arnoldinup said:
........ I mean, really, is that realistic ? I've been in lot's of filling stations in my 50-years of riding that don't have Premium. So my next question is : any performance and/or warranty issues regarding regular/non-ethanol fuel in the TNR ?
I bought a '13, and am now poring over the owners manual; the technical detail is just staggering. It's the most 'complicated' bike I've ever owned. I hope like hell I'm not going to have to deal with any 'glitches' anywhere in the 'digital drive train' .
Another item of note : the manual sez 'don't get any magnetizing energies near the ABS servo's . What about these magnetically-triggered traffic light controllers that are in the roadway everywhere? !!
Are my fears unfounded ? Don't sugar-coat it, tell me where I'm wrong .
Best regards from 'da UP ........ of Michigan !
First off, IIRC the manual, etc. says something like "Recommended Fuel: Premium Unleaded", or something like that... I could be wrong there, but I don't recall it specifying an octane number. But even if it does it doesn't seem to be a problem. Tons of riders have run mid-grade and regular seemingly without any issues, and good ol' Nick Sanders rode his Super Tenere over 52,000 miles on his record run with what you know had to be lesser octane fuels all down through South and Central America as well as Mexico. Personally I have run regular grade fuel on a few occasions when nothing else was available and I honestly couldn't tell one nano-whit of difference... No pinging or other problems, and that's in very high temperatures here in South Texas, and I have 30,000 miles on mine.
As far as technical complexity, etc... I think you'll see after very little reading on this and other forums that the Super Tenere is arguably one of the most reliable and trouble-free motorcycles ever produced. They just don't have problems. At least not like other bikes. Besides that, it is one of the easiest large displacement bikes on the planet to work on, and certainly as easy (or easier) to wrench on than any other motorcycle in the "Adventure" segment.
Regarding the ABS sensors (not servos)... The reason Yamaha doesn't want strong magnets anywhere near the ABS sensors on the hubs, or even more so near the sensor rings inside the hubs, is so they aren't accidentally rendered inoperative. The sensors themselves are no more than Hall-effect magnetic pick-ups, but more importantly the rings inside the hubs are magnetic platters, much like the disc in a hard drive, and if you got a very strong, say neodymium magnet, near it you could neutralize its magnetic charge/field and render it unable to do its job. That said, the magnetic wire triggers in the roadway are neither strong enough nor near enough to do such damage. Also note that I don't think any such sort of demagnetization of either the hall-effect sensors or hub rings has *EVER* been reported here, or anywhere.
BTW, it's those magnetic hub rings that allow the Super Tenere's ABS to work as well as it does. With more ABS systems there is some sort of toothed ring for a triggering, and a Hall-effect sensor reads the "teeth" on the ring. The more teeth, the higher the sampling rate, and the more accurate the system can read the wheel speed, or rate of change of that wheel speed. Still, if yo look at most bikes there really isn't *that* many teeth, so the sampling rate is pretty low. However, on the Super Tenere they encode literally millions of "teeth" on that magnetic platter ring inside the hub, and this allows a massive sampling rate, and incredible accuracy at reading wheel speed and rate of change of wheel speed. It's this high sampling rate and incredible accuracy that allow the Super Tenere's ABS and TCS to perform so much better than anything else out there at the moment.
And about knock sensors... No Super Tenere, sold anywhere in the world, has knock sensors, so that's not anything unique to USA bikes. But more importantly, you don't really need a "knock sensor" for detonation and/or pre-ignition control on today's electronic engine control systems. There are lots of other ways they can sense impending, or even operational, "knock" and adjust timing and or fuel mixture parameters to compensate. And given today's metallurgy, combustion chamber design, and material quality control just about any engine produced today can stand quite a bit of load "knock" for even extended periods of time. With today's emission regulations engines run right on the edge of detonation a large percentage of the time. Personally, I wouldn't worry about that.
Last but not least... I wouldn't count on the pump gas you're getting *NOT* having ethanol in it, regardless of grade, unless the pump specifically says so. Down here in the South it's becoming harder and harder to find non-ethanol-laced fuel, and often time the only grade that is ethanol-free is actually regular.
Basically, the entire Super Tenere fuel issue boils down to this IMHO... Yamaha knew this bike was going to often be ridden in areas with questionable fuel octane and quality, and built the bike to handle whatever was poured into it as long as it was some kind of "gasoline". However, to cover there corporate a**es they "recommend" premium fuel so folks will try to put the best quality fuel in it they can find.
Just my two centavos... YMMV (no pun intended).
Dallara
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