A custom shop has turned a Yamaha MT-09 into an inline three-cylinder Tenere
An Australian custom bike shop has turned a previous generation Yamaha MT-09 into a Tenere rivalling rally bike.
When Yamaha looked to bolster its middleweight range with a CP3-powered tourer, it had two paths it could take. The first is what we have today, thanks to the Tracer, a high-tech sports tourer that has sold extremely well across Europe and beyond.
You may also like to read our 2024 Yamaha MT-09 review.
The second route Yamaha could have gone, was down the adventure touring path. Sadly, it didn’t explore that.
But if, like us, you’ve always wondered what a CP3-powered adventure bike would look like, wonder no more, as Purpose Built Moto (PBM) has now answered that question for us all.
The bike, called MT-09 Rally Raid, used the previous generation MT-09 as its starting point, meaning it's the older, shorter-stroke 847cc engine that is used. The frame, too, is from one of the older-spec bikes, which were built between 2014 and 2020, when the new 890cc platform took over.
Obviously the styling is one of the most noticeable changes, although there’s a heap of work beneath the skin of the bike that should make it quite a potent off-road weapon. The revised bike boasts around 180mm of ground clearance thanks to fully adjustable suspension, which, at the front, comes from a KTM 1190 Adventure. That hardware allowed PBM to slot in some adventure-ready rubber and a spoked 21 inch wheel. Sorting the rear suspension, though, was a bit more of a task for the team.
“To have the rear operating correctly, some heavy engineering was needed.” Said Tom Gilroy from PBM. “I had to design and fabricate some new shock linkages for the lower shock mount, as well as re-engineer the central frame brace and top shock mount to allow more travel in the suspension to actuate properly through its full range of motion.”
From there, the team created the bodywork, the obligatory rally-style tower, some high-level pipes and carbon silencers, and switched out the pegs and bars to get the ergonomics on point. The result is certainly eye-catching, and while some question marks remain around the use of smooth-revving inline three-cylinders in off-road adventure bikes (hence why Triumph ditched its 800 in favour of the T-Plane configuration) it’s good to finally get an idea of what a Yamaha T9 Tenere could have looked like.
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Simon (AKA Toad) has been working within the motorcycle industry for more than twelve years, and a member of the motorcyclist family since birth. Growing up around British-built single and twins, it was inevitable that a life on two wheels was on the cards, from a very early age!
