The Mighty Big Blue!

The magnificent Rockies!

YAMAHA built some of the first modern day four stroke dirt oriented bikes, beginning with the 70's off road play-bike, TT500 and followed shortly after by the street legal XT model.

For those of you old enough to remember and for those not... four cycle motorcycles ruled off road competition until the late 60's.  There were 4 stroke powered road racers, enduro machines and even trials bikes were powered by the big single or twin.  In their heyday, there were few Maico's, CZ's, Huskies and fewer Japanese bikes competing in Barstow to Vegas and like races.

Power wash... MacLean creek Trail Kananaskis country

However, by the mid sixties, two stroke machinery was gradually taking over in all off road competitions.  Similarly the very first Suzuki and Yamaha road racers, although small in displacement began to get the edge on pavement.  For awhile there was not a four cycle engined machine anywhere to be found on a dirt or paved road course especially in smaller categories.  Once two strokes became dominant, with their high power to weight ratio, agile handling light frames and reliable engines, it seemed the Universe was going to dominated by strokers.

Elbow river Bragg Creek AB

When Yamaha introduced the single overhead cam, two valve air cooled TT, the press loved it.  Here was a bike with it's indirect lineage to British singles, but modern and reliable.  The manual decompression lever and cam configured piston indicator, made starting less of an ankle breaking concern for the rider.

Somewhere on the Forestry Trunk Road AB

The TT proved to be a great off road playbike.  Soon after it seemed everyone had an off road or dual purpose four stroke in the line-up, some with several models in various displacements.

My kinda road!

On the Powder Face Trail, Rocky Mountains

The XT 600 sitting in my garage is now 25 years old.  That's quite a lot for a 'modern' trail bike and even though we in Canada only had the pleasure of the E-A model in 1990 while the USA and especially Europe saw them for many years after, this bike is still quite modern and in actual practice, works just fine.

The E model came factory equipped with an electric leg, seems people were losing interest in kick starting especially high compression four cycle engines.  The kick starter of the previous generations being deleted in the E model.

Indian Graves AB Rocky Mountains

Four days on the Forestry Trunk Road. 1400 kms

I've owned mine since the mid 90's.  In fact it was the second one I'd bought, the first ridden by then girlfriend Deb.  Our two bikes saw 7000km of Baja and the SW US, I trucked them to the east coast 10 years later where they once again covered lots of ground including the famous Cabot Trail.

As often happens, we died as a couple but the two XT's soldiered on.  I don't know if DJ still has hers but I can say without any qualms, mine is working as designed and has covered a great deal of time since I bought it in Calgary those many years ago.

Baja California Norte, near Picacho del Diablo 10, 154 feet

There have been times I've thought of trading her off for something more modern and newer like maybe a DR 650 which is similar in intent and a little more powerful and a wee bit smoother running, but that thought fades into mist whenever I ride the Big Blue for the first time each year.

Catavina boulder field Baja CA.

Getting new skins front and back, brakes, chain and sprockets last year.

The SOHC 4 valve, dual carb single still runs like a top, has never let me down or left me stranded and delivers astonishing fuel mileage (my fill the other day yielded 63 mpg Cdn) I can ride at 110 kph with the slight over gearing and yet have enough low end grunt to tackle a real live off road XC race course in the Rocky Mountains.

Old girl still looks great!

To top it off, my BB is still comfortable, still modern enough that people are surprised when I tell them its a 1990 model, and still has lots of mileage left under the tank.

A quiet PEI back clay road.  Perfect XT territory.

Unlike that girlfriend... I'll probably keep Blue forever!