Archive for November 2010
Images of the Triumph Tiger 800 and its off-road focused 800XC sibling were leaked weeks earlier but official specifications have now been released with the new model’s presentation at the 2010 EICMA show in Milan, Italy.
Both Tigers are powered by 799cc three-cylinder engines claiming 93.7hp and 58.3 ft-lb. and use a steel trellis frame with a twin-sided aluminum cast alloy swingarm. The Tiger 800 has a claimed weight of 462 pounds while the 800XC is a little heftier with a claimed weight of 473 pounds. Both models carry a 5 gallon fuel tank.
The Tiger 800XC however offers a 45mm upside down Showa fork with 220mm travel and a Showa monoshock with adjustable preload and rebound damping as well as 215mm of travel.
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According to Star Motorcycles, it remains king of the hill among metric cruisers (might as well lump Victory in there) in America. Since 2007 the Yamaha sub-brand has maintained its position as “the second most recommended brand,” coming in behind you know who (Harley).
Contributing to Star’s success is its big-bore custom-style Raider, winner of our Mainstream Chopper Shootout. The turnkey custom theme seems a safe bet these days.
Industry data provided by Star shows that 73% of the mid-size cruiser segment consists of custom-style cruisers. We only have to look to Honda’s surprisingly popular Fury as some hard evidence to support this dat
QLINK Commuter 250.
By now you are probably familiar with the powersport industry’s ‘attack of the clones’; a phenomenon that pretty much began the same time that the movie came out (2002). This story doesn’t involve an army of black-and-white clad solders from a galaxy far, far away but instead a flood of cheap, Chinese built scooters that began to appear on our shores.
Many of these scooters looked alike but had different brand names attached to them. Sometimes they were actually the same scooter rebranded and supported by different distributers and other times they are a clone of a clone made with lesser components and supported by no one. The latter are usually the scooters you see online at some ‘super x-treme scooter clearance warehouse’ and they normally transport the owner one mile for every dollar spent before they are ready for the scrap yard. They sell like hotcakes and as long as they have customers they will continue to press them out.
kymco venox. Anybody who's been riding for more than a week or so has been "axed" this question. And most of the time, the best response is to steer the questioner to something with a low seat, lightweight, and a motor that isn't too powerful. Lightweight cruisers are ideal for this purpose, with their low seats and less-than-powerful motors.
Here in the US of A, the land of free choice, we actually don't have a lot of choices when it comes to small, inexpensive cruisers. Honda makes their 250 Rebel, and it's priced at just $3099. We tested it here in 1996, and it has actually declined in price since then. It has been basically unchanged since 1985. It's a dependable, lightweight bike, but it is slow and wobbly and ridiculously tiny. If you are very small it might be a good choice, but I would steer prospective riders away from it.
Victory Motorcycles reminds me of Canada. Few people in the USA pay much attention to the nearly invisible Canucks, just as Victory cruisers are roundly overlooked by America's steadfast allegiance to Harley-Davidsons. You have a better chance of seeing a limited-edition CVO Harley on the road than you will riding alongside any Victory model made in the firm’s 13-year history.
But lest you think Victory might be going the way of the Dodo bird (or Buell, R.I.P….), you should be aware that sales of the Polaris Industries spin-off were up 48% in the second quarter of 2010, despite a lackluster economy and a general shrinking of the two-wheel market – the 1400-plus-cc market is down 14% in North America this year. It was also Victory’s third consecutive quarter of increased market share and retail sales, thanks in large part to the successful Cross Country and Cross Roads light-tourers introduced late in 2009. In international markets, Victory sales are up 25%.
Victory’s 106 cubic-inch V-Twin is now standard equipment across the lineup, as is a redesigned 6-speed transmission.
And for 2011 Victory continues to evolve its lineup via several engineering improvements, including the adoption of the 106 cubic-inch V-Twin across Vic’s entire lineup. The 106/6 was previously available only on the Vision, Hammer, Jackpot and the hot-rod Vegas LE).
The 106-incher comes in two states of tune. The Stage 1 version in Victory’s touring lineup produces a claimed 92 hp and 109 ft-lbs of torque. The cruisers receive the slightly hotter Stage 2 iteration with lumpier cams claiming 97 hp and 113 ft-lbs. Victory Engineering’s James Holroyd notes that the enlarged 1731cc motor offers 14% more horsepower at no increase in price. We can get behind a program like that!
Upgrades to Victory’s powertrain also include a totally re-worked 6-speed transmission that promises smoother shifting, easier neutral access, and 100,000-mile durability.
The 999cc 65-degree V-4 powering the new Italian superbike is not only significant in that it’s a departure from Aprilia’s use of V-Twins, the compact V-4 was also developed and built entirely in-house at Aprilia. Austrian motor-building giant, Rotax, has supplied the 60-degree liter capacity Twin for the RSV1000 (known as the Mille in early iterations) and Tuono models, seemingly from time immemorial.
The Noale, Italy-based bike maker certainly drew from its deep well of V-Twin experience in the RSV1000, but the company now wanted a more powerful mill. To achieve the lofty goal of a claimed 180hp at 12,500 rpm, and to surpass power produced by competitor’s engines, Aprilia saw no other choice than the V-4.
Claudio Lombardi, chief architect of the Aprilia V-4, stated that extreme compactness of the powerplant was of primary importance.
That the Factory’s heads are 150mm narrower than the typical performance-oriented inline-Four’s 400mm head reveals Lombardi achieved the goal of a skinny engine. The compactness of the engine makes a very oversquare cylinder layout possible. Using large bores and subsequently larger valves helps the engine breathe more freely and achieve higher engine speeds. The Factory’s engine redlines at 14,100 rpm; compression ratio is 13.1.
Key to the engine’s slimness is the layout of the valve train.
A timing chain in each head drives the intake camshaft only, while a gear at the center of each intake camshaft drives a gear on the exhaust camshaft. This design lends to an extremely compact head in the exhaust area. Aprilia states the V-4 is even more compact than the 60-degree Twin in the RSV1000R.
Since Ducati held a world press launch (in Barcelona) for what many would consider a not-so-significant model, it wasn’t much of a stretch to suspect at the time the 696 also served as a sign of things to come for the Monster line.
Sure enough, only five months after the 696’s launch, Ducati announced the Monster 1100.
The 2011 WSBK season is an important one for BMW as it enters its third year of competition. Corser earned BMW its first two WSBK podium results this past season while also winning the team’s first superpole. BMW’s progress was dwarfed however by Aprilia which returned to the series the same time as BMW yet captured the riders and manufacturers titles in just its second seasons.
BMW finished sixth out of seven teams in both the 2009 and 2010 seasons, beating out Kawasaki both years. Kawasaki will enter an updated ZX-10R in 2011 so BMW will also need to step up its game to not just improve but keep pace.
On the positive side, BMW Italy’s World Superstock team captured the 2010 championship with rider Ayrton Badovini winning nine of ten races, missing out on a perfect season with a second place result in the final round. BMW Motorrad Italia will move up to the WSBK class with Badovini joined by former World Champion James Toseland, giving BMW four factory-supported riders.
Not coming to North America, at least not as a 2011 model, is the all new Suzuki GSR750. The naked standard is powered by the previous generation GSX-R750’s engine, retuned to improve low and mid-range power.
The 2011 Suzuki GSR750. Unfortunately, there aren't any plans to bring it to North America yet.
The GSR750 uses an all-new tubular steel frame that Suzuki says combines the advantages of a tubular girder streetbike frame with a twin spar sportbike frame. Front suspension is provided by a 41mm upside down KYP fork with adjustable preload. On the rear is a link type single coil shock with adjustable preload.
The front wheel is equipped with two 310mm floating brake discs with Tokico hydraulic dual-piston calipers while the rear uses a 240mm disc with Nissin single-piston caliper. Suzuki will also offer ABS as an option.
The FZ8 actually has much in common with the FZ1. Its engine – six-point mounted as a stressed, chassis-reinforcing member – shares the same 53.6mm stroke, but its bore size is 9mm smaller, at 68mm, instead of 77mm as found on the FZ1.
The FZ8’s 464-lb curb weight comes in at mere 23 lbs under its 487-lb liter-sized big brother. Part of the weight savings is nothing more than a slight loss of fuel capacity, as its 4.5 gallon fuel capacity is about one quart less than the FZ1’s.
KTM equipped the track bike with an Akrapovic EVO exhaust system, WP racing suspension, racing wiring harness, racing air filter, a thinner head gasket and several items from KTM’s Powerparts accessories line.
The RC8R Track is, as KTM likes to say, Ready to Race.
No official stats were released but expect to see an improvement on the regular KTM RC8R’s claimed 167.7hp and 90.1 ft-lb. and claimed dry weight of 405 pounds.
For more pictures, visit our KTM 1190 RC8R Track gallery. And don’t forget to check out the rest of our INTERMOT 2010 coverage.
An eighth of a liter isn’t that much. It’s about how much coffee you’ll get if you order a short cup of brew at Starbucks. If we’re talking streetbike engine displacement, that’s 125cc. But don’t let the small piston fool you, Honda’s CBR125R is as much fun as a barrel of Bonobos wired on caffeine.
The CBR125R is powered by a modern, liquid-cooled and fuel-injected SOHC 125cc Single that claims 13.5 horsepower. Admittedly, those aren’t superbike numbers, but there’s enough power to keep you ahead of city traffic and to maintain a safe pace along secondary roads. Mild hills require a downshift or two, as does turning into the wind, both of which shave speed off the CBR. And along winding, hilly roads you’ll be rowing through its slick-shifting six-speed gearbox like a ’60s hippie throwback rows through vinyl in a vintage record shop.
Made in America was the theme for the Harley factory's first built-from-scratch roadracer, the VR1000. Harley's road-racing department put the bike together using a list of American parts suppliers, some with no motorcycle experience, using no existing Harley motorcycle parts.
The streetable VR1000 you see here (and the race version) are both owned by Mike Canepa, manager of the San Jose Harley-Davidson race team. Over the latter part of the 1995 season, Mike has spent hours in his shop, and in the shops of many other Northern California metalwork magicians, fettling the VR to its peak performance. Their work all seemed worthwhile when rider Michael Barnes qualified faster than the factory riders, Doug Chandler and Chris Carr, at the Phoenix AMA national at season's end. Canepa owns the street VR as a rolling parts cache for the race bike, but offered Motorcycle Online a chance to ride the rare machine. We jumped at it.
But then, does Kawasaki’s Ninja 250R even need an introduction? Since receiving a stylistic and functional makeover in 2008, which you can read about here, the Ninja has continued its legacy as a top seller for Team Green.
To those of us who’ve known this little screamer for a while now, it’s not a mystery. Perhaps the only mystery in our minds is why the other Japanese OEMs have been content to let Kawasaki own this segment for the past couple of decades or more, but we’ll save that for the sidebar.
