Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2024 i BIKE

£92,000 may seem a lot for a bike you can’t safely ride without possessing the arms of an orangutan, but as its creator Simon Whitelock once said: ‘It’s not made for speed or power – it’s made to get into The Guinness Book of Records.’ Which it duly did, as the land vehicle with the most cylinders. And yes, it is road legal. The bike, which Bonhams auctioned in April, was finished in 2003 but the seeds for its creation were sown in 1985 when Simon started going to the Kawasaki Triple Rally. ‘Every now and again someone would turn up on a hybrid Kawasaki triple that I liked the look of,’ he said in 2018. ‘So, in 1987 I built a four-cylinder triple. Then I built a triple triple…

Plenty of customisers have had a go at Yamaha’s Virago XV920 cruiser, but few have gone to the lengths of Vlado Dinga. After sketching his ideas, the Slovakian scanned the donor bike to create a virtual 3D model, got it designed in CAD and 3D-printed all the prototype components before making everything else himself. ‘There were basically three ways to go with the design,’ he says. ‘The first was to stay with the low-seater style and get close to the Harley community, but that wasn’t to my taste. The second direction was a bobber – closer, but not enough for me. And last was a café racer, which is the most common way to modify bikes nowadays. That was closest to my heart, but too generic. ‘So, I decided to…

» The best way to get the widest range of motorcycle sport on your telly or laptop is by subscribing to Discovery+. This gets you live MotoGP through TNT Sports (previously BT Sport), World Superbikes and British Superbikes through Eurosport, and all the support races of all three championships. Eurosport also cover loads more bike sport – world championship motocross, Endurance World Championship, speedway GPs and Premiership, and rally raids. And you don’t need to watch it live – it’s all available on demand. Without TNT Sports (ie, no MotoGP), Discovery+ costs £6.99 a month; with TNT it’s £30.99 a month. Both options are a rolling monthly contract so you can stop it as soon as the racing finishes. The price can also vary depending on what you’ve already got.…

Group test Just when you thought Yamaha’s Ténéré 700 couldn’t spread its appeal any wider, along comes a sixth variant – the Explore – to kick the doors open to yet another market. This new model slots somewhere in the middle of the Ténéré’s range, which currently works for a broad spectrum of buyers – from day-to-day pleasure riders to full-on cross-continental thrill seekers. Yamaha hope the Explore will grab the attention of serious tourers who do most of their riding on tarmac. Additionally, the Explore should appeal to those who find adventure bikes too tall and cumbersome, thanks to a seat height which is 15mm lower than that of the Ténéré 700. For Bruce, the reduction in seat height is a welcome update. ‘I find the standard Ténéré a…

Testing these four machines – all vastly different in size, price, and spec – highlights just how flippin’ good Royal Enfield’s new Himalayan 450 really is. In this company it’s 100bhp down on the BMW, almost 750cc in deficit to the Africa Twin, and on the back foot against the Ténéré in terms of lineage and popularity. And yet the RE has still impressed, massively, because it’s such a well thought out package. Possibly the most engaging A2 bike on the market, and of vast appeal regardless of whether you’re on a restricted licence. Go for the less expensive paint scheme and it’s a steal, too. Yamaha are sure to score another win with the Explore. The stock Ténéré 700 already sets the standard in the mid-sized adventure class, with…

» Yes, MVs past were often dogged by fuel leaks, battery woes and starter clutch issues. But as of now the Varese products are as alluring as ever, yet with robust quality, impeccable detailing and a comprehensive four-year warranty. No, MVs don’t come cheap, never have, but few bikes carry the cachet. The Bike pick of the extensive crop is the Dragster R. Stubby, sharp and powered by MV’s 798cc triple, spec is sky-high with cornering ABS, eight-level traction and posh suspension. And it’s marvellous to ride. It retails for around £15,500, which is around four grand more than an equivalent Triumph or Yamaha. However, (barely) used bikes are so tempting. Year-old, 300-mile Brutale 800 Rosso for under £11k? You have to.…

This year’s opening round was at Circuito de Navarra in Spain. There was an official test in the week preceding race weekend, and Franco lost the front of the Honda Fireblade at turn four – the bike did its best to escape the circuit, barrelling over the tyre wall. The only items we could salvage were the front forks, front wheel and swingarm. We lost testing time, but Franco still qualified in 16th and mixed it with established riders to get two solid finishes (17th race one, 16th race two). Oulton Park hosted the second round, and it was a frustrating weekend. We had three once-a-year events in one weekend, with problems with the electronics, the steering stem tightening under load (hard to spot in the pits), and the rebound…

Five bikes… [ NEW BIKES ] When Suzuki pulled out of MotoGP and the Endurance World Championship in 2022, the bigwigs muttered about going away to ‘invest in carbon neutrality’. We assumed they meant batteries or hydrogen, but it would seem not – as this green-tinged prototype GSX-R1000R will race at the Suzuka 8 Hours. It’s been tuned to run on special fuel produced by Elf that contains 40 percent bio-sourced material (the maximum currently at pumps is 10 percent bio-sourced ethanol), and the engine is lubricated by bio-sourced Motul oil – the brew is secret, but it’s some mix of vegetable oils. The mudguards are made from flax fibres (linseed stalks, apparently) and the fairings are made of recycled carbon. Even the Bridgestone slicks use a larger quantity of recycled…

SHAD SH38x expanding panniers WHAT IS IT? The slimmest hard side bags on the market that will accept a modular flip-up helmet, thanks to a (patent pending) telescopic expandable design that increases capacity by 40%. Can be used in conjunction with SHAD’s existing expanding top boxes to give up to 134 litres of storage. WHAT DO WE LIKE? Commute with them closed, and there’ll be space for waterproofs, a flask of sweet tea and corned beef butties while still letting you bust traffic. Friday evening, expand them by 70mm ready to swallow a weekend’s clobber. Neat. Retractable handles, one key operation, choice of finishes (these are the carbon ones). HOW MUCH AND WHERE FROM? £487.99, shad.co.uk Merlin Torsten WHAT IS IT? Leather jacket with CE AAA certification, featuring D3O armour…

Here comes the sun ‘Book the time off now, decide where to go later – the main thing is to go!’ Why go touring? » Astonishing riding, amazing roads, spectacular scenery, lovely climate, friendly locals… The trick is to book the time off now – you can decide where to go later. The main thing is to go! I’ve only got a long weekend. Where to go? » If you’re short of time, you don’t want to waste too much of it on motorways. So, if you’re anywhere north of Leicester, head though the Pennines to Scotland rather than wasting time schlepping across southern England and northern France. If you’re in the south (or like the idea of hitting the continent), start with the Ardennes in southern Belgium and Luxembourg.…

They’ll take you on your holidays, two-up if required and laden with unnecessary clutter. They’ll make those white-light early morning commutes a joy, inspire on rolling roads, and romp across the landscape to a golden evening bike meet. And they’ll let you keep going when the hard surface disappears. Most of them now have coloured wheel rims too, which makes us far happier than it probably should. Nothing gets near the do-it-all, go-anywhere brilliance of the latest adventure bikes. That’s why we buy so many of the things, why every manufacturer has something compelling in its line-up. And with long sunny days and warm tarmac (and mud-free green lanes) there’s no better device for wringing every last drop out of summer. With so many adventuring motorcycles to choose from it’s…

This isn’t just a half-arsed attempt at whipping up nostalgia, oh no. Yamaha’s new XSR900 GP is entirely convincing, and its big, roomy cockpit is a time-travelling device that slices away 40 years. The knee recesses in the fuel tank are based on the YZR500 OW70 that Kenny Roberts rode in 1983. Super-cool bolton hand blisters on the fairing are influenced by the championshipwinning OW76 from 1984, and the lines of the body are based loosely on Wayne Rainey’s YZR from 1991. The half fairing is a tip of the hat to ancestors like the FZ750 and TRX850. And the R clips holding it on are remanufactured from the TZR250R. There aren’t many bikes that get people stopping, staring and even waving as much as the XSR900 GP. It’s an…

Hurled with gusto at tangled Sardinian tarmac, MV’s new adventure bike is nothing short of epic. I can be heavy-handed with the brakes then straight on the throttle, and there’s barely any dive from the long Sachs suspension. The route mixes blind mountain hairpins with fourth-gear sweepers, and the Enduro Veloce just soaks it up, railing into corners at incredible speed. It fires from side-to-side so easily, even readily changing direction while banked over. Surely such agility and stability shouldn’t be possible on an adventure bike with half an eye on dirt use and a 21-inch front wheel. Yet the MV reacts like a supermoto. It genuinely wouldn’t feel out of place on a trackday. Part of the reason for this is the engine’s counter-rotating crankshaft. As with MV’s other…

Folklore At the end of the 1998 World Superbike season, Suzuki swapped the running of their factory WSB team from Harris to Alstare. I’d had two good years on the GSX-R750 SRAD, podiumed three times and set a lap record at Brands Hatch, so on the flight home from the final round in Japan I felt happy. I was confident I’d be in WSB again in 1999. But the call never came. Alstare went with Frankie Chili and a Japanese lad called Katsuaki Fujiwara, which was a bit of a kick in the teeth as while Frankie did well, Fujiwara was nowhere. I had loads of good offers to return to British Superbikes but no rides I was happy with on the world scene, so I had a choice –…

» In the March issue we showed you Michelin’s tyres for adventure bike riders who don’t leave tarmac. Now we’ve tried them – and they’re jolly fine. Essentially they’re sports-touring tyres with chunky grooves to suit the image of globetrotting off-roaders. Compared to the previous Anakee III, which has some off-road capability (and remains in the line-up), Michelin claim improved wet grip, durability and agility. On a Triumph Tiger 1200 GT on a gymkhana-type course in a car park, through slaloms and ‘mini-roundabouts’, the Anakee Road give light steering, accuracy and full confidence at lean. The bike stops with no drama or ABS intervention in emergency stops from 50mph in the wet. And on poorly-maintained roads they have the qualities of a quiet, year-round sports-touring tyre. A no-brainer for pure…

[ Watching ] ‘I can’t even stand still for as long as he balanced on his Honda’ Racing: Walker-ing on water » World Superbikes, Assen, and the weather is biblical. Rain sheets down, the track’s like a canal, there’s chuff-all visibility. Chris Walker qualifies midfield on a Kwak ZX-10R and is punted off at the first turn. He’s last… and wins. If I’m right, he has the record for the most WSB races before a win. Or summat. Anyway, it’s a corker. YouTube search: Chris Walker Assen 2006 Silliness: Z1300 stunting » I can remember going to Donington Park as a kid to the first ever truck race. Barry Sheene was driving a DAF. More memorable were the wild wheelies and off-the-back skiing of Arto Nyquist on a vast Z1300.…

Know How [ Ahead of its time ] How come one hugely well-engineered motorcycle loses out to another? How can broadly similar concepts result in widely differing fates in the marketplace? Perception is everything. Aprilia’s Mana 850 boasted all the Honda NC700 had, but lost out to the Japanese take on a practical switchable sequential/automatic bike. Aprilia did the groundwork but Honda built the sales skyscraper – the NC became a 750 and thrived; the Mana withered and died. Much effort has been made over the decades to devise user-friendly machines to wean car drivers onto two wheels, while luring existing riders towards technically advanced motorcycles with labour-saving features. The dominant being automatic transmission, closely followed by a space to stash a helmet not involving a top box. Fuji were the…

5 BIKES THAT REALLY MATTER THIS MONTH [ TOURERS ] If this 281kg Harley Road Glide had entered last month’s Moto3 Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas – and oh how we wish it had – it would have qualified on the third row, just 0.7s off pole. Not bad for an air-cooled tourer with pushrod valve actuation and panniers. The technical progression made by the lead bikes in the King of the Baggers series is amazing, even since Bike featured the factory Indian last year. Time to ask Harley’s movers and shakers how they’ve done it… How is it so fast? » ‘It’s now a motorcycle with a Harley heart surrounded by a superbike,’ says chief mechanic Dave Hopkinson (a Brit who worked with Leon Haslam in British…

With a well-proven, 450cc parallel-twin motor making 43bhp, fully-adjustable KYB suspension and a spangly TFT screen, the new CFMoto 450MT seems like good value at £5699. But the PCP deal takes temptation to an entirely new level – a deposit of £887 gets you the bike for £49 a month over three years. Some buyers will no doubt use the Chinese-built bike as an urban tool, but it could be that multi-purpose trailie you’ve always fancied – there are clear nods to both road and off-road competence. Off-road capability The new trellis frame should easily be robust enough – it’s similar to the one used in CFMoto’s larger adventure bikes – and has removable front down tubes in case they need to be replaced after an off-road prang. The KYB…

Why should I go to watch racing? » For me, the perfect summer’s day is a comfy chair, some nice food, a lovely glass of rioja, some good mates and cracking, safe racing. Honestly, what could be better? There are loads of great tracks in the UK, and plenty more on the continent within easy riding distance of Calais. This year I’m away watching racing three weekends a month from March through to the final British Superbike race in October. OK, sold. So, where should I watch BSB? » My number one is Cadwell Park. It’s a beautiful circuit and the racing is usually fantastic. Make sure you watch at the Gooseneck and the start/finish straight opposite the Mountain for the atmosphere and jump. For food, go to the cafeteria…

Non-riders just don’t get it. Why have a hobby that’s expensive and physically dangerous, for no apparent reason, they ask. Meanwhile, we hit the road on a sunny day (or for most of us, any other day) and return home with a glow that flows right into the rest of our lives. Just what is the mental magic in motorcycling? Over the past couple of decades, scientists and psychologists have been studying this question. They conclude that the thrill of two wheels fires our neurons with an array of brain-spritzing stimuli that can fill us with deep happiness, teach us career-boosting skills, get us over deep trauma – and even help us to fend off brain ageing. Here’s how. One of the best-known biker-brain studies was performed in 2021 by…

Well, I didn’t see that coming. Having spent two days swapping seats between a smorgasbord of adventure bike excellence, including BMW’s sublime R1300GS, I’m never far away from wanting to jump back on the Himalayan 450 – by far the smallest and least powerful of our test quartet. Royal Enfield characterises its new go-anywhere Himalayan 450 through a lens of modesty; ‘capable’, ‘reliable’ and ‘functional’, says the Indian marque of its latest model. But that’s way too beige a synopsis of this funky single. Plonk yourself at its controls and the 450 exudes a far more emotive quality. Fun – and bags of it. It’s an absolute blast. In fact, I can’t remember the last time 39 horsepower felt this engaging. Seasoned tester and 250 racer Bruce Dunn is equally…

Pay for your R1300GS TE bmwmotorradfinancialservice.co.uk » CASH PRICE: £24,460 on the road (as tested) » PCP: Deposit £6115, 36 monthly payments £292.47, optional final payment £12,028.90 (4000 miles, 8.9% APR) » HP: Deposit £6115, 36 months £579.59, total £26,980 (8.9% APR) Let’s not beat about the bush. Despite the refinement and luxury of Ducati’s Multistrada V4, the BMW R1250GS was the best-selling big adventure bike and therefore the standard by which all others were measured. Now the R1300GS has arrived and raised the bar yet again. So, it’s not pulling at – never mind stretching – the truth to say that this, BMW’s all new do-anything boxer twin, is the finest adventure bike ever built. To ride this GS is to know its brilliance. Demolish a B-road with a…

RECALL ISSUES Cam chain slap on early models proved too noisy for Kawasaki’s liking, so updated tensioners were fitted free of charge. Speedo accuracy was an issue for 2020-2022 SXs and SE models – not something you want on such a high-performance machine – and was cured by a software update, again at Kawasaki’s expense. Most notable, however, is another software issue that can lead to expensive mechanical damage. If fourth or fifth ratios are not correctly engaged, the bike can jump out of gear, over-rev and potentially fracture the gear teeth when re-engaged – the ECU doesn’t have the capacity to suppress such a sudden rush of rpm, making damage to the gears more likely. In extreme cases the transmission could lock solid. An ECU meddle can cure the…

Used for: 14 months Price: £319.98 Info: sportsbikeshop.co.uk » The spec of this textile kit from German brand FLM reads impressively well. Made from Ripstop Cordura, there’s a waterproof and windproof membrane, lots of pockets (including waterproof ones), a removable thermal liner, proper vents, lots of adjustment, a pre-curved fit, and of course it’s CE-certified and includes level 2 armour. You even get a balaclava that unfurls from the jacket’s (soft-edged) collar to go under your helmet on chilly days. Warm, weatherproof and comfy, it feels and performs like decent kit indeed – and yet list price for the jacket and trouser combo is only just over £300. Better still, Sportsbike Shop currently have money off: go for this grey/red/black colour scheme (the best of the three offered) and the…