Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2022 i BIKE

With immaculate timing, just as Bike tests the new BSA Gold Star, the world’s oldest matching-numbers Goldie comes up for sale. This beautiful 1938 500cc single is in Bonham’s Stafford Show auction – 16 October – with an estimate of £20,000 to £30,000. We reckon it’ll go for more than that though. It’s the second Gold Star ever made by BSA, and the oldest surviving one with matching engine and frame numbers. With a known history and the patina of an unrestored 84-year-old bike, it’s bound to attract massive interest. It belonged to the late George Wander, a retired surgeon and world authority on pre-war Gold Stars (model designation: M24). He bought the bike in 2000, rode it extensively and maintained it rather than undertaking any restoration, so it’s completely…

[ WINNING AT LIFE ] It’s Rodeo time Amateur trials rider Tom Minta won a free entry to the world’s hardest extreme enduro, the Erzberg Rodeo. He came 28th out of 1200… The Erzberg Rodeo is the pinnacle for world class enduro riders. Held in a vast open mine in Austria, it’s absurdly tough – four hours of boulder fields, near-vertical climbs and vicious descents. This year eight riders out of 1200 finished. Given all that, you might imagine someone who got his first enduro bike in February and has only raced it three times would be a little nervous to find out he’s won an entry. Not exactly: ‘I was buzzing,’ 24-year-old Tom Minta tells Bike. ‘It was a dream come true.’ Tom won the Erzberg entry – and…

1 In 1986 I took a land speed record with a naturally aspirated Suzuki GSX1100 I’d bored out to 1500cc. That stood until 1999 when we beat it with a 380bhp nitrous Hayabusa. Back then we were making a lot of big bore kits by crossmatching pistons for different bikes – we put Kawasaki ZZR1100 pistons in a Bandit 600 to take it up to 884cc. That was a great bike. 2 In the ‘80s we did engines for a lot of the top privateers like Ray Stringer and Dave Heal. Ray Stringer’s OW01 was faster than the factory Boost Yamahas and no-one could believe it was legal – the number of times the engine was pulled down [by scrutineers] was incredible. I’d worked out how to shift the rev…

After 40 odd years of racing motorcycles what drives me now is 100% about wanting to have different experiences. The days of thinking that I was going out to win are long gone (though I quite like that too, when it happens), what I want is to do stuff that I’ll always remember. Last year, with all the Covid problems, I just did club meetings in the UK and honestly I’ll forget them all, but I’ll never forget a trip to the Isle of Man. And I’ll never forget doing Skerries. I get excited just sending the entry off for some big race meetings that I’ve never done before, but when you roll up at the track, after you’ve fretted about preparing the bikes and you’ve loaded the campervan and…

Is this peak retro? Here’s an all-new motorcycle, but with a badge that last appeared on a significant new bike 50 years ago, and which is styled and named after a model from the 1950s. Looking over the new BSA Gold Star I’m reminded of the words of Grayson Perry when Bike interviewed him in 2020: ‘If there is one thing designers are brilliant at faking,’ said the artist and TV person, ‘it’s authenticity.’ And with the new BSA they’ve nailed the brief. From the rounded form of the fuel tank to the curve of the frame’s rear loop, from the mudguard stays to headlight shell it feels like there’s a direct link back to the legendary DBD34 that was the original Rocker’s favourite and ton-up toy for tearaways. In…

Advice, guidance and things to do with bikes A massive screwdriver Actually, it’s not about having a massive screwdriver so much as having the right screwdriver. For crosshead screws that means the right tip in size and style; Phillips, cross-head or JIS. But shaft length is also important. With a long screwdriver it’s easier to ensure that the shaft is directly in line with the screw to deliver maximum torque, and also you can really get your weight onto it. Find an antique like this one at carboot sales. carbootsale.buy…

Fit, classy, engaging, unusual… and easy to find in the bike park » Do you really want a hot tub? No, of course not. You might spot one in B&Q and get excited about having fun in a giant cauldron, but the reality is it’s like having a bath in the back garden with the neighbours watching. Which is sort of like what happened when Husky showed their Vitpilen concept in 2015. We all went ‘ooh yeah, cool’, but when it went into production everyone realised nine-grand was expensive for a bare bike with one piston. It was killed off after just three years. Thing is, the Vitpilen 701 delivers on its visual promise. Based on KTM’s superb 690 Duke, it’s got the punch to ignite B-road and embarrass twins,…

‘This is the one where you dress up like Jacob Rees-Mogg… ludicrous’ Netley Marsh Autojumble Hampshire, September 9/10 For those of us with cheapskate tendencies or a desire to insulate the shed with yet more essential spares, Netley Marsh is worth the trip. It’s not as famous as Stafford, but just as capable of furnishing you with a boot full of rusty bargains you never knew you wanted. Plus you’ll see Sammy Miller – he’s always there. classicbikeshows.com MotoFest Coventry, September 10/11 Think of it as the Brummy edition of the Goodwood Revival, with fewer toffs, more curry houses and an equally friendly atmosphere. Like Goodwood, the mix of action and static displays are dominated by cars, but those are usually pretty special and there are enough bikes to keep…

» Now then Graham, what are you up to? Well, as you know when you pack in racing everyone gets dragged back into this paddock in some way or another. After working a few years with Michael Rutter I’m also working with Team Optimum as Crew Chief for the South African Rider Brent Harren in the Superstock class. » How’s that going? He’s doing alright. Last year he didn’t score many points, this year we’ve got him top ten, and he’s scoring points. He’s trying and he’s a good kid and he’s got a good sense of humour and enjoys the crack so you’re halfway there aren’t you? He knows how to ride a bike and his feedback is good. If we make a change he seems to read it…

Triumph engineers are now working on real-world electric bikes after the TE-1 prototype demonstrated how far the latest tech has come. Triumph’s tests showed the 220kg, I75bhp machine has a 100-mile ‘spirited riding’ range – far, far better than any production electric bike – and can do a fUll 20-minute trackday session at fast group speeds on one charge, then take 20 minutes to recharge to 80 percent. If that’s all true – and we have no reason to doubt Triumph’s figures – the TE-i is the most advanced electric motorcycle in existence. That’s the good news. The bad news is it won’t be turning up in showrooms. ‘The TE-1 is a research vehicle,’ the project’s leader Steve Sargent tells Bike. ‘It was built to help us understand what is…

The best one-make series always seem to involve inappropriate bikes – Triumph’s Speed Triple Challenge of 1994 was a cracker and Honda’s CB500 Cup was won by a 17-year-old James Toseland in 1997. So the omens are good for the BMW F900R Cup, which will support eight rounds of British Superbikes next year. The naked roadster is prime one-make material, having a thrashable but not overly powerful motor, a sweet-handling chassis and an image that could do with perking up. ‘A few years ago we were at a BMW track event in Spain and I rode an F900R – it was brilliant fun,’ BMW’s UK marketing chief Scott Grimsdall tells Bike. ‘It’s got the same diameter forks as an S1000RR, big front discs and handles neutrally. That got me thinking……

With a weather forecast that was more Sepang than Silverstone, this year’s British MotoGP was expected to attract a monster crowd. Yet the attendance of 41,000 on race day was the worst its ever been at Silverstone. The difference to last year’s Rossi send-off GP (race day attendance: 67,000) was obvious – this year there were empty seats in stands, space on banks and barely any queues to get in. The racing itself was fantastic with a surprise MotoGP win for Bagnaia, Brit Jake Dixon on the podium in Moto2 and a ludicrous scrap in Moto3, but the Sunday crowd was the second lowest of the entire season – only Qatar was lower. So what went wrong? There are a multitude of theories; the absence of Rossi and Marquez; no…

» For the first time ever, this year’s Baja Espana Aragon rally had a class for big adventure bikes and another for bloody massive ones. Triumph entered a Tiger 900 Rally Pro in the Trail class and, with five-time enduro world champion Iván Cervantes in the saddle, it stomped on a gaggle of Yamaha Ténéré 700s to win – Cervantes beat the second-place Ténéré by an hour and six minutes. Even more impressively, the Tiger came 11th overall against full-on Dakar bikes. The Spanish race favours raw speed over nimble handling, but that’s still a remarkable result. Harley, meanwhile, entered a standard 1250cc Pan America in the Maxi-Trail class with ex-Dakar rider Joan Pedrero on board. The good news is the bike finished, and was first in class. The less…

» The latest UK sales figures show there’s still plenty of life in Yamaha’s trusty MT-07. After being overshadowed in the middleweight sales charts by Triumph’s new Trident 660, the MT was back on top in July, with 111 sales. That got it tantalisingly close to BMW’s chart-topping R1250GS Adventure, which sold 120. Other highlights were that Suzuki’s GSX-S1000GT (89 sales) continues to outsell the top tourer (Honda’s NT1100: 62 sales), and that the Enfield Meteor and Classic smash every other 125cc-plus bike into irrelevance – combined, the two sold 325. That’s more than Ducati and Suzuki’s entire ranges.…

1993 and my seven year old son Chris was a massive Kevin Schwantz fan. Kevin seemed to have managed to drop the win or bin mentality and was leading the championship. ‘Okay son we’ll have a trip to Donington and leave mum and your four-year-old brother at home.’ At the crack of dawn we set off from home in Kent for the lengthy (to a seven-year-old) drive. Fortunately, as it turned out, we arrived in time to buy his T-shirt and settle down into a decent spot between McLean’s and Coppice to see the warm up. Unfortunately Chris only saw his hero once on the first lap before Mick Doohan had a go at 500 GP skittles at The Esses, taking out Schwantz and several others. Long drive home. Phil…

Climbing onto the pillion seat of the Triumph Tiger 1200 Rally Pro requires a specialist set of skills. It’s partly about having a Can-Can dancer’s athletic leg kicks, partly a rock climber’s adept use of hand and footholds. A head for heights is useful too. It turns out that getting off it is just as challenging. We’re skipping along the A39 north Devon coast road enjoying twisting tarmac and afternoon sun. I’m taking in the view from the Tiger’s passenger perch (having survived the perilous ascent), and from this altitude you can see for miles, right across the Bristol Channel to South Wales. Lovely. Photographer Chippy is at bike control, enjoying the Triumph’s precise handling and grunty engine. We’re both feeling the benefit of the electronically controlled suspension, soaking up…

Yamaha Ténéré 700 World Raid A huge success from the moment it plopped into dealers, the giant-slaying 700 is now available in pumped-up, puffed-out, round-the-world form. And that makes it better… right? While the prospect of marauding around the globe is obviously exciting, today’s ambitions are more in-line with our abilities and the time limits on pass-outs from domestic management. So, we’re taking the new World Raid on a Welsh raid. It’s a no less tantalising prospect. Our ride to Snowdonia is four hours of motorways, scything A-roads and jumbled B-roads, and once there the mountainous landscape and minimal traffic promise some of the UK’s best riding. With summer in full effect, why would you want to head anywhere else? To make matters all the more exciting the new Yamaha…

Loaded up with extra fuel, water and food for two days, we headed out of Merzouga, me on my 2006 Kawasaki KLE500 and son Gareth on his 2011 KTM 990R Adventure. Father and offspring feeling like schoolboys off on an adventure. Having spent the last five days riding through persistent rain across Spain and over the Atlas Mountains, we were about to dip our toes into desert territory. Gareth checked his GPS and found the track we needed. The bikes felt sluggish and heavy with the added weight of our kit, rolling slightly and feeling slow to respond. And within minutes we had lost our way in the maze of small tracks that meandered from the town into the desert. Both bikes immediately sank deeply into the sand. Had we…

PAMPERED PILLIONS The sofa is broad, comfy and well appointed. Electrically adjusted screen provides an air bubble for pillions too, and they also get a heated seat. But getting on and off requires some agility. With panniers that’s quite a leg kick to get across the seat. IT SOUNDS FANTASTIC Fire up the 1600cc six and you are treated to a little blip on start-up. It needs revs to pull away, but is flexible once in motion and delivers a fantastic howl and serious pace when the revs climb past 6000. Banging through the gears with the quickshifter is addictive. STILL THE BEST LUGGAGE BMW hard cases are still the best, with simple latches and easy on-off fittings. Plus they are contoured to keep the bike comparatively slim. Central locking…

Clarke impact wrench Used for: six months Price: £81 Info: machinemart.co.uk » This is designed for heavy duty stuff such as car wheel nuts so I thought it would be overkill for bikes, but it’s proven itself to be a useful addition to the collection. A case in point was the eccentric chain adjuster in the rear hub of my Triumph Sprint 1050 which, as any owner will tell you, seizes up if you put salt on your chips, never mind ride in some. I’d reached the limit of my brutal disassembly approach, pushing the end of a ratchet wrench with my boot to no avail. The next stage would be to put a scaffold pole over the handle but I wasn’t sure the wrench would survive. So electric impact…

How big exactly? I’m so glad you asked. The giant air-cooled overhead-valve V-twin in this BAC displaces 2400cc – yes, almost two-and-a-half litres – and makes its peak power at just 1500rpm. To make sure you can hear it running the valve gear is external and the exhausts are just a few inches long. The only controls are a throttle and valve lifter; it doesn’t have a clutch or any gears, and drive is transmitted by a 100mm-wide belt to the huge pulley filling the rear wheel. Oh, it doesn’t have any brakes either. Yet despite appearing the crudest thing this side of a Jimmy Carr routine, the BAC was a refined and leading-edge design for a very specialised field. And that field was motor paced cycling. This crazy sport…

With more power than rivals, loads of torque and decent comfort, the new MV Lucky Explorer 9.5 is good enough to give market leaders such as Ducati’s DesertX a headache. Bike contributor Adam Child reports back after riding a prototype of the new 931cc three-cylinder MV. » Initial impressions? The first thing you notice is it sounds amazing. The exhaust doesn’t look finished, but the internals are – it’s Euro5-plus – and it sounds really raucous. It howls. The other thing you notice is the torque – from 2000rpm it drives right through the rev range, which is unusual for an MV. Usually you don’t get much until 6000rpm so this is a completely different way of thinking. » So the engine is good? Oh yes. At 7000rpm it picks…

For 16 years Roberto Canè was in charge of the electronics in all Ducati’s MotoGP bikes, so he knows a thing or two about tricky projects. But when he became the company’s head of electric vehicles and was instructed to develop a new MotoE bike, he had no idea how tough it would be. ‘The most challenging part? Honestly, all of it,’ he tells Bike. ‘This project was incredibly difficult. I was involved at the beginning of the MotoGP era – I joined Ducati Corse in 2002 and the MotoGP project was one of the hardest challenges I had ever worked on. But this was harder. At the beginning I thought it was impossible to reach the results we wanted.’ The targets were set by Ducati CEO Claudio Domenicalli in…

» BMW have announced all R1250GS and R1200GS models made since 2013 will get a vent valve fitted to the swingarm/shaft housing next time they get serviced to prevent a possible build-up of moisture that could cause the shaft to corrode. RTs are also affected – that’s 440,000 bikes in total. All bikes will be tested to see if the shaft drive – particularly the rear universal joint –has been damaged, in which case the dealer will replace worn parts. BMW are keen to stress this is not a recall but a ‘service campaign’ and recommend owners book their bikes in for a service as per the usual schedule.…

Local heroes Southern Ireland’s most popular road race, the Skerries 100 is run on a 2.9 mile course just north of Dublin with practice on Saturday and racing on Sunday. Michael Sweeney, seen here leading the Supertwins race around Finnegan’s corner on his KBS Kawasaki, lives in the small sea-side town of Skerries. The local hero was the popular winner of three races at this year’s event as he added two superbike wins on a M1000RR BMW to his Twins success. A horde of classic bangers A fan grabs a snapshot of Stephen Tobin as he races to victory in the 250cc-400cc race. There were ten races on the Skerries programme this year, covering machinery of every class from 125cc two strokes and Moto3 Hondas through a horde of classic…

On the face of it, the Aprilia Tuono 660 Factory has missed the middleweight naked mark by some margin. I mean it produces less than 100bhp and costs ten grand which, price wise, puts it up against Yamaha’s MT-09 and KTM’s 890 Duke, but minus 15bhp. But motorcycles should not be judged on spec sheets alone. It’s as much about how a bike makes you feel to ride, and the Tuono 660 Factory is one of the best feel-good road bikes I’ve ridden in yonks. To create the Factory the Noale team took the standard Tuono 660 and slimmed it down 2kg to bring the overall kerb weight in at an impressive 181kg. Consequently the 660 feels minimal and agile, dancing through corners with a gentle push on the wide…

TWEAKING MT-10s attract owners who like to fiddle. The MT’s responsive throttle isn’t everyone’s cuppa so ECU flashing is common – find out who did the work. Yam’s accessory Akrapovic pipe is popular but doesn’t add power – and doesn’t increase the bike’s value either. If the owner has removed the catalytic converter, fitted a link pipe and changed the air filter the bike might have 15bhp or so more. It’ll also be bloody loud and should have been set-up on a dyno. The MT doesn’t need more oomph so make sure it’s what you really want – and check who carried out the mods. CROSSPLANE INLINE FOUR The MT-10 uses the 998cc engine from the R1 sportsbike but with a retune that includes larger inlet valves so it’s gruntier…

£12,495 Velocette Venom » Four solid reasons why you need this in your shed. First, it looks brilliant (especially as it has a Thruxton tank). Second, telling people you ride a Venom sounds cool especially as – third – the 499cc single is fast: in 1961 a Venom averaged 100mph over 24 hours at Montlhéry, a world record that still stands for single-cylinder and 500cc bikes. Yes, it’s unbeaten. And fourth, and best of all, this is a gloriously well-used example with oodles of history – showing 90,000 miles, it’s got a vast service file (much of it handwritten) with MoTs back to the 1970s. Who wouldn’t want to ride it past 100,000 miles? £9495 Triumph T120R » Stride jauntily into your nearest Triumph dealer and they’ll flog you a…

‘More sporty potential than all but the most expensive adventure bikes’ As last rides go, this was a cracker – despite Covid, rain and a moral dilemma. The plan was to head to the Bikers Classic event at Spa Francorchamps with a couple of mates for a long weekend of riding, race-watching and talking cobblers, the latter two undertaken while maintaining heroic levels of hydration. It didn’t quite work out like that though. The GSX-S proved easy enough to load up with camping gear thanks to a generous pillion seat, two massive grab rails and plenty of bungee hooks. Our test bike came without panniers (they’re a £1500 option) but I was happy enough – every road into Dover was bound to be a filtering competition. And so it proved,…

If you’re a motorcyclist visiting Northern Ireland, you have to go to Ballymoney and visit both Joey’s Bar and the Joey Dunlop memorial, in the park just down the road. But there’s so much more to riding in Northern Ireland, and much of it is linked by great motorcycling roads. Arguably the worst road of the day is the first one of this short ride. The B62 could be described charitably as ‘efficient’ because it makes a beeline from Ballymoney to the coast, long straights finally giving way to sweepers and then, finally, some glorious corners as the sea comes into view. Rather than heading into Portstewart, home of the North West 200, it’s a good idea to head in the other direction, taking the A2 east along the shore…

‘They keep it clean and fast, they are all making good moves’ After last month’s win at Knockhill we reckoned Franco’s Kawasaki ZX-6R needed a refresh, so mechanic Dave Hewson pulled the motor apart. He re-set the valve clearances, fitted a new cam chain and a load of new gears. Gearboxes get really hammered on race bikes, shifting at peak revs with a quickshifter soon wears the dogs and the gear edges, and a missed gear can cost you a race win, so you can’t take chances. I got the job of running the bike in at Cadwell Park, and it was actually the first time I’d ridden it. Franco likes to have wider handlebars than me, and he has a pad on the back of the tank to push…