Yamaha SZR660 Reviews

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Good Points: Rare, economical thumper

Bad Points: ergonomics. Rare parts to source

General comments: I just bought a 1998 Yamaha SZR660 on ebay. "A what?" I hear you say "never heard of one" - me neither until a few weeks ago that is. Well they do exist and in a nutshell it's an XT660 single cylinder engine wrapped in a TZR deltabox frame with sports styling and utilizing TZR wheels, Brembo brakes and Italian Paoli USD forks up front and a Marzocchi at the rear! Bit of a Frankenstein creation this one. On the drawing board it must have looked good with it's light weight, it's torquey engine and a trick suspension which all goes together to slot it into the 'supermono' racing class - where I believe it did (and still does) quite well. The bike was made with Yamaha/Italian bits and assembled in Italy between 1996 and 2001 - it's a bit of an oddball but as an everyday commuter (which is what I bought it for) it does the job incredibly well, that massive single cylinder engine with a piston the size of a dustbin lid firing at roughly every lampost distance as you bob bob bob down the road and returning something in the region of 65 mpg. Open the throttle on the straight and you are rewarded with a meaty growl and a surprising thrust for a relatively low powered machine (approx 50 bhp) hit a hill and the SZR whisks you up on a big fat wave of torque - it feels like you could ride this thing up the gable end of a house. There's little need to change gear as the grunty engine does all the work so this is quite a pleasurable machine to tootle about on. Sit the bike on the motorway as I did recently on a journey from Lincoln to Bolton and it cruises happily and comfortably at 80 - 90 with 100 easily available if needed and all the while returning mpg in the high 50's ! Throw a few twisties at it and the light weight stiff frame, excellent suspension and grunt of the big single all combine to make it a fine handling easily flickable fun ride - for gods sake if you're brave enough you can have the exhaust scraping the road in a shower of sparks on this one! The Brembo brakes on the front with it's massive twin discs is serious overkill for a machine of this weight - squeeze too hard and it's endo's and handstands on the handlebars time. So why weren't these bikes more popular back in the day? For whatever reason the concept didn't catch on and the bike exists in only a few memories now with a small following on the racing circuit keeping the thing alive. So, good engine, excellent handling and amazing fuel consumption etc etc - what's the down side? Well there's the riding position - for me at 6 feet tall it's not roomy enough and I feel like my knees are somewhere just below my chin, the tank is tall and it's quite a stretch to the low bars which look like they can't take risers, the instruments are nice but the speedo is almost impossible to read and needs guess work at the speed cameras, the switchgear is very 80's and fiddly and confusing - I'm always sounding the horn instead of cancelling the indicators! At some speeds the vibration of that big single below you can be annoying and uncomfortable and forget the pillion unless your passenger is no taller than about 4 feet and needs nothing to hold onto - because there is no grab rail to stop them flying off when that wave of torque kicks in. This is a bike of nearly 700cc with the physical dimensions of a 400cc machine (to me who also rides a ZX12R it feels like a 250 machine) another bad bit is that you must constantly keep your eye on the rev counter as this thing is in the red so very easily - even under moderate acceleration.
In conclusion I think that it's a great bike in concept and nowadays makes a lot of sense as a cheap and cheerful commuter but think that if Yamaha had concentrated a bit more on rider friendly ergonomics and riding position it could have been a lot more popular and we'd be seeing a lot more of them on the road - still I was the only one on an SZR660 at the Rivington Barn recently and it caused quite a stir so maybe it is'nt such a bad thing eh?