? Because it’s safe. A rich mixture works everywhere. It doesn’t give the best performance, but it’s safe.

By ‘safe’ I mean it doesn’t seize or blow up. Manufacturers don’t want that.

If these internet claims are questioned the response is normally, ‘I read it some-where,’ or, ‘A mate said so’. The reply is never, ‘Here’s a dyno sheet. Look at the air/fuel lambda readings (air-to-fuel ratio readings)’.

Remember, rich doesn’t produce the best power.

But that’s for another time.

GREG YAGER

‘I need a steering damper for sand riding’

Sure, a steering damper will help you in the sand – if you’re skipping over the ruts like Toby Price.

What does a steering damper do?

A steering damper slows down high-speed deflections. It works on that tree root, rock, or anything sharp-edged that will deflect the steering.

Imagine lifting your bike under the bashplate so the handlebars can go side to side with the front wheel off the ground. If you were to stand beside the front wheel with the steering straight ahead and kick the leading edge of the front tyre, the steering would go banging from side to side with no resistance, right?

That’s a high-speed deflection.

When you have a properly adjusted steering damper and you kick it at the same point it will barely deflect. That’s because the high-speed deflection is ‘dampened’.

A quality steering damper won’t have that resistance at slow speed for normal riding. Riding in deep-sand wheel tracks – in The Simpson, for example – you need the bike’s steering to be able to move unimpeded. You need to feel the bike’s behaviour so you can shift your weight and change your direction according to the feedback received from the machine.

The last thing you want is a mechanism dictating what your steering is doing. It will only end in tears.

Adventure boots

My favourite quote with adventure boots is, “They’re really comfortable to walk in!” We’re not going for a walk. We’re going
for a ride…on a dirty big adventure bike with a mass sometimes twice your bodyweight, experiencing numerous unplanned occurrences along the way,like rocks, ruts, wildlife, clay, water and so forth.

Ultimately, you want a boot that’s comfortable and offers the best ankle protection you can afford. I wear Gaerne SG-12s. They’re a fairly rigid boot with hinges on both sides, so the ankle is pivoted. Some days I wear those boots, with knee braces, for 14 or 16 hours while pre-running, with no discomfort at all.

In my opinion, protection is the major consideration. If you want to walk, pack some shoes.

Fun fact: in the last 10 years of running RideADV I’ve seen 12 broken ankles. Of the 12, 11 were riders wearing soft boots.

‘You can’t run ultra-heavy-duty tubes’

This really makes my blood boil!

I often see people write, ‘You can’t run ultra-heavy-duty tubes on adventure bikes because they get too hot.’

Yeah. Maybe when Noah built the ark that used to happen.

RideADV partner Crash and I have run ultra-heavy-duty (UHD) tubes for as long as I can remember. We’ve done plenty of high-speed cross-country racing over the years, like Condo and Yellow Mountain and the December 21 Longest Day rides, and you can’t even touch the tyre during some of those events because of the heat. And yet I’ve never had any flats in a UHD tube due to high temperature.

Fun fact: The RideADV fleet of six bikes cumulatively cover approximately 200,000km per year, and we’re lucky to see two flats in that time.

Keep left

I don’t know how often I sit and watch some YouTube motorcycle person (and don’t start me on that topic) in a video, flying along, hugging the right-hand side of the track, cresting rises and rounding blind corners.

I sit there watching and screaming at the screen, “KEEP LEFT!”

I lead a lot of rides, and being out front I deal with a million things trying ruin the day. The last thing I need is some clueless missile taking someone out at Mach 3 because they were too lazy and thoughtless to stay on the left-hand side of the track.

RideADV is a huge advocate of keeping left, and complacency is everyone’s enemy. I personally know of three people who have been involved in head-on collisions in the six weeks prior to my writing this piece. Nothing ruins a ride or your health more than having a head-on with some Bogan-drivin’, Southern-Cross-tattooed, bullbar-and-spotlight-accessorised GU Nissan Patrol.

Remember: every day’s a school day!

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