Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2018 i Australian Motorcyclist

WE’VE GONE ALL nostalgic in the office here and there are a couple of ‘new’ (old) bikes making their way into the ever-extending list of long term bikes. Let’s start with the one The Bear has acquired. It’s a Kawasaki GPZ 750 Turbo. He used to have one and has lusted over another one forever, and I’ve always told him to just get one! Only a couple of weeks ago he was saying again how much he’d like one and I said, “Do it, or you’ll forever be wondering or wishing you’d got one”. So, through a friend of a friend The Bear has got himself a tidy 750 turbo. He’s pretty chuffed and excited and well done to him. I’m sure he will be writing the odd piece every…

ONE OF THE MOST anticipated bikes of 2018 has been Benelli’s Leoncino. Shown at the EICMA exhibition in Milan back in 2015, it has taken a while to be released. Meanwhile Benelli has managed to keep interest in the bike strong, which would have been hard to do considering all the other bikes that have been released by other manufacturers in the meantime. A bit of a history lesson about Benelli will get us to the Leoncino. Benelli was established in Pesaro, Italy in 1911, which has given rise to dubious claims that it is the oldest of all European motorcycle factories still in operation. In the beginning, it was just the Benelli Garage, which repaired bicycles and motorcycles. In 1921, Benelli built its first motorcycle, using their own engine…

IT’S FUNNY, YOU KNOW – whenever someone I’ve met finds out what I do for a living, they say “You must have the best job in the world”. And of course I do. But while others perhaps can’t get away as frequently as I do, they can (mostly) get away at some time or other. A slice of my life is available to most people, considering how the cost of travel has fallen in the past few years. And the most convenient and inclusive, if perhaps not the absolutely cheapest, way to travel is on a motorcycle, on an organised tour. It can be the most enjoyable, too, if you pick the right tour. Here are a few suggestions. BEACH BUMMING Beach’s Motorcycle Adventures has announced an interesting extension of…

THERE HAVE BEEN thousands of motorcycle models produced over the years, but there is a select group that has changed motorcycling’s direction over the years. I threw the question out to The Bear and Ralph to get their top ten picks and together we have come up with what we consider to be the top ten motorcycles that influenced the world. Here they are, in no particular order. HONDA CBR900RR FIREBLADE 1992 saw the release of the Honda Fireblade. For too long previously, ‘superbikes’ were all about power and not about handling or braking. Tadao Baba, the designer of the CBR900RR, wanted specific things in his new bike – essentially he wanted power, handling like nothing before it and braking with supreme capability. No component was to outshine another; the…

WE LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU, the letters are among the most keenly read parts of the magazine. Please try and keep letters down to no more than 300 words.Then you can read many, not just a couple.We do reserve the right to cut them and, unless you identify yourself and at least your town or suburb and state, we will print your email address instead. Please address letters to contactus@ausmotorcyclist.com.au or Australian Motorcyclist Magazine, Suite 4b, Level 1, 11-13 Orion Rd, Lane Cove West NSW 2066. All opinions published here are those of the writers and we do not vouch for their accuracy or even their sanity. HARRY RAISES AN issue here that many buyers may not really consider. For his efforts he gets the Rocky Creek Designs T-shirt. SW…

ON THE MOVE Those wonderful folks at RMS (Roads and Maritime Services) in NSW are trialling a mobile safety inspection service in some areas of the state. The MTA (Motor Traders Association) has raised a number of concerns, one being that the quality of inspections may fall, which could impact on the safety of vehicles on the road. It will be interesting to see what the impact on earnings of mechanical workshops will be, too. Still, it could be quite handy. STILL DOWN Australia’s motorcycle market fell 1.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2018, with all the market categories except for scooters affected by this slight decline. The latest note from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries shows that 21,614 motorcycles, ATVs and scooters were sold during the…

METZELER’S KAROO tyre range has been a bit of a staple among adventure riders for some time now. What has been lacking, though, is a Karoo that could handle the power of bigger adventure bikes, which can easily destroy them if ridden with some verve. Block patterns and big horsepower sometimes struggle to play nice together. That’s now a thing of the past, it seems, with the Karoo Street designed to handle all that power both on the road and in the dirt. SYNTHETIC DREAMS Prior to sampling the Karoo Street I was given a lengthy tour of the Pirelli/ Metzeler factory just outside Frankfurt in Germany, giving me a wonderful insight into how Metzeler and Pirelli tyres are designed and made. Head of R&D, Oliver Haupt, took me on…

FROM THE CENTRE of Sydney, anything from 130km and 2 hours up. Tarred roads all the way, with some freeway if you choose that. There was a time when Kiama was an annoying interruption to the flow of a southward trip for a touring motorcyclist. You had to slow down as you reached the first houses coming up Gipps Street, then there was the left-hand ninety degree turn around Hindmarsh Park, another ninety degree turn, and more houses before you could let the bike have its head in the Kiama esses. Oh, okay, there was a good fish & chips shop in Terralong Street, opposite the park, but that was it. And now? Well, the place has been bypassed by the highway, so if you’re going south you hardly notice…

HELLO, MY NAME IS CLUBBY and I am an alco... Oops, sorry, wrong self-help group introduction; let me start again. Hello, my name is Clubby, and I am a Tragic, a Ténéré Tragic. Curiously enough, Ténéré-itis is a disease that affects a substantial slice of the population. I suffered in silence for years, but in 2011, as publisher of my own dirt bike magazine Trail Zone, I had the means by which to publicly ponder who else might suffer the same affliction. So I put the word out through the magazine and asked, ‘If I stage a ride just for Ténérés, will anyone come?’ And with that I set off from Sydney, taking aim for the Flinders Ranges, acting like the Pied Piper of Ténérés and picking up new-found fellow…

THE USUAL WAY this column gets written is I head out for a few days riding and hit a few pubs. Usually there’re a few pretty ordinary dives and then I find a good one, get the story take some pics and send it all in to Stu. This all works because there’s no commitment to featuring any particular place. If it’s ordinary or worse I just head out in the morning and have another go. This month it was a bit different. On March 18th, powered by winds that’d blow a dog off a chain, fires ripped into the heart of Tathra on the NSW south coast. Seventy homes were lost in the space of a couple of hours. The firies stopped a complete annihilation of the town, the…

LIKE THE SONG SAYS, “It’s a Big, Wide, Wonderful World”. And you wouldn’t be the only one if you wanted to ride it all. The problem for many of us is that we’re getting a bit long in the tooth to fit all of it into the remaining years of our riding life. Fear not, pilgrims. I have found a way in which you can do most of it in a week. Amazing? Unlikely? Of course. True? Well, sort of. Close enough for starters, that’s for sure. My bag was one of the first off the carousel at Reina Sofia Airport, and I heaved a sigh of relief. I’ll tell you why some other time, but be assured that I was not at all sure that it would make it.…

THERE ARE MANY motorcycle workshops around, but not many which you can trust to take care of your classic motorcycle. Now, when I say, classic motorcycle I don’t mean your clapped out 1990 Yamaha YZ250, or your Honda postie bike that’s seen 20 owners since Australia Post realised its humble workhorse was past its best. But a Silver Shotgun, now… It’s best to take your classic to a workshop or specialist who knows your brand inside out. That’s not always easy to do of course, especially if distance isn’t your friend, but if you are new to classics then make sure you do your homework before you trust the shop or individual with your pride and joy. You shouldn’t be paying the mechanic to learn on your bike, you should…

SUITING A BULL Berik Volante one-piece leather suit Price - $999.95 BEING SUCH A TALL giraffe I need many cows to donate their protective goodness to me for a one-piece leather racing suit and Berik has always served me perfectly over the many years I’ve been wearing their products (just over ten years now). I’ve crashed in them, worn them in the rain and to the other extreme, roared around racetracks in 40 degree heat and mega humidity in Malaysia! Why have I always chosen Berik you might ask? Sizing is the big one and comfort is the next. There’s nothing worse than having an ill-fitting one-piece suit on a racetrack. It impacts how fast you can ride a bike. So, onto the new Berik to hang proudly on my…

TRIUMPH IS RENOWNED for creating new models from its existing range (just look at the many T100 Bonnie variants of a couple of years ago). So it’s no surprise that they have taken the one platform, in this case the muscular Bonneville T120, and given us two totally different bikes – the Bobber Black and Speedmaster. The Bobber Black is for the café riders who want some muscle on tap, even if they only use it every now and again; the Speedmaster is for the touring rider who wants to travel our big brown land without the bulk of a big cruiser. For the launch of these two bikes we did a city ride and some drag racing, for the Bobber Black, and went to the Hunter Valley on the…

SHORT BUT LONG is the name of the game with this ride. Short distance, long time to ride, as there’s so much to see and do along the way. MUNDARING Located 34km east of Perth, the Aboriginal name of the area ‘Mindah-lung’ is said to mean ‘a high place on a high place’. It was anglicised to become ‘Mundaring’. The Mundaring area is part of the Perth Hills area, easily accessible by the Great Eastern Highway. MUNDARING WEIR HOTEL Popular weekend spot with Perth’s motorcyclists. “Old world charm and beauty is what first catches the eye, then the stunning food and relaxed atmosphere”, they say. The hotel can take a lot of time as it’s such a pleasant place to be. Celebrate Sundays with a traditional lamb spit roast, wood…

You know, your chain and sprockets (yes, okay, unless you have a shaft or belt drive) are important items that need regular maintenance. Many riders hardly give their chain a glance between services at their bike shop (Uh hum…yes, Bear I’m talking to you! (Aww… The Bear)) but even if you don’t want to adjust your chain, at the very least give it a damn spray with some chain lube. You will find your bike rides more smoothly and it’s easier to change gears. Talk about value! Regular contributor Robert Crick, who writes some very interesting travel articles for us, has taken on the job of telling you just how easy it is to look after the essentials – instead of your finding out the hard way. SW BASIC AND…

IF KAWASAKI’S KLR650 is the Swiss Army Knife of motorcycles, Suzuki’s V-Strom 650 is the Leatherman. A bit heavier, a bit bulkier, a lot more specialized and a hell of a lot more comfortable to use. When Phil and Brenden of MotoQuest Tours & Rentals offered to lend me a bike for my Baja California trip, I was duly thankful. When they suggested a V-Strom 650, I knew I’d hit the jackpot. I’ve owned one of these bikes and I did some fairly good trips on it, so I knew what to expect. Or I thought I did. As it turns out, the 2017 model that I picked up in Long Beach was a major upgrade on my old bike – and that included the seat, which is covered with…