Innehållsförteckning för June 2017 från Fast Bikes

From humble beginnings to something which is now annually looked forward to by thousands, the World GP legends series steps up a notch in 2017. You’ll still get to see stars from the past riding iconic 500cc two-strokes, but now those same old boys will be racing on modern tackle, too. Yamaha are one of the first to sign up to provide bikes (R1s in classic racing colours), and it looks as though others will join the fray. This will allow the old boys to go hammer and tongs but with some electronic backup to give those old bones their best chance of staying in one piece. These lads may be getting on, but they’re still fast, and still pure racers at heart – no matter what their age! “We’ve…

AIROH ST 701 The new Airoh ST is designed for both touring and sports usage and, in fact, an Airoh will be worn by Michael Laverty in BSB this year so, er, kudos! The 701 has been extensively wind-tunnel tested, is luxuriously comfortable, is ACU Gold approved, plus comes with a Pinlock ready extra-wide quick-release visor and (urgh…) an internal drop-down sun visor, too. Yes, we know many of you like those (we don’t), but no it doesn’t stop the 701 from being a cracking lid. It comes in many different colours spread over two shell sizes, in head sizes XS-XXL. £399.99 www.bikeittrade.com OP TIMATE 1+ CHARGER This Optimate 1+ battery charger, or optimiser, rather, comes with a 1.8m cable, and two keyhole slots for easy wall mounting.…

The problem with BMW’s S 1000 RR, isn’t so much with the bike itself – but all the others here. After attending the launch of this very model just a few weeks ago, I couldn’t help but be impressed with how the tweaks and twiddles had indeed upped its game. Yes, a lot of that trip was spent essentially underwater, but in the dry time we did have the bike fared well. I also opined that it could now give the Tuono a bit more of a run for its money. The old version, though, as I had yet to ride the 2017 machine... Opening up this barking test with a ride around some of Lincolnshire’s finest (and fastest) roads, however, the BMW is no longer feeling as good as…

Ihadn’t initially realised just how seriously Aprilia had taken this update to their opponent-crushing Tuono, until I worked my way through the extensive press information. The Öhlins fork gets new NIX inners, with a different spring rate for better road use and the rear shock is likewise upgraded. The RBW throttle is all-new, the electronics have been revamped, it now has race cornering ABS, a downshift blipper, a pitlane limiter, cruise-control and a new toggle switch to access these perks via the flashiest dash here. The engine has also seen treatment, with DLC-coated pistons, conrod honing treatment, a new balance shaft and that’s just the start of it! Aprilia told us we’d be the first in the UK to ride the bike, and as it had less than 70 miles…

Is this a first for ACT+? Yes, it’s revolutionary and we’re very excited for its arrival. With this technology we are able to separate straight line and cornering stability, which is hugely important for performance and confidence. The idea has been a real breakthrough and I’m certain it will be used on many more products in the future. Why so little tread? The design of this tread pattern is proven to be very efficient, and it also looks great. We made a call not to cut the tread all the way to the edges, because we know that people don’t use that final 25mm of rubber when it’s raining. So, rather than compromise the tyre’s performance in the dry, we thought we’d leave the shoulders like a slick so there’s…

POWER COMMANDER/ BAZZAZ PIGGYBACK UNIT Pros: Easy to fit and remove Can be resold if you sell bike If you load up a zero map, the bike will be back to stock immediately Doesn’t interfere with ignition settings Easy for tuners to work with Plenty of backup from manufacturer Cons: Can’t alter ignition settings (unless you add an ignition module) Doesn’t remove speed limiters or power restrictions in gears Paying for a hardware unit as well as the setup time ECU FLASHING Pros: No extra hardware to buy Can change a lot more of the bike’s behaviour – ignition advance, speed and power limits Bike will seem stock Cons: No added value when you sell the bike Much more involved to map the fuelling accurately Harder to return the bike…

STAR LETTER I AM TITANIUM Dear Fast Bikes, it’s probably fair to say that most riders have had an accident of some kind during their riding life. We all have stories to tell and, once fit again, most of us get back on the horse. But for some it doesn’t always work out that way due to extended recovery, permanent injury or loss of confidence. To these people I’d say – if riding is your passion, don’t give up! In July 2015 I’d recently bought my beloved Panigale 899 in white. I’d had a number of bikes, including two GSX-R 600s and a Monster 696. The Panigale, however, was my dream bike. But weeks later, in a bizarre chain of events, I dropped it next to a wall while parking…

THIS MONTH I HAVE MOSTLY BEEN… “Running in engines and racing MT-09s...” Sweet baby Jebus. I woke up one morning as myself before mysteriously morphing into Jonathan Rea, albeit a morbidly obese Englishman with a fraction of the talent. You see, Brucey handed me the keys to the first member of Fast Bikes’ 2017 longtermer fleet – a brand-new Kawasaki ZX-10RR. I’m in love. First thing first, that paint scheme. In a world of snazzy colours and complex aesthetics, there’s a lot to be said for the simplicity. With KRT’s winter colours, Kawasaki accidentally stumbled upon a universally adored icon, and the forged Marchesinis lend the RR another level of peng over the stock bike’s three-spoke rims. We’ve also got Brembo M50s and an auto-blipper to enjoy, plus a few…

Shane Byrne turned 40 just before Christmas and 2017 sees him return as the five times and defending champion in one of the toughest series on the planet. Reunited with his loyal and championship winning Be Wiser Ducati PBM team aboard the factory-backed Panigale R and armed with a year’s development under their belts, he started as red hot favourite to land title number six. But his season got off to the worst possible start when he crashed out at Donington Park’s opening round during the morning warm-up session and he was ruled out of action with concussion. Away from the track, the son of a London train driver who was brought up on a council estate in Lambeth is happily married with two kids, financially secure and with property…

Indeed, this will be the last time in print we’ll be able to remind you to get set and ready for this year’s RRnR festival at Santa Pod Raceway on May 20th & 21st. It’s a veritable motorcycling smorgasbord of awesomeness for you to get your teeth into, and if you fancy making a weekend of it there’s camping available, plus Saturday night entertainment and, of course, some bars to go along with it. The main attraction though, as you may have guessed, is the quarter-mile strip, and you plus your buddies can take part yourselves to see just who’s quickest in the Fast Bikes ‘run what ya brung’ competition. We’ll even throw in trophies and everything! There are different classes to enter, which you can check out on the…

This one kind of slipped by us, as it was debuted at a show a couple of months back, but we didn’t want you to miss out on it. Customised on order from MV Agusta Taiwan, by Rough Crafts, it’s designed to hark back to the earliest Grand Prix machines and in that respect, it really hits its mark. From our perspective, it’s both hideous and wonderfully gorgeous all at the same time which, when you think about it, is some feat. The attention to detail is also seriously impressive. Add to that the fact that it’s very different from the norm, and you’ve a real head turner, even if it isn’t to everyone’s tastes.…

Let’s not beat around the bush, the Abarth rep isn’t some highly tuned special, it is an XSR900 with bolt-on extras that has been launched alongside a 695 XSR Limited Edition car. But fair play to Abarth, it does look really good and comes with a nice array of additions. For £9999, which is £1700 more than a stock XSR, you get a carbon pillion seat cover and also a carbon flyscreen and front mudguard. The engine remains unaltered, however it has been fitted with a stainless Akrapovic full system with dual stacked silencers. On the styling front the bike comes in an Abarth-style grey and the suede seat has red stitching. And finally, the riding position has been altered through the addition of ‘swallow tail’ café racer bars. And…

I’m sat looking at the new Super Duke in a layby. It’s the first time I’ve seen the new bike in the flesh and it kinda looks the same as before, but not the same as before. It’s a touch more svelte, I think at least, as there seems to be more spaces in and around the side panels and from an on-board view, it feels a tad skinnier, too. Perhaps it’s that headlight though, possibly the coolest looking part on the bike and a fashion I imagine may well get taken up by other naked bikes in future, because it looks stunning. I hop aboard, and it’s still a high bike compared to the others, more a super supermoto than ever before. It’s not a naked bike in the…

Before I dive into the end game, a couple of points. Firstly an apology. We didn’t have time to get the bikes on the JHS dyno, so we must use claimed figures for the moment. Yes, it would have been ideal given Euro4, but they all felt faster than their predecessors and we will, at some point, get around to doing it. So, sorry! The second thing is that, exactly like last year’s naked group test, there’s no real loser here. Each and every bike you could fall in love with, especially with more time in the saddle, so many things you’d adore, with traits to snare and enrapture you. Some are better at things than others, and vice versa, but ride only what you buy and I doubt you’d…

So, you’re fortunate enough to have £12,000 in your skyrocket and Ducati is your brand of choice. The ‘modern classics’ revival and a recent surge in popularity have caused prices to escalate, meaning a 1995 Ducati 916SP will cost you the same amount as a two-bed in Margate – or the 91Sex’s modern-day counterpart produced 20 years later, the 959 Panigale. As a kid, I remember lusting after a 916 like no other. I hated Carl Fogarty at the time after he randomly blanked me at an airport, so its racing connotations mattered little and couldn’t slant opinion. It was the pure beauty – the first bike I’d swap for a girl in bed and, if it weren’t for the children, I’d happily swap the wife for one right now.…

1 TESCO MOMENTUM 99 118.9 pence/litre. Tesco’s Momentum99 octane rating is 99RON, contains superior additives compared to their standard petrol and has been independently tested to reduce fuel consumption, apparently. 2 SHELL UNLEADED 117.9 pence/litre. Just like other standard ‘premium’ unleaded fuels, Shell unleaded has an octane rating of 95RON. 3 TESCO UNLEADED 113.9 pence/litre. 95RON. On paper, this supermarket fuel should perform the same as any other unleaded petrol. 4 SHELL V-POWER NITRO+ 128.9 pence/litre. Probably the most popular enhanced high octane petrol. Along with Tesco Momentum, V-Power is octane rated at 99RON.…

Two races into the fresh MotoGP season, and there's already an air of inevitability floating around the paddock. There’s also just one man’s name on everyone's lips – Maverick Viñales... After winning both opening races, seemingly comfortably, he’s already being tipped as this year’s champion. With good reason though, mostly due to the huge points gap he holds over all the main players bar his team-mate Valentino Rossi. So is it over already? Of course not, too many things can (and probably will) happen over the course of the year, which could scupper his first meaningful attempt at clinching the big crown. The biggest threat will be when the others get their respective shit together, because thus far, Maverick has been aided somewhat by mistakes elsewhere. In Qatar, Honda made…

KING OF THE ROAD Aprilia RSV4 RF vs BMW S 1000 RR vs Kawasaki ZX-10RR – superstar superbikes scrap it out on the streets! 50 BEST USED Got cash burning a hole in your pocket? You need to check out our guide to the best used options on the market. HOW TO BUILD A TT SUPERBIKE AT HOME TT winner Gary Johnson invites us round and gets our hands mucky in the process… PLUS LOADS MORE GREAT CONTENT: ■ Why carbon fibre’s set to rule ■ Seasonal Superbikes, Bahrain-style ■ Honda SP-2 Buyer’s Guide ■ Nailing the TT – McGuinness talks tactics On Sale 30th May, 2017 Buy it from WHSmith, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and all good newsagents. Failing that, try a bad one. Check out the eye-poppingly good…

Hello, hello, fare thee all well? Me? I’m alright, well, I was alright by the end of it. The end of Aragon’s WSB round, to be precise, which went tits up pretty much from the first minutes of practice. I did a lap and we had an engine go bad on us. They managed to get me back out by the end of the session, but as we’d had to cobble a bike together there was another problem. Great… I don’t know if that motor is gone from my allocation, you never know until they get back to Ducati, but personally I reckon it’s gone. There was no mechanical noise at all, so no idea, but probably terminal. There are quite a few engines in other teams going bang this…

We’ve teamed up with purveyors of fine exhaust cans, Scorpion, to offer you guys the chance to win one of their smart and sexy cans for your very own bike! And, if you win, you’ll have a choice to make. You can either win and receive the can in the post. Or, the far better option, if you ride to Scorpion’s HQ, they fit the new can (sending your stocker back to your address), and then stick your bike on their dyno machine to see what gains it’s made, and ride back with a brand to new beat emanating from your pride and joy. Better, right? To be in with a chance of winning this can, head to our Facebook page from May 2nd onwards. There you’ll find the competition…

If you backtrack to 2008, the 600cc supersport sector was hotter than Nigella Lawson with ice cream on top. And right at the head of that rev-hungry, sharp handling, mid-capacity performance frenzy was Yamaha with its then new to the market fourth generation R6. It was a model that took the scene to a whole new level, combining Grand Prix looks with a lithe handling frame, and an engine that mullered its rivals in a totally unforgiving way. You could say things looked pretty damn rosy for the Japanese manufacturer, but that window of glory was to be short-lived, because later that year the global crisis came along and did a right old number on the motorcycle market. Hardest hit of all was the supersport sector and, like an overnight…

1999/2000 YZF-R6 Just a year after Yamaha had shocked the world with the YZF-R1, its baby brother arrived – the YZF-R6. Claiming a staggering 120bhp with a dry weight of 169kg, the R6 was developed alongside the R1 and R7 and borrowed much of the R1’s technology, including a stacked gearbox, one-piece aluminium cylinder/crankcase design and even short-skirt pistons. N ot only this, t h e R6’s Deltabox II frame was the first aluminium dual beam frame to appear on a supersport bike (and featured a removable subframe to please crash-happy racers) and it even had the R1’s brakes. The first true track-focused supersport bike had arrived… • MEMORABLE FEATURE Yamaha claimed that the R6 was the first four-stroke to produce the equivalent of 200bhp per litre. 2001/02 YZF-R6 With…

Usually, when one machine keeps banging in the class wins, it becomes harder and harder to write about. It’s true, I cannot count the number of times, say, Triumph’s Street Triple won its respective test against its peers and I had to come up with exactly why, but without repeating myself. At the dozenth attempt, trust me, this becomes quite a tricky task. But when it comes to the big naked sports class, the second most important to Fast Bikes and its wonderful readers, the Aprilia Tuono has been a joy to describe. First it was the litre version, then the previous iteration, which became an 1100cc scorcher, but both were a pleasure to wax lyrical about. Sure, perhaps a rival may be a teeny tiny bit better on the…

You’ve got to love a bit of fighting talk, and there was plenty to go around as presentation slide followed presentation slide, trouncing the opposition on grip, wet performance and durability. Oh, and let’s not forget to mention that agility levels had also been cranked through the ceiling, and knocked seven bells out of all worthy rivals during that ascension. It was a sales pitch Lord Sugar would have approved of, rendering these hoops the most essential of fitments to those looking to blitz along B-roads and nail the odd trackday. Or, at least in theory… Power to the patent Under a roasting Qatar sunset we would eventually get the chance to savour the offerings on tap, but not until our brains had been neared to bursting point by an…

Is there any motorcycle innovation that’s split opinion to the level traction-control has over recent years? Likely not, and with TC it’s often a case of the ‘have-nots’ giving the ‘haves’ grief for using rider aids. There’s little understanding of them if someone has never tried them (a good system, at least), and those that do are soon converted to the new-age technology. But never mind all that for the moment, let’s look at TC, what it is, how it works and where it comes from first, eh? Simple TC Traction-control systems reduce power when their sensors detect the rear wheel has already begun to lose traction. Basic road bike systems monitor the ABS sensors mounted on the wheels and if they sense that the rear wheel is accelerating faster…

SUSPENSION LINK AGES This is a major concern for the Daytona. Every 12,000-miles or two years the linkages should be stripped and re-greased, but this seldom happens on older machines, leading to seizure. Always check this area to ensure it is properly greased and that the linkages are moving smoothly, as replacing them can be a real ball-ache of a job and good quality used parts are becoming tricky to locate. SPECIAL MODELS The 955i was produced in two limited edition variants – the Centennial and Special Edition. The Centennial was made in 2002 and was dressed in British racing green paint and featured a single sided swingarm and carbon side panels. The 2004 Special Edition came in all-black with a black frame and black single-sided swingarm. ECCENTRIC ADJUSTER…

If stripping a bike to pieces can be considered constructive, then it’s fair to say we’re making good progress with our Moto3 project. Over several brews, and far too many tall tales (on my part), an afternoon with my mates Clive and Jack saw a perfectly functioning and capable Suzuki RM-Z250 get ripped apart. Now, for those of you that missed out on last month’s introduction, the plan is to reconstitute my RM-Z250 as a Moto3 wannabe. But not just the kind of bike that’ll look pretty at dinner parties and collect dust in the corner of a room. No, no, no! This bike’s destined for the race track, and we’ve got BSB’s Motostar championship in our sights. Just to get it out on the grid would be a result…

Why are there so many types of helmet materials and which is the safest one? Originally, helmets were made of composite fibres, like fibreglass. Over the years the use of plastic materials was introduced, such as ABS and polycarbonate. The main reason for this was to contain production costs and aid production volume and consistency. So, nowadays, different materials are used to meet and support all the various needs of the market. Obviously, because of the homologation standards applied to the industry, all helmets on the market have to reach a certain criteria to be fit for sale, so a thermoplastic helmet could be considered as safe as one made from composite fibres. Of course, some helmets will exceed the minimal standards that have been set, so this is worth…

It’s funny to think that the diminutive John McPhee is now one of the most experienced men on the Moto3 grid, isn’t it? Now riding for the British Talent Team, John wowed all of us at the opening round in Qatar, coming within a whisker of taking his second-ever GP win. John’s speed has never really been in doubt, he’s been there or thereabouts on many occasions over the years but, sadly, he has often suffered from the usual malaise that the majority of British riders have experienced for decades – never quite the right bike, or the right team, or just poor timing. It feels like we’ve waited an age for him to succeed, which he did last season, finally taking the top podium spot at Brno with his…

So, after conceding we had no bike to race (and moaning as much as possible in true teenager fashion), we were given a last minute lifeline to appear at the first round of the MCE British Superbike Championship at Donington Park, riding the Total Plant Solutions Ducati Panigale 899 in the Ducati Tri-Options Cup. Keith ‘Bugsy’ Jaggard was the splendid chap who gave us the chance to get some more saddle time, after he upgraded (along with most of the field) to the new 959 Panigale. It meant I was really going to have to pull my finger out to get some good results. Sitting on the bike for the first time when we actually got to the circuit, the initial sessions were always going to be an uphill struggle.…