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That Raider is one weird-looking bike. It seems to me they're trying to hard with some of the styling on the Jap cruisers.




I just re-read the full-page ad for the Raider inside the cover of my new Rider magazine. "Jaw dropping performance and incredible handling."

Again, the looks do nothing for me, as it is raked out too much and looks obviously "custom" (not saying that is a bad thing. Just not MY thing.) I just rode it because it was there. But I have to admit it handled a ****** of a lot better than I expected it to, even at low speeds and on very rough downward sloped,rutted asphault coming to a stop and a right hand turn. Bad stretch of road to have in the middle of a group demo ride, but was a nice route otherwise, and hey - in the real world you deal with what life throws at you, right? It was fast when getting on it, and I found easy to lay into right-angle turns, either left or right. I was curious enough to want to research what the rake/trail numbers are on it, but they were not in the Yamaha brochure. I wanted to compare those numbers to our bikes. This thing was really fast and well-mannered, and the transmission snicked into gear solidly - I just could not figure out a smooth clutch-less upshift. Managed one, at high rpm. The rest were very jerky with no clutch, but smooth when pulling the clutch in. I had to force myself to upshift at much lower rpm than I would on my SM, but that was true of all 5 I rode yesterday, and as we know, inherent in the v-twin design. Torque at low revs.

I still can't see bags or shields on the Raider, though. That I think would take it out of it's "element". That is also what makes ours so versatile.

Keith
Houston
Ridin'Texas
'04 Speedmaster
AI removed, Pingle, UNI Filter, 1 shim, straight-through slash-cut TORs, Stage 1 DynaJet, 140 mains, 3 turns, 16/42 final drive, 115K
2020 T120 Black