Inhaltsverzeichnis für February 2018 in Performance Bikes

Michelin started the trend for tyre fitments bragging about their winter prowess, and they’re now on the third iteration of sports touring tyres designed to stick when all is greasy. The Road 5 (they’ve ditched the ‘Pilot’ bit) has a rehashed design for the 2CT compounds and the trademark sipes to perform better, for longer – they reckon a half-worn front offers the same wet braking performance as a new Pilot Road 4 managed before. Price £270 per pair (est) Contact moto.michelin.co.uk…

BROWSING THOUGH the December issue of PB, I was struck by Kar’s article on improving braking performance. I was interested in the outcomes of your experiment. As an ex-racer in the Hornet Cup I’d looked into fluid dynamics and improving braking performance as it’s the easiest, cheapest and most effective performance mod you can make, particularly in a class where such things are very restricted. In short, I found that decreasing the master cylinder bore from 14mm (OEM) to a 12.7mm bore item increased the force with which the pads are pushed against the discs (a significant braking improvement – if I remember correctly, it was calculated at about an 18% increase in braking power). The feel at the lever improves, too, allowing better brake modulation. This is often confused…

FOR 2017, we relocated our Rutter Test from Mallory Park to Donington – former home of the British Grand Prix. With a Metzeler control tyre and the help of K-Tech for suspension set-up, the playing field couldn’t have been more level. So now, with the Christmas pudding and (shut your ears, Whitey) turkey sitting heavily on their stomachs, John McAvoy and Michael Rutter take their relationship to a whole new level. Meeting up at a local pub, like an episode of Long Lost Family, the pair exchanged loving looks across the table, nursed a single pint each (they’re both as tight as a gnat’s chuff) and got down to brass tacks. The final leaderboard for 2017 is based purely on lap times. So, our duo, uncharacteristically devoid of leather (with…

‘IF I’D BOUGHT THE TRICKER FACTORY MODEL I’D HAVE BEEN LESS INCLINED TO MODIFY IT’ BEFORE I START to talk about Adam Eborall’s Aprilia Tuono special, I should confess a few things. I’m a huge fan of the original V-twin Tuono models and own a first-generation Tuono Racing, which I lovingly refer to as my ‘Italian chav bike’ due to its gaudy styling, plethora of carbon and assorted bling, and unruly nature. It’s a great bike, but it is equally crass in many ways (Aprilia are horrific when it comes to matching colours). The anodising on the Öhlins forks is a different colour to the bars, which are a different colour again to the Brembo brake calipers – stylistically, it’s a bit of a dog’s dinner. Obviously none of this…

Do your homework Don’t go handing money to someone just because they have a shiny turbo; ask around and see if they actually know their stuff. I’ve seen some shocking work by so-called turbo experts who have ruined good bikes. Work with the turbo man I always like to talk to the customer and ask what they are wanting to do with their bike. If it is a drag bike you’ll be wanting power, but if it is for the road then a milder tune is going to be better as that will make it easier to ride. Service regularly Bikes that have turbos don’t need any special maintenance, but they do need servicing regularly and with quality oil. They are putting out quite a lot of power, so treat…

‘With the baffles out, the new set-up is neighbour-friendly, unless you’re a dick with the throttle’ 2005 YAMAHA YZF-R1 CARL NEWBIGGING I LIKE THINGS to be done right, so the bodgy catalyst removal (which consists of hammering the matrix out of the Y-piece, leaving an expansion chamber-like void) performed by a previous owner was niggling me. It’s also an ugly piece of pipework – pressed and welded steel, heat-stained over the last 20,000 miles. There are plenty of options, but Black Widow’s £135 replacement caught my eye – compatible with stock headers and cans (or my existing Microns), but made from 1mm stainless and neatly welded, it had to be worth a look. The pipes are designed and developed in the UK, but made elsewhere. In theory that means decent…

2016 BMW S1000RR MICHAEL RUTTER 2017 HAS BEEN a brilliant season for me and the team. We finished third in British Superstock overall, and we had a great season on the roads, too. I did my fastest ever lap at the TT at 131.7mph in the Senior to finish fifth, I got a fourth in the Superstock race, a fifth in the Superbike race and a win in the Lightweight. The North West 200 was good, too. I got a win, two seconds, a third and a fifth. It’s been one of the best seasons of racing for me for a long time, but most importantly, we’ve all really enjoyed it. We really understand the bike now, which makes a massive difference, and Alec made the superlight Macau bike that…

CHRIS NEWBIGGING EDITOR chris@pbmag.co.uk Bart Simpson boxers AUSTIN SMITH ART EDITOR austin@pbmag.co.uk Novelty ‘elephant trunk’ posing pouch MICHAEL RUTTER TRACK TESTER editorial@pbmag.co.uk Commando (and hairless) MARK WHITE TECHNICIAN editorial@pbmag.co.uk Aubergine JOHN McAVOY ROAD TESTER editorial@pbmag.co.uk Action Man asexuality JEREMY McWILLIAMS COLUMNIST editorial@pbmag.co.uk KTM freebie thong JOHN BENNETT VLOGGER www.youtube.com/lambchoprides Greying Y-fronts KAR LEE FORUM EDITOR editorial@pbmag.co.uk Foil-wrapped engine crash bung CAROLINE BARRETT EDITORIAL ASSISTANT caz@pbmag.co.uk James Ellison-logo girdle THANKS TO Chappers and Baldy (for the chocolates), Uwe Seitz, Wagamama (Peterborough branch), your mum, the sheer wealth of XHamster ‘stepmom’ search results. NO THANKS TO National Lottery scratchcards.…

NEED A BIKE fix in the winter misery? Once you’ve exhausted your PB back issue stash, hop on a train and head to London on February 16-18 to put some sunshine in your heart, even if it’s not in the sky. As well as the usual fodder of new bikes, cheap kit and bike displays, there’s a live action arena with Chris Walker, Neil Hodgson and Ruben Xaus attempting to maim each other with mini bikes. Convalescing John McGuinness is taking advantage of his reduced mobility to run the bar. Go late in the day, he might be too pissed to take cash from you... Details: mcnmotorcycle show.seetickets.com…

THIS ISN’T HORSE shit, we promise: these very words came from the mouth of a Ducati employee in a chat with a French website. Edouard Lotthe manages Ducati Western Europe, and told MotoStation that parent company VW’s commitment to offering an electric option for all of its products would impact Bologna’s two-wheeled offerings. Also, a premium big scooter with the Ducati name on the side is on the cards – no surprise given how many Burgmans, TMAXs and other expensive scoots Europe laps up. In slightly more conventional news, he also revealed the air-cooled engines would be engineered to meet Euro 5, guaranteeing an authentically-powered future for the Scrambler/Monster range for a while yet.…

Your choice of Dunlop sports tyres is now up to four: the Sportsmart TT fits between the GP Racer (intended for track-only use) and the Sportsmart II Max (road use, occasional light track duties). The TT is claimed to eliminate the need to switch between road/track tyres by giving you rubber that’ll work nicely at standard road pressures, but will offer some of the advantages of a race tyre when you drop it to Dunlop’s NTEC carcass-enabled crazy low pressures. They’re available from March – plenty of time to decide ‘how trackday are you?’ Price £275 per pair (est) Contact www.dunlop.eu…

‘He wanted to stand on top of the podium when he won the championship, so he risked everything’ I’VE DONE SOME more coaching in Almeria with Tracksense this month, which proved to be interesting. A certain F1 driver was there for his first ever motorcycle trackday. I was told not to say who, but he’s been a world champ... Almeria is very technical; I’ve been coaching there for more than 10 years and my best lap was a 1.35 on a 500cc GP bike back in 2002. The fastest clients I coach are in the high 1.41s and are either racing at a national level or fast club level. A BSB guy will get a high 1.38. So, this F1 driver turns up and hires a standard S1000RR on his…

WITH HIS RACE SEASON done – on both the short circuits and roads – and with the data analysed from our numerous visits to Donington over the past year, meeting up with Rutter for a quick pint (or at least just the one pint, even if he did cradle it for a few hours...) was the perfect opportunity to reflect on the bikes he’s tested for PB in 2017. Primed with the full list of the 15 machines he’s hammered around the famed GP circuit in the name of science (and sheer schoolboy excitement), we turned on the dictaphone, and prepared ourselves for Rutter’s quick, and final, verdict on each of the bikes. While he had plenty to say about the winners and losers in each of the key sectors…

Richard Adams Maxton Suspension Richard is a familiar face in the BSB and TT paddock. What he doesn’t know about springs isn’t worth knowing. www.maxtonsuspension.co.uk Frank Wrathall Jnr Dynojet UK When it comes to fuelling maps, Frank is your man. Unsurprisingly, he is extremely familiar with the Yamaha FZ1.www.dynojet.co.uk Mark White PB’s FZ1 fan As well as spending more than 20 years of his life working on bikes, Mark ran PB’s long-term FZ1 test bike in 2011. He spent a year building on Yamaha's solid base to create Project Abarth, an FZ1 that was better than an Aprilia Tuono V4. FZ1 Fazer The FZ1 Fazer was launched alongside the FZ1 and gained ABS as an option in 2007 as well as a small half fairing, pillion grab rails and a…

‘If it’s been running rich for a while – or from new – the combustion chamber will be coated in carbon’ 2003 MV AGUSTA BRUTALE 750 CHRIS NEWBIGGING I RECALL A sanctimonious arsehole once telling me dynos were a waste of time, and that he could jet his old Kawasaki just as well by feel. Cobblers: until you stick a proper O2-sniffing probe up a bike’s bum to record your air:fuel ratio, you don’t really know what’s going at every rpm and throttle opening. What feels OK often isn’t. As was demonstrated by me: my MV’s low-speed fuelling was obviously to cock, with snatchy pick-up and a surge at 4000rpm or so. But into the midrange and up top, it had a linear feel and no obvious issues – apart…

2017 YAMAHA MT-09 MARK WHITE I’VE QUITE A good boss. Not only have I failed to get my words in on time for this very instalment and he’s not punched me in the face (although he does manage to make me feel as guilty as my mum did when she found out that I spent most of my college years playing pool in the local pub) but he’s graced me with a long-termer to tazz around on, and he actually listens when I talk about what I’d like to do to it. So, after mentioning I’d like to fiddle with the MT-09’s riding position, it shouldn’t have been a surprise to find a pair of rearsets, adjustable bar risers and handlebars to stick in them when I skulked into the…

2017 HONDA FIREBLADE JOHN McAVOY I’VE BEEN AROUND the block a few times (CN – we know, Rutter was telling us all about your kerb crawling session the other day), so the impact of the name ‘Fireblade’ will never be lost on me. It transcends motorcycling. It’s synonymous with rapid, pant-wettingly scary sportsbike dickheadery. And I have to admit to stroking myself off in the downstairs loo of my house once I’d got off the phone to Chris when he told me I was going to be the steward of PB’s Blade. However, much as the bike has some undeniably self-evident strengths, the reality is that I’ve spent the bulk of the year fielding questions about the Blade with sentences that start with, “Yeah, it’s OK, but...” The ride-by-wire throttle…

Gilles California Superbike School footpegs HOW LONG FOURMONTHS/COST £172 CONTACT WWW.PERFORMANCEPARTS-LTD.COM THERE ARE only two downsides to these footpegs: they look like they might accompany some sort of orthotic shoe, and they cost as much as a basic set of rearsets. But I highly recommend them anyway, and this is why... For combined road/track use, most current sportsbikes have enough ground clearance. I’ve never ground out the GSX-R’s OE pegs, so rearsets are mostly needless. But the pegs themselves have an annoying turned up end which restricts movement, reduces comfort and isn’t that grippy. In a corner, my feet ended up hanging way off and grinding toesliders to pieces. These fix that – the larger, curved platform gives your boots plenty of knurling to hang on to, and the droopy…

KTM 790 DUKE PRICE It’s £8499 when it lands in the next month or so. That is all. But I have a word count to fill, so please bear with me while I make such a concise piece of news fit the space allocated. That should cover it. Thank you for your patience. MV PROMISE NEW FOUR-CYLINDER MV, now free of AMG/Mercedes control (but with Russian investors to answer to), are promising a new inline four motor powering new models later this year. We predict a Brutale first: the Varese mob (as it were) have previously said naked bikes are now a priority for them, and the expense of sportsbike development is hard to justify. DEREK SHIELS JOINS PENZ13 Irish road racing champ Derek Sheils has joined the Penz13 team…

ENERGICA WILL provide a grid full of their ‘Ego’ electric sportsbikes to Dorna for the first ever Moto-e world championship. The one-make series is intended to introduce the spectacle of electric bike racing at world level, but should eliminate the huge performance gulf seen in other championships allowing prototype machinery from all-comers. The bikes will be lightly tweaked and prepared Ego road bikes, so it’s also hoped it will lend zero-emissions performance bikes credibility rather than displaying the engineering prowess of one-off race bikes like the Mugen. Mat Oxley has covered Dorna’s first step into green racing for us: see p58 for more.…

THE MT-10 IS A BRILLIANT thing. The MT-10SP is an even more brilliant thing. But there’s always room for improvement, especially if trackdays are a priority. Yamaha’s MT models are first and foremost road bikes. They’re capable and hilarious fun, but get hot and heavy on a circuit and you’ll run into limitations despite the shared components with the R1. Manageable ones, but limitations nonetheless. German Yamaha dealer Dominik Klein has longstanding form for taking Iwata’s creations way beyond their design brief: we’ve featured his FZ-1 and 2006 R1 on these pages before, and he’s also fettled MT-09s, MT-01s and more in his Dillingen workshop. His ‘MT-10RR’ is possibly the wildest confection yet: it makes 192bhp with a fat torque curve, but only swings the needle on the scales to…

1st 2017 ApriliaRSV4 RF 1:36.62s “Even though it was fastest, I still don’t think we got the best out of it, due to all the technical issues, and all the stopping and starting involved.” 2nd 2017 Ducati 1299 Panigale S 1:36.71s “I loved the feel of the big Panigale – the engine is immense. The overall package is hard, fast and loud – old school!” 3rd 2017 Yamaha YZF-R1M 1:37.10s “The engine characteristics of the big Yamaha really suited a lap of Donington. The electronic suspension elevates it hugely.” 4th 2017 Suzuki GSX-R1000R 1:37.23s “The GSX-R is pretty much perfect for a lap of Donington – it’s fun, but it’s also scary... a bit like a race bike can be.” 5th 2017 BMW S1000RR 1:37.73s “Yes, I race one, but…

‘The issue isn’t always ultimate battery capacity, but more the rate of discharge and heat management’COLIN WHITTAMORE, MUGEN JAPANESE COMPANY MUGEN (owned by Soichiro Honda’s son, Hirotoshi) currently makes the world’s fastest EV race bikes. The company scored its fastest TT Zero victory at 118.4mph, a huge increase against the 87.4mph achieved during the inaugural 2009 electric TT. If petrol-powered superbikes had improved at the same rate, the Isle of Man TT lap record would now stand at almost 190mph. Further improvements will mostly come from better batteries, believes Mugen Europe’s Colin Whittamore. “The battery is the common limiting factor,” he says. “However, the issue isn’t always ultimate battery capacity, but more the rate of discharge and heat management. The faster you pull/push energy out of/ into a battery the…

1 Long flat-head screwdriver ‘This is so old I have no idea at all where it came from, but it is so useful. It is perfect for adjusting carbs as you have enough reach to go in from above them. I don’t let anyone else use it as long screwdrivers are always getting bent or broken when people try and unseize a screw with them. If the screw is seized, take the bit off and unseize it with a short screwdriver rather than bend a long handle one.’ 2 Ball-ended 6mm Allen socket ‘The problem with ball-ended Allen sockets is everyone uses them to over-tighten exhaust headers, causing the ball to snap off within the bolt. I always keep this on a small ratchet spanner as that stops people over-tightening…

‘The rear subframe needs straightening and probably partial reconstruction. It’ll get a tweak with a big bar...’ 2008 HONDA FIREBLADE CHRIS NEWBIGGING IT MIGHT LOOK like we haven’t done much... well we haven’t, really. But slower progress is a necessity at this point, as a final, functioning package depends on certain things being right. The biggest obstruction to building a running bike is the placement of ancillary components – as the bike stands, the battery, fusebox, reg/rec and dash don’t have a home. And we don’t have headlights that fit, either: the originals won’t work with our endurance fairing, and we don’t wish to refit 2kg of bulk anyway. All these issues are being resolved by one-man engineering solutions band Simon Francis. He’s already made the neat, hidden, weight saving…

‘I don’t want to wrap it in cotton wool, but there are a couple of additions any bike can benefit from’ 2014 KTM 1290 SUPER DUKE R JOHN BENNETT THE LONG COUNTDOWN to spring has well and truly begun. Remember that? The glorious time of the year when you can once again ride on salt-free roads and actually feel all your fingers and toes whilst riding... As I am a self-confessed big southern softie I don’t tend to ride much during the winter, and what with the Super Duke’s tyres being absolutely shot and the MoT expired, it’s time for the winter hibernation and garage tinkering to commence. You may remember I mentioned last month that I have some big plans in store for the KTM. Before I start with…

‘I’m enjoying being catapulted through the cold, dense air that the motor is gobbling’ 2017 SUZUKI GSX-R1000R CHRIS NEWBIGGING I’M NOT THE sort to lecture on the merits of all-year riding, and how it makes you a ‘real biker’ or some shit. Nor do I claim it makes you a better rider: come the first trackday of 2018 I’ll still be rusty as hell when it comes to anything more than just getting somewhere. No... winter riding only makes you better at winter riding. But Peterborough is like every other town or city and is getting ever-busier: driving to/from work either takes ages (over an hour to leave my parking space on occasion), or the congested throng of poorly-disciplined arseholes permitted to drive sends me round the twist. A bike…

‘It’s whatever you want it to be... It’s just waiting there to be unleashed’ 2017 KTM 1290 SUPER DUKE GT AUSTIN SMITH THERE IS ABSOLUTELY no point trying to pigeon-hole this bike. Super Duke with fancy clothes? Nah, not really. Super-tourer? Absolutely not. Super-naked track weapon? Too wieldy. It’s fair to say Super Duke GT is a bike that defies categorisation. But, because of this, it has a bit of a personality complex. There are many things that stand out from my year on the 1290 – most of them grin-inducingly brilliant, some of them that could best be filed under ‘niggles of various magnitude.’ Here’s my round-up... It gives me a rush... In my 24 years of riding there haven’t been many bikes with an engine quite like the…