Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol 66 Issue 17 i Australian Motorcycle News

HESKETH HAS NEVER been one for catering to the masses and, despite being reborn under new ownership, there’s clearly still much of the eccentric edge of the original company. And never more so than with its latest creation, the Valiant SC. When entrepreneur Paul Sleeman bought Hesketh from its founder and namesake, Lord Hesketh, in 2010, his initial plan was to build a run of 24 V-twin machines. Dubbed the Hesketh 24, that S&S-engined creation sold out and led to the development of a second model, the Sonnet. Now the Valiant SC sits at the top of the range. The bike is understandably closely related to the other models in the Hesketh line. It’s a small outfit with limited R&D resources, so sharing parts makes sense. Once again the engine…

HARLEY-DAVIDSON’S NEW Road King Special might only be a mild reworking of an existing model, but it manages to be a distinctive bike nonetheless. As the name suggests, it’s based on the Road King, but by adding blacked-out bagger looks, Harley has created something to cash in on the latest bagger trends. Harley-Davidson design boss Brad Richards said: “The Road King has always reflected the purity of the Harley-Davidson FL riding experience. By exchanging chrome surfaces for black and lowering the bike’s profile, we’ve moved the traditional Road King into a new space that’s very current in the custom bagger scene.” As well as the blacked-out engine, fork and headlight bowl, the bike gets side cases that are reshaped and extend downwards at the back, giving the bike a longer,…

AS AMCN WENT to press, 20 NRL players were 10 days into an 11-day, 4000km ride to raise awareness and funds for Father Riley’s Youth off the Streets charity. Supported by Harley-Davidson, which provided 20 motorcycles for the event and a 2017 Roadster raffle prize, H-D ambassador Nathan Hindmarsh joined the likes of Steve Roach, Paul Sironen, Brad Fittler and 16 more Origin legends on a whirlwind tour of New South Wales that included 14 country towns. By the tour’s end, the crew will have given away 3000 footballs to kids, set up coaching clinics, attended tournaments and greatly assisted, both financially and physically, in returfing the footy oval in the northern NSW town of Walgett. The event is in its fifth year and has so far raised more than…

“This is what people did for amusement prior to apps” CLEAR OUT THE back of the garage and you’ll find you own at least two copies of the Guinness Book of Records. For almost three decades this annual tome was the default gift choice for birthdays, Father’s Day and Christmas. A quick scan and you could choose a path to 15 minutes of fame. After all, it couldn’t be that difficult to keep a hula hoop rotating while bouncing a rubber ball and reciting Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’. For 72 hours. This sounded a little prissy to road racers Allan Cunynghame, Peter Stoneman and Dave Richards, who thought a more worthy effort would be the ‘World Motor Cycle Endurance Riding Record’. Having got hold of Ken Blake’s BMW R90S, which had…

THE MORBIDLY OBESE and slightly long-in-the-tooth Triumph Rocket III has been a favourite of the morbidly obese, slightly long-in-the-tooth riding set for the past 13 years. As it’s a cruiser, many owners don’t bother going down the custom route for their rides. Modified examples of the 2300cc beast usually just feature a pallet’s worth of matte-black paint and around four hundred metres of exhaust wrap. But now Sydney-based builder Wenley Andrews has worked his café racer magic on a 2006 Rocket III and given it the looks to match the gigantic torquey engine underneath. Maybe I’m exaggerating when I say the Rocket is morbidly obese, but in stock trim it weighs 350kg wringing wet. Yet all that heft and road-going presence was part of the appeal for head workshop provocateur…

Thanks in no small part to Steve McQueen, the Triumph TR6C became a legend With the debut of the latest version of its twin-cylinder Street Scrambler, Triumph has taken another long look in its corporate rearview mirror and homed in on one of the most successful models in its 1960s classic-era line-up: the go-anywhere Trophy street enduro. For all the hullabaloo when Ducati launched its Scrambler sub-brand back in 2014, many people overlooked that it was actually Triumph that invented the street scrambler category back in 1949 with the TR5 Trophy. This powered Triumph’s expansion in the US and was followed up by a bike that for many is still the most alluring of the many different models in the British brand’s twin-cylinder back catalogue, the 650cc Bonneville-based TR6C…

The biggest period of change in road racing was surely the 70s, when the sight of pudding basin helmets and black leathers worn by stern-faced men was replaced by brightly coloured race suits, umbrella chicks, and decalled full-face lids worn by hard-partying blokes who could pass as either rock stars or surfers. Baby boomers Kenny Roberts, Barry Sheene and Gregg ‘Harry’ Hansford were at the vanguard of the superstar revolution of the 70s, and racing has never been the same since. King Kenny is still with us, but as we all know, both Barry and Gregg have gone. To race fans growing up in the era, Barry Sheene appeared indestructible. He not only survived horrific crashes at Daytona in ’75 and at Silverstone in ’82 with a leer and a…

MOST RACEBIKES get a little downtime during the offseason, but not our little Yamaha YZF-R3, which has been logging plenty of practice laps over the past couple of months. We were even given the opportunity to do a back-to-back small-capacity production bike comparo with a piece of motorcycling history – Troy Corser’s Suzuki RGV250 two-banger. This was the very bike that kick-started his career in 1990 when as an 18-year-old he claimed victory in the highly competitive AMCN 250cc Production Challenge. Without giving too much away, I can reveal that lap times between the two bikes were surprisingly similar, but the way each went about the business of posting consistent 1m10s runs around the Wakefield Park circuit were very different. The information downloaded from our V-Box data logger made for…

The 2017 ASBK opened under sunny skies at Phillip Island, and the story of the weekend without doubt was the outstanding performance of privateer Daniel Falzon. The 22-year-old took his Caterpillar/Mainline Dyno Yamaha YZF-R1 to a string of firsts: first ever pole, first ever Superbike win, first in every race, and now first in the championship. It was an outstanding performance by any measure and had the whole paddock abuzz with excitement. How long has it been since there was a genuine young gun in the Superbike class to challenge the big stars of the last decade or more? The more established racers had up-and-down weekends. Yamaha Racing Team’s Wayne Maxwell (17,2,4) binned his YZF-R1 at Turn 4 on the first lap of Race 1. Maxwell dislocated a shoulder in…

IT WAS BRILLIANCE on a budget from Mason Coote (Coote Racing/YRD), but he had to work for it. Repsol Gas Racing’s Mark Chiodo (9,1,2) showed the field a clean pair of heels in qualifying when he put his Triumph 675 R an amazing 1.657sec ahead of Coote’s YZF-R6 and it looked as though it was going to be a one-horse race for the weekend. But, as we all know, racing doesn’t always work out the way you think, and so it proved to be. In Race 1, Chiodo binned his bike at MG and Coote (1,2,1) showed great racecraft to take full advantage of the incident and score a well-earned victory from the super impressive Ted Collins (2,3,3), riding for Next Gen Motorsport on his Suzuki GSX-R. Collins is making…

Tyred out AFTER A HIGH-PROFILE tyre deflation that prevented eventual world champion Kenan Sofuoglu from winning the 2016 World Supersport race, and several other instances of WSS tyre issues in previous seasons, a decision was made at Phillip Island on Friday night to reduce the WSS race from the planned 18 laps to only 15. This is not unprecedented, but is hardly ideal for the image of the championship. Also, the new rear Supersport tyre – the B compound in Australia – was pulled from the allocation as one of the new ones blistered and caused a crash for expected WSS front-runner Lucas Mahias. Everybody was given the Hobson’s choice of the A tyre, but they did get more for their allocation. There is no track in the world like…

SUZUKI UPPED THE stakes in the aerodynamic war with a new fairing that showed small winglets encased in a double-sided cowling either side of the air intake. Rookie rider Álex Rins said the fairing helped with wheelie control and front-balance in high speed corners. The fairing is the latest in experimental designs to counter the banning of protruding winglets. But aero costs are spiralling. Suzuki was planning to head to a wind tunnel in Japan with factory riders Rins and Andrea Iannone, immediately after the Island test. Apart from the fairing, the main development on the GSXRR is an upgraded engine to add top-end power and more acceleration with only minor chassis changes.…

THE FIRST AMA SX race held at the US Bank stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota, saw Eli Tomac (Monster Energy Kawasaki) take his third victory of the season. In the dying stages, Marvin Musquin (Red Bull KTM) clawed his way back through the field to steal second place from teammate, Ryan Dungey, who came third. Australian Chad Reed (Yamalube Yamaha) went down on the whoops and tumbled down the order to finish 16th. In Round 8 at Atlanta, Dungey scorched off the line to take the holeshot and was never headed as he ticked off lap after lap on the sandy track with his trademark smooth riding style. Tomac recovered from a poor start to get into contention with the front-runners and make a clean pass on Blake Baggett (Rocky Mountain…

You’ve had a very different timeline in bike racing; where did it start? I started off on a Kawasaki Trail Boss, a 100cc farm bike. Then I bought a 250 Montesa and started doing motocross, speedway and short circuit. I quite liked speedway. It was pretty big in Bendigo at the time and I got hold of a Weslake slider and had a ball. I knew the only way to make a go of speedway was to go to England, but the chicken farm was a family business and I was forever part of it. In the mid-70s I bought a [Yamaha] TZ350 and got into road racing, and made it to A-grade. Who were the gun guys of the era? Ray Quincey, Ken Blake, Bob Rosenthal and Ross Barelli,…

WE ALREADY KNOW Honda is plotting a new V4-engined superbike as part of the company’s 70th anniversary celebrations in 2019, and now a new batch of patents have emerged that offer more insights into the machine. Most important is a patent that reveals the design of the bike’s seat and tail unit. We know the engine is a V4 because it’s described in the documents as having: “A front bank and rear bank, which are configured in a V shape opened upwardly and connected to a front upper part of the crankcase. Each of the front bank and rear bank is configured of two cylinders.” It also specifies there will be a chain final drive, so this is no VFR1200 derivative. A second patent that relates to the exhaust hanger…

LIFE IMITATING ART imitating life? Nearly. This is a bike imitating a toy imitating a bike. As an engineering exercise, BMW has asked a bunch of its trainees to create a life-sized version of the alternate model that can be built using Lego’s R1200GS kit. We all grew up with Lego (if you didn’t, you have our sympathies; there are probably support groups available to help) so the idea of the alternate model isn’t unfamiliar. As well as the main model illustrated on the front of the box, there are usually instructions to assemble the same components in a different arrangement to form a second creation in case you’re bored with the first. In the case of the 603-part BMW R1200GS Lego kit, the alternate model is a futuristic hover…

HONDA RAISED MORE than a few eyebrows when it unveiled its innovative self-balancing motorcycle at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. While self-balancing motorcycles date back to the start of the decade, Honda swapped the more conventional (and bulky) gyroscopic solution for a clever and unprecedented two-tiered steer-by-wire system. Now, only weeks later, the US Patent and Trademark office has published what is reported to be the Japanese manufacturer’s first foray into an automatic emergency braking (AEB) system for motorcycles. And what it points to for many is the somewhat inevitable realisation that fully autonomous motorcycles are closer than we think. The technology is already rife on modern passenger vehicles, and Honda has plenty of experience with the so-called Collision Mitigation Braking System (CMBS) it uses on…

Letter of the issue That’s the spirit Hi there, Just thought I would drop you a quick line, about to board the Spirit of Tasmania to Devonport, 16 years in a row our group of approx. eight fellas make the journey to the apple isle for the time of our lives. ‘Four days on two inches’ is our catchcry, new designed T-shirts every year to commemorate the occasion, life doesn’t get any better. This year I’m taking my RS125. Just tore the plastic wrap off the latest edition of AMCN and first off I read the editor’s blurb, puts me in the right focus for the following pages. The editorial re Ducati’s new V4 (Vol 66 No 15) and the memories of the RG500 that Chris saw for the first…

It’s been a long time coming, but the new Suzuki GSX-R1000R is on target to claim back the crown it once owned: the King of the Racetrack. There are no pretences that the new Gixxer is just an updated version of the previous incarnation – it is a completely new build. Suzuki claims more than 600 parts are different to the 2016 version, meaning that this bike has had a major shake-up. If you thought Suzuki’s quality was top-notch in the past, this bike takes it to another level To be brutally honest, it needed it. Among the current crop of high-tech superbikes, the old Suzuki 1000 was lagging in the performance department. Although it’s still a very capable machine, sales were slowing and it was time to raise the…

While electric motorcycles are still few and far between, there’s consensus in the industry that they will become ever more important. For years we’ve been told that they’re coming, but it’s been a faltering start so far. Aside from a couple of notable success stories, it’s often easier to pick out the failures than those that are proving the potential of the electric motorcycle market. American firm Zero, founded in 2006, is probably the biggest success. Its range of all-electric roadbikes is ever-growing and ever-improving, with performance and range coming on in leaps and bounds. Some of its latest bikes will manage more than 190km at highway speed and over 300km in city conditions. With up to 52kW and 146Nm depending on the model, their performance is far better than…

Through Timor-Leste, Indonesia and some of the remotest parts of Asia Nearly 4000m up on the cold and desolate border between China and Kyrgyzstan, Dean Martinello was compiling a mental list of all the stupid places he’d been with Betsy before this trip. Three thousand clicks through the Congo in first gear, dodging armed bandits in the badlands of the Sahara desert, stuck in a bog in Siberia… As the snowstorm approached he tried to reassure himself that this situation was no harder. But there was one big difference. This time he had his “pillion in a million”, Sal Clark, to think about. Sure, two years ago she’d happily survived for 12 months on the back of Betsy, Dean’s temperamental KTM Erzberg racer, travelling the length of the American continent.…

Yamaha MT-10 Making a road warrior 1 Middle Screen Features: Easy fitting and scratch-resistant. Price: $307.92 2 Tank Bag mount ring Features: Quick release cable Price: $71.23 3 City Tank Bag Features: 11-litre capacity, expandable to 15 litres. Price: $272.67 4 Soft Side Case set Features: Anti-theft locks and quick release Price: $676.31 5 Soft Side Case stay Features: Easy to install Price: $366.08 Yamaha MT-10 998cc, liquid-cooled, 16-valve, DOHC in-line four 118kW (claimed) 111Nm (claimed) 210kg (wet, claimed) $17,999 (+ ORC) WHEN BOXES FULL full of genuine accessory touring gear arrived from Yamaha, I was a little overwhelmed by the sheer volume of goodies and extensive instruction booklet. However, it soon became apparent that buying genuine accessories means things actually fit, and the bolt holes were exactly where the…

This section of the route has a great road surface and some nice open corners This is one of those rides that left us wondering whether it was the riding or the scenery that was most spectacular. Either way, it rates right up there as one of the most worthwhile destinations to head for on your bike. The Waterfall Way links the rolling hills of the Northern Tablelands to the picturesque mid North Coast region, just south of Coffs Harbour. Coming from the west, the Waterfall Way (tourist road B78) starts on the New England Highway opposite Armidale airport. There is a good Caltex roadhouse here where you can fuel up and refresh before following the tourist signs east from the roundabout and skirting across the bottom edge of town.…

MARC MÁRQUEZ AND Maverick Viñales are edging towards a Honda versus Yamaha battle for the MotoGP championship that threatens to squeeze Jorge Lorenzo and Ducati to a supporting role. And that’s to say nothing of Valentino Rossi, who was unable to match the devastating pace of his new M1 teammate Viñales and departed the Phillip Island test 12th fastest and “very unhappy”. In what could be a dress rehearsal of the 18-race championship, Márquez came out of the pits and tagged onto Viñales, dicing with him over a number of laps. It was an incident which saw tensions running high. When asked by AMCN about Márquez’s moves, Viñales said: “It is not normal in a race simulation to have someone pull out and join you, the track is four kilometres.…

The remarkable Tony Rees grabbed a big lead in the 2017 New Zealand Superbike Championship as he won Round 3 at Taupo while his two main rivals lost points with tumbles. At 49 years of age, Rees is on track to become the oldest racer to win his country’s premier motorcycle title. He leads defending champion Sloan Frost by 42.5 points with just one round remaining. A highlight of the meeting was the debut Superbike victory for dynamic rookie Dan Mettam, who won the Supersport championship last year. Strictly speaking he won half a race as the second heat was run in two sections after being red-flagged, but a win is a win and Mettam was stoked. The greasy track caused worries for all the riders and it caught Tony…

2016 Ducati Hypermotard 939 SP The Hypermotard was produced in 2007 as the Hypermotard 1100 using a 1078cc air-cooled Multistrada powerplant before a mid-sized 803cc version (the Hypermotard 796) joined the line-up in 2010. In 2012 Ducati swapped the upspecced ‘Evo’ model tag to ‘SP’, and the following year a watercooled 821cc variant was unveiled that was the first Hypermotard to incorporate ABS, traction control and a slipper clutch. The all-new 939 of 2016 has a very useful 16-litre tank and comfortable ergonomics that belie the staunch supermoto styling. What it’s got The Ducati Hypermotard 939 SP is powered by a liquid-cooled, 937cc, 90° V-twin, fuel-injected four-stroke engine with four valves per cylinder. Power runs through a six-speed constant-mesh gearbox. The front suspension is a 50mm fully adjustable Öhlins USD…

The starter brought the engine to life easily, with a sonorous note, like the bass voice in an acapella song THAT WAS THE message of Royal Enfield President Rudratej ‘Rudy’ Singh at a local ride day organised for Aussie media late last year. He was visiting the country to build the profile of the Indian-owned brand, which is enjoying renewed popularity Down Under; it enjoyed a massive 63 per cent sales hike in the first three quarters of 2016 compared to 2015. He was also previewing RE’s soon-to-be-released adventure bike, the Himalayan, and getting us excited about the company’s plans to manufacture a whole new line of modern motorcycles – without giving away any details at all, dammit (although I’m sure I heard someone whisper ‘twin’). But for our…

Lobo’s classic early 70s anthem for freewheelers, Me and You and a Dog Named Boo , was a number one hit around the world. It summed up the decade when a young generation got on the move. For Australians and New Zealanders it often involved an overland road trip to Europe, starting in Timor-Leste. Dean and Sally followed in the tracks of these 70s adventurers, but decades of political change meant their route took some major diversions. Timor-Leste: Back in the early 1970s, the infamous ‘hippy trail’ took adventurous young Australians from Darwin to the former Portuguese colony, then north via the islands of Bali. Timor-Leste was a cheap place to hang out back then, before Bali was ‘discovered’. But now, when the country is still recovering from decades of…

OGGY KNOBBS IS one of the best-known crash protection brands in Australia and a true blue home grown product, so it seemed a good choice for our new long-termer. Just one problem – the existing kit, designed with the previous model 650NK in mind, didn’t fit the 2017 version. Luckily, there was a solution. The guys who make Oggy Knobbs are located across the bay in Williamstown, and they offered to use our CFMoto as a test mule to design a suitable kit. It also gave us a chance to check out a bit of an endangered species in our country – a manufacturing business. Promoto owner Frank Hajdu has been in the industry for almost 20 years now, and produced the first Oggy Knobbs kit back in 1999 after…

“It’s been a fairytale weekend. Getting pole position at the start shocked us enough as it was, then we got consecutive race wins and then finally topped it off with a perfect score. It’s almost like doing an Allerton from last year. It leaves us in a great position for the championship and the Caterpillar R1 is working perfectly. We will do some minor adjustments for the next round but no doubt we will be up there. The racing is incredibly competitive this year with fantastic depth in the field and I can’t wait to get out there again”…

As the curtain rose on the 2017 Superbike World Championship season, it was Johnny Rea (KRT) who – as expected – took centre stage with a thrilling double, in the process claiming his 40th WSBK race victory. It is not often a rider turns 40 in World Superbike, in terms of wins at least – only Fogarty, Bayliss and Haga had smashed through that glass ceiling before. Superpole winner, double race winner … looking at the results sheets it might seem like it was plain sailing for Rea. He has now won five of the last six races at what is more or less his home track thanks to his wife Tatia being a native of these parts. But tell the enthralled fans and TV spectators that Rea had it…

Roberto Rolfo (team Factory Vamag MV Agusta) scored a heroic win in what was eventually a 10-lap WSS race, even though the close attentions of Lucas Mahias (GRT Yamaha Official World SSP Team) proved uncomfortably close over the line, eventually pushing him onto the grass. The winner flashed up Mahias, but the result was given to Rolfo, who at 36 took his and his team’s first win. “It was an unbelievable race, one of the best of my career. Maybe the best one. I saw the other riders were slow in front and I overtook on the very high speed corners which was fantastic.” Mahias, who survived a 250km/h crash at turn three on Friday with no fractures, but a damaged finger on his left hand, was deemed too aggressive…

FIT, FAST AND eager to go racing, Jack Miller is targeting a top 10 finish in this year’s MotoGP world championship. The rising confidence came on the back of the Phillip Island test and another trouble-free pre-season shakedown. And there is still room for more improvement with Miller set to receive the latest edition of Honda’s power-up V4 for the final pre-season practice in Qatar. Miller feels the engine will blend perfectly with the chassis spec of his RC213V, the same frame used by Cal Crutchlow to win at Phillip island last October. “I’m definitely ready to go racing, both physically and mentally. I’ve improved my times every day on the bike at both the Island and Sepang tests, and no crashes,” Miller said. “This was really important for my…

THE FANS CERTAINLY weren’t expecting this... Down the beach roared a 1949 Norton 500T, one of maybe only 200 still in existence globally. It approached the corner-marker drum at a seemingly impossible speed. Then rider Matthew Hugo backed it in like a modern dirtbike. After a long two-wheel slide that ended with a tank-slapping weave, the rear tyre dug in and Hugo accelerated off up the beach again to the roar of the crowd. This was the first lap of practice and the start of one of the most spectacular and best-supported motorcycling events in South Australia in recent years. Four years of planning by the state’s oldest motorcycle club saw the return of racing to Adelaide’s Sellicks Beach after 60 years, and the distinct possibility it might become a…

THE 2017 MXGP season kicked off under lights in the desert of Qatar with eight-time Motocross World Champion Tony Cairoli (Red Bull KTM) taking the double win. In Race 1, Clement Desalle (Monster Energy Kawasaki) took an incident-free second place, while reigning Champion Tim Gajser (Factory Honda) clashed with teammate Evgeny Bobryshev in the battle for third position before coming out on top. The lead in Race 2 was passed around between ex-champions Romain Febvre (Monster Energy Yamaha), Cairoli and Gajser, with the last of these riders taking control until Cairoli charged past in the final two laps to secure his second win. Febvre was third. Jeffery Herlings (Red Bull KTM) had a difficult start to his season due to niggling injuries after several dominant years in MX2. He could…

 JOHN MCGUINNESS IS a household name in real-roads racing with 23 Isle of Man TT wins to his credit – so how does he feel about the job ahead with a new Honda Fireblade and Guy Martin by his side? “I’ve got a space cadet for a teammate” You’re just three wins away from equalling Joey Dunlop’s record, is that a motivating factor for you? Not really because I’ve had my pack of cards dealt 20 years ago and somebody said you’ll win 6 TTs, so I never really dreamed of winning 23, but 26 would be icing on the cake to match Joey. Joey has been my all-time hero. The bottom line now is to enjoy riding the bikes and development of the bikes and stay in one piece…