Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 1 - 2019 i Cycle World

While most of the feedback about our move to a quarterly schedule has been positive, we, like you (based on your feedback), find the break between the last 2018 issue and the first of 2019 long. Hopefully you kept busy on cycleworld.com finding out about new motorcycles, just as we did writing about them. In fact, we were very busy making sure we had the expertise and talent to keep doing the best testing and telling the finest motorcycle stories, so I’d like to give you an update. You got to meet Senior Editor Justin Dawes last year when he did his first comparison test for the magazine, hammering a trio of adventure bikes in “Big Dirt.” He heads for the wilds again in the dual-sport shootout on page 42.…

In times past, a walk along Daytona’s pit lane during practice was a feast for the eyes, and one of the major attractions was the light-weight magnesium parts on factory bikes. My own home-built Kawasaki H2-R 750 had only the prosaic gray cast-aluminum ignition and primary gear covers carried over from the 1970–’71 500cc Triple. But on the factory bikes, those parts were finished with the gold chromic-acid process sometimes called Dow 19. Lovely because: unavailable, exotic, wonderful. In 1976, when Yamaha brought its four-cylinder monoshock 0W-31 you-can’t-have-it version of the TZ750 to Daytona, its magnesium Powerjet carburetors were a strange, almost furry brown color—maybe the dichromate process. Other processes are used to provide a base for paint, as seen on the black clutch cover and clutch-release lever of production…

On January 6, 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave the State of the Union Address citing four essential freedoms. Each point was punctuated with “everywhere” or “anywhere in the world.” While these four have to do with basic human rights, as I gazed upon four of the most advanced, modern, high-performance dual-sports ever produced, set in front of snow-capped Utah mountains, two of FDR’s words rang particularly clear and true: anywhere and everywhere. Dual-sports used to be about “most places” but were lower spec and less performance-oriented in comparison to manufacturers’ race bikes. Now dual-sports share much with top-of-the-line off-road models. Compromises are fewer, both mechanically and in capability. Any of the motorcycles in this shootout could be ridden to off-road races, raced, then ridden back home. Any race. And while…

It’s true that MotoGP represents the sport’s premier stage, with prototype works machines that showcase the pinnacle of two-wheeled performance, but production-based superbike competition is the conduit through which cutting-edge innovation translates most directly to the road-going sportbikes we currently enjoy. That said, it doesn’t take forensic analysis to trace the MotoGP DNA Ducati has infused into its Panigale V4 platform. Look no further than the Desmosedici Stradale 90-degree, V-4 engine’s counter-rotating crankshaft and unique, twin-like firing order to identify features directly derived from the Desmosedici MotoGP engine. The 2019 Panigale V4 R brings the addition of the most advanced aerodynamics and electronics suite Ducati has ever offered to the public. Those are some serious GP genes. Racing rules be damned. Ducati endowed its Panigale V4 and V4 S models…

Some 20 years ago I “met” Bob Nichols on the phone. He was making up lightweight connecting rods for his prewar Indian Scout and wanted to discuss alternative designs. We found lots to talk about, and he sounded excited about his project and eager to cut metal. Many more phone conversations followed over the years, from which I learned more about Nichols. He’d been born into the Great Depression but spent 24 years at Douglas in the most intense time of aviation development—a time when the U.S. Congress couldn’t say no to a never-ending series of X-planes. He became a technologist, but not by the usual escalator of pay-as-you-go good schools. He mowed lawns for small change and spent any free time in auto and machine shops until people gave…

As climate warmed at the end of the last ice age, and as humans hunted out the large Pleistocene animals whose meat had sustained them, a new way of life was forced upon those who inhabited the Middle East some 10,000 years ago. To stay alive through ever-more-frequent “starving times” people had begun gathering and eating the tiny seeds of certain grasses. They quickly learned that new plants would grow where such seeds had fallen. This was the dawn of a revolutionary food technology—agriculture—whose rapid development permitted a steadily growing population. Cities, the arithmetic of taxation, written language and all the complexities of civilization come down to us from this. In 1911, Indian was a world leader in motorcycle technology. In that year’s Senior Isle of Man TT, against opposition…

Single-shock rear suspensions are near-universal today. Traditional twin-shock setups are still seen, but exist mainly for reasons of retro style. When the era of longer rear-suspension travel arrived in 1974, it made the best sense to implement it with a single-suspension unit. Why have suspension at all? For decades, American motorcycles had rigid frames—no rear suspension. But as highways improved and speeds rose, rear suspension became necessary to provide chassis stability. Letting just the sprung wheel ride up and down over bumps saved the rider and chassis from their disturbance. The rear shock provides two basic functions: Supporting the weight of the rear of the bike with a bump-softening spring, and controlling any up-and-down oscillations of the suspension by providing damping. Damping is a controlled friction force that drains energy…

Is it strange that the Baja 1000 was first conquered by the 1962 Honda CL72, a 250cc twin scrambler also known as a Dream? It wasn’t much of a dirt bike, but then again nothing built back then was. But Triumph racing legend Bud Ekins suggested riding the length of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula as a way for American Honda to showcase the reliability of its new CL72 scrambler, and so his brother Dave, and Billy Robertson Jr., “raced” the 952 miles from Tijuana to La Paz starting at midnight, March 22, 1962. Their time of 39 hours, 56 minutes, was a two-wheeled record primarily because there wasn’t one, but it was a grand feat, one that set the stage for what would eventually become the monster that is “The Thousand.”…

Mike Tyson understood how the human brain works. When the lethal second half of the former world heavyweight boxing champion’s trademark combination—right hook to the body, right uppercut to the jaw—hit home, the powerful punch often rendered the recipient unconscious. In fact, “Iron Mike” won 26 of his first 28 fights by knockout or stoppage, with no fewer than 16 of those coming in the opening round of the match. Swedish neurosurgeon Hans von Holst and business partner Peter Halldin (a researcher at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm) claim approximately two-thirds of all motorcyclists—not to mention bicyclists, equestrians, pedestrians, and skiers, among others—who hit their heads in falls do so at some angle to the ground, not a perfectly straight vertical drop, potentially subjecting their brains, helmeted…