Yamaha TRX850, the undiscovered jewel.

TDM-TRX Club Nederland

October 2007 I sold the TRX. It has served me well for 5 years but three is one too many. After the arrival of the Suzuki SV650s it had to go. I'll probably miss the looks, character and the thumping of this bike, but what's done is done. I'll leave the TRX-pages online for a while, even if only for myself for nostalgic reasons...




July 2004 I visited Scotland & England on the TRX, at last I travelled prepared and without losing my way. With thanks to Sjoerd Spieker for the idea I've converted a very simple Halfords route device to fit the TRX. Obviously it is not used to hold a road map, but you can insert about 6 pages of route description and simply turn the knob on the left for the next instructions as you progress.
I've simply bolted on a 20mm diameter alloy tube and you can click it on that as you would on a pushbike. Images speak louder than words, it is that simple. And as it sits neatly behind the top-half it is not affected by the wind. Admittedly it does feel flimsy (as it would be for around 20 Euro / 12 pound) but I've tested upto 120 miles an hour (for legal reasons I'll say that was in Germany ;-) ) and that was not a problem.






May 21-23 2004 the third TRX-meeting in Stiege was held. If you read my report on the 2003 event you won't be surprised that I was there and that I'll attend the fourth as well (the weekend around 28/29 May 2005).
June 2003 I attended the 2003 edition of this international TRX-meeting in the Harz mountain range in Germany. Read about it on the page on das TRX-Treffen 2003 in Stiege. Organised by the German TRX-community TRXworld.de A community that thrives in the real world as well as in the virtual world.

The pic on the left is from the 2003 edition at the same venue. Duisburg is home of the Stammtisch Duisburg, an expanding group of now about 30 TRX-riders that meet once a month. For high octane conversation and consumption. The pic on the right shows some of the regulars, or at least their bikes;-) And I must say, thay know their beers but I've not seen them drink and drive, to their credit!

Annual meeting in Stiege parked at the Stammtisch Duisburg

The TRX is my absolute favorite bike at the moment! It is not the fasted, most exotic or the most popular twin cylinder sportsbike. But is is alive! The looks stand out and it is a fantastic riders bike, that deserves some modifications to improve the minor flaws. On this page you'll find some pics of my bike, and some links to interesting pages and sources for other TRX-owners.

So meet the TRX. Built from 1995 to 1998 and it didn't sell very well. That explains why mine has a 2000 registration. Bought it private from a lovely girl from Eindhoven November 2002. She wept bitter tears when I took it away from her. But she was due to be a mother and had other things on her mind. As you can see the Yamaha is not a big bike by any stretch of the imagination. On the right is a picture of the bike as I bought it. It was in pristine condition and pretty much standard when I bought it. Just a K&N airfilter, Dynojet kit and a larger sprocket (2 extra teeth) at the rearwheel for some extra pulling power.



I have recently taken the TRX to a garage for some work. As you can see on this graph the bike ran too lean in October. That means there was much room for improvement in the midrange, top end power was quite good. I took the bike for a tune-up in March 2004, and it appeared that the Dynojet kit wasn't installed properly. The needles weren't operating properly and that caused the hesitant response on throttle.
The airfilterbox has now been modified, the original needles properly adjusted and there is a very marked improvement. Or how does 89Nm at 5.750 compared to 82 at 6250 rpm sound to you? Max output similar 82.1 BHP instead of 80.9 at 7500 rpm (all measurements on the rear wheel). The graph shows one of the better runs compared to one of the better runs in October. As you can read there at 5000 rpm it now delivers 61 bhp compared to 51 bhp before. And that is smack in the range that you use every day. Fantastic improvement for little money. If you want to see and hear the March testrun, download the 8.2 Mb file trxrun4.avi from home.wanadoo.nl/a.talmon For a soundbite there is a 40 sec 440kb wav-file of a testrun and the graph that tells all: before-and-after-graph. Obviously the Arnold004 graph is from October and the Arnold 012 is from March.
On the pic on the left the rather soft and weak original stuff is being replaced by progressive White Power springs. The middle shot shows my bike on the Dynojet and on the right a rare MVAgusta Brutale that visited the workshop the same day.



The TRX is not really a long distance tourer, I have to admit that the 375 miles to the Harz left me with a sore bum, but the bike suits me fine for any shorter runs than that. Insiders will spot that I have added the blue dot R1-frontbrakes and have replaced the original exhaust pipes by alloy BOS-pipes. You'll hear me coming now ;-) The pic on the right is in a typical dutch scenic spot on an outing while a friend rode my Hawk.


A great thing about the Internet is all the communities you can find there. For english-speaking TRX-riders the yahoo mailing list is worth your while. You'll need to register to actually read the entries though. Mostly British and Australian people in there, but also 5 or 6 dutch riders at least. Lots of information and knowledge out there! When I read about the ride-outs that are organised in that group in the Peak District (very familiar to me) I'm really itching to get there. Yahoo-TRX.

Here's some of the best sites that I know of for TRX-riders, let me know if you've seen better ones:
Dutch TDM-TRX club. Sadly mainly TDM-riders in there, still worth while.
Martyn Franklin's site. Interesting stuff there if you're not content with the standard package.
Sandy Cook has collected loads of stuff about the TRX including scanned tests in the 'hard pressed' section. With sites like this about all you need to do is link and save your own efforts.