The T7 is the first bike for which I made a mass-produced skid plate.
We can say that “GpMucci” as a company exists thanks to the THOR skid plate for this fantastic motorbike, of which I am a happy owner.
Over the years I have published several videos on the T7 and my skid plate, by clicking the image here you can see the video in which I talk about the latest version of Thor.
At the bottom of the page the products for the Yamaha Tenere 700 are listed.
HOW THE STORY BEGAN
Some time ago two friends of mine, brothers Paolo and Stefano Caprioni of the homonymous Team Kapriony, told me that they were thinking of creating a racing bike using the Yamaha Ténéré 700 as a basis to race the famous Africa Eco Race rally, the rally running on the tracks of the old Paris Dakar.
Large displacement motorcycles are also allowed in this race, while in the Dakar the limit is 450.
I started studying the T7 with the Caprioni brothers, and trying to make a little bit of modifications to prepare it for the race. They had already worked on the suspension and I worked hard to change the riding position in the saddle, release the seat position so that the rider could move forward more and freely, both in sitting and standing driving mode and to remove all the weight possible.
In these bikes you have to foresee quite long distances on rough terrain even with the bike traveling at low speeds, therefore with high consumption.
I therefore worked to position the weights of the 30 liters of petrol as low as possible to be able to shift the center of gravity trying to rebalance the mass of the engine which on this bike is placed rather high.
This whole adventure happened in the coronavirus era, so I closed myself in the workshop, working day and night to lower the weight of the bike and create something new.
So it was working on the T7, disassembling and reassembling it a hundred times, I began to appreciate its constructive simplicity and different details that made me fall in love with this project.
When another rally driver friend asked me to think of a large skid plate that one day could accommodate a tool compartment and a supply of water, I worked with paper and pencil to create something that was not only extremely functional but that also improve the aesthetics of the bike instead of defacing it.
And I think I succeeded.