Incompetence on the road from London to Sydney,
In 1988 Adam Smallman left London on his much-bodged Yamaha XT500, destination Australia. 31 years later he talks adventure DNA and Yamaha’s brilliant new Ténéré 700…
THE INSPIRATION WAS Ted Simon’s Jupiter’s Travels. The preparation was Marx Brothers. And the execution? As botched as that of Mary, Queen of Scots. It is March 1988 on an overcast Sunday and I’ve left London bound for Australia, perched on a £500, 12-year-old Yamaha XT500. Months of hacksawing, bending, welding and more sees it fitted with custom panniers, a single seat, big fuel tank and wide oil cooler. It ain’t pretty but it will mean a trouble-free adventure. I’ll be solo, cover 23,000 miles and will be on the road for 13 months…
The single chuffs its way down the M3 towards a ferry to Spain, shiny alloy boxes emblazoned with ‘London to Sydney’, passing
drivers waving and tooting their horns as I progress. At this moment I am exhilarated, intimidated and very alone. The wind noise around my open-face Arai almost drowns a thought: ‘what the bloody hell am I doing?’
Thirty-one years later and I’m in London on Yamaha’s new Ténéré 700. I have been willing the twin into production existence since it made its debut as a concept bike (for more background see Bike, September 2017). Back then the T7, as it was known, looked fantastic and so, so right. The Ténéré name had been misapplied to a ship’s anchor I once owned, the XTZ1200 Super Ténéré, in which ‘Super’ meant a whopping 50kg more than this new bike. I hated every atom of it.
In the 700, Yamaha have built a bike worthy of the desert name. It’s slimmer, snappier and simpler than the ‘Super’ juggernaut aberrance. The 700’s lineage from the legendary XT500, the forefather of big trailies (five years before BMW’S GS emerged and actually not big at all), is demonstrated in its superb nimbleness, decent punch, proven reliability and credible off-road ambitions. It’s the real deal.
I’ve had, and loved, KTMS – and, as a compliment, the 700 has echoes of the superb KTM 990 SMT, one of the best-balanced road bikes around – but I fret about their higher-mileage reliability. Big BMWS have ballooned to absurdity and the brand leaves me stone freezing cold.
No, were I to do that trip again – solo and halfway around the world via deserts, the Himalaya, a Korean girl’s bed, fatal riots in Jerusalem, Saudi Arabian gunpoint and an Indian nunnery – I’d take the 700, no question.
More than that, I’d take it untouched. For what I did to the XT500 three decades back verged on the criminally foolish, and the consequences of my poorly-executed over-preparation ahead of the trip in 1987 were Olympian.
Within a few hundred miles it was obvious the ally boxes I’d commissioned were far too narrow for my big fat hands, which became maps of self-harm. Meanwhile everything in the boxes – underpants, a gifted Koran, a dog-eared Moby Dick, repaired inner tubes – became irrevocably peppered with aluminium dust. And it got worse: the metalwork from which the boxes hung weakened the frame loop until it snapped – the rigidity of the mounts tore the aluminium away. Then a piston broke, which may have been instigated by the, too big for the motor, oil cooler. The torque wrench, spanners and Haynes manual were optimistically binned in Greece to cut weight. Had I been starved of oxygen at birth?
A perfect storm, then, of unbridled incompetence that gathered in the thenunspoilt Sinai Peninsula, Egypt. There, in the aftermath of an intense time in Jerusalem – is there any other sort? – the simple act of forgetting to bend over the front drive sprocket’s lock tab meant I sheared the gearbox spline. I was inland from the coast, it was more than 40-degrees, there was no shade and I had barely any water. stroke hit me like a brick and
I began to hallucinate – is that a camel licking my toes? – until Bedouins in a pick-up rescued me.
‘Make sure you build the engine in clean conditions,’ my dad tells me by phone from Wiltshire. In an open, sand-swept room facing the Gulf of Aqaba the motor comes out. Three weeks later, after spares arrived from London and days of dissolution and ennui in Cairo, the engine sat bolted together, a fine layer of sand decorating it ominously. And a collection of small and interesting parts that belonged inside the motor were now outside it. A spacer here, a washer there.
‘F**k it,’ I thought and threw them into the boxes until I could remember where they belonged (I never did manage total recall). And off I rode towards Cairo and onward to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan by freighter. Which brings me back to my ride on the 700, less London-to-sydney and more London-to-sydenham. One of the pieces of magic Yamaha have woven into this bike is how brilliant the suspension and handling is. I dissed the XTZ1200 for being some 50kg heavier than the 700 but the new bike, is, in turn, 50kg heavier than the vintage XT500’S 150kg wet weight. A watercooled twin, ABS pump, twin discs and meaty suspension makes it so. But, boy, you just wouldn’t know it. It’s a slim and famously manageable thing.
London, picked apart by roadworks at every junction and every turn, is a riot on this bike. The suspension is a balm to the obstacle course of speedbumps, potholes and fractured tarmac. It flip-flops on a dime, ignores strips of wet constructors’ sand and glides over four-inch-deep cycle-killing black holes. And on what should have been a joyless, windswept ride across Norfolk back-roads streaming with water and pasted with autumn leaves, the excellent Pirelli Scorpion Rally tyres and fine suspension and geometry made it huge fun. The XT’S suspension was certainly of its age and not bad
‘A perfect storm of unbridled incompetence that gathered in the then-unspoilt Sinai Peninsula, Egypt…’
for it, but the new Ténéré is a class apart. Kolkata’s anarchic streets would be a breeze on it.
Even better, the motor, lifted from the MT-07, packs an incredibly usable low, and mid-range, punch that belies its dull and stifled noise, a rare shortcoming on the bike. It’s the perfect motor for this deployment and I love it. For sure I never felt I lacked power on the 30bhp XT500 – how feeble that output sounds now – but the 700 transforms open road riding with its 72bhp shove and should you want to cruise at the ton that’s easy too. In London’s throttled streets its pep is a genuine boon when you need to spring from trouble. Useful too if thwarting the ambitions of sub-saharan bandits. Which you can never rule out.
Common to both bikes is simplicity. Yamaha, keen to manage price and expectations, haven’t added traction control, engine modes, semi-active suspension or semi-automatic gearboxes. It’s authentic and WYSIWYG – What You See Is What You Get. It’s got
ABS (which usefully can be switched off when heading to the dirt) and a four-strong LED headlight that’s literally brilliant. And that’s your lot. This hugely appeals to my ‘do it now’ nature on functional machinery. I own a BMW S1000RR track bike, festooned with tech to make me faster and safer and yet I truly loved my near-standard, near two-decade-old GSX-R1000 K1 which was just as quick around corners.
Simply put, the Ténéré is a very clever and considered package, perfectly judged for general riding and, according to reports, a solid performer off-road (my spinning up of the Scorpions in Richmond Park car park doesn’t really count). Rarely have I so rapidly enjoyed a motorcycle.
Apart from failing to give it an XT500 paint job (chop-chop Yamaha, you wasted that idea on the Xtribute XSR recently), the Ténéré has three flaws and none stop me from wanting to load her up and just go…
‘Should you want to cruise at the ton, that’s easy thanks to 72.5bhp. Useful too if thwarting the ambitions of sub-saharan bandits’
The exhaust note – not dissimilar to an XT500 – I’ve mentioned. The gearbox is gritty in its action but may loosen over time. Finally, the seat-to-footpeg distance is a touch low for my six-footfour frame – my knee bends outward each time I shift down a gear. The seat height-to-tarmac distance – 875mm – is tall enough to worry shorties but clearly demonstrates its off-roading intentions. The Brembo front brakes are adequate but I wouldn’t want them too aggressive on this bike anyway.
So, literally scarred by my XT500 experience, no mods wanted or required on the 700 ahead of a transglobal adventure. Except maybe a taller seat. Oh, and a radiator guard. And the lighter Akrapovic pipe. But, yeah, definitely no mods…
So, it is October 2019 on a wet and windy Saturday and I’ve left London bound for Norfolk – maybe I’ll make it to New Zealand – perched on an £8845 Yamaha Ténéré 700. Months of hacksawing, bending, welding and more not required. Thank the Lord.