Australian Motorcycle News Vol 67 Issue 20

This classic shot could have been missed – possibly a good thing judging by Kenny’s fashion sense COMPUTERS ARE A relatively recent innovation when compared to the six-decade history of AMCN, so we have managed to amass more than half a century of hard-copy archives. A recent trip to the lock-up where our priceless memories are now stored started as a five-minute job but blew out to a two-hour visit because I opened a box that, judging by its contents, had not been opened for years. It included random notes, old press kits and a handful of old photos held together by a bulldog clip, with a note that read: DO NOT SEPARATE! Judging by the images, someone was working on a Willing Brothers feature and had painstakingly scoured through…

WHILE THE DUCATI 1299 Superleggera or BMW HP4 Race means you can buy a carbon-framed motorcycle right now, the technology is still a long way from being mainstream and affordable to most, but BMW is changing that. The German company has developed a system to mass-produce carbon parts using injection moulding, allowing automated machines to turn out complicated component in under a minute. The technology has proven good enough to win an international innovation award from carbon fibre specialist organisation JEC Group. The demonstration of the new tech used a motorcycle swingarm as its subject, a good sign it is intended for motorcycle applications. While there’s no word on the carbon swingarm’s future, the component looks like it has been designed to fit the BMW G310 range of bikes. Project…

YAMAHA RECENTLY confirmed it is planning more leaning multi-wheel-range (LMW) bikes to join its Tricity and Niken, and a new patent application shows one of them could be powered by Yamaha’s most powerful production bike engine – the 1679cc V4 from its legendary grunt master, the VMAX. The engine design may be a decade old, but it’s still got the goods, producing 147kW (200hp) and 167Nm. The new patent reveals a VMAX-style machine coupled with a two-wheeled front end. Unlike the Niken and Tricity, which use telescopic forks mounted on a transverse parallelogram linkage to provide tilting front suspension, the VMAX patent application shows a wishbone-style arrangement. The wishbones, similar to racing-car suspension, have their inboard mounting points positioned as close to the bike’s centreline as possible. A vertical bracket…

BIKE MANUFACTURERS will go to extreme lengths to keep their upcoming models secret. But sometimes a gaping hole in a range becomes so blatantly obvious it’s clear what’s going to fill it, and that is precisely the case with Honda’s ever-popular CB500F and CB650F. Honda’s new CB125R, CB300R and CB1000R all share a common neoretro design theme. In comparison, the CB650F and CB500F look blandly modern despite both having been updated in 2017 and 2016 respectively. Of the two models, an updated CB650R is the easiest to envisage. The styling direction taken by the 2018 CB1000R, CB300R and CB125R was previewed on Honda’s 2015 concept bike, the CB4. Under the skin of the CB4 was a near-stock CB650F. In short, the work to create a neoretro version of the CB650F…

BMW’S HEADLONG RUSH into the scooter arena is set to continue later this year unabated with the reveal of this new single-cylinder twist-and-go. You’re not supposed to be seeing it just yet, but these pictures – from the firm’s design patent for the new machine – reveal exactly how it looks. The BMW C400X cashes in on the popularity of the company’s R1200GS, with some unusual styling that borrows the adventure bike’s beak and lopsided headlight design. It’s more aggressive-looking than the average scooter. That frowny face, with four headlights behind a reverse-raked Perspex cover, takes its cues from BMW’s cars. And the twin air intakes below them could be a call-back to the famous ‘double-kidney’ grille of its four-wheelers – sure signs that BMW is trying to tempt non-motorcyclists…

OUR NEW INTERN, Zane, managed to elevate himself from bike-washer/chai wallah to legend when he suggested this year’s April Fool’s Day joke should be about government plans to ban the sale of petrol-powered motorcycles in Australia from 2025. It sure beat any other ideas we had, including cutting two inches off all the office chair and table legs so Dale felt a little taller. Our news flash was topical, and not totally unbelievable given the track record of recent government decisions in Australia. Things began to become a little far-fetched when we said parliament would be sitting on Easter Sunday morning to push through the new legislation. However, if you want an April Fool’s Day joke that will become the benchmark for future efforts, look no further than our ‘exclusive…