2010 Yamaha Super Tenere 1200 Pictures 1
2010 Yamaha Super Tenere 1200 Pictures 2
2010 Yamaha Super Tenere 1200 Pictures 3
2010 Yamaha Super Tenere 1200 Pictures 3The 2010 Yamaha Super Tenere 1200 braking system on the Super Tenere sounds very well thought out. ABS is a hugely effective safety feature on roadbikes - and a combined braking system certainly helps deliver more controlled and comfortable stopping - particularly if you're standing up.
Yamaha has built an electronic ABS/combined brake system that uses wheel speed sensors front and rear, as well as other inputs, to decide what's happening at each wheel under braking - and then uses an infinitely variable hydraulic pressure unit to modulate brake pressure if it looks like a wheel is about to lose traction. Apparently this is supposed to kick in even before a slide occurs, and avoid the juddering common to most ABS systems. I guess we'll wait and see.
Since the rear brake's hard to get to when you're standing up, the electronic/hydraulic system is also set up to proportion braking between the front and rear calipers in a controlled fashion. But if you hit the rear brake pedal first, this function is cancelled for that braking instance - so if you're the sort of rider that likes to control the braking proportions in this way, you can have full control. Nifty. Not sure if this control extends to letting you lock the rear wheel up when you want to off-road, but it's a clever step in the right direction.
Chassis 2010 Yamaha Super Tenere 1200
Like the Beemer, the 2010 Yamaha Super Tenere 1200 is a heavy bike, coming in at 261kg wet with a full fuel tank (that's about 5kg more than the R1200GS Adventure). But Yamaha has gone to great pains to point out that the mass has been kept low and central throughout the design process to make such a big bike handle across the range of conditions it's built for.
The frame is steel rather than aluminium - a lost opportunity to reduce some of that weight, perhaps, but then steel is tougher in high-shock situations, so it makes the Super Ten a better bike to lay on its side.
