Shakey's leaning

Shane Byrne is now back to BSB, but to me and he still deserves a place in WSB ... with style.

Go for it Shakey !

Superlight kit

Came across that the other day.

It looks like a MotoGP bike or it could also be Adrea Iannone's Moto2 ride, but it all started from this off road crosser.

450GP.com provide kits to transform a thumper crosser into an ultra light supermono. Choose your weapon among the 450cc range and cut sharp track corners with your new 140kg 70+ bhp kitted toy.

How sweet these kits got to be. Just look at the parts list and drool.

Cycle ergo

Whether you're looking for a new bike (winter always comes with loads of opportunities after all) or just want to know how life would feel on the latest liter motorcycle exotica, you should definitely visit Cycle-ergo website. This website's moto is so simple and obvious that once you've performed your first try, you will certainly find yourself coming back later with new ideas. Just fill a simple form with your height, inseam and preferred arm straightness, then chose a motorcycle you would like to know more on how it is to be sat on and voila.

Then, if you are a 6+ foot bloke like me, it will become so blatant the last generations of sportbikes - whether in the 600 or 1000 class - are built for midget riders. Tall guys, please look elsewhere. I know it's nothing new here as bike manufacturers have been trying to reduce drag for years now, but putting aside the fact that riders are becoming taller (not every day, but it's a statistical fact) at the design step simply means building a sportbike nowadays is just a matter of technical performance rather than trying to figure out how potential riders would actually fit on it.

Me on an Aprilia RSV4. Nice belly protection, isn't it ?

Would the tall riders please wave your hand if you're feeling concerned ? Are tall monkeys forced to buy BMW R1200GSs ?

Me on a BMW R1200GS

Well no actually and there are a lot of nicely designed, tall rider friendly motorcycles to discover on Cycle-ergo. Bookmark update !

Pipeburn 2010 retrospective

Be sure not to miss out one of the first (and already among the best) motorcycle retrospective of the year. Best custom builds published on Pipeburn throughout the (soon to be past) year are gathered in one post here.

This year's production's been great. Hope to see more of these next year ! Hey Pipeburn guys, keep the good work coming !

Line drawings

As winter approaches (weather guy says it's going to snow on tusday around here), I think it's the right time to strip the R1100S again. The idea would be to have all the refreshing jobs done during the winter so it's ready when spring comes back. What I have on the list is fairly simple : 

- a full paint job with a paint scheme that still needs to be decided (maybe you can help, see below)

- a front suspension rebuild

- a front bearings swap

- an exhaust headers grind

- a couple more thingies with parts to come and already arrived.

Anyway, I talked about this custom patin scheme idea of mine (based on a black and white theme) on the Pelican forum last week to gather a couple of thoughts and pictures of similar projects. One suggested I could use the existing line drawings found in some other posts and draw my own paint scheme by hand. And that is precisely what I'm going to try out. But not being the most artistically inventive person on earth I'm sharing these raw drawings with you, so you can also suggest a paint scheme by just droping me an email with yours attached.

Have fun drawing.

Environment

These shots were taken in a pub near my (not so anymore) new job. I like the place and you can guess why ... I'm not into those fat Goldies, but it's a biker-friendly place and food's not bad at all.

At last ...

... Rossi's test riding his Ducati.

The best comment so far ? The one spotted on Visordown : "Jorge who ?"

Death of PS Performance rumors

I've been reading on several trustworthy websites and forums an insistant rumor in which PS Performance, the well known motorcycle accessories reseller, is dead. Since I don't really like propagating rumors, I kept this for a couple of days before mentioning it here. But now that it seems to be confirmed and since the websites stays up, it's really worth mentioning so nobody places an order anymore. A few have, have been billed and will never see their items (nor their money back), so beware.

And it could be worse than it seems. I've found a couple of forum posts where guys living near their offices wanted to check for themselves. The only thing they could find once arrived is a closed door, empty offices and a pile of shredded paper. Need even worse ? Well the local police is already gathering claims from cheated customers and the file is growing huge. The cherry on the cake ? The police says Saïd, PS Performance founder and current owner, is nowhere to be found.

Better stay away from them for the moment.

KTM SMT

It's been weeks since I had decided I would try a KTM one day. Whether it would be a 690cm3 single or a 990cm3 twin was still to determine, but I was eager to try one of these bikes. With the Duke 3 showing a bit more often now as a second hand choice, I really wanted to know how it feels on the road. What better thing to do then than to pay a visit to the local KTM dealer ? And that's exactly what I did on Saturday, enjoying the one and only day of decent weather of the whole week-end (a 3 days week-end around here).

When I arrived in front of the shop, I immediately noticed that there was only one KTM bike outside and my guess was that it was the demo bike. Visiting the shop was pretty quick, as it's a really small one and it's only filled with KTM's complete motocross range and hardly a road bike (a rebuilt 690 SMC). A quick chat with the dealer later, it seems that KTM is not stocking its production, which means when it's all sold and the season's nearly over, there's no way you can't get one to try it out.

Anyway, there's still that one waiting outside and I had made the road through there, so ...I asked for its keys  and went on for a ride. So here I am riding a 990 SMT for a 35 minutes trip to my parent's house (where I had to pick up some parts) and back. During the first part of the trip, I wasn't at ease ... at all. I could not find a position on the bike, I felt like the wide bars would hit my belly any time soon and I had to lift my foot at every down shifting. Add to this that the the riding position is completely upright and the bars are pretty high making the front feeling rather vague compared to the bike I had just jumped from, and you will understand why I wasn't that happy to throw my leg over the bike again when leaving from my parent's house.

But the second part of the trip was far better, like I kind of knew what to expect from this bike. And guess what ? I really enjoyed the trip back. Now I had a rather good feeling with the front (which for me is a requirement) and could at last fully enjoy the strong engine and the "made for tall guys" ergonomics of the SMT. The KTM feels light and flickable in roundabouts. Exiting one on full throttle is made possible because it just makes you fell it can do it.

The time to give the keys back has come too soon. I really wanted to keep on feeling the front wheel getting higher and higher under the acceleration and with the only help of a small bump on the road. Sweet ! Can I ask for some more ?

Lightweight racing batteries

We've already discussed about batteries this year when mentioning Carbon Speed Racing products range. Batteries are really worth a first look when you're trying to shave some weight out of your ride as a motorcycle battery average weight is around 5kgs, which is a lot on a 160+ supersport.

Good news for who wants to prep' up his bike for track purpose : here are 2 new options for lightweight racing batteries to choose from. The first one is from Black and White bikes, a UK-based track bike specialist.

The second alternative is sold by Performance Parts limited.

Both of these batteries do cover a wide range of motorcycles. Each of these suppliers can provide with two different battery models : one for the smaller capacity engines, the other for bigger capacity, twins and thumper engines. Expect a gain of  4+kgs as those batteries' claimed weight is around 499 grams.