Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2025 i BIKE

It is with immense sadness that we report the passing of Owen Jenner. Winner of the 2020 British Junior Supersport series, 2023 British Junior Superstock title and 2024 British GP2 championship, 21-year-old Owen had joined Bike-supported Rapid Honda for this year. We rode flat track with him over winter and attended preseason testing, and were as impressed by his enthusiasm, charm and ever-present grin as his obviously massive talent on a bike. Owen lost his life from injuries sustained in a multi-rider incident in a British Supersport race at Oulton Park on 5 May. Our deepest condolences to his family, friends and team. Our sympathy too for the families and friends of Shane Richardson, who also sadly lost his life in the incident, and Tom Tunstall, who was severely injured.…

There's a rare moment of silence as we stand around the Morbidelli at our first coffee stop in Horncastle. Previous such contemplation of a Chinese bike would be followed by derisive snorts at the shonky finishes, mismatched bolt heads and ill-fitting plastics. But not this time – the pause is because we're all searching for a detail that looks cheap and nasty… and we can't find a single one. This is some going, given the company I'm in. Langy wouldn't know a spanner if one fell into his half-soy venti frappuccino, but he's a motorcycle design aficionado. Pay for your C1002V morbidelli.co.uk » CASH PRICE: £8799 » PCP: £2000 deposit, 36 monthly payments £94.27, optional final payment £4962.25 (4000 miles, 8.9% APR) » OTHER OPTIONS: Morbidelli T1002VX adventure bike, same…

Oxford fold-away bar-end mirrors £39.99 According to my dad, the way he and his mates used to make their bikes look meaner/faster/cooler was by taking the mirrors off. Obviously, he won't let me do that on my Lexmoto, so I've fitted these instead. Made from anodised aluminium, they transform the look of the bike – the stock mirrors were vast and ugly – and actually give a better view of what's behind. And because they fold I can still get past the car on the drive and through the garden gate. oxfordproducts.com…

I ordered my Streetfighter in 2019 before pictures of it were released – I was so convinced about a 205bhp Panigale V4 engine in a Streetfighter chassis that I decided, for once, I'd get the latest thing. Because of Covid lockdowns I eventually got it in June 2020 and I absolutely love it. It's done 8000 miles and around 6000 of those have been on track, where it's just… wow. It's incredibly flattering. The electronics are so sophisticated and the brakes are amazing (though I've never felt the ABS come on, no matter how hard I brake going into corners). It's not the best road bike I've ever ridden. I'm an experienced motorcyclist (Clive's been riding for 50 years and is a Rapid Training road and track coach – Ed)…

Tony Hoare: Testing, testing, one, two, one, two. Can you hear me, mate? Paul Lang: Loud and clear. Can we record ourselves on these Cardio intercoms? Over. TH: Yep. But it's Cardo, not Cardio. We don't have to pedal. And please do not say ‘copy’, ‘roger’ or ‘over’ again for the duration of this trip. PL: Copy that. So, today you get fish and chips for lunch, and I get to listen to you telling me adventure bikes are better than I think? And that I should like our Suzuki V-Strom 800RE? TH: Sounds like I get the better end of that deal. Let's get some miles done and see how you feel at the end of the day. PL: I'm open-minded and ready to roll. Where are we off…

Ashining example of the efficacy of an inline V-twin for dirt applications had been around since 1953. Harley's KR (sidevalve) and later XR (overhead valve) flat trackers were slim, punchy and reliable. All you could reasonably wish for. Up until 1980, no one appreciated the obvious rightness of the engine layout for off-road applications other than mile or half-mile ovals. Until motorcycle dealer Antonio Valentini, tuner and customiser of all things Moto Morini, took matters in hand. Morini were masters of the compact V-twin. Their exquisitely engineered and robust 350cc 72° V-twin of 1973 had been stroked and bored to 478cc by 1977. In 1979 Valentini built three off-road prototypes employing this five-speed Moto Morini 500 power unit. A ‘softer’ camshaft with less valve overlap and lift was the only…

1 John Westlake John's been a bike journalist since the Suzuki Bandit was fresh news, so he knows a great two-wheeled buy when he sees it. His group test is insightful, surprising, amusing, and involves chips. Naked value, page 32 2 Chris Cope Chinese bikes. Now there's a topic to kick-start a heated conversation. Chris has dug deep into the world of high-spec but low-priced machinery to see if they really are too good to be true. Cheap for a reason?, page 50 3 Mat Oxley As an Isle of Man winner himself, Mat knows how to get the best out of TT racers – and his interview with Davey Todd ahead of this year's races is truly glorious. Unputdownable, as they say. Davey Todd interview, page 60 4 Chippy…

Reinhard Neumair is one of those mechanical geniuses you rarely hear about because he just quietly gets on being astonishing. But occasionally bikes like this appear to demonstrate what he's been up to – in this case, turning a 350 Gold Star into a 500 by making his own crank, camshaft and main bearings, boring out the cylinder and replacing the tappets with some taken from a Jawa speedway race engine. And then winning rounds of the German singles championship on it. Reinhard, who's based near Munich in Germany, bought the bike as a standard 350 back in 1985. ‘I repaired it and on my first ride I realised it was far too much fun for it to be in a museum,’ he tells Bike. ‘First I just wanted a…

The last time a British rider qualified for an ice speedway GP was 40 years ago. But now Paul Cooper is almost there – only mechanical problems stopped him qualifying at the last round. ‘It was very frustrating,’ he tells Bike. ‘I won two heats and beat the guy who won the meeting but technical problems hindered my starts and I ended up coming seventh [out of 16 pro ice speedway riders].’ This is no mean feat given that Paul rode on ice for the first time three years ago and only put in some serious practice two years ago. He is rather handy on a bike though, having won seven British grasstrack championships and been a professional speedway rider for 10 years. The sideways skills didn't exactly transfer over…

The new MotoGP regulations for 2027 are nearly upon us, with the most important being those affecting engines. There is a 15 per cent reduction in capacity – to 850cc – and that puts us in an interesting place from a beard-stroking and navel-gazing point of view. Let's recap where we've been with MotoGP engines, since it was realised in 2002 that the only way four-strokes could beat 500cc two-strokes was to allow oil boilers to have twice the capacity (in fact, 990cc). All engines have had to be naturally aspirated (NA) since just after the Second World War, which on the one hand choked off an interesting technical avenue but on the other set bikes up to be the standard-bearers for anyone appreciative of the connoisseur's art of building…

Judging value is a tricky business because – contrary to what Mr Aldi will have you believe – there's much more involved than cheapness. If it were that simple we would have all been tooling round on shonky knock-off 500s for years and you'd never see a BMW R1300GS. For a motorcycle to be good value it has to meet your expectations for the money. For it to be great value, it has to far exceed them. Which brings us to our trio of naked bargain-meisters. The BSA Gold Star promises classic style, modern performance and sky-high garage appeal for £90 less than a BMW G310GS. At the other end of the performance scale, Honda's CB1000 Hornet SP seems to give everything a Yamaha MT-10 SP or KTM 1390 Super…

Cheery on the thrum to work, capable of unlikely feats on a tangled back lane and more than happy romping down the toughest green lane, Yamaha's Ténéré 700 had obvious appeal. Especially for the £8399 asked at its launch. No wonder it popped to the head of sales figures and reinvigorated the mid-capacity adventure market. Times change, though. The Ténéré's success means it now has plenty of rivals – not just from established brands with the Aprilia Tuareg and Honda Transalp, but from a surge of Chinese bikes with reassuring quality, glitzy equipment lists and surely-too-cheap tags. The 700 needed polishing up – and so Yamaha have been buffing. Have they made it too dirty? Sportsbikes are usually ‘improved’ by making them firmer and faster, and adventure bikes suffer in…

Top-class rider Not many bigger names in SuperEnduro than British star Jonny Walker. Triumph's factory rider started out doing trials before moving to motocross. ‘My friends had tracks, so I rode at them, and then just kind of fell into enduro,’ says the 34-year-old. ‘I did a year on my own when I was maybe 18 or 19, then got picked up by a British team supported by KTM. The manager was a guy called Julian Stevens, who was David Knight's old mechanic. He was like, “we need to go and do an extreme race”, which at the time was the Erzbergrodeo. I was third on my first time.’ Walker has since won Erzberg, plus the Hell's Gate, Tough One and Red Bull Romaniacs events. Quite handy, then. The man…

CAN YOU SEE ME? No old-fashioned tail light here. Instead, like many BMWs, the red bits are included in the winkers. In bright conditions I worry that slowing and turning signals are not as obvious as they could be (especially having followed other bikes). They look significantly slicker than an old K100's breeze blocks, mind. EASY TO GET CARRIED AWAY The S1000R Sport is £15,920 in black with electronic suspension, keyless ride, tyre monitoring, heated grips, quickshifter, cruise control and more. Add £420 for these colours, £1080 for the billet pack (levers, controls, pegs), £935 for the silencer, £155 for the screen, £1440 for forged wheels… and you're at £20k. IT'S THE SMALL THINGS The Sport version is keyless (£200 option on the base bike), meaning you can saunter out…

‘Pilot jets are blocked and main jet nozzles are clogged with grime’ You'll have seen E5 and E10 on petrol pumps. This indicates the amount of ethanol in the fuel – 10 per cent for E10. Ethanol is hygroscopic, which means it likes absorbing water. So, when Mike's 1990 Yamaha TDR250 starts bogging and dying when warm, he suspects water in the fuel tank – just as with his son Lyle's Lexmoto 50 (last issue). Hence, it's on my bench. After checking the spark plugs and finding a good spark with the engine both hot and cold, it's into the fuel system. When bikes are used infrequently the petrol has what petrochemical experts refer to as ‘phase separation’ – the water in the tank unmixes from the petrol and is…

BMW may be making fuss about the new R1300R's sporty credentials, but that's not what's got BMW dealers fizzing. They're excited about the 790mm seat height and £13,200 price (just £200 more than the outgoing R1250R), which seems great value for a motorcycle that shares the engine, electronics and chassis with the £16,640 R1300GS. ‘The price is very competitive,’ says Charlie Aston, the retail manager at BMW Wollaston in Northampton. ‘It's half the money of something like the M1000RR, yet has the same tech and more torque. Off the line it'll probably be quicker. Okay, so it hasn't got 200bhp, but who uses that if you're not on track? Maybe the R is going to be the clever choice for discerning buyers this year.’ Charlie's also pleased that BMW have…

Yep, it's another Chinese bike that makes you wonder whether now's the time to take the plunge. The new Voge DS625X has a 581cc, 63bhp parallel twin motor, adjustable Kayaba suspension, two rider modes, piles of kit as standard, a two-year warranty, and it's made by the same people who build BMW's parallel twins. The DS is £79 a month on a PCP with a £1400 deposit. The engine is a development of the well-proven 494cc DS525X motor that arrived in 2023 and made an A2-licence-friendly 47bhp. The new engine has been completely reworked, with a new 270° firing interval to give that off-beat V-twin character, an oil cooler to help reduce warm-up times (and emissions), plus an improved clutch with a lighter feel. And of course the extra 87cc…

Britain's best-value chippies are all in Grimsby, according to the internet – Mathews Chippy, for example, serves up a regular haddock and chips for a barely believable £3. Destination sorted. We'll spend a day in the Lincolnshire Wolds then head over to Grimsby on day two. I fire up the Hornet and lead our eclectic group out for a brief motorway haul before heading east. Contrary to all the excited gibbering from Bike‘s road testers about the new Hornet SP, my first impression is underwhelming. Droning up the A1, it's as civilised and slick as any Honda, but the rider's view is uninspiring – switchgear from the NC750 commuter, nondescript yokes, black bar risers, standard Honda 5in TFT, same Showa forks as the standard Hornet… it's all very neat but…

Picking a value winner from these three is plainly impossible because it depends what you want. After all, delicious £4 fish and chips aren't good value if you're allergic to haddock. But after much argument, all three of us agreed on a value hierarchy. In third place is the Morbidelli. This could have fought for the victory but for its absurd ground clearance problems, which took the edge off every ride because you can never fully relax. It's a shame because in every other respect the C1002V is an astonishing achievement. The build quality and finish are superb, the engine feels smooth and sophisticated, and the handling is commendable… right up until a footrest hanger gouges chunks out of the B1203. Splitting the Honda and BSA is bizarrely difficult, given…

From AJS to Zontes, there's almost a made-in-China motorcycle in the UK for every letter of the alphabet. Not surprising. More than 200 individual companies in China produce bikes and bike components. And, according to stats from the China Chamber of Commerce for Motorcycles, those companies produced 19.97 million motorcycles last year, about half of which were exported. Add more than one million exported engines on top of that. All those Chinese bikes carry a stigma, however, rooted in the bad old days of poorly made knock-offs. US journalist Evan Allen tells a story about a ‘pit bike-type of thing’ his father brought home when he was a kid. ‘It barely ever ran,’ says Evan. ‘And when it did, you couldn't get more than 20 minutes of riding in without…

Racing motorcycles around short circuits and racing motorcycles around the Isle of Man are different games with a similar genesis, like football and rugby, cricket and baseball. That's why it's very rare for a rider to succeed at both. During the past half-century or so only a handful of riders have won a British championship and a TT in the same year. Reigning British Superstock champion and 2024 Senior TT winner Davey Todd is one of them. The 29-year-old Yorkshireman is therefore the perfect person to answer the big question: how do you compare the thrill of riding at the TT with riding around Brands Hatch or Thruxton? ‘The buzz is a million times more riding around the TT than riding around a short circuit – if I was to…

Life was extraordinarily tough out here, and most people barely lived to see 60. The high altitude, the infertile land, the scarcity of water and the extreme cold ensured that only the most determined of souls could survive here. Just outside town were three small buildings that I'd marked on my phone as the most likely place to find gas. Just before I came to a stop, a woman stepped outside. ‘Hello,’ I said. She greeted me back. ‘Gas?’ ‘How much do you need?’ she asked. In reality, I didn't understand what she said, but that seemed like the most relevant question to me. So, by way of reply I held up both my hands, spreading my fingers. ‘10 litres, yes,’ she said, and immediately headed towards the smaller building.…

Having endured a torrid introduction to Hertfordshire's muddy lanes aboard (and frequently sprawled alongside) my standard-tyred 690 Enduro R, I'd realised that both the KTM and my ability to look after it urgently required upgrading. Knobblier tyres were essential, as was toughening up the bike to cope with the inevitable spills. So, I've bought and bolted on shorter levers and solid lever protectors, ‘unbreakable’ mirrors, stronger foot levers, engine case guards and crash bars. A sturdy aluminium bash plate, from Czech specialists Rade Garage, has a storage area for tyre levers and spare tube. The firm also makes a plastic box that replaces the under-seat airbox and is ideal for tools and other bits: tyre gauge, pump, head torch, disc lock, first-aid kit, ultra-light camping trowel (27 grams!), and mini-chainsaw…

I go to Mecum [the world's biggest classi bike auction] each year and sell bikes I bought in the UK. I've noticed there's a culture difference and you can exploit the market differences. What I realised was that some bikes are viewed differently. Here in the UK, if it's not a well-known bike, or it's sold as seen, or it's an unsexy brand, the thought process tends to be ‘am I going to get it going? Where will I get parts for it?’, and so on. In the US they tend just to think ‘that looks cool’, and worry about logistics afterwards – or they're buying it to look at in their collection so don't care about the practicalities. For example, I've bought Italian bikes made by long-deceased brands at…