i love it! a new "factory team-style" look for the swingarm. do these marketing types just not understand who buys these products??:silly:
when, when, when are yamaha and kawi going to realize that the damn factory-cool-team-wannabe finsh on the swingarms GETS SCRATCHED IMMEDIATELY AND LOOKS LIKE ASS!! maybe if their product development team actually went to the races they would see that all the factory mechanics have removed the paint.
Will,
When you say you have clean swingarms, what do you mean?
Mine is ground meat!
How do you keep them clean or factory looking?
I really don't want to put some full size decal on it. I always thought those looked garish.
Bill
well, all the factory yamaha's i've seen had the paint stripped from the swingarms. in fact, early on - with henry's bike - it looked like they were even damascening them, which was veeerrry sano. i imagaine sfo knows, but for the rest of youse, damascening is where they create the little circular swirls so the the surface of the metal looks like fish scales. it's a hot rod thing.
anyhow, the best way i have found to strip 'em is to take the swingarm off and bead blast using medium glass beads. first, i remove all the attachments, then i stuff wads of paper shop towels into the pivot bearings. next, i use electrical tape to cover the ends of the pivots. if you do this right, it will save you having to wash the bearings out afterwards. however, if you get done and you feel grit in the works, you have no choice. anyway, the final step after all the paint is gone is to lightly wet sand the arms with 300 grit sandpaper. a scotch wheel can be used in the tight areas, but i prefer the "linear" brushed look everywhere else. the whole job takes me about 2 hours before the swingarm is ready to go back on.
There is only $300 difference between the 450 and 426. If Yamaha comes out with a new and improved YZ450F, do you really think it will keep the $5,999 MSRP that the 426 has? I doubt it....it will most likely be over $6k, just like the Honda.
I certainly wouldn't wait around a whole year for a bike that may not even be made, just to save a couple hundred bucks.
The money problem with the new Honda is not the MSRP price but the actual dealer price. First you have MSRP ($6299) then you have the dealer's shipping and building fee ($150-250) and then you have the tax and license on top of that ($600-800). Now you have an out the door price of $7100-7400). You can usually deal with the salesman and get him to knock off the shipping fee and come down to a reasonable price, but with the 450f being in high demand the dealers will not negotiate. I talked to my local shop and he said that he wouldn't make any deals on the bike, and that with the demand he was going to sell all his at full boat. So it will take extra $$$ to get a new CRF450.
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