Serow Index Page
Serow 1000 miles along the High Atlas Traverse
Serow ready for the High Atlas Traverse
Serow Mosko Moto Alpine R60 bags
Serow Filter, pegs, shock
Serow Tubeless rear tyre mounting trick

I was lucky enough to find an injected 250 Serow via a friend’s friend who’s selling up and heading RTW.
My Serow (bike #67) followed a false start with a Yam TW225 (right) built up by another mate (all these mates!) with an unusual 6-speed Serow/TTR motor. Half the Serow’s price, the fat-tyred 2004 T-Dub was there for the taking and looked like a fun, low-saddled, low weight, low-tech hack. But working on this autumn’s recce of the High Atlas Traverse (more soon) led to a dark night of the fuel delivery systems.

The T-Dub’s carb could be re-jetted of course, but the plan was to reach elevations where atmospheric pressure drops by 80%, oxygen drops by 40%, horsepower drops by a third and only giant-winged Maghrebian condors can stay aloft.

Power loss with elevation is the same on any IC motor, but a carb’s rough running would require leaning out with fiddly experimentation with jet sizes, needle heights, etc which can’t be done until halfway up a mountainside. That and oiher carb problems is why I became an early efi convert. I well recall the old CV carb’d Tornados gasping at as little as 2300 metres in low gears. So out goes the 225 Dub. Want it? Let me know. Loads of new bits.

Serow
Never officially imported into the UK, bikes carrying the Serow name (a Japanese mountain goat) date back to 1980s 225cc and are said to hold a cult status.
My 2011 was imported from Japan a couple of years ago and appears to be an even rarer ‘Touring Serow‘ or SuperGoat version, featuring factory fitted front, side and tail racks, a mini windscreen and maybe other add ons. In fact, today’s air-cooled XT250 (above left) sold new in North America, many other emission-tolerant territories and rentable in Morocco looks pretty much the same bike.

While convenient, I’m not a great fan of frontal racks – loading low and centrally is best. But you don’t need to pile it on, as Lois P did on her first big trip (left), just like me. The chunky front rack is integrated into the windscreen mounts so it’ll have to stay and I dare say may get used as an amusing toilet roll dispenser.
On the back are some slim, 12mm tube side racks which will keep throwovers off the pipe and panels. They’re the sort of thing I’d have got made. I’m sure I’ll find a use for the alloy tail rack too. The previous owner also fitted heated grips (shorted out right now), Acerbis hard guards, a USB socket and some 1-inch risers which are nearly enough for me, but probably all the cables have to give.

Under the scales with a full 9.8 litre tank my Serow Touring clocks in at a surprisingly 139kg, 12 kilos more than the TW, and only 7kg less than the similarly equipped CRF 300L I ran in 2023. I guess the factory racking might add up to 6kg, and with a regular Serow claiming 133kg wet, that estimate adds up. I see the Serow engine only takes 1.2 litres of oil (a 300L takes 1.8), so with an air-cooled motor that will want changing fairly frequently.

Yamaha Serow vs Honda CRF300L

	Yamaha XT250 Serow (2011)	Honda CRF300L (2021)
Engine	SOHC 2v air-cooled efi 9.5:1	DOHC 4v watercooled efi 10.7:1
Power & Torque	19hp, 20Nm @6000rpm	27hp, 26Nm @6500rpm
Weight as bought	139kg	146kg
Wheels	18 TL / 21	18 / 21
Seat height as bought	830mm	894mm
Oil capacity	1200cc	1800cc
Stock tank volume	9.8L	7.8L
Gears	5	6

Picking up the Serow for the 100-mile ride home, I was straight away comforted by the gentle pitter-patter of the air-cooled motor. Having owned loads of similar machines, I suppose you might call that ‘ear memory‘. The gear change wasn’t great and adjusting the clutch didn’t change much, but it’s no worse than last year’s new 450MT. At the speeds I reached, barely 60mph, the screen seemed to work fine with no need for added spoilers.

Much of what makes the Serow a hit in Asia is of course the 830mm seat height, over two inches less than the Honda 300 which I eventually lowered with a Scmouba link. I’m sure the low seat makes the Yam feel lighter and more agile than its 139 kilos suggest. But before long age-old saddle soreness set in – again, no different than any other 250 traily I’ve run, and solvable with some padded pants, frequent stops or vans. That and the Garmin playing up made me rush for the finish line.

Factory tubeless rear wheel
Another one of the Serow’s big draws is the stock tubeless rear wheel. Yay! no messing about with mastic and glues this time round. It uses a single inboard flange, while the front remains tubed. As fronts rarely get punctures, and 21s are easy to remove (and building an MT 21″ tubeless wheel costs a packet), I’ll leave a tube up front and carry a puncture kit.

My SuperGoat came with half-worn Pirelli MT43 trials tyres which work great in the muddy UK I’m told, but are a bit the squared off edge knobs are a bit flexy on road bends, even at modest Serow speeds. Like the other Serow 250 owner I know who runs the same tyres, the rim loses air, settling down at 23psi (stock pressures are only 25psi).

I’m sure the rim looked clean enough when I took the tyre off the other week. Doing that, I found out the hard way that refitting that tall-sidewall Pirelli is tricky, until I worked out a new knack. It might just be the Pirelli making a poor seal – a shot of Slime fixes it for good, and actual flats too.
By chance, another chum had some unused Serow-sized Michelin Wilds going spare. They’ll do nicely for Morocco and might seal better than the MTs. If not I have Slime on the shelf.

I got through my first tankful, with fuel economy way better than I hoped: 36.2 kpl or over 100mpg and off my chart (left). Second fill, mostly nipping to town on chores, crashed to 34.5kpl or 97mpg, but I’ll take it. I had to really struggle to get those sorts of figures of the CRF300, and >100mpg only happened once. Even with the piddling 9.8 litre tank, that adds up to a potential 350 kilometre range which will do nicely.