Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2016 i Cycle World

MY LIFE AS A MOTORCYCLIST was forged early on by lap timers, checkered flags, and the god-awful fear of finishing second. I wasn’t a motorcyclist; I was a racer. And while I wouldn’t trade my years spent at the track for any amount of money, I’ve since come to the realization that there’s more than one way to enjoy two wheels and a motor. Which brings me here—to a patch of dirt on the top of a mountain, 200 miles from home, curled up in a tent that’s tethered to a cruiser. Happy as I’ve ever been. How did I end up here? In a literal sense, a 2016 Victory High-Ball. A bike that I first decided on because of its looks but quickly grew to love thanks to its…

MOTORCYCLISTS COME IN ALL SHAPES, sizes, and interests. Many of us find common ground in our love for the special machines we ride, new technologies that improve our experience on them, and using them to conquer the ground beneath us and the people next to us. We often spend more time focused on the first two but, when it comes to having fun, it’s all about the latter. My idea of fun on a motorcycle doesn’t require the latest and greatest bike and doesn’t require the newest technology. My idea of fun on a motorcycle only requires about 30 hp, a little crash protection, some twisty asphalt, and a handful of buddies. My idea of fun on a motorcycle is a day at SoCal Supermoto (socalsupermoto.com). The beauty of SoCal…

“We’re taking the Triumph Tiger on the Adventure Rally this week to complete a 2x2 test with the BMW F800GS. Then I can let you grab its smoldering remains,” read the email from Cycle World Senior Editor Blake Conner. I have to admit after reading that I was worried, but it turned out the bike just needed a good hosing-off after being flogged off road. Blake, on the other hand, wound up breaking his leg on the same trails one week later during the annual CW Trek, so he required more comprehensive repairs. But I digress. With 5,575 miles already on the clock, the Tiger 800 XCx made a quick detour through Mickey Cohen Motorsports for an oil-and-filter change before I got my grubby little (actually size XXL) paws on…

Peter Egan is at it again. What a great article. A story about a great motorcycle ride, music, musicians, and writers. It’s about people, places, and history. It’s about guitars and big, beautiful motorcycles. But even more it’s about the sweetness of life itself. GREG PAPPAS PLYMOUTH, MI FIND YOUR CROSSROADS Thank you, Peter and Mark, for another timeless, classic road trip. I’m sure you’re aware that everyone who reads that story has just come along for the ride and enjoyed every last bit of the trip. You have now added another ride to my bucket list! Now, I just need to get myself from Sydney to Memphis. BILL CAGNACCI SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA Peter Egan scored a tour de force with “Down to the Crossroads” in the September issue. He reminds faithful…

Motorcycling as we know it will not always be “motorcycling as we know it.” Technologies will continue to advance, the riding experience will evolve, and in the push to make motorcycles more accessible to a wider range of consumers, cutting-edge systems will begin to change what it means to ride a motorcycle. One of the technologies that will transform the riding experience most, and one that many manufacturers have already shown interest in or experimented with, is automatic transmissions. Biperformance Development Corporation (BDC) recognized that shift and has gone on to develop its ShiftFX Electronic Shift Transmission, which it does not plan on making available to the aftermarket world but rather to manufacturers for use in their production motorcycles. What sets ShiftFX’s EST apart from current systems, like Honda’s DCT,…

Throw two credit cards on the ground. Then shoulder a 500-pound motorcycle, sprint forward, and leap onto the cards at 50, 100, or 150 mph. Although tires are rubber instead of plastic, that’s still all the contact patch you get. Odd analogy perhaps, but the point is to get you thinking: Given the speed potential of modern streetbikes, these precious little footprints make tires your bike’s most important components. Besides visually inspecting for wear and damage, get to know your tires by finding the four-digit date code, molded into an oval on the sidewall. The first two digits represent the week and the second two represent the year of manufacture (e.g., 1109 means the 11th week of 2009). Worn out or not, if a tire reaches the age of eight…

It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s big news. We’ve all learned the great names—Knucklehead, Pan, Shovel, Evolution, and Twin Cam—and now there’s a new one: “Milwaukee-Eight,” which tells us this new engine, like Harley’s legendary board-track racer of long ago, has eight valves. Displacement is 107ci (1,750cc) or 114ci (1,870cc). The 2017 touring models get these engines first, but this is the Big Twin that will, no doubt, power Harley-Davidson’s future. The standard 107 uses precision oil-cooled cylinder heads and will be found in Street Glides, Road Glides, the Electra Glide Ultra Classic, and Freewheeler trikes. A Twin-Cooled version with liquid-cooled cylinder heads and radiators will power Ultra Limited models, the Road Glide Ultra, and Tri Glide models. CVO Limited and Street Glide models are equipped with…

IS THERE ANYTHING BETTER than riding a motorcycle flat-out on a racetrack? For me, that is exactly the activity that got me into this business in the first place. Too many tickets, too many crashes, out-of-hand insurance premiums, and a driver’s license with an APB out on it had me looking to the confines of a racetrack in my 20s. The problem was that 25 years ago there weren’t many trackdays. You either raced (which I couldn’t afford) or found another hobby. My solution was to pursue a career testing motorcycles. Not much has changed: By far my favorite motorcycle-related activity is circulating a roadrace track in anger. In my 20 years working at motorcycle mags, I’ve had the opportunity to ride just about every production sportbike ever made in…

IN THE CORNER OF MY GARAGE is a 1993 Kawasaki KX80 that has sat gathering dust for nearly two decades. It was the very bike featured in Cycle World (December 1994), as a kart track roadrace project I built and competed on. The bike’s key mods are lowered suspension, 17-inch wheels, and an upgraded front brake system—in essence a supermoto by modern definition. In the beginning, my KX was the sole converted MXer present at West Coast mini-roadrace events that consisted mostly of adults and youth riding fully faired Yamaha YSR50 and Honda NSR50 machines. The KX was dominant in the GP 80 class running against bikes with 80cc two-strokes shoehorned into YSR or 125 GP chassis. It wasn’t long before others began showing up with MXbased bikes of their…

Squeezing into airliners en route to the World Superbike event at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, I was full of questions. After a championship by Tom Sykes on Kawasaki in 2013 and another by Sylvain Guintoli on Aprilia in 2014, former Honda rider Jonathan Rea joined Sykes on the green brand and took the title in 2015. How did Rea do this on a bike that was new to him, after years of being, in a sense, out to pasture on the uncompetitive Honda? (It should be explained that the Honda wasn’t allowed throttle by wire until 2012—a system that by smoothing engine delivery allows use of significantly higher tune.) Ducati, too, posed a question. Its “frameless” Panigale 1199— born in 2012—has somehow become competitive after some dry seasons. I wanted…

We at Cycle World are excited about the FZ-10 and its potential impact on the naked-bike category. How excited? Well, enough that—ahead of its arrival here in the States—we reached out to friends overseas for their first impressions (August ’16). Since then, the bike has made the trip across the Pacific, and we’ve finally had the chance to throw a leg over one. Here’s what we took away from that ride. BY THE NUMBERS ZERO TAKING THE FIFTH: The number of wheelies our lawyers want us to actually admit we did 18 TORQUE: Percentage more torque than the R1 between 6,000 and 8,000 rpm 1 1 2 MAX SPEED: The max speed at which the FZ-10’s cruise control can be set (in mph) On our first foray with the FZ-10…

It only took about five minutes mired in rush-hour traffic crawling along the I-94 East heading into downtown Milwaukee for me to appreciate the attributes of the new Milwaukee-Eight-powered touring models I’d spent the earlier part of the day riding at Black Hawk Farms Raceway, a road course located in South Beloit, Illinois. I was aboard a 2016 Screamin’ Eagle Twin Cam 110B CVO Softail Pro Street Breakout, and the high heat and humidity of a sweltering Midwestern summer day were taking their toll in this stop-and-go procession. Not only were my inner thighs on fire, but my left forearm had also begun to scream due to the factory hot rod’s high-effort clutch pull. I now truly understood the greatest attributes of the all-new Milwaukee-Eight powertrain and am happy to…

SOME PEOPLE SAY they like vintage motorcycles because the bikes “need” them. I think, in some sense, it’s a mental problem in which we need the bikes. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying a modern motorcycle that needs virtually no maintenance. But for some of us, to paraphrase Socrates, the unexamined motorcycle isn’t worth riding. Well, it totally is when you can’t get your vintage bike on the road, but that striving for understanding and mastery of the strange puzzle that old bikes represent brings a deep satisfaction and an appreciation that manifests as pure, effervescent joy on the right road at the right time on the right bike when all things mechanical are running right. Of course, the flip side of that joy is total depression. I had one…

Tension in the pit mounted as the start of the 100th Anniversary Pikes Peak International Hill Climb was placed on temporary delay. Race officials relayed periodic updates received from the mountain’s 14,414-foot summit: Road conditions had improved yet remained far from favorable due a storm that had passed through during the night. SHOULD I HAVE FOUND COMFORT IN THE NEWS THAT TRUCKS HAD BEEN DISPATCHED TO BREAK UP ICE COVERING THE PAVEMENT THROUGH OLYMPIC, A FAST RIGHT-HAND SWEEPER NEARING THE FINISH? Should I have found comfort in the news that trucks had been dispatched to break up ice covering the pavement through Olympic, a fast right-hand sweeper nearing the finish? Like many of the 12.42-mile course’s 156 turns, this unnerving corner is lined on the outside by a narrow dirt…