Category: Bikes (Page 3 of 4)

Real world experience from a non-aligned writer (well, maybe a little declared bias when it comes to Ducatis, certain Porsches and EVs) on the riding and driving of new, old, strange and unusual machines.

Boxer Rebellion

July 31, 2006 / Richard / 0 Comments

I like BMWs. Or rather, I’ve always tried to like BMWs — they plough their own furrow (sometimes literally) and are distinctive and different in appearance, ride and attitude, offering an intriguing alternative to the ubiquity of across-the-frame four-cylinder machines. My earliest vicarious experience with the marque was in the mid-seventies, with Bike magazine’s breathless review of the rip-snorting R90S, which heavily implied that only those stout of both heart and sinew could be expected to master the mighty beast — quite a heady concept to an impressionable student who was just then coming to terms with the unbridled power of a newly-restored Royal Enfield 250. The fact that the R90S actually put out something like 60bhp on a good day was neither here nor there — it was the shock and awe that counted.

In the early eighties, I occasionally knocked around on an R90/6 and on one of the first K100s to hit these shores (“What shores?” — “Mine’s a gin & tonic, thank you…”) — compared to my Pantah, it was like riding a fast-spin washing machine that was attached to the world by rubber bands. Slack rubber bands. Thankfully chassis and suspension have improved over the years and BMW, after a short-lived attempt to abandon the Boxer twin layout, still offer a range composed predominantly of the twins plus four-cylinder heavyweights. I’ve ridden several of the current generation of both and am generally of the opinion that there are some truly excellent chassis here, all however desperately in search of decent engines.

I have seen the Future…

June 15, 2006 / Richard / 0 Comments

….and it goes “whirrrr”.

I spent today at meetings in London: it was hot, dirty and noisy and I was contributing both considerable decibelage and a fug of semi-combusted hydrocarbons to the ambience by whomping around on a 1000cc Ducati. At regular intervals the phrase, “there has to be a better way to do this”, kept springing to mind. Of course, my bicycle would have been perfect for the job. Had I been able to get it there: with a despairingly predictable lack of joined-up thinking on transport and the environment, the UK government has allowed the rail operators to ban bicycles from most services. Which has rather put a stop to that.

This evening however I’ve found that better way: I went somewhere else in space and time, to where the whole future arrives, not with a bang, but with a muted whirring – to my first close encounter with the ENV — the world’s first dedicated fuel cell powered motorcycle.

DesmoSedici RR, Oh my…

June 1, 2006 / Richard / 0 Comments

I’m not impressed by power. No, really. If I were, I could have bought any of the current crop of Übersportsbikes for less than I paid for my Ducati, had another 45bhp in my right hand and a license in the shredder. I’m much more interested in handling, real-world performance, and maybe a little bit of cool engineering style. However…

Small and Perfectly Formed…

February 12, 2006 / Richard / 0 Comments

Here’s a thing: a non-Italian bike, sight of which had me screeching to a halt outside the dealer while going about my business of the day. I can’t think of anything save the current R1 that’s managed that before. So here’s a teaser: My photoshoot of the very new, very shiny Triumph Daytona 675, in tasteful dark grey:

Click here for the Colour image gallery.
Click here for the Black & White image gallery.

Butting In…

February 4, 2006 / Richard / 0 Comments

The Ducati STx bikes have pretty good seats. For a Ducati. That actually doesn’t do them justice — several 500 mile-plus days without major pain, loss of feeling or feelings of self-flagellation have demonstrated that. However, to be picky, the side ridges of the rider’s perch can start digging into the inner thigh after a few hundred miles, and one 600-mile two-up epic revealed a few, ah, points of discomfort for my uncomplaining pillion — it wasn’t anything she said as much as the very fine John Wayne impression she did on dismounting. So several alternatives presented themselves: the buy-in, from Corbin or Sargent, a new model year Ducati OEM seat (they’re distinctly plusher on the butt) or the full custom route.

Braking and Banjos

January 16, 2006 / Richard / 1 Comment

In an earlier post, I mentioned strange problems with a heavy judder under braking, something I’ve seen reported by a number of people in various fora. It’s been a while, but we finally managed to find a solution. Even better, it’s a very cheap and easy solution. I’d gotten as far as having the the head bearings changed, to little effect – they were rusted and badly worn (traditional on the STs, apparently, as Ducati don’t seem to get around to greasing them at the factory), but not completely shagged — they would however only have lasted another few thousand miles. After that, I was looking at the fork slider bushes and the disks themselves — neither of them being cheap options.

The guys at Snell’s, my local dealer, then got in touch with Ducati UK, who suggested trying the modified banjo assembly for the brake master cylinder that Ducati produced to address similar problems with some Multistradas. So we did, it was fitted this morning and all is now smooth as silk.

So, for anyone suffering from that dreaded judder under braking, one solution (YMMV) is a simple banjo kit: It’s listed as a Multistrada part, number 69922861A. In my case, it was supplied and fitted under warranty, despite the bike being 18 months outside the warranty period. Result, and very impressed with both Snell’s and Ducati UK.

How far? On a what?!

November 19, 2005 / Richard / 0 Comments

&ldquot;You go touring. On a Ducati? — so where’s the tow truck?&rdquot; — if I’d had a quid (Eng. coll: unit of currency) for every time I’d heard that from fellow bikers, I’d be at least a couple of dozen cappucinos to the good. So here’ we are, three years and 31,000 miles down the line, and me and the Stealth Bomber are not only still hanging around together, but doing very well — I haven’t even managed to drop it yet, despite one panic-fuelled deadlift of 210kg — a strained muscle was self-healing, fairings aren’t. So, 31,000 miles in three years, on a Ducati. Without a support vehicle? (remembering that the average annual mileage of a Ducati in the UK is 2,500) Er, yes actually, so it’s probably worth a review of the score so far — let’s see just how temperamental these ‘fragile’ Italian beasts really are. First, the vital statistics:

Number of breakdowns: 0.
Number of no-starts: 0.
Number of not-quite starts: 1 (cold day and dodgy battery – replaced under warranty).
Number of stops on-the-road: 0 (although a worn-out wheel bearing discovered at the Nurburgring caused some nervous twitching).

The First Day of Sprint

March 21, 2005 / Richard / 2 Comments

Just a week ago, Winter was very much with us. It was snowing in my little corner of Surrey, and had been for a fortnight. I’d had flu, and life was very much about not going anywhere beyond the warm and inherently stable confines of a motor car. Then, come Thursday morning, Spring arrived with a burst of bright and glowing sunshine — outside, the sparrows were coughing their way through the first dawn chorus of the year and inside, the cats were darkly muttering their desire to get outside of those same sparrows. And, to round out the signs and portents for this first day of Spring, Haslemere Motorcycles had also arranged to hand me the keys to their very shiny, very new Triumph Sprint ST demonstrator, for a test ride, which was definitely worth getting up for.

Now you’ll notice that was spelt T-r-i-u-m-p-h, not D-u-c-a-t-i. But if you’ve read other stuff on this site, you’ll also know that, despite being a hardened Ducatista, I’m just generally in favour of excellence in the form of good and characterful motorcycles. And it’s always been a toss-up for me between the V-twin and the in-line triple as the perfect engine format. That’s an opinion that hasn’t changed since my motorcycling adolescence of the 1970s and my formative exposure to two of the great biking icons of the day – the Ducati 900ss and the T160V Trident.

I’ve ridden most current Ducatis, and not a few of the Triumphs of the last several years, and been impressed with all of them. The difference however is that I can usually manage to look at a Ducati without wincing, which hasn’t always been true of the Trumpets. Worthy and thoroughly competent motorcycles certainly, but frequently with all the stylistic finesse of a lard blancmange and occasional lapses of finish that would shame a Trabant.

First Impressions

That’s all been changing in the last couple of years — Triumph appearing to have adopted the very un-British view that a bike that looks good as well as working well will, funnily enough, sell well. And the latest incarnation of that thinking is the new generation Sprint ST, Triumph’s sports tourer and a direct competitor to my own ST4s. So here we have the Triumph, resplendent in electric blue paintwork and triple-themed lights, clocks and pipes: matching tie, handkerchief and socks. Parts in fact seem slightly and contrivedly over-designed, giving parts like the clocks the impression of cosmetic plastic rather than alloyed engineering.

Overall though, this bike looks great – it has a spare elegance of design and line, with an aggressive and very non-lardy rearward-rising stance and a remarkable overall slimness to the package — it looks, and feels, light and lithe.

State of the Art…

September 13, 2004 / Richard / 1 Comment

Bear with me, will you? I’ve been running this blog and site since late 1998 and have finally gotten around to migrating it all into my Two Worlds vServer engine, a set-up based on Movable Type content management system plus lots of other bits and pieces, held together with various hackettes (sorry, “ubiquity integration modules) in perl and php. Anyway, most of the raw content is across, but I’m still writing a few scripts to handle images and attachments, hence the sudden lack of photos, incriminating or otherwise. This will be completed very soon, at which point whatever passes for normal service will be resumed.
Richard

Those Definitely Weren’t the Days…

August 24, 2004 / Richard / 0 Comments

During a recent discussion on the Ducati ST owners’ list about the relative merits of kickstarts and electric starts, I was forcibly reminded of a friend’s 1954 BSA B33 500cc single. Despite having the flywheel mass of the Brooklyn/Forth (choose according to domicile) bridge, it would frequently not-quite-make-it past TDC and kick back with the full force of its very long stroke. But in slow motion, as befits a very leisurely motorcycle (at ‘touring’ revs it was firing every other streetlight). Quite enough to cause any or all of: knee to hit chin (moral: don’t stick your tongue out while kickstarting a motorcycle); knee to hit handlebar with eye-watering force; or, and from the spectator point of view, finest of all, to fire the entire hapless and sweating human being into orbit – half a dozen of these things in sync and Britain would have won the space race years before Gagarin and Thunderbirds got in on the act. Landing was iffy – I’d arrive in the gutter, do a half roll and rise to my feet just in time to watch the thing gracefully keel over sideways and land with the metallic sigh of a job well done. I like – I REALLY like – electric starts.