Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 1 - 2018 i Cycle World

During the early 1960s, Joe Parkhurst reacted to the state of motorcycle publishing and the market. Cycle World published its first issue in January 1962. Within a decade, Joe, who’d hocked everything and made the first issue on his kitchen table, owned lots more motorcycles, a Ferrari Daytona, and a big yacht. And he was having the time of his life making the best motorcycle magazine in the world. It’s 2018, and Cycle World is reacting to the state of publishing and the market as the media world has changed profoundly. While I don’t have any visions of fancy carsor big boats, we do plan to make this heavy-duty, high-quality quarterly CW the kind of beautiful, library- worthy print piece you’ll want to keep forever. Traditional stars like Kevin Cameron…

Metals are a river that flows through our history. Bronze Age horsemen from Asia’s steppe brought the mysterious stuff to the near-eastern “Cradles of Civilization.” Gold and silver drove Spanish New World exploration and conquest. And now titanium’s use in aerospace and racing has made that element synonymous with the highest performance. Titanium, sought for its combination of high strength, low weight, and extraordinary corrosion and fatigue resistance, became available in commercial quantities only after 1953. Although common in the earth’s crust, titanium is difficult (read: expensive) to extract from its ore. It was therefore the rivalries of the Cold War that bankrolled its large-scale production. The Soviets becamemassive producers, making entire lightweight submarines of the stuff. Aerospace-grade titanium currently sells for $20 to $25 a pound, and 15 percent…

Despite the obvious reason for this story’s title, I chose it for the Panigale V-4’s parallel with Fiat’s 28-liter S.76 racing car of 1910—the 300 hp “Beast of Turin.” Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta said a few years ago, “Liter-bikes are finished, and they’re not coming back,” referring to when sportbike sales collapsed during the Great Recession of 2008–09. Are liter-bikes now mythic giants from a past age, destined like Fiat’s S.76 to be replaced by smaller, nimbler machines? I put this question to Claudio Domenicali, the admired and respected CEO of Ducati, a man whose ability has carried him up through engineering, racing, and R&D to the highest management level. He answered that Ducati’s success is driven by the company’s ability to bring the leading edge of motorcycling to its…

Here in all its dark, fluid grace is the AJS Porcupine, a parallel-twin that was England’s postwar bid to rise above the limited power of traditional British racing singles with more cylinders and higher revs. In 1949— the first year of the new FIM world championships— rider Les Graham would give the Porcupine its only championship. The bike in these photos was not the championship-winning 1949 E90, but rather the last redesign in 1954 with 45-degree-inclined cylinders. The name—Porcupine—originated with the quill-like spike finning between the pair of cam covers of the original engine, whose cylinders were just 15 degrees above horizontal. In the 1920s AJS had led the high-tech development of overhead-valve and then overhead-cam racing singles in the Isle of Man TT races. The Collier brothers, who joined…

With giant riding talents Gary Scott, Jay Springsteen, and Scott Parker (remember people calling him “the Parker kid?”), Harley-Davidson factory mechanic Bill Werner orchestrated 13 AMA Grand National dirt track championships. Then as an encore, he created a new winning machine by implementing his knowledge in the form of the Kawasaki Ninja-650-based machines that rose up to successfully challenge the Harley-Davidson XR-750s long before Indian re-entered the series in 2016. The easy accessibility of Ninja 650 parts and know-how has made those machines the most numerous in the American Flat Track paddock—Werner’s originalcreation has become “power to the people.” Just as Rob Muzzy made himself into “Mr. Superbike,” Bill Werner is Mr. Dirt Track. “My getting into racing started with a friend coming over on his 305 Honda,” Werner began.…

Back in 1849, the forgotten soul who gave Death Valley its name escaped that godforsaken desert with fewer men in his party than he started with. In the years since, infernal heat and scarce water have killed quite a few more. My buddy Jeb Scolman and I hoped that with a couple of modern machines and some gasoline we could do better. We figured that the diverse topography of the Panamint region would be the perfect place to test the 2017 Suzuki V-Strom 650XT to answer the question: Can $2,300 worth of tires and accessories (primarily from Twisted Throttle) transform a beloved budget middleweight into a workable, or at least enjoyable, desert exploring machine? Three days of dunes, salt flats, jagged boulders, steep canyons, and sandy washes should help us…

An important difference between motorcycles and cars is that while cars enclose their mechanism, motorcycles reveal theirs, presenting a wealth of eye-attracting visual elements. Parts and assemblies that come into being for purely functional reasons—Öhlins forks whose tubes are golden with hard titanium carbide, wheelie bars from the dragstrip, or the light-and-dark duo of titanium’s blond gleam and the textured black of carbon fiber—sprout as seeds in the visual imaginations of those who build motorcycle art. Freed from the slavery of function, these elements could travel in any direction, undergoing any kind of transformation, but in general, custom builders stayclose to real-world models. I’m thinking of more than one owner of Suzuki’s RG500 Gamma street two-stroke, who work to transform it into a shrine of craftsmanship and extreme materials. Titanium’s…

D3O really does call the base material used in its armor “orange goo,” but that’s mostly because those of us who are not scientists or engineers glaze over when we hear “dilatants are a non-Newtonian fluid.” But D3O (pronounced dee-three-oh) works the way it does because this liquid goo increases in viscosity when shear is applied, contrary to ideas presented by Sir Isaac(also English, like D3O the company) in, what else, but the notion of Newtonian fluid. Eyes glazed yet? Goo’s magic quality is that when it gets hit, it sort of “locks up” and absorbs the impact. Those scientists will wince at “locks up,” but this is how most of us would understand the material’s behavior. D3O’s secret to success with the base orange-goo dilatant is in finding ways…

During his 26 years at Ducati, Claudio Domenicali—who received his mechanical-engineering degree from the University of Bologna— has risen from project leader on the Supermono in 1991 to lead the company today as CEO. In 1994, he was made Ducati design department manager, and in 1997, deputy technical manager. By 1999, his ability to manage complex projects and the people involved in them was recognized by making him manager of Ducati Corse—the racing department, which has employed as much as 25 percent of total Ducati staff. In 2005 he was made R&D director, and it was during developmentof the 1098R that he made his memorable declaration: “For every part, you must think about its weight and its performance— no compromises!” In 2009, his abilities beyond engineering were recognized by making…