OFF-ROAD TEST: 2025 YAMAHA WR450F

[MotoFactory]

For the last few years, Yamaha has been teasing us. We got to see pictures of the WR450F and WR250F, but nothing more. We couldn’t even go to a local Yamaha dealer and sit on one. Why? Because Yamaha doesn’t sell them where we are in California. It turns out that those bikes are imported as true off-road vehicles complete with federal compliance for emissions and noise. California, unfortunately, has additional requirements that aren’t on the federal checklist, including a non-permeable fuel tank and a charcoal canister. Yamaha ran the profit-loss analysis and discovered that the cost of complying with those demands outweighed the projected revenue from California sales. So, we get to look but not touch.

To compound our frustration, the WR450F was a new bike for 2024. It got the engine and chassis makeover that the YZ450F motocross bike got in 2023. Enough was enough. We decided to leave California, pick up a test bike at Yamaha’s national headquarters in Marietta, Georgia, and take it to Indiana to test. Long-time test rider Justin Jones spearheaded the project and even raced the bike in the Mid-South Cross-Country series. We love it when a plan comes together!

THE WR MAKEOVER

The WR450F trail bike has always had a blood kinship with the YZ450F motocross bike. It’s simply a quieter, softer and more trail-worthy version. When the YZ gets updates, usually the WR gets them a year later, which is exactly what happened here. The YZ’s 2023 makeover was far more involved than a typical yearly update. The frame was new, the motor was mostly new and, more than anything else, the bike’s personality was new. For years, 450 Yamahas had been clunky straight-line bikes, but the new one became lighter, more agile, more responsive and more aggressive.

The fuel capacity is 2.0 gallons versus 1.6 on the YZ450F. Quick pit stops are a little tricky, because the fuel filler is hidden under the front of the seat.

All those mechanical changes were cut and pasted to the WR last year, but with an off-road slant. First and foremost, the WR450F has a completely different power delivery. In absolutely stock form, the bike is very, very bottled up. Yamaha went overboard in its efforts to meet the federal off-road vehicle requirements. It comes with a stop that doesn’t allow full throttle. It also has an inner baffle in the muffler that Yamaha engineers affectionately call the “pea-shooter.” The mapping is completely different and fixed at the EPA-approved setting. Interestingly, the bike comes with a connectivity unit that allows the use of the Yamaha Power Tuner smartphone app. Once you connect with the bike’s CPU, however, it doesn’t offer the same access as given to a YZ. You can alter traction control, but the fuel mixture and spark advance are off limits. Other features, such as a maintenance log and the suspension setup guide, are enabled. There’s an additional screen that can act as a speedometer and tachometer if you mount your phone on the handlebar.

Other off-road features include a wide-ratio five-speed gearbox, softer settings for the KYB suspension, a radiator fan, a headlight, a taillight, 2 gallons of fuel capacity, an 18-inch rear wheel and an odometer. One additional feature that we especially like is the electrical power output. The WR produces 140 watts of power, which is almost twice as much as the YZ450F. That’s crucial if you want to do any night riding. Several years ago we ran the WR in the 24 hours of Glen Helen with great success. Subsequently, we tried it on a YZ and our accessory headlight ran the battery dry immediately after the sun went down.

THE COMPETITION KIT

Yamaha probably knows that almost no one rides the WR in box-stock condition. The throttle stop and the inner baffle don’t strike us as measures that are to be taken seriously. These have been part of the WR puzzle for over 20 years. Replacing the throttle stop with the part from the YZ is essential. You can run the bike with the pea-shooter in place if you plan on riding in areas that are highly noise sensitive. As you might expect, it runs much better with that removed, and it’s really not that loud—pretty much the same as a KTM 450XC-W and just a touch louder than a Honda CRF450X.

We installed the WR competition kit, which permits map alteration through the use of the Yamaha Power Tuner smartphone app.

For this test we went a step further. Yamaha offers a competition kit for the WR, which includes the YZ throttle stop as well as a completely different ECU. It sells for $200 and comes with the mapping from the YZ450FX closed-course competition bike. It is, in fact, the very ECU that comes on the YZ450FX. That bike is much more closely related to the motocross version and is technically classified as a closed-course competition bike. By installing this, the bike is no longer an off-road bike as defined by federal regulations, although we don’t know of any consequences that the end user might face. It already is ineligible for a California green sticker, which is the only state that might care one way or the other.

The competition kit ECU opens up all the mapping capabilities offered by the Yamaha Power Tuner smartphone app. We still love that system, but it seems we almost always struggle to make it work properly on the first attempt. In this case, we finally discovered that you had to tell the app that you were programming a YZ450FX in order to get the full range of mapping capabilities. Once you lied to it, everything worked properly.

The bike comes with a handlebar-mounted map switch that lets you choose between two maps. There is no dedicated switch for traction control; you can only access that function with your smartphone. We eventually settled on having the same settings for map one and map two with the exception of installing traction control on map two. That way we could use the map switch to engage or disengage that feature on the fly. The only other modifications we made were to install handguards and a disc guard. If we were to modify the exhaust system or run race gas, we would have to go deeper into the remapping options.

INDIANA MUD

Justin raced the bike in the first round of the Mid-South Cross-Country series before we arrived to test the bike for ourselves. He won the Vet A class and fell in love with the bike. Even though the mapping is the same as that of the YZ450FX, the power delivery is much smoother. That’s excellent in the muddy conditions of a Midwestern spring. At the very bottom, the power delivery is a little jerky, but once you get the revs out of the basement, the WR has a very linear progression—much more controllable than that of a typical 450 race bike. In the middle, it gradually catches up but never has a nasty hit. Peak power is just a little bit softer than a YZ’s, but it’s still more than you need or want in the woods.

The five-speed gearbox has a very low first gear. Normally, a 450 race with a low first gear is a recipe for disaster. You get too much power too quickly. In this case, Yamaha has developed gear-by-gear mapping, so the power delivery is actually more manageable in the lower gears. Even so, you find yourself in second gear most of the time. There is a slight risk of stalling when the trail gets really tight, and in those situations it’s good to have a lower gear for good measure.

 

Yamaha still uses the reverse head that came back in 2009. Everything else has changed since then. Among other things, the WR450F comes with a radiator fan as standard equipment.

In the suspension department, the WR’s stock settings were firmer than we expected. When we last tested a WR a few years back, it was extremely soft. That was good for first gear, but as soon as you up-shifted, you had to brace for impact. Today’s version seems to be set up with hard, fast riding in mind. The fork might even be a bit harsh on roots and rocks. But, if you take away compression damping, it gets too much dive. We think it could be solved without re-valving, perhaps with an easy change in oil level. Justin will report back with any solutions.

THE SUPERCROSS FACTOR

It might sound odd, but Supercross influence has made the WR into a better trail bike. With its new geometry, the bike is far more agile than the WRs we remember. The steering is more responsive, and overall the bike feels much lighter. In outdoor motocross, our MX testers complained that the YZ was a little hyperactive. On the trail, we never got that feeling from the WR. It always tracked straight through the worst that Indiana had to offer. We also like the fact that the riding position is more spread out. The seat/handlebar/footpeg relationship is roomy and comfortable. That comes with a taller seat height, which might present a problem for shorter riders. Justin is 6-foot-4 and loved it.

There are three 450s in the Yamaha line-up that all overlap. The YZ450F is the motocrosser, the YZ450FX is the cross-country racer, and the WR450F is the trail bike. After testing them all, we’ve come to the conclusion that the WR is the golden child. It comes disguised as a family trail bike. You could ride it in the backyard and your neighbors would never know. But, underneath that, it has an alter ego that can go racing and win at the highest level. It could also be dressed up as a dual-sport if you live in a state that allows such things. It is a rare bike that can truly do it all—as long as you don’t do it in California.

The post OFF-ROAD TEST: 2025 YAMAHA WR450F appeared first on Dirt Bike Magazine.

Просмотреть полный текст статьи