Yamaha MT-03

Here I explore a little bit about why I like riding motorcycles & thoughts about the MT-03 with extension & commentary about my history with other motorcycles & cars

Hypernaked in Midnight Black with a striking body & high tech headlight LED projector lens setup. Its sculpted form looks like it belongs to a higher performance level of machines but in reality more of a starter bike if you can call it that. The 321 cc fuel injected liquid cooled twin only makes good power when you REV it to higher RMPs where it shines. Low RPM range not too torquey or overpower which is great for new riders or people like me who were riding a 4 speed Honda GROM for a while & a CVT scooter for many years before that. 

I am 5 ft 11 in tall at 165lbs & MT-O3 fits me life a glove. My knees tuck into the sculpted tank to give body grip thats comfortable & confidence inspiring. You want to have confidence in your riding when you out in traffic. Riding motorcycles much more dangerous than driving cars. In Washington state where I live riding in traffic about 26X more dangerous statistically than automobile driving. 

Pretend Your Invisible 

Other than checking your gear for good operation, wearing safety gear like a helmet, jacket, gloves & boots, you also want to be sharp & focused & thinking about riding sane & safe & avoiding accidents & other bad drivers. Pretend like other people are drunk or high or did not or cannot see you, like they are aiming for you. I live to tell this advice because I am a paranoid safety focused rider who never loiters in anyones vehicle blind spots, I am either passing or falling behind (reverse passing). I presume that no one see's me, which is possible since I wear all black gear on an all black MT-03 // Tokyo night scene style

Riding a rewarding feeling & fun. MT-03 performs like a sports car given its 6 speed manual sequential shifting setup & high revving standard twin engine that spools up quickly & makes a glorious exhaust sound. I wear reusable silicon earplugs & wear a full face helmet & even still the exhaust plenty audible & sounds fantastic when revving from 4K RPM upward when accelerating. A precise shifting feel in the food & light left hand clutch make shifting a breeze. Finding neutral can be a little touchy or hard since its a half click notch between 1st down & 2nd gear up. You have to develop a feel with your left foot, though conveniently the dash display shows you what gear you're in, including if you hit neutral, which is great for mentally computing shift points & down shift rev matching. 

Riding a motorcycle like riding a bicycle with an engine, every young bicycle riders dream realized. You have to ride regularly to develop physically to adapt to the saddle. A 1 hour ride at first might seem like a lot if you are older & starting out. I started out riding sport bikes as a teenager & could ride my 600F4 for 3-4 hours without much pain. Now at 37 years old about 2 hours my limit before I start to feel it & by that I mean sore or worn out physically with joint pain. Thats fine because I used the MT-03 as a commuter bike to ride about 30 min one way to work, sparingly on fair weather days. 

Its taken me 8 months to log 800 miles, so I do not ride it much, largely because its so dangerous & because I only enjoy riding when its warm & clear, though I will ride on clear colder days using heated gloves when I have the itch to ride. Its more demanding in every way than driving, including gearing up to leave for work & extracting my bike from work & gearing up to come home. This limits when I actually use it for commuting since its not safe to park it outside where I work in a high crime area where it would surely be stolen in short order. I actually wheel the MT03 inside & keep it in the backroom safety locked up away from a would be thief. 

My History with Motorcycles

Starting as far back as 1996 my friends put me on an XR400 dirt bike & I was hooked. I ordered an Arai Signet GT helmet from a local motorcycle shop, my cousin loaned me his 1989 Honda Hurricane sport bike, I signed up for the MSR motorcycle safety foundation class & obtained by unlimited displacement license endorsement at the age of 16. I purchased a 1999 Honda F4 from a guy in Seattle for $5K & hid it at my cousins house & then closed by my parents house at Dan's house, on the side of the house & kept it secrete for a couple of years. I sold the 600F4 & took a couple years off & then purchased Buzz the 2004 Suzuki GSX-R600 in 2008 for $5k. In 2013 sold Buzz for our 2013 Honda PCX150 & still have that one. A Honda GROM SF in 2019 was converted to a 2020 Yamaha MT-O3 & thats my daily fun commuter bike while the twist & go Honda PCX Meg's machine now! Its been more than 20 years of riding now & I still enjoy it! 

Enjoyment 

Ride & enjoy it & you do not have to have a destination, just the act of riding & focusing on precise shifting up & down & clutch work with exceptional accuracy & enjoying the sound & feel of riding & the dynamic performance & nimble vehicle dynamics & your control over it as the rider. There's a lot to keep your brain occupied if you are paying attention while riding, always striving to have fun while also focusing on safety & safe operation, making sure your sober & clear & sharp & focused!

This one took me a long time to fully appreciate, but you have to enjoy riding a motorcycle to do it safely in traffic. The real world full of random unpredictable hazards & obstacles. Sand & rocks in parts of the road where other vehicles tires rarely transit means these zones are slippery like ICE to curved motorcycle tires that have tiny contact pack between the tire & the road, think large coin contact area, not a sheet of paper X4 like a car. 

Tire & Contact Patch 

Motorcycle tires are much softer & grippier than car tires & corresponding less durable in terms of how long the tires last when used over large distance, where common car tires might last 30-80K miles, most motorcycle tires last less than 10,000 miles. YMMV as lots of factors like your tire pressure, riding patterns, surfaces you ride on, ambient temp of those surfaces & your tires & many other factors like their age & rubber compounds specific to each tire maker. I keep the pressure in the tires to the specs in the owners manual & have the MTO3 professionally serviced. Whatever it takes to make it operate smooth & safe & reliable! I might get back into wrenching on vehicles when Meg & I finally build our first home together in the near future. I look forward to keeping our MT03 in the associated shop building near our next home. 

From my other writing, enjoy: 

Yamah MT-03 log 

Noted oil indicator turned off after 45 miles of additional riding. Added 2 oz of advanced fuel PEA additive metal can in bag in box shelf garage with chain wax etc topped off with residual grange e0 gas from safe can which is now empty (refill soon). Exhaust wrap coating burn off nearing completion as smell when fully hot lesser & stop smelling faster indicating carbonization & removal of residual polymer & solvents. Smelly vapor & fume emissions from exhaust wrap spray coating finally not so intense when the header pipe heats to nearly the full exhaust gas temperature when the engines running under loads from riding. I took the exhaust system off & wrapped it with black fiber glass & then sprayed the fiber glass with a special high temp polymer coating to protect the color & fibers, including heating the header with a propane blowtorch & heat gun to bake in the coating, a smoky smelling intensive process that required a moderate amount of wrenching to get off & put back on. Exhaust tube wrapping was an interesting experience, especially the glass fibers flying off (wear gloves & face mask & eye protection) but also my first encounter with metal zip ties that are really cool stainless steel :) 

It took about 800 miles or 40 something full saturation heat cycles from cold off to full hot riding for 30+ minutes per time before the smelly fumes from the exhaust wrap & spray coating on it to diminish. I added the wrap to help the catalytic converter to heat up faster & to reject heat from the front of the engine which would cause the radiator cooling fan to kick on previously after riding & coming to a traffic light, stopped idling, no auto idle stop on this machine. 

Dealer serviced the MT-03 to inspect everything for safety checks & clean & lubricate & adjust the chain to spec at ~716 mile ODO

Fuel Economy 

MT-03 achieves ~85 MPG at DOT legal speeds lightly hypermiling, a collection of techniques to maximize fuel economy & lower emissions that I learned about from some related YouTube videos by Wayne Gerdes & others & I also hypermile in our 2005 & 2010 Toyota Prii / & when riding the 13 Honda PCX150 // in all cases I can boost fuel economy 20-40% verse normal style operation with hypermiling prediction smooth steady kinetic energy maintain techniques where I try to keep my inertia to avoid wasting fuel having to accelerate again. Under spirited full acceleration & fast riding more like 58 MPG & worse case like 45 MPG

R3 Optimized Engine 

Yamaha tuned the 321cc motor of the MT03 in the extensively race optimized R3 sport bike for years. More than 9 years of the same engine block & cylinder head with many design optimizations & revisions to a more refined fuel injected & liquid cooled standard close packed twin gasoline fueled piston engine with port fuel injection & complete emissions control system of catalytic convert, EGR, crank case fumes into intake to burn as fuel vapor system, 5 wire O2 to engine control computer or ECU. Think clean burning car technology in a fuel efficient motorcycle with about 42 HP & 22 lb-ft of torque that weights about 420 lbs with all fluids filled. I weigh about 165lbs & with gear about 185-200 depending on if I am wearing a backpack with lunch in reusable containers with a 40z water bottle or not. 

Rides Comfortable 

I think the MT-O3 has great ergonomics with a low seat high & sculpted tank that allows people shorter than 6 ft 2 inch to clamp the gas tank with their inner thighs to stabilize their torso which gives a confidence inspiring body grip control of the motorcycle. Seat seems comfortable enough & the setup can accommodate 2 up riding with a partner or spouse or friend riding in the rear seat position. Ergonomics are great with a bar rake angle & seating position thats more like a dirt bike or touring bike with less pressure on your wrists, elbows & shoulders. 

Looks Cool

Styling exceptionally cool looking for an entry bike at such an affordable price ~$6000 USD 2020 new out the door with tax & license from i90 Motorsports in Issaquah, WA, USA. We traded in our extensively DIY custom tuned 2019 Honda GROM 125 for $2700 of purchase credit. 

Sounds Great

Riding the MT-03 a real pleasure if you enjoy tasteful levels of engine sounds & exhaust noises without being loud like full loop racing exhaust setup like the one I installed on our former Honda GROM SF. Wind noise will damage your hearing, so wear hearing protection plugs in your ears & a full helmet to protect your face & brain. 

Dash Info 

Information display a crips B&W LCD high contrast display that makes it easy to see your speed, fuel economy, remaining fuel level, time of day, approximation of engine temperature, odometer & other check lights & display features related to the machines operation states, possible errors or glitches & warning displays + a really cool shift indicator that tells you what gear your in which helps you compute up & down shift points & rev matching with the tachometer display of engine RPM, nice given that its equipped with a precisely shifting sequential 6 speed transmission where you click down with you left foot to select first gear, after first squeezing your left hand clutch open for gear selection. Half way with a notch click lifting up the left foot leaver gives you N neutral with a green indicator on the display, half a click more up gets 2nd gear & further up clicking goes 3rd then 4th then 5th then 6th - the longest gear only useful for steady state causing at higher speeds, always down shift before accelerating from a long gear to get better useful & safer acceleration for getting on a freeway or highway or interstate on ramp when faster acceleration both fun & sounds great while improving safety since other people will hear you riding nearby! 

Easy to Love MT-03

I find it hard to find anything to dislike! Hard to say if it will be reliable, but so far its seems great! I love the way it feels, fits & rides. It sounds great & the dash is cool & information rich with useful data on the fly. Range & economy good & its clean burning with emissions controls & runs on readily available pump gas though I fuel it with additive enhanced O2, PEA + Stabil added since it sits without being ridden often! 

Other People say the MT03 not fast enough or does not make enough power earlier like its previous design iteration based on a large single cylinder engine, thumper that made lots of early torque. The MT-03 motor a rev happy racer style that performs much better in the higher RPM range // even cruising does better at 4-5k RPM not 2-3 k RPM, do not lug the motor low as its actually less fuel efficient down there, something you can find on the dash with one of the odometer section display options that gives out real time dynamic economy data // & tells you your average fuel economy & other information, use the mode buttons to scroll through the functions. 

Other people say the MT-03 has poor ergonomics, but they are big tall men in excess of 6 ft 2in tall & need a larger bike to feel a good fit, & thats not most people. Most people in the world are shorter, not really tall, so more people will be able to make good use of an MT-03 with a safe good fit on its frame. I think the comfortable low stress seating position much more ergonomic than my previous sport bikes & while I have never rode a cruiser bike, the MT03 seating seems like a natural good balance between casual & sport seating, more like a dirt bike.

Added a front wind screen via Amazon part for $38, a small clear polycarbonate unit with metal brackets & interesting grommet bolts that were fun to encounter for the first time. I have never added a windscreen to any other vehicle. This helps reduce wind blast at freeway speeds near or above 60 MPH -- 100 km/h 

Like children, motorcycles are not for everyone, but I regularly meet small women who commute to work year round on motorcycles. Some people are thrill seekers & theres an element of this in my otherwise serious & somewhat nerdy personality. I love computers & the internet & use both much more than my motorcycle & perhaps thats why I am able to write this blog // safe & upright & free from major injuries, thankfully! Praise be to God!