Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2020 i BIKE

The COVID-19 crisis meant that H&H Auctioneers sale at the National Motorcycle Museum on 7 April was held behind closed doors, with bids coming in by internet and phone. That didn’t stop someone spending £38,250 to acquire this 1990 Norton F1, or from 70% of the 200+ lots finding new homes. With styling by industrial designers Seymour Powell, an aluminium frame by Spondon, top quality components and the black, silver and gold paint job that came along with the pedigree of the John Player sponsored race bikes the F1 looks great. A twin rotor Wankel engine sounds like nothing else, delivers smooth power, but 588cc means that there’s just 94bhp. When new it would have cost £12,700 (£29,000 in today’s money), which was more than a Honda RC30. Apparently just…

RELEASE THE POTENTIAL Pressure-charging the engine using the crankcase isn’t John’s only trickK He’s also spent years trying different fuels including methanolI ethanolI acetoneI laughing gas and hydrogenK OhI and a rocket sled powered by toffeeK NOT WHAT YOU KNOW... John had the chromoly frame welded and the aluminium chassis parts fabricated by friends Jorma Saari and Patryck LaseckiK The complete bike weighs just NR0kgK MULTI-FUNCTION Not just somewhere to sitI the seat unit is also the air reservoir tank for the crankcase-supercharged engineK Look how high those footpegs areK OBSESSED As well as working on this NNT0I John’s still found time to race his other hybridI mechanic at the Manx I be a sidecar passengerKKK ohI and race an ice rocket sled TWICE THE SIZE OF A 1299 PANIGALE…

» Brough’s cut price deal on new SS100s has worked so well they’ve nearly run out. The SS100 list price is £59,999, but all the Euro3 models were reduced to £35,000 a few weeks ago at Devon dealer Moto Corsa. ‘We have sold over 50 per cent of the stock,’ Moto Corsa’s boss David Martin tells Bike . ‘We have two new ones left and six demos.’ The SS100 is powered by a 997cc water-cooled V-twin that makes a respectable 100bhp and is surrounded by handmade loveliness, including a titanium frame. » If you wish to exit the lockdown in some style, contact info@motocorsa.co.uk…

» Garrett’s ‘E-Turbo’ couples an electric compressor for low revs with a turbo for high rpm, all in one unit – adding the electric motor into the middle of the turbo, between the exhaust-driven turbine and the compressor wheel. That means the electric motor can get the compressor up to speed so it starts boosting the instant you touch the throttle, with the exhaust-driven turbine section taking over the compressor-driving duties when gas-flow through the engine has built up enough. No more lag. It also doubles up as an energy recovery system, so when the throttle is closed and the turbo is still spinning, it recuperates as much as 60% of the energy that it used to spool the turbo up in the first place. On sale next year.…

I’ve had these two T-shirts from the very early 1980s when I would have been 17ish. Both have been signed by Barry himself. Me and two mates flew to Oliver’s Mount on our Fizzys. We blagged our way into the pits behind the start/ finish line where we watched him win just about everything he entered. Then flew home dreaming we were him, two-stroke oil burning in our nostrils. Those where the good old days. Geoff Millington, email IF YOU’vE GOT AN OLD T-SHIRT LIKE GEOFF’S AND FANCY SEEING IT IN BIKE , TAKE A PIC AND EMAIL IT IN. IF WE PUBLISH IT HERE IN ‘LETTERS’ WE’LL SEND YOU A NEW BIKE T-shirT.…

1 Where is the BMW  G310GS made? And by whom? 2 Where was Honda’s first overseas factory? 3 Which bike was designed in GermanyI but made by multiple manufacturers in at least three different continents? 4 Which British brand is now owned by India’s TVS? 5 When did Triumph start manufacturing components in Thailand? 6 How many factories in Taiwan does Triumph have? 3R0cc models from 7 three established brands have been made in IndiaK Which are they? 8 What links Norton, Piaggio and Harley-Davidson? 9 In which country were Honda Gold Wings made from 1979-2008? 10 What is the link between Triumph and KTM? 11 Name three famous Italian motorcycle brands that are now Chinese owned? 12 Which company originally developed the Malaysian built engine used in the CCM…

I’m a thousand miles south of Marrakech and an hour’s ride from the Mauritanian frontier, braced against the crosswinds of a choking dust storm barrelling out of the interior. Just a week in and I’m worn out, but the trip has barely started. Up ahead, Bir Gandouz looms out of the gritty haze, the last town before the border. I decide to take an early cut and get stuck in first thing tomorrow. It’s where the ‘getting there’ ends and the ‘being there’ begins: a chance to see how my Africa Twin handles the Saharan pistes where its desert-racing progenitor made its name. I’ve already been pelted with a bigger-than-usual barrage of pre-departure cock-ups. Normally, suffering one cock-up makes you immune to others. Not this time. Panicked last-minute repairs then…

SEND IT BACK There was a recall in O0NO after some bikes were built with the wrong torque setting on the con-rod boltsK It affected 4T0 bikesI but all O0NO models were recalled to see if the bolts were tight enoughK There was another in O0N3 for the self-unscrewing sidestand on all bikes from O009 to O0N4K It’s rare that a bike has slipped through BMW’s netI but if the evidence is flimsy then a BMW dealer can tell you if a bike has had the work done… or notK PERFORMANCE HAS A COST The inline-four engine is drastically oversquare and uses offset camshaftsI finger followers (rather than bucket and shim) and heady revs for a claimed N94bhpK You’ll get more than N80 real ponies at the wheelK This means…

‘ The tarmac zigs and zags between snoozy villages and country pubs’ Don’t laugh, but the Lincolnshire Wolds are Britain’s equivalent of Italy’s Rimini. But it’s not a weather thing, or that they are both east coast holiday meccas. No, we say this because they have both spawned some of the best motorcycle racers in the world. For Rimini it’s Rossi, Simoncelli, Antonelli, Migno and Dovizioso to name a few. For the unassuming Wolds, which is a way better place to ride, it’s Martin, Plater, McElnea, Boast, Marshall, and more. What made the likes of Martin, Plater and Boast so special is the seemingly endless Lincolnshire tarmac that spiders out across a vast, under populated, under policed and undulating landscape. And, of course, all roads in Lincolnshire lead to Cadwell…

What would you scribble if you rolled up to your designing job and were told to draw: ‘a heavy-duty motorcycle that looks more like a truck’? That was the bizarre brief handed to Honda’s crayon operators in the early 1980s. Obviously, you’d create something of comedically small proportions, and powered by the weedy 49cc four-stroke single with centrifugal clutch that’s propelled many millions of Cubs and monkey bikes. Of course you would. On sale for one year spanning 1982 and 1983, the CT50 Motra (rumour has it the name is a combination of motorcycle and truck) differs from other slam-and-go Hondas by having an exotic six speeds. The normal three-speed transmission has an additional splitter giving high and low ranges – with the lower range selected Honda claimed the 4.5bhp…

REAR SHOCK An Öhlins TTX40 unit which sits directly under the carbon fibre seat, perpendicular to the swingarm. WHEELS Exclusive carbon ten-spoke jobs made by Rotobox. CARBON FIBRE The central structure running from tank to tail unit is carbon fibre with a final layer of unidirectional fabric, where the carbon strands are aligned to give extra strength in the direction required. Looks like wood grain, apparently. BRAKES Brembo calipers, obviously, and you can specify either 320mm carbon-ceramic discs or boring old metal. The latest creation from Italian manufacturer Vyrus is their most extreme yet, which is saying something. The new Alyen (pronounced alien, obvs) has hub-centre steering partly operated by hydraulics, a magnesium frame and swingarms, and was made without any clay modelling – the design went straight from computer…

Imagine 30 sporty nakeds – Street Triples, KTM 890s, Yamaha MT-09s etc – racing round Cadwell as a support race for BSB. Gaggles of young hotshots would fight it out, looking to make a name for themselves in front of BSB chiefs and big crowds. It could be utterly stupendous. Which is why BSB director Stuart Higgs is seriously considering the idea. ‘It’s an exploratory project,’ he tells Bike , ‘and I’m aware the most important thing in the world at the moment isn’t a new motorbike race. But we’re talking to manufacturers, because it’s a genre of motorcycles that are important to the motorcycle industry yet there isn’t a sporting platform for them. ‘That sector is particularly interesting because at the last count there were nine manufacturers with suitable…

For those of us who struggle to adjust the chain without gouging the swingarm and slashing a knuckle open, the chances of building a motorcycle are remote… unless we lower our sights somewhat. Instead of a handmade custom tracker, think Lego model. There are two routes to plastic brick glory. First, replicate the bike of your dreams to scale. The Britten you see here was made by an Australian bike nut known only as KC who spent 300 hours putting it together for a toy shop in New Zealand (home of the Britten). According to KC, all you do is get a 3D scan of your target bike, pixelate it, then copy the print-out in Lego. He might be simplifying that a bit. » See more at thebrickman.com At the…

All you’ll ever need I enjoyed your Buy Me used bike special ( Bike , May) because it brought back memories of great trips ridden on some of the superb bikes you covered in the feature. Particularly the BMW K1300S story for which I agree with all of Mike Armitage’s descriptives. Myself and a group of friends did a full European trip back in 2009. At that time I owned a few bikes and decided to take my BMW K1200S which incorporated the ASC electronic suspension. I thought I couldn’t have chosen a more perfect bike for the trip, that was until the following year when I upgraded the 12 to a K1300S (in orange) with ASC 2, ABS, BMW panniers, traction control and the quick shifter banging and popping…

You could say it was inevitable that Peter Hickman would end up a TT hero. His father Dave won the 250cc Manx Grand Prix in 1977 and might’ve gone on to bigger things if he hadn’t suffered career-ending injuries at the Mallory Park post-TT meeting in June 1979, when he crashed exiting Gerard’s and was twice run over. Dave switched from riding to spannering, first with several GP teams, then with the JPS Norton squad, who briefly dominated the British championships with their fiery rotary racer. Peter’s earliest memories are of toddling around paddocks while his dad went about his business. But of course there’s no such thing as inevitability, especially in motorcycle racing. Hickman Senior didn’t want his son to ride bikes, let alone race them, so Peter had…

Benelli, Royal Enfield, Yamaha. Three bikes with clear brands and heritage, and with definite nationalities. Or maybe not. Globalisation has overtaken motorcycle manufacture, with companies joining forces and popping up in new locations in the name of economics, efficiency and market access. Who’d have thought of these three long established marques, the one manufactured closest to the UK would be the Yamaha? There are big advantages. New bikes are as cheap as they’ve ever been – Enfield’s Interceptor is £2500 cheaper than Suzuki’s 1995 benchmark bargain Bandit 600 would be in today’s cash – and we’ve loads of choice. But does it matter if your Japanese bike is made in Europe, or if an old brand badge is stuck on bikes made in a factory with no history? Benelli’s new…

Indian Motorcycles: an American legend falls foul of a con man… » The legendary Indian motorcycle marque had been largely dormant since the founding US motorcycle manufacturer went bust in 1954. Various attempts worldwide to revive the badge over the ensuing 25 years had caused tortuous legal rows over who actually owned the title. Then in 1990 the exotically named American, Philip S. Zanghi II, convinced funders that he possessed the brand. Zanghi promised investors – who included everyone from his next-door neighbour to businessmen on the other side of the world – that he would build powerful new motorcycles in Springfield, Massachusetts, where the original Indians had been manufactured in a tepee-shaped factory. When that failed to materialise, he claimed he was about to open a plant in Connecticut…

» Triumph’s Street Triple made such an impact on naked middleweights that anything with more than three cylinders got ignoredK Which was unfairI as Suzuki’s GSRTR0 is ruddy capableK User-friendlyI tossable yet stable, utterly reliable and surprisingly refined, its ex-GSX-R750 motor also makes it proper fastK In factI the GSR was the fastest-accelerating N00bhp motorbike we’d ever dataloggedK ReallyK Underrated when new means bargain nowK Prices start under £3000K Stretching the cash to £4k bags a gleaming late-model O0NS bike that’ll do anything you ask – for a grand less than the equivalent (and slower) Street TripleK…

This isn’t a limp brochure-style round-up of all the bikes you can buy. No, your guide is far more useful as it only contains bikes that we have tested, with comparable on-the-road prices plus data, expert opinion and must-know detail gathered by fussy full-time testers. We do hundreds of thousands of miles, dyno, datalog, weigh and answer the big questions. Don’t buy a new bike without reading this first. Go have a look... now » Not been to Ducati’s museum? Fancy going? Now you can. Well, virtually at least. Simply go to Google maps, drag the little yellow bloke from the corner of the screen up onto the museum, and you can walk your way around the exhibits. That’s 17 euros saved. You can also do the same at the…

‘Hodgson stalls his BSB Ducati on the line and has to start dead last’ Racing ‘Dead last to in the lead’ » Dead last to in the lead in just eight laps. Neil Hodgson stalls his BSB Ducati on the line, has to start dead last, and makes everyone else look s-l-o-w… I was there, getting sunburnt on the infield, mincing around with a paddock pass from a mate who worked for MB4U. Glorious day out in Oulton’s greenery. MA youtube.com/watch?v=kYixFb3Lqhk&t=148s Inside Ducati Developing bikes » Q&A with the test rider, recorded with live questions, shots of development mules, pics of the test facility, discussion on the development processes… you get the idea. They go to the 11km Nardo speed bowl for a week every month. MA youtube.com/watch?v=76yCcove0DQ…

ENGINE ‘It’s from a N980 Honda XLR00K I love these motors because they have the twin port exhaust and four valve headK There’s something about the symmetry that I really likeK And when you look at that engine side-onI it’s like a diagram of how an engine worksK’ RIDING IT ‘You know when you get a new set of tyres on your bike and it just feels so agile again? This feels like it was beforeK It’s a bit docile but I’m enjoying the fact that it is usable because a lot of bikes like this are built purely to look coolK ’ RIDING POSITION ‘I wanted the proportions of a N00-year-old bike but with the ergonomics of a sportsbikeK I used a GSX-RTR0 as my template and I just…

Most club racers and trackday nuts ply their trade on modified road bikes for good reason – they’re relatively cheap to buy, reliable and, well, that’s what everyone else does. Kramer offer a lighter, simpler and often much faster path. The new GP2-R is the German company’s second model, and uses the same template as the wildly successful HKR EVO2. That bike – based around a KTM 690cc single-cylinder motor – won numerous championships around the world (including British Supertwins, twice), usually scything past more powerful bikes in corners to do so. Powered by KTM’s new 890cc parallel twin engine, the GP2-R is a step up from the EVO2. The engine is left standard to keep it reliable, but a race exhaust and massive airbox give it 130bhp and Kramer’s…

Norton’s purchase for £16m by Indian motorcycle manufacturer TVS has been greeted with unanimous relief by owners, marque experts and those who had paid deposits. New owners TVS say they will keep design and production in the UK, no jobs will be lost, and they have allocated cash to make sure people who paid deposits get their bikes or a refund. Mike Jackson, president of the Norton’s Owners Club and Norton’s sales director in the 1970s, said: ‘It’s very good news. TVS are the right company and they’re a good fit. And the fact they’ve allocated £3-4m to sort out the customers who’ve paid deposits makes sense. If they hadn’t, customers would have been moaning about Norton for years to come.’ Dominator 961 owner Graham Le Blond agrees: ‘I have…

Problems with packaging and power delivery have made turbos and superchargers hard to implement on two wheels but now a solution could be in sight with the rapid recent development of electric superchargers. The basic idea of turbos and superchargers is simple; you compress air before it enters cylinders. That means there’s more oxygen in there, and when combined with extra fuel there’s a more powerful combustion to force the piston down. It replicates a larger-capacity engine. That’s all very well, but both turbochargers and superchargers have drawbacks on bikes. Turbos, which use spent exhaust gasses to drive a turbine that’s connected by a shaft to the compressor, are more efficient because they use ‘waste’ power. But that leads to the familiar problem of turbo lag, when you have to…

‘There’s a point where place of origin becomes an issue... Would a £12k Chinese Benelli still work? Probably not’ Does the globalisation of bike production matter? With the Yamaha, Benelli and Royal Enfield as evidence, clearly not. Yamaha’s production and quality standards mean nothing on the Ténéré 700 suggests it’s not from Japan other than its very reasonable pricing. Being produced in China gives Benelli’s new 752S a convincing Italian image and high specification for a keen list price, without any of the tacky ‘fake’ air that preconceptions assume of Chinese bikes. And with the RE Interceptor, being made in India is actually a bonus – you get a bloody cheap price plus more authenticity than you can shake a cooling fin at. I suspect there’s a price point where…

Miles ridden: 3481 Riders: John Westlake Tyres tried: Metzeler Karoo Street Fuel used: 344 litres Chain lubed: 15 times Honda really didn’t want to muck this one up. The old Africa Twin – smaller engine, basic electronics, introduced in 2016 – was a huge seller and although it didn’t topple The German in any road tests, it came close in the sales charts. Part of this was due to some mightily attractive PCP deals, but they wouldn’t have worked unless the bike was good. So Honda’s plan with the 2020 AT was simple: enlarge the parallel twin engine to boost power and cover for any Euro5 compromises, tickle the styling (it’s positively pornographic in HRC red, white and blue) and throw a bucket of electronics at it. The result is…

Being unable to go out very much means Mrs Armitage thinks my time should be fully taken with important jobs. Things like repotting dead-looking plants that I can’t pronounce and rearranging the towels in the bathroom. Today I’ve got something more engaging to attend to. Our long-term test Ducati Panigale V2 was given a hearty clean before being shackled into my garage, but while fiddling with the trickle charger in a bid to postpone domestic duties I’m annoyed by dirty marks on the inaccessible inner base of the screen. Closer inspection reveals a filthy bottom yoke, the fat fork legs and proximity of the snug-fitting bodywork having prevented my sponge from gaining access. Having used plenty of profanity while disassembling the V4 we had last year, I’m also intrigued how…

‘My neighbours later reported the only unsettling thing they heard all afternoon was some imaginative swearing’ Not having been brought up on trials bikes, my skills are coarse and clunky. I’m best at the bits that require a hoof of throttle and lashings of mindless optimism. Put me in front of a log and I’ll make a serviceable attempt at bouncing over it. But tight turns? Finesse? No. So when isolation madness set in and I decided to clear my tiny garden of parasols and sunbathers so that it could be used for a greater good, I wasn’t as excited as you’d imagine. I knew it would be difficult. And so it proved. The Oset 24 Racing should of course have been the perfect tool, being so quiet at back…

Caberg Evo Drift Used for: 8 months Price: £O44K99 Info: cabergcaresKcoKuk » A mid-price helmet from a less prominent firm, but it’s pleasing. Fit, lining, comfort, robust vents and Air Wolf-style sun visor are all good things, and it’s quiet too. An old-style catch allows the visor to be teased open to clear mist, which seems odd with a modern anti-mist insert. However, like most hats the drop-down dark visor fogs-up on cold mornings – the catch allows clearing air in, without getting chilly. More main vents would be nice on hot days, and despite the Pinlock there’s a puddle of condensation at the bottom of the visor when it’s cold and wet (not an issue on a naked bike). Prices start at £230 for plain white, up to £310…