Yamaha MT-01 – Bent Rim Blues

Hello all. A double header tonight….actually it’s now the morning.

First up is today’s big development. After getting the bike back from SB motos yesterday I decided today that a thorough cleaning was in order, I mean eat your dinner off it clean.

Did the first pass(!) and the bike was pretty clean, got all of that rusty water/gunk off the nooks and crannies and the bike was looking good. Only the rear wheel to clean, but I decided today to give the chain a good clean as well first, and then clean the wheel and finish by a second pass. Intensive aye. Sad, definitely.

My paddock stand has never been the same ever since someone sat on my MT-03 whilst it was up on the stand. It was all bent and has chewed my GSR swingarm with a nice arc of scrape. So I obviously didn’t want to get the MT-01 on the stand only to rip a big arc through the gorgeous blue metallic swingarm.

I modified the paddock stand (Oxford for those interested) and made sure that the brackets stayed well away from the swingarm.

Finally I could get the rear wheel properly cleaned, so I gave it a wee spin….then another, and another…because I noticed something that was both baffling and indeed horrifying:

Well I never.

I’ve never seen a motorcycle wheel like it. It’s funny (in a really un-funny way) because Blair’s car wheels had an issue just last week where he went to the garage to get a knocking sound fixed (unrelated) and found his front left tyre flat. Found out that his alloy was dented and thus wasn’t holding the seal with the rim letting all the air out of the tyre.

This is the same thing, but the added risk is that when you lean in to a corner the tyre deforms around the rim area, you see it in motogp on the camera mounted to the bottom fairing. I may not be getting motogp lean angles on the MT but in general that’s what happens.

So knowing that the only thing keeping the air in the tyre is the seal made between tyre and rim, it certainly doesn’t fill me with confidence with a nice big flat dent on it.

But in saying that, I’ve ridden for 4 weeks with this issue (because I never dented it, it was one of the previous 2 owners that did this unforgivable act) and Ive never felt anything. I’ve ridden it enough now to feel comfortable leaning it well over and there’s never been any indication of a serious flat spot on the rim.

Well, I’ve emailed the garage asking for their thoughts as I really dont know what to do. Checking the OEM online parts place states that a Yamaha MT-01 rear wheel, without anything on it, just the plain jane alloy, is €850, that’s £718 at xe.com’s exchange rate.

And by anyone’s standards, that’s a LOT of banger for a bit of metal.

I don’t know enough about warranty’s and rights as a buyer to comment enough on it. I will investigate it more and await the garage’s thoughts. Very interesting indeed.