Cycle Worldの January/February 2018 の目次

→ Riding the 2018 Ducati Monster 821 through the Apennine Mountains highlights one of motorcycling’s greatest pleasures: the feeling of connectedness between the body’s faculties in pursuit of one objective. Looking through the corner, shifting your body weight as the bike leans toward the apex, the sensation of speed as your hand twists the throttle—this is the beautiful interplay between the body, the machine, and the winding road. As David Foster Wallace says in his essay Both Flesh and Not, “The human beauty we’re talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’ reconciliation with the…

For the greater portion of motorcycle riders in America, “sport” touring looks a lot like the 2018-and-a-half Harley- Davidson Sport Glide. This is mostly because cruisers and particularly Harley- Davidsons are mainstream motorcycling in America, owning half of large motorcycle sales. The Sport Glide is the ninth new bike in the redone 2018 Softail lineup, melding performance-cruiser and touring elements into this new model. “There was a great lineage and predecessor of motorcycle to build on when we think about the middleweight or light touring space it falls into,” said Kirk Rasmussen, Softail platform styling manager. “The Dyna Convertible, FXRT, FXDXT, CVO Softail Convertible, and even most recently the Dyna Switchback—it solidified in our minds that there truly is a space and customer need to deliver a cruiser riding experience…

For years, I have preached the gospel of COAF, an aviation acronym for “combination of adverse factors.” Simply, COAF defines the series of missteps that precedes an accident, such as inclement weather, inadequate training, poor flight planning, or an overloaded airframe. So how does reverse-engineering aircraft crashes help motorcyclists? Because we’re the same: vulnerable human flesh and bone traveling along at injurious velocities with little to protect us from collisions with mountaintops—or cars, cliffs, K-rails or the street, track, or trail. But even if we don’t fall, COAF can still lead to trouble, and I’m living proof of that. Recently I participated in a weekend racebike build at the Barber Vintage Festival. Originally intending to run a pair of five-lap vintage MX motos, the arrival of Hurricane Nate rejiggered my…

HONDA WAS SUFFICIENTLY IMPRESSED TO LICENSE ELF CONCEPTS FOR PLANNED MASS PRODUCTION, BUT AFTER ELF-5 OF 1988 ALL BECAME SILENT. After so many promising beginnings by chassis innovators, why has it taken so long for a non-telescopic front end to reach a mass market? BMW’s Telelever (derived from the Saxon-Motodd suspension), combining telescopic fork legs with an A-arm, arrived in 1994 but has had only limited use. When suspension of the highest performance was required for that company’s S1000RR sportbike, a conventional (but highly refined) telescopic fork was chosen. When Dorna created Moto2, a “torrent of chassis innovation” was predicted, but only a “conformity of success” has resulted. Of innovation there has been plenty—from the Ner-A-Car to George Wallis’ pure hub-steerer of 1923 and OEC’s duplex steering of 1927 to…

WAITING TO GET JUMPED Q:I accidentally left my key on all night on my 2009 Harley- Davidson Road Glide, and now my battery is completely dead. Is it okay to jump it from my Dodge pickup or another vehicle? NICK STEIN CYCLEWORLD.COM A:It is always better to recharge a battery slowly, especially if it has been drained completely dead. If time or circumstance doesn’t allow, then jumping from another vehicle is a viable option. It really doesn’t matter what the jumping vehicle is; the most important thing is to not treat the process casually. Connect the positive (red) terminal of the dead battery to the positive terminal of the good battery. On the negative (black) side of the process, the most important thing is to make your last connection cable…

Regarding Zach Brown’s article, “The North Rim” (November ’17): Have we just witnessed a new genre of motojournalism? Bison, a really big hole in the ground, and the Milky Way usually have little involvement in motorcycle testing. In this case, however, the standards have changed. Not one mention of horsepower or torque, inches of suspension travel, or how quickly the machine can navigate a measurable but completely irrelevant quarter-mile. Yet, I know which machine is for me, beyond any doubt. Very well done, Mr. Brown. Keep it up, please. JIM ANDERSON OSKALOOSA, IA It’s Bowman, but we forgive you, Mr. Adkins. We forgive you. MORE ON THE RIM Really? Adventure bikes, no tools, no tubes, no Fix-A-Flat. Zach Bowman—and Jeff Allen—should know better. ADV 101: tools and tire repair before…

Since introducing the very first fuel-injected 450cc four-stroke back in 2008, Suzuki’s thengroundbreaking RM-Z450 has been quiet on the update front for the past decade. Only minor changes have trickled in and— to be blunt—the flagship RM-Z has fallen behind the cutting edge. For 2018 the RM-Z450 has a reworked engine, an updated frame and swingarm, plus fresh suspension components. All key items in any recipe for a return to greatness. Suzuki claims higher peak horsepower and broader torque from the updated (not all-new) 449cc powerplant, accomplished through a new cylinder head with its intake port shape-matched with a new intake camshaft profile and a 30-percent larger air-filter opening. More air, more power. The throttle body is completely new, now with a higher-pressure fuel pump and the injector relocated to…

Standing in the same paddock that Marc Marquez used during the Japanese round of the MotoGP World Championship, I could see the very seat where I peered through rain to watch the race just three days earlier. I never thought I would see the day where I’d stand in full race leathers about to throw a leg over a pre-production Gold Wing, and yet today was that day. I set out to test ride the new hyper-tech tourer in the most unlikely of places: Twin Ring Motegi, located about 100 miles north of Tokyo. Our testbikes were prototypes and we were riding them prior to public announcement, so using the racetrack made sense from a privacy standpoint. But the Gold Wing had also been redesigned to be lighter, faster, more…

THE SUZUKI'S CRISP, BLOCKY LINES WHISPER "KEVIN SCHWANTZ" IN THE RIDER'S EAR, AND THE BANANA SWINGARM IS GORGEOUS. As the tach needle swept past 8,000 rpm, the sound of the accelerating Honda NSR250 swept me back 27 years to a wild ride through the Hollywood hills on gray-market 250cc two-strokes snuck into the States from Japan. Within six months of that day I lapped Willow Springs Raceway on Keith Code’s Yamaha TZ250 with Wayne Rainey as my coach. That period for me at Motorcyclist magazine sunk the needle of 250cc two-stroke addiction deep into my arm, and many American enthusiasts drooled with me. By 1991, 250cc smokers were coming of age. Twin-spar aluminum frames had replaced the steel trellis or backbone and parallel-twin engines were being set aside for vees.…

Kazuho Nakai, the second engineer on the new Gold Wing project, explains: “We wanted to give the Gold Wing customer a more premium experience. We wanted to appeal to younger riders and make it sportier.” But Nakai’s description only hints at the balancing act that Honda has whenever it comes out with an all-new Gold Wing—a balancing act that Bill Savino, product planner at American Honda, says became so intense that Honda seriously considered giving this new motorcycle a different name. That’s surprising because this 2018 machine, an 1,833cc, flat-sixcylinder touring bike with integral saddlebags, sure looks like a Gold Wing. Yes, it has a fancy new front suspension, a modern and zoomy LED headlight, tauter lines, and no place for an ignition key, but if a time traveler showed…

Everything about Yamaha’s R1DT prototype is made to go left. The tires are staggered not only front to rear but also left to right, with the latter boasting an extra half aninch in width and the former filled with 10 fewer psi. The soft Hoosier dirt tires wrinkle their sidewalls, wincing under the burden of a 1,200-pound tube-frame daydream.verythingrototype es are staear but e latter bch in widwith 10 fewtheir sidewa1,200-pound tubburd It sounds like the Jetsons’ car if George lost his mind, cleared out the company account, bought what-ever passes for a Porsche in Hanna-Barbera’s steril-ized future, and ran off with Rosie in the passenger seat. The pulsing cross-plane exhaust thrums off the empty grandstands of Eagle Raceway, a short hike from downtown Lincoln, Nebraska. There’s a bone-stock YZF-R1S…

THE VIEW FROM INSIDE THE PADDOCK WHO TO WATCH ANDY DIBRINO Oregon young gun chasing the $50,000 prize. JOE KOPP The 2003 AMA #1 hunting a final big payday. Hooligan racing started with out-of-shape riders racing out-of-shape streetbikes on short dirt tracks. If this new class of flat track has passed you by, the premise is to race bikes with a minimum of 750cc in a stock main frame—virtually everything else is up for grabs. Hooligan racing caught some traction in Southern California four or five years ago with a hard-core group of blue-collar riders in black leathers. This was a community of friends and rivals, some backed by small-scale aftermarket suppliers, building and racing tough Harley-Davidson Sportsters on a budget. They’d bang bars at any track that would include…