Table of contents for January 2018 in Performance Bikes

 IT’S GREAT TO SEE V4s making a comeback. At this point, we’ve no idea how good the new Ducati is (though we have a fair idea...), but you clearly love it: all of the £35k ‘Speciale’ editions are sold already... ‘It’s a great insight into the RC45 at its best, and how it was used as a starting point for Honda’s RCV’ Why this hasn’t happened before is anyone’s guess: with MotoGP (and 500GP before that) dominated by V4s, the tech should have filtered down on a wider scale years ago. We’re so excited about it, we’re having a little party on paper for glorious V4s. Firstly, full details on the Duke (p8). Then we met up with Aaron Slight, PB reader Mick and his beautiful ex-Barros Suzuka RC45 (p57).…

STILL THINK Ducatis should have no more than two cylinders? Fear not: the premium 959 Corse is available to satisfy your desires. s sameas regular 959 (as seen on p24, getting a Rutter Test drilling), but the Sachs shock and Showa BPF forks are left on a shelf in Borgo Panigale, and instead an Öhlins TTX36 shock and NIX30 fork set are slotted in, complete with a matching Swedish steering damper. It also has a lithium-ion battery and the road-legal Akrapovic silencers (usually only offered as an option) as standard. It’s claimed 2.5kg lighter than the standard bike. Paintwork is matt-finish Phillip Morris orange/white nicked from Dovi and Jorge’s MotoGP bikes, without the litany of sponsorship decals. To you sir? £15,895.…

VARESE’S TROUBLED firm masked its recent grief with a Milan show stand rammed with new ‘models’, most of which were just paint and cosmetic trinkets tarting up existing models (Pirelli-branded Brutale? No?). The Dragster 800RR is the only model that could be considered truly new, slotting the Euro 4-friendly lump from the Brutale 800RR (which also got a slicker gearbox, updated electronics, a new countershaft, cams and valves) into the Dragster RR. It’s also held in place with a new mount, which increases the chassis’ torsional rigidity. Most of the bodywork is changed, too, most noticeably the redesigned tailpiece with hidden passenger pegs.…

KAWASAKI ARE having another bash at invoking the spirit of 1970s Zeds with the Z900RS and Café, using the modern Z900’s underpinnings, but with significant mechanical and cosmetic tweaks to create a sympathetic-looking retro. Peak power is 109bhp (12bhp less than the modern-look variant), but max torque is identical at 72lb.ft and delivered 1200rpm lower, at 6500rpm. The engine has different cases to give it the look of the air-cooled original. The forks gain comp adjustment to become fully-adjustable, and radial caliper mounts give a loving home to the Z1000’s four-pots. The wheelbase is 20mm longer, the riding position puts less weight over the front. Rake is the same, trail is reduced. There’s also a Z900RS Café, with green/white paint, a nose cowl, lower handlebars and a different seat. It’s…

WE CAN’T see who the new CB1000R is for: both it and we are a little confused. The chassis has more relaxed geometry but less weight than the old bike, offers retro/futuristic styling yet makes 145bhp with shortened gear ratios and more poke in the middle than before. It’s almost as if it’s torn between stealing sales from the MT-10 and BMW’s R nineT. It uses a reworked version of the old CB1000R engine (itself a pegged-back 2006 Blade lump), in a steel spine chassis, with a rearward weight bias (unlike anything with sporty intent). The old CB1000R had a die-cast alloy frame and forward weight distribution for sporty handling. It seems to have the heart of a supernaked in a relaxed town cruiser where such power isn’t useful. Maybe…

HOT PIPE FOR THE TWINS BLACK WIDOW Z650/MT-07 FULL SYSTEMS BUDGET-PRICED exhaust makers Black Widow are stepping their game up with new thinner, lighter 1mm stainless systems finished with welds and details to match exhausts costing twice or three times as much. Full systems, depending on design/material of silencer cost £280-£420 for the Yamaha MT-07 or £285-£425 for the latest Kawasaki twins (and older ones, too). The exhausts have removable baffles, and the complete set-up should save weight whilst adding noise and power. Price: From £280 Contact: www.blackwidowexhausts.co.uk STIFF AND RUBBERED UP BRIDGESTONE R11 This is Bridgestone’s new treaded race tyre, intended for any series not bound to a control tyre. It has a new ‘variable mono-spiral belt’ in both front/rear, plus an extra ‘GP belt’ in the rear.…

NOVEMBER’S ISSUE of PB has just landed on my doormat and has got a discussion going with a mate about the good old days of PB – mainly the exploits of Gus Scott and Ronnie Smith: stories of their Superstock racing and general foolhardiness in a golden time of motorcycling. Times where you could still rock up to a BSB meeting in a knackered Transit van with a couple of mates and a few beers and be competitive without throwing thousands at tyre bills and hospitality. Times we were scratching around on KR1-Ss and RGVs, which are now sought after by middle-aged office workers who’ve never even ridden a two-stroke before, never changed a piston at the TT campsite using nothing more than the underseat tool kit. The reason for…

I REALLY ENJOYED the R6 a lot, and have to salute Yamaha for keeping the 600cc class alive. This updated R6 really does deliver the essential Supersport experience... pile on the revs, keep the speed up and keep your chin on the fuel tank. As a bike, it looks the part, and it works exactly as it should. The brakes and forks are right on the money, the riding position is good, the throttle connection is spot-on, and the electronics are really refined, and not at all second-rate. The only mark against it is the way it locks up when down shifting to first gear from high rpm (although different gearing would solve this by making first gear redundant). On the surface, its lap time might not seem all that…

I STILL FEEL BAD for what I did to Rupert,” Mat Oxley says when I tell him we’re paying tribute by recreating the feature that originated the boys road trip format now common in magazines and even TV. “You vicious, vicious bastard.” The result of sending three poorly-prepared young men across France on restricted two-strokes was 1500 miles that were more eventful than you could have in a year of roaming Europe on a GS. They got lost, they broke down, rode until delirium set in and, above all, they were flat-out and committed everywhere. The three protagonists – Rupe, Trev and a bloke called Joe, reflect on the trip with fondness, even if death seemed like an attractive option at times during the actual event... So I had the…

AMONG MICK’S COLLECTION of racing exotica is this WSB-spec RC45, now an Aaron Slight replica. “I bought it from Col Morris in 2007. He’d snapped up all the bikes and spares from Honda Britain in Louth when they changed over to the SP-1 in 2000,” explains Mick. “It was a factory bike that had been built for the roads for Phil McCallen or Joey, but never raced. They used Öhlins and Dymags for the roads, and Showa and Marchesini for the tracks. A lot of factory parts were stripped, but I’ve sourced replacements to replicate as closely as possible the bike Aaron rode in the first half of 1998, the end of the single-sided swingarm era. “The factory titanium pipes and Showa kit forks came from America. The rear Marchesini…

THE BASE model 2018 Multistrada gets a capacity hike to 1262cc that brings a claimed peak output of 95lb.ft and 158bhp. It gets Bosch IMU electronic aids, while the ramped-up 1260 S model also benefits from semi-active suspension. But what’s really got our winkies tingling is the Pikes Peak edition (above), which adds to the S-spec package, with a quickshifter and auto-blipper, as well as an optional Termignoni exhaust and other carbon baubles. You’ll pay £14,295 for the stock 1260, and £17,195 for the S. The Pikes Peak price is still TBA.…

SHEATH Monocoque frame also forms the bodywork of this svelte Italian YOU CAN ALWAYS COUNT on the Italians to wheel out something niche and beautifully engineered. At this year’s Milan show, it was a 250 two-stroke V-twin in a carbon monocoque chassis with no welds and Euro 4 compliance, from five ex-Ferrari employees. There are two models: one road, one race. The fledgling firm is headed by Vincenzo Mattia, who along with his co-workers learnt their trade as apprentices at the Ferrari plant. Now, from a little workshop in the shadow of the Maranello factory, they’re working on the Duecinquanta (which simply means Two-Fifty, but sounds more romantic left untranslated). Mattia spoke to PB at the bike’s unveiling. “There are no two-strokes any more: if you are passionate about these…

‘It’s surprised quite a few people’ KAWASAKI ZZR1400 SE MICHAEL FADIAN YOU FEATURED my GSX-R1000 a while back. I replaced it with this in a bid to use my bike more often. It’s a 2013 ZZR1400 Special Edition, with the main highlights being BST carbon wheels, a full Akrapovic system, a Power Commander 5, and MWR air filter. I fitted a Brembo RCS19 master cylinder plus an RCS16 for the clutch, with an Oberon slave cylinder, and added an HM quickshifter. I’ve fitted carbon replacements for the lower rear fairing, front tank cover, rear hugger and chainguard, mudguard side panels, cockpit infills, heel guards, and exhaust hangers. And it also has a fair number of stainless and titanium fixings. It’s very much a work in progress, but I’m building it…

‘WE WERE ALWAYS FIDDLING WITH FORKS. UNKNOWN TO SHOWA, WE EVEN DID PRIVATE TESTS WITH ÖHLINS’ RC45 VICTORIES 1994 Suzuka (Aaron Slight, Doug Polen) Formula One TT (Steve Hislop) Senior TT (Steve Hislop) 1995 World endurance title (Stephane Mertens, Jean-Michel Mattioli), US Superbike title (Miguel Duhamel) Formula One TT (Phillip McCallen) Senior TT (Joey Dunlop) 1996 Daytona (Duhamel) Formula One TT (McCallen) Senior TT (McCallen) 1997 WSB title (John Kocinski) Suzuka (Shinichi Itoh, Tohru Ukawa) Formula One TT (McCallen) Senior TT (McCallen) 1998 World endurance title (Polen, Christian Laveille) Suzuka (Itoh, Ukawa) US Superbikes (Ben Bostrom) Formula One TT (Ian Simpson) Senior TT (Ian Simpson) 1999 Suzuka (Okada, Alex Barros) Daytona (Duhamel) IN 1994, Ducati replaced their 888 with the 916, on which Carl Fogarty promptly took the first of…

KEVIN ‘ZIPPY’ WILSON’S garage is, without a doubt, the oddest garage PB have ever visited. From the outside it appears a fairly normal, if a little longer than standard, single garage. However, lift the up-and-over door and it all gets very strange. Inside this garage, Kevin has created another garage, which is accessed through what looks almost like a bank vault door! It’s actually a garage within a garage... “I plan everything down to the last detail, so to me this set-up made perfect sense,” Kevin explains. “I needed somewhere to build bikes and I wanted to make the space as comfortable as possible, so I planned out my ideal garage and that’s what I built. Even before I cut the first piece of wood I knew exactly where every…

TRINKETS Alcantara seat, datalogger kit and taller screen are all available for the super-exclusive Speciale BRING THE NOISE Speciale variant gets an Akrapovic system as part of its track-only upgrade above standard trim STAND OUT Just in case there’s any doubt, if your bike has the Tricolore paintjob, it cost you £34,995 DUCATI’S RUMOURED, teased and spy-shotted Panigale V4 is now a real thing. And what a thing: a claimed 211bhp, which should translate to 195-200bhp at the wheel based on the usual equation between claims/PB dyno figures, and 195kg wet. Ducati’s weight claims are usually pretty accurate. Apart from the mega-money, limited-edition Superleggera I and II, nothing else with headlights has managed a true 1:1 ratio, so the V4 will have the honour of being the first ‘normal’ road…

THE SCRAMBLER 1100 is a mild surprise: the air-cooled 2v motor was seemingly consigned to the past, replaced by 4v liquid-cooled lumps better able to keep a lid on noise and emissions. But it has cleaned up its act, and is motivating a proper man’s version of the funky retro Scrambler with 86bhp and 65lb.ft of torque, which is largely maintained over a large spread of the rev range. There’s also a Sport version with Öhlins suspension. The rest is a scaled-up version of the 800cc original, with Bosch cornering ABS, ride modes and TC making it a modern ride with 1960s styling. It’s £10,695 (£12,295 for the Sport): a lot of funky retro fun for the cash. Now, if we could have a Monster with a pepped-up version of…

RATHER THAN address the ZX-10R’s main issues (grunt, grip, confidence in the brakes) Kawasaki are the first to fit Showa’s new semi-active suspension to create a third specification option. The familiar Balance-Free forks now have wires crudely poking out of them feeding damping adjusters, which react according to data fed in from the bike’s own IMU and other sensors. Through the addition of stroke sensors to feed the system even more data is claimed to give them an edge over rivals: Öhlins’ ERS system (R1M, Panigale S) and BMW’s Sachs-produced Dynamic ESA, in other words. The SE also gets the RR’s Marchesini forged alloy wheels and auto-blipper, but not the different cylinder head and adjustable chassis pivots on the homologation model. Power is unchanged, though at 208kg it weighs 2kg…

NO MAJOR changes for the R1 family: just a few tweaks to keep it on-trend. The quickshifter is now accompanied by an auto-blipper, and the throttle mapping has been refined. If you opt for the R1M, the Öhlins ERS suspension has also been upgraded to the latest version, with refined algorithms for more precise function. The new spec bikes will come into the UK in March: online reservations for the R1M opened at the end of November, so they have sold already.…

MICHAEL RUTTER Multiple TT, BSB and Macau GP winner Rutter also holds the unofficial record for the fastest lap of the TT circuit on a production road bike. YAMAHA YZF-R6 112.05bhp • 191.4kg • 10,999 Despite a motor and chassis that are essentially 12 years old, the last remaining 600 still kicks ass... DUCATI 959 PANIGALE 144.27bhp • 205.4kg • £13,995 Underweight superbike or overweight middleweight? No matter which way you cut it, the ‘baby’ Pani can be thrilling. K-TECH SUSPENSION Each of our Rutter Test bikes is given the attention of James Harpham of K-Tech, to evaluate their standard suspension settings, make adjustments if necessary, and set each bike up to allow the quickest possible lap time.www.ktechsuspension.com OUR LOVE AFFAIR with power and its mystical ability to increase our…

‘You watch a young guy like that and hope he has the DNA of a champion’ NINETEEN-YEAR-OLD Remy Gardner didn’t have it easy in 2017. Contesting his second year of Moto2 on a Tech 3 machine, among a grid mostly full of Kalex bikes, he finished the championship in 21st place. He also broke his ankle in pre-season testing. “That was a shit start to the season,” he says. “There were complications, so I had two operations, which weighed me down a lot. I missed a lot of time on the bike, but my results got better.” Gardner joined Herve Poncharal’s Tech 3 outfit at the end of 2016, and says there are good sides and bad sides to having a former world champion for a dad. “It’s a positive…

“MICK DOOHAN AND I WERE TWO OF THE INNOVATORS TO GET FITTER SO WE COULD RIDE THE BIKES HARDER’ What were the physical demands of doing a WSB race? I don’t believe there is anything harder than doing a race. You didn’t need to go to the gym afterwards; you were in recovery mode for three days! Your back, your arms – you couldn’t move. Somewhere like Hockenheim, for example, where the thing’s trying to wobble its head off on the straights, and you’re trying to hold it flat stick... What did you do to improve? Mick Doohan and I were two of the innovators to get fitter so we could ride the bikes harder for longer. We lived in Monaco at the time and because we were in different…

‘Reinforcing bands give the new carbon-Kevlar bodywork just enough rigidity’ 2008 HONDA FIREBLADE CHRIS NEWBIGGING DESPITE SPOTTING many similarities with his beloved early R1s, Whitey has been chuntering about the finicky Honda’s internals and the just-so assembly routine required. There are no shortcuts: it’s the manual’s way or nothing. Throw in the inevitable floods of oil on his workbench from hidden corners of the crankcases, and the result is a man driven back to tobacco... Still, his efforts are worth it: the surplus low-miles cylinder head from SMT Racing is cleaned up and sitting on top of some immaculate 400-mile pistons we picked up for a bargain price on eBay. The bores are originals (they’re still round, with almost zero wear) but we added a new set of rings (courtesy…

FICKLE, AREN’T WE? Just a few years ago, we loved getting the FZ1 in to test – a pokey motor, flat bars and decent handling spelt fun. Now, in the frenzy of super-powerful, cutting edge and daringly-styled nekkids, we’d just about forgotten them until we were perusing the small ads to find the subject of this particular feature. “Oh yeah, I remember those. That’s cheap...” It’s not actually, it’s just what they’re worth: they are a 12 year-old model, after all. But it puts a new slant on an obsolete model – one of the best R1 engines, in an attractive-looking package with a chassis you can easily get a lot more from, for less than the cost of the 125s Tweedles Dee, Dum and Doh rode to Valencia on…