Treading the finest of marketing and sales lines the engineers responsible for Yamaha's 250cc race replicas built the reverse-cylinder TZR you see on these pages.
Aware that too much high-tech can turn Joe Average motorcycle buyer away they took a risk.
Or did they?
Treat this horniest of 250cc stroker's like one of its distant-very-four stroke cousins and you're going to think nothing but ill of that risk.
Give it its head though-and it's a matter of risk? What risk?
And so it should be. Like its Japanese fellows Honda, Suzuki and Kawasaki Yamaha can tool up an incredibly complex motorcycle like the new TZR - and know that within its allotted model life it will sell budget and more.
And that's just on the domestic Japanese market.
Sales, here, and in places like Australia and mainland Europe are just icing on the cake.
Reverse cylinder technology doesn't, of course, come cheaply. But count your lucky stars Kiwis at least it comes. Great Britain importer Mitsui sneaked in a couple of reverse-cylinder, TZRs for the TT last year. But unless things have changed in the last couple of months punters over there in the cold and windy isle are going to have to content themselves with the good old??? pipes at the front/carbies at the back model. What's more the NZ model TZR's are the most powerful of various variants made.

It's not as if they are that unfortunate either. You're living in cloud cuckoo land if you think you can just bowl into a motorcycle shop in California, Washington DC or Iowa and buy a bike like a reverse cylinder TZR. Ultra-strict emission laws have effectively outlawed the sales of trick little two-strokes like Yamaha's RD/RZ series for years.
Still think at $(NZ)9,999.00 a fully road registerable reverse cylinder TZR 250 is expensive?
Enough thinly-disguised justification though. What does this reverse-cylinder TZR 250 go like?
Silly question really. It looks like a million dollars.
And it goes like two!
Performance off idle is typically anaemic. But use all that est. 47kW (that's over 60 bhp) of peak power and you're not going to be disappointed.
Delivery isn't particularly helped by relatively high gearing. But together your throttle hand, gear lever foot and clutch hand can have a whole lot of fun notwithstanding.
Round town and even out on good old State Highway No 1 things are all a bit fraught. But find yourself suitably open piece of road or circuit and from 6500 rpm up, a six-speed reverse cylinder TZR 250 is magic in the making.
Below 6500 rpm the exhaust note is dull and flat. Above it, it is truly something to behold. Due, I've decided, to the different resonances a set of chambers only millimeters from your bum produce, the note is rich, deep and right up there in red line territory, absolutely intoxicating. Like the burst of acceleration from around 7000 rpm.
Incredible as it seems one of these new reverse cylinder TZRs will positively drive from around 7000 rpm through to 8000 and 9000 rpm - and then top it all off with a peak power burst which would embarrass a well ridden GSX-R 750.
Lower gearing would mask a reverse cylinder TZR's rather thin spread of torque. But one or two more gear changes per minute/second do the same sort of job.
It's not as if, after all, you have to worry too much about where, and how, you are going.
Nowhere near as frantic in the feel as superseded 250 two strokes, the reverse cylinder TZR steers and handles with what only could be described as precocious confidence.
Carefully set up Moller Yamaha's test bike (look for it on a track near you in the capable hands of one Andrew Stroud) might have been. But at no time did I manage to produce anything resembling a front end shimmy, a rear end kick, or a 'where-did-that-come-from' shake.
Stones and even tiny little chips of seal proved the annoying nemesis of Bridgestone's latest 110/70 x 17 front / 140/60 x 18 rear radials. But the reverse cylinder TZR's incredible frame/suspension combination inspired nothing but confidence.
 

Such is the speed of 250cc race replica development in Japan that up-side-down forks are on the way. That's fine by me. But in the mean-time I don't think that there will be many riders out there who are going to find 1989/90 model's pre-load adjustable (no anti-dive) telescopics wanting.
Suspension travel isn't in trail bike league. But this is no tourer. What sacrifices made in the name of travel are more than made up for by spring/damper performance and minimum brake dive.
That goes for the rear too. You're going to get a sore bum riding Yamaha's reverse cylinder TZR 250. There are no two ways about it, the padding on the extravagantly curved seat/tail peice unit is absolutely minimal.
You are not going to get thrown around though. Equipped, as the marketing department no doubt deemed essential, with remote reservoir, Yamaha's preload and rebound adjustable rear shock absorber does a fine job.
Pivoting, as do most of Yamaha's other sport bike shocks, on 'Monocross' linkages it deals with bumps, pot holes and ridges in a detached and, yes, arrogantly superior manner.
It should too. Frame and swing-arm are jewel-like, aluminium, cast extruded and/or welded/bolted together with a care and attention to detail that continues to surprise.
Like Suzuki, Yamaha has combined solid yet lightweight castings swingarm pivot and steering head) with smooth 'Deltabox' extrusions.
Weight - at 136 kg is up on the more conventional TZR (it weighed 131 kg). But so is horsepower (that estimated 47 kW).
Dimensions are ball park - at 1380mm for instance, the reverse cylinder TZR is 5mm longer in wheelbase than the model it supercedes. But the reverse cylinder TZR could pass for a much bigger bike. It 'feels' much longer, a lot lower, and somehow bigger, more mature. Featherlike weight aside it 'feels' for all the world like Yamaha's FZR 6000.
OK, there is so little engine weight that you only have to think about it and you are leaning into a corner. But there is none of the skitteriness that RD's and RG's of old have displayed.
Nor is there much of that pivot-on-the-fork angle braking/cornering feel.
 
 

PHOTO CAPTION: Remote reservoir for shock

PHOTO CAPTION: 17 inch front/18 inch back wheel combo straight off the track. Rims are wiiiiiiiide, especially for a 250.

PHOTO CAPTION: Seat really only suitable for short bursts - like 10 laps round Wanganui or 8 round Manfield/Pukekohe.
 
 

No, the reverse cylinder TZR doesn't come as standard with a steering damper. But it certainly 'feels' like it has got one fitted.
Moller Yamaha's test bike felt like it had a set of bionic brake pads fitted too come to think about it. Talk about 'stoppie' ability.
Laced up to those taut front forks are two huge drilled discs, matching calipers looking for all the world like the ones on an EXUP FZR 1000.
The rear disc is suitably smaller. But it is no less exotic. Twist the heavily braced swing arm and that gorgeous frame is a full-floater rod, there to rid the reverse cylinder TZR of any of that dreaded rear-end hop.
Wonderful. Like the rest of the bike, probably the most remarkable thing about this latest in race-replica lineage though, is its very ordinariness. Now you and I know that tucked in behind that TZ-replica fairing is a reverse cylinder in-line two stroke engine that, in fully-road rideable form produces more than that once benchmark barrier 50 bhp per 500cc.
The only thing is, Yamaha has made sure that, to Joe Average, the carbs could still be tucked in behind the cylinders, the chambers, snaking their way under the fairing.

Playing it safe? Yes, but, that's not the complete answer. While the two 32mm Mikuni carburettors do get an unimpeded look at the crankcases into which their fuel air mix is sucked they don't exactly drag air from behind the front wheel. Mounted up in what could be termed the conventional position is an air box. Air is sucked in to it, and then channelled down, over/ around the head and cylinders and on to the carbies.
And that's not the only compromise. Tucked in between frame spar and fairing on the right hand side of the bike is the oil tank, the left hand side-with a large easy to use fuel tap and choke - the coolant header tank. Actual combustion is aided and abetted by crankcase reed induction, and Yamaha's YPVS-tagged variable exhaust valve plumbing.
Details? Like the tool kit?
With admittedly rather shapely expansion Chambers taking up all that room under the seat - the tool kit has been banished to a little compartment behind a trap door on the right hand side of the fairing - under the engine!!!
Quite a neat little touch really.
It's not the only one on the new reverse cylinder TZR either. coating the inside of the fairing in the vicinity of the engine/transmission unit is a thin layer of foam - there no doubt to dampen vibration!
All this description is all very well. But what, I'm sure you are all asking, is this exotic little limited edition 250 REALLY like?
Well, the rev counter's calibrated from 3000rpm like all the best 750/1000cc sports bikes. And, after all these years, yes, you still have to kick it in the guts to get it going. That's right, there's no electric start, and, get this, you have to reach down and bend the right foot peg back to get a decent swing on the small, but perfectly formed arm.
This latest TZR is not the lightest 250. Nor, geared as it is standard could it be regarded as the 'quickest'. What it is is a surgically precise and for a road-going two wheeler built to a performance/price/legality compromise - incredibly competent production racing weapon.
Riding one you get a buzz worthy of a Lotto win - and a sore bum.
 
 

Specifications

Engine                  Liquid-cooled parallel twin
Bore x stroke           56 x 50.7
Compression ratio       7.4 to 1
Peak power              approx 47 kw produced at 9500 rpm
Peak torque             3.8 kg/m produced at 8000 rpm
Carburation             2 x 32 mm Mikuni front mounted
Gearbox                 6 speed
Chassis                 Aluminium (cast/extrusion) 'DeltaBox'
Wheelbase               1380 mm
Weight, dry (claimed)   136 kg
Wheels/Tyres    Front   110/80 x 17
                Rear    140/70 x 18
Retail price            $10,989.00
 

Test bike courtesy of Moller Yamaha
 
 
 
 

PHOTO CAPTION: Attention to detail bordering on the amazing.

PHOTO CAPTION: Reverse cylinder engine.

PHOTO CAPTION: Brakes pack some bite.




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