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-   -   Yamaha YZF-R3 : Ownership Review (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/motorbikes/204437-yamaha-yzf-r3-ownership-review-6.html)

Plan to add it. Need to check what needs to be done to add this.

An update after a longish gap.

Odo Milestone



Mileage Update



Had a minor incident with the R3 near KR Puram. Rear ended a Splendor which cracking the front upper fairing and the head lamp assembly. No further damage. Picked up the parts from Pacer Yamaha Hebbal and fixed it.





During the replacement of the damaged parts, used the opportunity for a thorough clean up and replaced the OE indicators with the LED ones (OE accessory from Yamaha which costs a 1490 a pair. For two sets spent 2980 bucks)







Though the LEDs are bright, it does not light up the ground area close to the bike like the Halogen ones.

On one of the lean days, headed to Gear Gear Motorcycle to change the coolant and brake fluid.





Coolant Change - changed back from engine ice to Motul Motocool. Engine Ice had the fan run too often in the city traffic



The riding has been less and odo is creeping up very slowly currently standing at 135xx kms. I am planning to take some time off work to head for a ride in the coming weeks. The summer heat is a deterrent though.

With the lockdown in place, the R3 was gathering dust, to an extent where small spider webs started appearing. Little spiders made the R3 its home. Made it a point to clean all the two wheelers at home, Jupiter, Ntorq and R3.

First started with the Jupiter. It had a puncture too and the choke cable when pulled was leaking fuel. So sat down, removed the Carb, cleaned it and put it back. Fuel leakage issue solved. It had a puncture on the rear wheel. Had to double the puncture pack to arrest the leakage as the nail had gone diagonally into the tyre. Finally the wash done and one two wheeler taken care of.

Ntorq was back from the major repair with the crankshaft and other others. So gave it a thorough wash. Post wash observed the idling was unstable and the carb settings gone haywire. Tuned the carb and adjusted the idling. Now it is all fine and the throttle response is crisp. The second two wheeler done from the list.

The R3 was up next. Decided to do the below checks and adjustments apart from the wash. Did not take too many pics, as the hands were dirty.

1. Chain Cleaning
2. Chain Adjustment
3. Chain Lubing
4. Rear Suspension Preload Adjustment. It was set in the softest setting. Now at notch 4 (7 slots available in total).
5. Coolant check and top up
6. Brakes Cleaning and Bleeding.

Air filter cleaning was not required as it was recently done.

Pre Wash Pictures.









Gunk under the sprocket cover



Coolant

Coolant was topped as it was appearing at the low level. It hardly took around 100 ml, probably even lesser.





Post Wash









I was already tired by the time, I was mid way through the R3 work. Decided to do the Brake cleaning and bleeding another day. Anyways have another 10 days for the lockdown to end. I have the Linea up next for a thorough clean up job.

RTR too has some work, but that is parked in the work place and it can be taken up only when the lockdown ends. Have good amount of work on it post the 4V head conversion (more on it later). RTR will be around for a few more years, the FC has been renewed.

1. Magnet Assembly and stator coil from RTR 200 to be installed.
2. Carb needs to be cleaned up and tuned.
3. Tank has started rusting (more due to the way it was kept at the garage for close to two years :Frustrati)
4. AC to DC wiring alteration
5. Front Brake Master Cylinder Replacement.
6. Few other sundry works.

Planning to keep the RTR for the daily usage. It has already clocked around 1.83 lakh kms in total with the current odometer around 66 or 67k. Had to replace the speedometer twice due, initially due to a faulty unit. and later due to the LCD cracking.

The Brake cleaning and bleeding work done. Some pictures which I took initially. Hands were too dirty to take pics of the rear brake cleaning work.

Front Brake pad needs replacement in about 1500 kms. I will pick up the front brakes pad once the lockdown is lifted. Also wanted to change this to Brembo RCS 15 or 19 Corsa Corta. Need to find a compatible clutch lever to match the brake levers from brembo.







Brake Cleaner used.



Post cleaning took it for a small spin. Brakes feel a wee bit sharper, could be placebo effect too. :D

Hey Nkrishnap,

It's been almost 9 months since the last update. How is the R3 going?

How tough is it to maintain and source spares owing to discontinuation of the model?

Cheers.!

Yeah. Long gap. Had a ACL reconstruction on right knee and hence very little running. Crossee 1k kms for thr last 10 months or so and odo is at 14k. Rode to Megur Homestay for the annual R3 meet. More rides should happen.

Most spares are available and max time I have had to wait is 8 working days.

Completed 15,000 Kms mark on the odo. The odo is climbing up at a snail's pace. Lost the 14000 kms mark picture as I could not recover the picture from the phone when it got reset.

15000 kms milestone



Mileage update



Apart from this, nothing much to report per say. Typical Japanese machine. I would changing the engine oil in a few days. Pakelo it would be this time around to see how it fares as I am hearing good stuff about it.

Ended up spending a bit of time working on the R3 and got the below done.

1. A thorough cleaning of the body
2. Bike chain cleaned and lubed
3. Engine Oil and Oil Filter Changed
4. Air Filter changed. Had a spare K&N OE Replacement filter with me. Went ahead and replaced the OE one which had sort of choked in 2500 kms. Lets see how it goes, may swap to a better performance filter, that is if I find it.

Old oil drained, I had used AMS oil MCF the last time. Changed it as I felt the bike to be a bit rough on the higher revs. It has been the same case with Amsoil MC4 and Amsoil MCF. However the gear shifts were butter smooth compared to previous oils.



Pakelo Krypton MBK 10W-40 Engine Oil Can. Quite expensive at 1800 odd per litre.



Yours Truly doing the oil change :)



Ridden the bike only for 15 kms. Planning for a couple of small breakfast rides during the weekdays to pick up more riding habit again. I will update how this oil behaves as I clock in more kilometeres.

Hoping to hear how the Pakelo fared in an R3. It's doing quite well in my 390 Adv!

Do you know of anyone selling an R3 in Bangalore? Any leads will be much appreciated

Observed that the front tyres had started developing cracks. With the bike being sparingly used and around 9K kms the tyres had clocked. Did not want to take a risk as the bike is primarily ridden on the highway. Swapped the tyres with Michelin Road 5 at Madhus.







Pakelo is doing fine, have some 500 odd kms on it. The high revs are way smoother than what it was on the AMSOIL.

If I come across any R3 for sale, will pass the information on to you.

I rode a rental R3 in preparation of the launch and found it vibes on the handlebars quite a bit. It starts at 4k and become crazy distracting past 5k all the way till redline. Zero vibes to complain about on the pegs, the tank and the seat, just the bars (I was wearing gloves too). I spoke to the rental guys and they said it could be because of a bad chain sprocket. Does this mirror any of your experiences? Coming from a RE350, the vibes hits different on these little twins. Revving twice as much means twice as many vibes and I feel like having a second cylinder is doubling the vibes for each rev and it feels like a high frequency buzz which i was not at all comfortable with. Hoping its a one off thing due to badly maintained bikes.

I hope that the vibration issues are mostly because the bike is a rental, and would be abused by renters. Japanese twin cylinder motorcycles and vibrations don't sit together in the same sentence. Infact, the R3 comes equipped with a counter balancer to counter the normal "minimal" vibrations produced by the engine.

As per your experience, the vibes were being doubled because of the second cylinder. That generally is not the case with twin/multi cylinder japanese motorcycles. Please do try test riding another well-maintained R3, and you'll see the difference for yourself.

I don't mean to be a downer on anyone on this topic and I'd very much like to ward off vibes from all bikes if I could but even Japanese multicylinder bikes have vibrations. Kawasaki's 650 is quite vibey that they rubberised the pegs even on the Ninja (although you can argue its not a real sportsbike) and you can still feel the buzz everywhere throughout the rev range. Even Japanese i4s buzz at certain rpm like the Honda 650 at 6k. I suspect almost all engines vibrate quite a bit as you hit their power band and that is why people buy big bikes for touring so to avoid cruising in the power band. The problem for small twins like the R3 and Ninja 300 is that they coast at 7k+ on the highway.

I found a 2018 R3 ABS which has run 6k kms. I texted the owner but he hasn't replied yet. What points should I keep in mind while evaluating a used R3? Also what will be the fair price for this bike? The bike looks good in pictures posted in the ad.

Suggestions will be highly appreciated.
Regards

So I got an R3 exactly one year back (I live in Bangalore)

Some Background

I had mostly ridden only Enfields - Lightning 535, Standard 350, Machismo, Classic 500 - I even did 2 to 3 track days on my 535 bullet in 2011-14 (imagine!)

2013 I rode my brothers Duke 390 for some days (realized how good modern bikes are!) and in 2015 I picked up an RC 390 that I used 90% only for track days. After about 10 15 track days, I decided to switch to a smaller bike to unlearn bad habits and I got my friends old R15 v1

The Yamaha really won me over - had never ridden anything so smooth and easy. In 2019 I decided to go to CSS track school and I got an R15 V3

If I admired the R15 before, now I was literally blown away with the V3 - that VVT tech made a 150 cc feel like it was a 250 cc.
I did 3 to 4 track days on the R15 v3 and then went back to my RC390 now fully modified for track only only (powertronic ECU, YSS, race fairing, slipper clutch, RC-Boi brake MC etc.)

After COVID I kept getting better on track with the RC for a while, but I hit a plateau and the bike was feeling really hard to push. It may be a mental thing and probably I am not a great rider :p but riding the RC felt like a huge effort - can't relax even a millisecond. I also had a high speed fall (no injuries thankfully) on track due to a tank slapper coming out of a fast corner. This also affected my stress when riding the RC

I had always had some desire to buy an R3 - I had heard very good things from track buddies who rode it.

So I decided to do what I did before - redo CSS training once and do it on an R3.
By sheer luck or divine intervention I found a perfectly maintained R3 with only 3500 KM on it for (ONLY) 3 Lakh in Nov 2022
Owner was a real gentleman and was only selling because he had no time to ride. He had kept it in showroom condition.
He wanted to sell it to someone who would appreciate it.

The moment I rode it back home, I was completely a Yamaha fanboy. I have never felt so happy riding a bike as I did with this...
I rode it to Chennai for CSS and had an absolute blast on the track.

For the first time in years, I was riding fast and my body and mind were completely relaxed. It was like the bike read my mind and did exactly what I needed.

I did 3 long group rides after that - BR Hills, Yercaud, Gokarna and really enjoyed myself.

I thought that this bike is so awesome for touring, let me not ride it seriously on track till I get better tires, frame sliders and so on, so next track day I had my RC 390 shipped and rode this to Chennai.

On the track, the moment I rode the RC (after a gap of 10 months) it felt like going from a Ferrari to a diesel tractor. My RC is highly souped up and way better than any stock machine, but still it felt totally loose and rattly sudenly.

After one 20 minute session, I gave up on the RC, and switched to my R3 for the rest of the 3 day event.

To keep it short, let me just say that I rode faster on the stock R3 than I ever did on the R3 and was able to put many more laps than I could generally manage (mostly because I didnt have to exert so much mentally and physically)
To top it off, I actually broke my all time lap record too.

I wrote a long post on substack describing this track day https://repmovsd.substack.com/p/one-...g-a-motorcycle


Since then I have slowly "decorated" my R3 with small accessories over the past few months

• GB Racing engine covers (ubuy)
• Flush mount indicators (ubuy)
• Radiator and front protector grill (ubuy)
• Stem nut with Ram Mount ball (ubuy)
• Removed the cat con, but retained stock exhaust for a better sound and 4-5 KG weight reduction
• Fuel-X Lite

Planning to add:

• Bigger windscreen
• Diablo Rosso 3 tires
• Steel brake lines
• Lithium battery (I have an old Shorai that is still working, is about 3 KG lighter)
• Rear-sets
• Frame and fork sliders
• Radial master cylinder kit
• Foldable levers
• LED headlight bulbs
• YSS rear shock
• R6 throttle tube
• Adapt the MT 15 grab rail to this (it mounts on the rear footpeg bracket)
• When the new R3 is released, I will find out if any of the parts from that are retro-fittable to this 2018 model - maybe the slipper clutch and USD front forks

Will add pics and more observations soon