Reader Jared Oakley rates his year-old Yamaha MT-09
‘The standard suspension is an embarrassment’
Ihave been telling everyone for years about how good the Yamaha MT-09 was, but despite singing its praises to anyone who would listend, I didn’t actually own one. Until recently.” Last year, Jared Oakley rectified that situation, by buying the updated second-generation MT-09 model when it first came out. So why did it take him so long to follow his own advice?
“A lot of my mates are old duffers and as such they have grown up on British bikes. The result of this is that they’ve ended up moving towards Triumph Daytona 675s and Street Triples,” explained Jared. “Before they bought them I said, ‘try the Yamaha first’ as the reviews were so positive, but they refused.
A mate of mine was looking at buying an MT-09, so I went along with him to test ride the MT-10 as I’ve always loved R1s and thought it might suit me down to the ground. But when I rode it I was really disappointed. It just felt like it was too light on the front, too powerful, and you got the impression that you were always heading towards an accident. We swapped bikes and after a few yards on the MT-09 I was hooked.”
Sometimes you just know that a bike is for you and that’s exactly what Jared discovered when he slung a leg over the MT-09. “Everything about it suited me,” he remembers. “The triple engine was just perfect for road riding; it was really comfortable and I just clicked with it. I refused to ride the MT-10 again and just a month later I swapped my Panigale for the MT-09 and even walked away with £1000 in my pocket.”
Far from giving up on sportsbikes, however, Jared has instead separated out his love of speed and his love of road riding. A track Fireblade satisfies the urge to go wild while after a year with the MT-09, he has turned it into his ideal road bike for having fun on. But it wasn’t always that way.
“You can’t buy an MT-09 and leave it standard. For a start, the suspension is an embarrassment,” he says. “But all the bare bones of an absolutely brilliant bike are there; you just need to treat it to a few modifications to get the very best out of it.”
One he got the bike how he wanted, it’s been pretty plain sailing and with panniers added, long trips are on the agenda, too.