As some of you may know, I had my Bandit 1200 written off in the summer of '99. Fortunately, I had my trusty (ha!) SZR to rely on (ha!). After a winter of regularly finding the SZR's poxy italian electrics had died (nothing a good thump to the CDI unit wouldn't sort out...usually...) I took it on a BOTAFOT run. 

Getting over to Aylesbury the bike was running fine, and as ever, the A41 seemed a perfect place for top speed testing. However, about 2 miles into the BOTAFOT run itself on the A414, the bike started making grungy noises and lurching a bit - turns out a the chain had ripped off a bit of it's own guard, and wrapped this around the front sprocket. I limped it to the Little Thief in Buckingham, made my excuses and limped the thing home.

Obviously, the thing to do was fix it. So, I went out and bought a new bike instead. At the time, I thought I was in the marked for a second hand fireblade or GXSR750 or somesuch - I had about 4,500 - 5,000 pounds to spend and such bikes were available at that price. However, given my little unresolved Bandit problem (uninsured driver...Motorists Insurance Bureau...yadda, yadda, yadda, you don't really want to know) insurance on a 'blade or Gixer was looking at the wrong side of a grand fully comp - and after my Bandit experience there was no way I would consider insuring anything TPF&T again!

Then I noticed on Motorcycle City's website that they were selling off brand new Yamaha TRX850s for 4 grand - almost 3 grand under the (admittedly stupidly high) list price. I'd always liked the TRX - I like half-faired bikes for some reason, and when I found out that I could insure one fully comp for less than 400 quid, well how could I not buy one?

My initial thoughts when I picked up the TRX from Motorcycle City's headquarters in Farnborough were that it was very tall compared to my SZR, but wasn't the power delivery brilliant! The torque and all-over power of the parallel twin motor was just lovely. And the handling didn't seem to bad either (but more on that later).

Of course, having bought a big(ish) twin, it just wouldn't be right if it didn't sound monstrous, so - as gorgeous as the original fitment gold-coloured endcans were, they had to go - and were replaced by some excellent (if not strictly - ahem - road legal) Remus oval-section titanium end cans, fitted and set up with a matching dynojet kit and K&N air filter by Rhino Dyno in Croydon. This transformed my stock 72bhp, thrumming TRX into an 84bhp at the back wheel beast with a sound like armageddon in stereo. And the total cost of the bike + endcans etc. was still well under my original 5K reserve budget. Result.

I've been using the TRX for commuting, touring (weekends in Northern Ireland and France) and general acting like a fool at the weekends. It's been almost perfect for everything.

Faults? Well, first gear is a bit tall, which makes riding in very heavy traffic a bit of a pain in the arse sometimes. Comfort wise it's not too bad at all, but on longer journeys (say upwards of 200 miles in one session) a bit of a painful neck can occur. The only major niggle was the original fitment tyres - the execreble Macadams (also OE on my old Bandit 1200 - also shite on that too). At first I thought that the bike's handling was only average, until I replaced the originals with most excellent Bridgestone Battlax BT010s - the bike now handles like a dream, even in the wet.

Of course, I'm not going to deny that more power would be nice - it can be hard work keeping up with people on Blades, R1s and the like (although reeling in supersports 600 riders is very easy - just keep the TRX in 3rd gear everywhere, and that soon sees them disappearing in the mirrors), but for now I am very happy with the TRX.