all right good day everybody two wheeled friends around the world zach hortz here with revzilla and welcome to another episode of daily rider our guest today is exciting if for no other reason then it might do pretty well on the leaderboard at the end of this episode that is yamaha's updated for 2021 mt-07 so that is a mid-sized parallel twin with some pretty good punch some new technology a new dash new ergonomics all for an msrp of 7 700 united states dollars i think this is going to be a fun one everybody so let's get to it all right okey dokey everybody we've got nice temperate weather here sunny day we got a full tank of gas we got a full gopro battery so let's get to it on this 2021 mt-07 we'll start with the engine this is a 689 cc parallel twin with a 270 crank for this year it has some updates to the air intake to the valve seats some stuff in the transmission to reduce drive line lash they claim uh yamaha claims but uh we'll talk about that a little bit later maybe most significant is the exhaust so this is the catalytic converter um that they moved up in the exhaust closer to the headers where it's hotter which is said to be good front brake rotors have gone up 298's now same as the mt-09 so that's a sort of improvement larger brake rotors are good of course and yeah all led lighting new styling as everybody is very eager to comment about on social media we'll talk about the styling and stuff a little bit more later but basically same package as before just with some some tweaks some slight improvements and uh yeah new dash so i guess we look at the new dash right now why not and actually while we do that this is interesting the key is in front of the dash so instead of having the key here in the dash they put the dash real low and close to the gas cap and they put the key in front which is streamlined um but a little a little odd uh and of course you'll notice when i'm riding the dash is pretty far down in my my field of vision anyway let's fire it up there it is chugga chugga chugga chugga chugga chugga very eager and fun engine so let's do it let's get this daily rider on the daily ride so as usual do specs right off the bat before they fall out of my head um we have a 406 pound wet weight that's what a full 3.7 gallons of gas in the tank um and interestingly that is exactly what yamaha claims i believe um 406 pounds so respect to the tuning fork brand for uh hitting the wet weight uh the claimed weight right on the head i always appreciate it when brands are honest about how much the bikes weigh um 31.7 inch seat height and you can see i got a pretty pretty good bend in my leg i'm six foot two and it is extremely approachable um swing a leg over uh 31.7 inch height isn't crazy low but um but yeah the bike feels small and it's fairly narrow in the middle which is nice it's got horsepower in the mid 70s yamaha doesn't have any actual claimed uh brake horsepower figures but you know 7075 it's approximately the same as it was in the previous generation and i believe the torque figure is around 50 foot-pounds uh which is pretty good for an engine this size very very willing oh geez oh yellow light anyway spunky engine uh plenty of get up and go as we will discover uh and yeah fairly light package overall just just more than 400 pounds so all right green light and we can let this sucker wrap up we're not gonna let it rip too much in case our fella pulls in front of us and now on to ergonomics i did promise you there are some ergonomic adjustments for 2021 and um it's mostly to do with the handlebar which is about an inch and a quarter wider and about a half inch taller than it was it also got a little bit closer to the cockpit as well which i never really felt like it needed the previous mt07 but i gotta say riding this one i feel like the there goes are unquestionably reasonable the only complaint i have at um more than six feet tall is the legroom is a little tight uh but that's not something i feel particularly compelled to complain about um first of all it's not uncomfortable even riding it all day and second of all you know it's uh it's a it's a small bike so it's gonna be kinda small and that's okay otherwise and in general the uh the ergos are quite good it's very just upright sort of a classic um you know sporty commuter naked setup very uh relaxed no weight on your hands unlike that guy on the sport bike whose wrist is probably hurt right now uh yeah it's just very very reasonable and um but it's it's still got a bit of a bit of sport to it you know you lean forward toward the handlebar just a little bit and the pegs are high enough that they don't drag when you um rip through some uh actual you know canyon roads or mountain roads or or whatever your pleasure is and that's probably why the leg room isn't uh great for some of my size because the pegs are up high enough to be sporty but the seat is low enough that it's approachable for riders of many statures and that's just fine in my book all right we can do a little roll-on test 55 miles an hour in sixth gear punch it look at that going 70 in no time really good really good punch like i said this engine is very eager just uh yeah has really great energy about it and that 270 crank means it's got kind of bc sound as opposed to a 180 crank like the battle toad or uh yeah any other kawasaki versus or yamaha mt03 made more to the point the comfort on the freeway is pretty good i think uh no wind protection obviously i find 6570 this uh this we're going 65 is really just easy to take easy to live with it's perfectly comfortable if you want to go 80 or even 75 i think it starts to get a little more stressful on your on your body just holding on into the wind you can slide back and forth on the seat pretty well if you slide back you raise yourself up a little bit which is not necessarily great for staying out of the wind but you're in the wind no matter how you slice it on this bike so i appreciate that the seat is flat enough that you can move around and uh aside from the leg room this is a very comfortable machine even for someone who's pretty tall man that headwind is serious even at 65 miles an hour getting knocked around a little bit here but speaking of 65 miles an hour um if this is the average speed that you're going to hold on on the open road such as this i think you'll find your gas mileage will be pretty darn good yamaha claims 58 mpg i think and i did not get uh mileage that good ever but i did get 50 one tank was 56 another one was in the low 50s i think so it'll depend a lot on your average speed but um but yeah in general it's a pretty efficient engine especially if you're riding around the city or you're you're on sort of two lane roads you're not revenant particularly high and uh 3.7 gallon tank means uh you know theoretically 200 mile range i think you're more likely to fill up after 130 or 150 at best is my my guess there but um yeah a decent range for what it is no one's expecting this bike to be able to go 250 miles on a tank so i think it delivers just fine last thing i'll say about freeway speeds as we slow down from freeway speeds is the gearing which if you know anything about me you know that i love to suggest gearing bikes up because they're you're too short and this one this one's a perfect example of that i'm in sixth gear and we're going 45 miles an hour pulling 3000 rpm 30 200 rpm something like that um and the engine is great at this i think it's just sort of chugs along it's perfectly happy and i wouldn't be sad if it was pulling realistically 4000 rpm yeah so 55 miles an hour 4 000 rpm if it was pulling that kind of rpm at 70 that's i think that would make sense to me it's got good good punch decent enough roll on power uh you get better mileage and as we will experiment with um first year for me is almost too low too short but that's uh also a personal opinion thing and this bike is necessarily geared for someone such as myself i don't think as we get to the place where we normally talk about mirrors i remember that was another one of the updates the mirrors the mirrors are uh taller and wider set i think these are mt09 mirrors basically if memory serves they took the the mirrors from the mt09 and applied them here as well as the handlebar getting a little bit wider uh and these mirrors are quite good i gotta say give them a give them a grade a for the mirrors i don't remember the previous generation mirrors being bad but um all i can say is that these ones are pretty good and that is another update for 2021 glad i remembered into the neighborhood and zach's stop sign challenge i feel like i feel like the m207 could do pretty well here it's uh nicely balanced ah that wasn't super confidence inspiring but it does have nice nice balance it's a short wheelbase it's a light bike to begin with and it feels light it's light to the touch it doesn't um it carries its weight pretty well uh the top of the tank is fairly low they you know they kept the mass fairly central so yeah it's a very agreeable bike at low speed in my opinion and i really don't have any excuse for not nailing this photo stop right here there we go so doable so doable yes very good very good indeed another thing i like about the mt07 at low speed is the clutch cable operating clutch nice direct feel very light lever pull predictable easy to use basic absolutely nothing wrong with it the throttle response on the other hand not great yamaha is still struggling with this um man i'm just getting by the skin of my teeth on these footless stops here i don't know what is exactly that um yamaha struggles with the fueling but it's not it's still just a little bit jerky and one of the reasons yes one of the reasons that i find it's so frustrating is that other bikes like i rode um the triumph trident back to back with this bike uh which i'll talk about a little more later uh and that bike's fueling is just perfect it's so good it's so good and i don't maybe maybe it's it's some it's just something they figured out the yamaha can't figure out but the on off throttle on the spikes is similar to most mt versions it just is a little bit herky-jerky but aside from that it's an awfully agreeable bike around town it looks like we might even have time to talk about the dash at this stop light um so here it is the new dash uh instead of having buttons on the dash um you control it with this guy over here um so when you go toggle up trip two if you hold it down uh you can reset it which i'm not gonna do um average fuel coolant temp air temp odometer that's basically it nothing super special um but fuel gauge nice and big clock nice and big gear position indicator nice and big tack very easy to read speed right in the middle it's simple in a way that is uh very pleasing to use and it's nice and crisp um not too much glare my only complaint is that i wish i could see two of these parameters at the same time so you know trip one and average fuel economy or air temperature like i'd love to be able to see air temperature and what my trip meter is at the same time but i can't do that you know if you start complaining about stuff like that you know that functionally it's pretty good i think all right finally green light [Music] just a little power wheelie in second gear got a 7 500 bike no big deal all right this is the last stop sign that i count as part of the neighborhood one i think if we get this one yeah nice clean one that's the perfect score technically as i said a couple of those were pretty ugly uh in the neighborhood but technically a perfect score for the mt07 not bad not bad at all little guy all right lovers lane time to talk about passenger accommodations and uh notes from miss k-dog the the stig of passenger accommodations here on daily rider k-dog's report is that the passenger accommodations are surprisingly good on the mt07 um plenty of room back there the the cushion's not super comfortable but there's also more leg room than she was expecting uh surprise thumbs up for the passenger accommodations even if they're not you know full on luxury comfortable as you would get on a sport tour or something like that so i don't know hopefully that helps you and the tip of the cap decay dog as always we're dipping into our trusty road section here we're behind a little bit of traffic but um enough room to lean on the tires just a little bit and remind me what it's like to actually ride the mt07 on twisty road there have been a lot of question on social media rightly so about the suspension of the mt07 did they fix it is it better is it is it excellent now um the short answer is no they didn't really fix it it's not way better it's still soft and um just like a little bit under damped and kind of budget for lack of a better term but one thing that i want to make very clear is that you don't need olin's moto gp suspension to have fun on a twisty road i rode this bike around through mountain roads along the freeway um through twisty road i dragged my toe sliders and you know whipped through corners and had fun and there were certain situations where it it is obviously not premium suspension but it didn't really spoil the ride for me it's not i don't think i don't want people to think just because the suspension isn't great that it's the first thing you need to do and oh you got to spend two thousand dollars on your mt07 suspension um like if you want to go to your first track day or something like that you don't if you're a sort of beginner intermediate rider you're gonna find that it's fine uh and you should endeavor to make it better at some point or you know yamaha should first of all but if you want a bike with premium suspension then this isn't it but it is a really fun motorcycle on a twisty road even if the suspension action is uh arguably the worst part of the bike now here we go third gear 45 miles an hour look at it go popping woolies it's just so much fun i'm like don't want to do huge willys all the time always because it feels like that's important with uh disaster but it's just such an agreeable fun engine it's so good it's so energetic you know what it is it might be better than the mt09 engine i know i know i'm probably not the first person to say it but it feels a little bit blasphemous still but it's so good it's just so punchy and interested in what you're doing and the mt-09 triple is a terrific engine it makes a sweet noise it's got lots of power it's it's it's got great energy as well but just the the fueling isn't quite as as nice i don't think and it doesn't i don't know it's just um it's a little more raw in a way that i really appreciate a son of a yellow light it's a little more raw in a way that i really appreciate about the mt07 it just it it always aside from the suspension um action it just always makes me feel like a better rider it's just it's so good it's very good i was cursing the red light but that just means we get to accelerate again [Music] just pumping power wheelies away from stop lights i mean like the m209 does that too but like you don't even you don't need that you don't even need a hundred horsepower to do that just one of these guys so energetic on the topic of the engine i did get one question i thought was particularly interesting where the fella asked uh you know this this bike has such a reputation for being a hooligan bike but is it still good to ride around town like is it is it hard to ride politely kind of that was his basic question i think and no that's one of the cool things about this bike that i think makes it so lovable what the mother yellow lights anyway one of the things that makes this bike so good is that it's very polite and easy to ride it reminds me of um of a ktm super duke in so much as it's polite and gentle and friendly and just putt around town if that's what you want to do but if you want to like if you want to have fun then pop the clutch twist the grip and it'll you know sort of spark to life i doesn't spark to life quite the way a ktm super duke does i'll admit that uh but it's still just really fun in a way that is difficult to describe except that it's great and uh and i appreciate that about it that it can be polite or a little bit of a hooligan and we got a red light so we're gonna talk about breaks i just decided since we haven't done that at all um didn't get the abs to engage just then i the brakes are not as much better as i wanted them to be considering the bigger rotors i thought that was gonna help they're still just a little spongy um there's plenty of power you can engage abs and one thing i do like about the braking performance of this bike is when you're uh if you if you're delicate in your very aggressive braking you can pick the back wheel up like it'll let you endo a little bit before the abs kicks in it's not ultra ultra conservative which i think yeah i appreciate um for a sort of aspirational performance bike like this is i do wish the brakes were a little sharper but i find myself i don't know have a little bit of trouble complaining about it considering it's uh very affordable and for some reason this just popped into my head i did have a question about the xsr 700 and someone said dash i get an xsr 700 or should i get this i've always appreciated the uh the ergonomics on the mt07 more than the xsr the xsr has kind of a back swept bar that i didn't really like it's been a minute since i rode one but i would just go mt i do appreciate the way the xsr looks and i appreciate that some people just think it looks much much better and that's fair um so to that point i did have a friend who bought an xsr700 and he just replaced the handlebar put on and i think an mto9 handlebar and uh was very happy with it so something to think about i would go mt but keep in mind you can adjust the things that i don't like about it okie dokie on to the dirt section with mt07 and uh sort of as you'd expect tires don't like it but the suspension's fine nice kind of wide handlebar wider for 2021 as we learned um yeah and uh no tc so you can get swayze crap that's a little more traction than i thought um yeah so now we'll hit some jumps because that's what we do we'll see how this suspension that everyone hates so much does over the jumps i'm going second gear over the first jump not too bad i'm not gonna do the big one though well i'll save that for ten or eight seven hundreds and the like and if you wanna trundle down a dirt road i think you'll be just fine on the m27 even handled the jump a little bit better than maybe we would have expected i think now time to find out how to wheelie spoiler alert it does unbelievable wheelies balance point hanging out at the balance point i feel like i could go forever if the road was straight oh my god it's so good it's almost like someone said hey yamaha give me a 7 700 motorcycle with less than 75 horsepower that will do the best wheelies in the world and yamaha said here's our best effort i'm remembering actually that i mentioned the uh different cut of the transmission gears and how that reduced driveline lash let's try one more back in here not really not really um one more little wheelie though just for the heck of it um and uh yeah you know if yamaha didn't say anything to me about fixing driveline lash by changing the cut of the gears in the transmission i wouldn't have noticed it it's not great i mean it's you know not improved in a way that i think is super notable still a little bit of that herky-jerky throttle response and a little bit of driveline lash um incidentally i do think the new mt-09 is quite a bit better all right u-turn test people here we go i have a feeling mto7 is going to do pretty well let me see here so we get uh we're going to stop as close as we can to a stop without putting our foot down crank the bar to the left yeah yeah within two parking spaces so average if not a little bit better and one more little willy because i can't help myself and this bike can't help itself to be honest there we go daily ride on yamaha's ever lovable mt-07 what a little machine this sounds great doesn't it someone said if it asked if it still sounds like a lawnmower uh uh sure if your lawnmower sounds burly and if you've ever had an mt07 with a uh pipe on it i think it sounds delicious it's just uh excellent yeah there you do as is tradition here we go jumping into instagram questions about the mt07 got a few pretty good ones here in my opinion first one is from adventure mikael who asks having ridden then mto3 having ridden the mt3 maybe is this a natural progression or a steep jump good question because i think it's a little bit of both it is a natural progression obviously it's the next one up in the lineup it's not a whole lot more expensive it's not a whole lot more powerful um but it is a you know it's it's a sizable jump in energy i would say an mt03 is very docile this has a little bit of a wild side that being said um i can't help but recommend this bike especially if you like the mt03 um i just think it's a i think it's a great platform it's well executed and super fun to ride so good luck mikhail next question 4e6 asks how do you think it would fare against the awesome triumph trident objection as always leading the witness i did say i was going to talk about um the triumph trident i did ride them back to back the very quick notes um the wheelbase is approximately the same i believe the swing arm on the triumph trident is sort of noticeably longer and that means it's just sort of like less uh i don't know it wants to drive forward rather than wheelie um so it's just like a little bit less hooligan a little bit a little bit more calm other things of note the fueling throttle response on the trident is as close to perfect as any motorcycle i've ever ridden um it is just excellent which is a huge step up from this which is far from excellent the brakes on the trident are much better than the mt07 this feels a little bit more conventional to me sort of sprightly and nimble the the trident is light enough it's it's not too bad it weighs another 20 or 25 pounds more than this bike but still not too heavy or anything and then the last thing that i should note about the trident is that it's very very narrow between uh the knees so on a trident when you sit on it like this and put your legs in toward the engine there's much more space here and for shorter riders it's going to feel like the seat height is lower quite a bit lower than the mt07 i believe based on feedback i got from a colleague who is shorter than i am next question from inland adv who asks at 510 i've i always felt a little cramped on my 2016 f-z07 did they improve um the ergonomics for the average to taller rider so yes they did the handlebar is moved as we talked about i think taller riders will be fine as long as you're okay with the legroom and if you're not maybe a taller seat would help but yeah hopefully that makes sense next question is from nasos alex would you like to see an sp version of it or is the standard one fine for everyday use i like the way this question is phrased because it's easy for me to say yes it is fine for everyday use we don't need an sp version in my opinion would an sp version be fun yeah for sure man let's put three thousand dollars worth of suspension on it and you know way better brakes uh so yeah that would be fun uh but just uh you know if you want to get this bike and then put a whole bunch of money into suspension and brakes you could just get a tornado 660 in my opinion that's basically the sp version of this bike much more power better brakes better suspension um more features so if that's what you want you can consider that hopefully that helps next question is from peaksretro who asks how does that tiny headlight perform i saved this question because i got a lot of people asking about this little led projector beam and saying like if the headlight's so tiny does it even light up the road it does uh it works it works fine it's not uh you know world-class uh headlight but it's totally totally adequate don't think that because it's got that scrunched up little face and a tiny little cyclops eye um that it is for some reason not good enough to ride at night or something it's it's just fine next question is from sassy crotch graham who asks is there really a place for this bike since the tracer 700 exists uh first of all yes i think so second of all the tracer 700 does not exist in the united states of america so uh for the us market anyway it is very relevant just a just a friendly reminder because sometimes people ask what about the tracer 700 um let me look at that one here sorry last question is from ridefastdie old who asks did you have fun like genuine fun and the answer that question as you can probably guess at this point is yes i did i had so much fun and that's one of the things about this bike that is really just so uh difficult to describe because you know the the the suspension is not great the brakes are you could be better um it is arguably not the most beautiful bike in the world even though i do kind of like the um the liquid charcoal um gloss paint with the with the hi-vis wheels i don't know i think they've got kind of a cool thing going with the mt aesthetic but the point is there's there are some things that you can pick at about this bike and uh and i sometimes get comments and say well how like why do you like it so much it's really it's just the engine and it's the dynamic of the way the bike rides it's so much fun it's really genuinely entertaining for for someone who is very very experienced and uh and yet it's quite good for someone who's who's relatively new to motorcycling it's basically the pixar movie of motorcycles you know good for kids good for adults um so yeah i i i just i can't emphasize enough how enjoyable it is to ride even if it's not perfect so hopefully that helps thank you as always for your instagram questions and now we're gonna run into revzilla west here and put this sucker on the dailyrider leaderboard stay with me all right everybody here we are into the shop and to the dailyrider leaderboard we've got yamaha's mt07 ready to rumble and we've got our leaderboard here friendly reminder of what's at the top and uh sort of on the podium there multistrada v4 still king um some mighty good bikes down the list there so where do we think the old uh mt07 falls huh oh let's start here so ducati street fighter v4s which one would you rather have mto7 or that street fighter pretty easy you said you'd rather have the street fighter right i think day to day the mt07 might be better you know it's more approachable it's a sort of like it's a little easier ride probably uh honda africa twin 1100 comfortable bike lots of options great on the highway like good bike great sport touring bike you can even take it on an off-road section a little bit if you want to but it's big i think that i think the mt07 has got it beat which brings us to yamaha tener a700 so is an mt07 better than a t7 i don't think so i think the t7's got a beat it's uh it's more capable you can take it off-road if you want to uh it's got some wind protection um it's better looking in my opinion you know it's more expensive so you know there's some there's some give there's some take but yeah i think the t7 has got to beat i think this is where it goes just under yamaha ten array 700 i don't think that it's better than its sibling if your inseam allows but above a street triple r what zack you're crazy your streets your ball are so much better huh maybe i mean it's faster it's got more options sleeker arguably better looking but getting to work mt07 is so much fun so much fun and it's got abs it's the only real safe feature i feel like it needs slick little bike pretty good finish so if you agree with those results put a comment below if you do not agree with those results put a comment below i appreciate you watching i hope you enjoyed the wheelies at least half as much as i did and i hope you learned something along the way see you next time everybody thanks for watching we're going to be at this traffic light forever somebody pull up behind me i need someone else to trigger the light yes this fellow aston martin is going to do us a favor very much appreciated aston alright finally green light