Table of contents for Issue 324 in Motorcycle Trader

Indian Motorcycle continues to expand its national dealer network with the opening of its first store in Tasmania, just months after Perth. The historic American brand is now represented across Australia via 15 dealerships. Indian Motorcycle Tasmania, previously known as Titan Bike and Trike, is located at 76 Charles Street, Moonah, in Hobart. It is run by sales manager Shaun Kelly who has three generations of motorcycle shops in his family. “We recognise and understand that owning a motorcycle such as an Indian is a lifestyle decision and one that demands matching customers’ expectations not just with product but also in terms of experience,” Kelly says. Indian Motorcycle Tasmania will also work as a service agent for Victory Motorcycles. For dealer locations, visit www.indianmotorcycle.com.au…

MY MILD OBSESSION with two-valve Ducatis began in 2005 when the company introduced its retro-inspired Sport Classic range. I just had to have one. Ducati’s modern four-valve offerings didn’t appeal to me but the limited-edition Paul Smart model was a curvaceous thing of beauty and harked back to a time when bikes were simpler. The fact that the Paul Smart was excruciating to ride on public roads prompted me to give it a whirl on the track. I was quite surprised at how well the standard bike made its way around Phillip Island, but I knew it could be improved. Some of the nostalgic components, like the spoked wheels and twin-piston callipers, were really holding it back. What started with a few mods on one Sport Classic turned into multiple…

Most riders think his last name is ‘Strapz’, but it’s actually ‘White’. And that’s just for starters. So how did an emergency paramedic end up creating Australia’s most successful motorcycle accessory manufacturing business? Like all good roads, the story of Andy Strapz/ White is a long and winding one. Born in Western Australia and son of a bricklayer, Andy White’s early life was spent leading YMCA groups adventuring in the great outdoors. He followed this up at college, gaining formal qualifications and working in a psychiatric unit as a recreation officer in Townsville. Seduced by the rock ’n’ roll life, he toured the east coast as a roadie and sound mixer, eventually using his band truck to work as a courier in Sydney. Business on the road dried up during…

“That Aprilia is just plain ugly, and it was a flop. The BMW was staid and boxy – a bike equivalent of a ’70s Volvo” UGLY FLOP I can agree with most of Roff’s choices (see Beautiful Bikes feature, MT #322), but that Aprilia is just plain ugly, and it was a flop. The BMW R90S was staid, boxy and not pretty at all – a bike equivalent of a ’70s Volvo. Two notable exceptions from the list were the Kwaka Z1 900/Z1000 and the original Harley Softail of 1984. Both ushered in new eras. Their respective popularity reflected their beauty and performance. The Harley was revolutionary. New Evo motor, Wide Glide front end, retro hardtail look – it was a factory custom that turned Harley’s fortunes around and inspired…

“My final view: a shower of sparks bursting from Tim’s right footpeg as he charged the curves” Brisbane in the mid-1970s was the playground of the Four-Owners, four-cylinder bikes the common interest. Kwaka Nines and Honda 750s dominated the club. I was invited on a ride to Lake Moogerah, on the Gold Coast hinterland. Tim was a club member and Honda Four fanatic. After a recent smash, his bike had been sensibly upgraded. He’d fitted Continental tyres, Koni shocks, forks running automatic transmission fluid, flat ’bars and a 4-into-1 system. When Tim wasn’t crashing, he used the mix to good effect. He could be fast – when upright. We tracked the 65-bike run as far as the dam before spearing off onto a back road. “I was down here last…

One of John Bloor’s Hinckley Triumph success stories is the resurrected Bonneville. By combining the style and appeal of the classic 1960s original with modern features, Triumph successfully managed to recreate an icon. Introduced in 2000, the new Bonneville has grown from 790 to 1200cc and has continued as a pivotal model in Triumph’s line-up. But without the original, the current Bonneville range’s appeal would be minimal. Relatively powerful, good-looking and made famous by racers and film stars, the original T120 Bonneville typified the best of the sixties. Arguably the leading performance motorcycle of the era, “Precision, Power, and Performance,” was Triumph’s catchcry. There was no excess and style followed function. Although not rare and produced in considerable numbers over 25 years, the T120 Bonneville was one of the archetypal…

RIGG ’N’ ROLL No one wants to sift through a bag of wet socks while looking for a raincoat. What you do want are a variety of waterproof bags that are easy to attach, easy to pack and easy to unpack. Nelson-Rigg’s latest answer to this need is two waterproof drybags: a 15-litre Adventure Dry Roll Bag and a 30-litre Adventure Deluxe Dry Bag. Both are marketed as 100 per cent waterproof, have heat-welded seams, self-fastening webbing, quick-release buckles and four aluminium hooks for fastening. Other features include metal D-rings that attach to other luggage and optional padded back straps. 15L black/yellow SE-1015 $109.95 30L black/yellow SE-1030 $139.95 www.LinkInt.com.au IN A FLASH If you’ve never had your bike’s ECU professionally tweaked, you haven’t lived. The result can make you feel…

Harley-Davidson’s Breakout has reclaimed its throne as Australia’s top-selling road bike by knocking off Harley’s LAMS-approved Street 500, despite an industry sales slump in the first half of the year. The iconic Milwaukee brand sold 711 examples of its raked-out cruiser compared with 609 Street 500s (down from 743 or 18%). In third was the Honda Grom, a 125cc road-legal fun bike, which sold 597 units – more than double its debut figure for the same period last year. Some 50,908 new motorcycle sales were recorded between January and June, down from 53,084, or four per cent, during the same period last year, according to the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries. While off-road bikes remained stable, road bike sales were down almost 13 per cent, with the biggest losers being…

Classic race bike builder Ken McIntosh once told me a great bike doesn’t need the best of any one thing, it just needs to do everything well. Well that’s exactly how I’d describe BMW’s cheapest and smallest motorcycle to date, the G 310 R. Priced from $5790 (plus on-road costs), the Indian-built G 310 R is an unpretentious naked bike that, even when pushed to its limit, does everything well. It accelerates well, steers well, stops well and it possesses a high-quality finish for what is essentially a budget bike. Riding a 310cc single-cylinder learner bike may all sound a bit beige, but riding the little Beemer is actually a bucketload of fun. It’s even happy to oblige with burnouts and wheelies, should you feel inclined. “Due to quality concerns,…

A revamped CVO Street Glide should be music to our ears. But is larger and louder really better? Does music really make everything better? You’d hope so if you were buying a Harley-Davidson CVO Street Glide. Priced from $48,995 (plus on-road costs), this year’s CVO bike costs about $12,000 more than the regular Street Glide Special, making it Harley’s second most expensive offering, behind the CVO Ultra. Where does the extra money go? Mostly on its sound system. We’re talking 6.5-inch three-way front speakers, pannier speakers, carbon-fibre cone woofers, dome tweeters, 300-watt amplifiers, and pre-amps. In short, enough volume to kill a duck and annoy the neighbours in the next suburb. Of course, you do get a bunch of more conventional upgrades, including the biggest Harley engine available, the new…

Adventure riding is one of motorcycling’s fastest-growing segments so I thought it was time to include some tips specifically related to this. Australia and New Zealand offer endless opportunities to use an adventure bike for what it is designed to do: ride long distances along unmade roads – conditions not suited to most road-going motorcycles. I chose the BMW R 1200 GS as my demonstration bike because it’s unquestionably a pioneer of the class. It’s a big bike and I’m not a big guy, so the correct riding technique is critical if I’m going to tackle challenging conditions successfully. I’ve been coaching with BMW over the past few years and I’ve met countless riders who’ve signed up for a school to improve their skills. They generally fall into two categories:…

Engineers and designers often push the envelope of convention. Sometimes it ends with crazy ideas. Remember the various hub-centre-steering prototypes of the 1980s? These days we have self-balancing motorcycle designs being promoted by BMW and Honda. The motorcycling world hasn’t gone mad. It’s always been like that. Our two-wheeled history is littered with prototypes, some successful, some not. You can date this right back to the steam-powered cycle designs of the 1860s. One fascinating prototype that never made it into production is MV Agusta’s 300B of 1955. It seemed to unlock the future, with advanced features such as electric-only starting and high camshafts with very short pushrods. Today we take electric starting for granted and the high-cam short-pushrod design reappeared in BMW’s boxer twin engine of 1993. But things were…

NEW SOUTH WALES ROYAL ENFIELD CLUB OF AUSTRALIA INC. Meetings first Tuesday of the month at Public House Petersham in Sydney, 7.30pm. The NSW club aims to promote the preservation and restoration of historic Royal Enfields. Membership of the Royal Enfield Club of Australia covers the cost of NSW club membership. Contact Peter Jackson on 0466 233 781. Contact Garry Eyles on 0400405158 POLISH MOTORCYCLE SOCIAL GROUP, SYDNEY All types of bikes welcome. No attitudes. Just social rides every Saturday or Sunday morning for Polish-speaking riders. Phone J.J.on 0410 487 696 after 10.30am or Waldek on 0403 280 385 DUAL SPORT MOTORCYCLE RIDERS ASSOCIATION (DSMRA) PO Box 825, Hornsby, 2077. Call Ian Gesch on (02) 6262 7162. Or visit the website for all Australian areas, updated regularly: www.dsmra.asn.au SOUTHERN CROSS…

Indian Motorcycle has launched a trio of moody models, including the stripped-down and blacked-out Scout Bobber, Springfield Dark Horse and the range-topping Roadmaster Elite, which features 24-karat gold leaf badging. Due in October, the limited-production Roadmaster Elite features custom-inspired two-tone candy paint that is said to take 30 hours to complete and is finished by hand as well as gold leaf badging on the tank and lowers. A 300-watt premium audio system (up from 200W) adds to the Roadmaster’s long list of standard equipment. The introduction of the Springfield Dark Horse brings Indian’s blacked-out stable to three and is primarily aimed at Harley’s recently launched Road King Special. Indian’s latest ebony equine features the usual matte black paint with gloss-black details as well as an open front fender to expose…

“You could sit and look at the Millona’s details for a month of Sundays” My job involves racing and testing all sorts of bikes around the world. I often have to pinch myself. I live my dream and I never take any of it for granted. Those bikes have included some of the best, from the latest high-tech weapons to the early exotics that are now as priceless as they are legendary. As for the number of bikes, I lost count long ago. A select few are cemented in my memory, but it’s rare for a bike to completely blow me away. Then there’s this bike, the NCR Millona One Shot, which left me with my jaw on the floor. But here’s the thing. I admire an exotic, bespoke build,…

“I’m reintroducing myself to trail riding, which used to mean a nice ride on dirt roads with a bottle of wine, some salami, cheese and Jatz in the bed roll on the back” ROOTHY: So you’ve finally done it: you’ve laid out hard cash for a Yamaha XT500. You realise you’ve paid about three times what they were worth back in 1978? SPANNER: Thanks for reminding me. I wonder how much that Jaguar you swapped for your first XT500 would be worth now? ROOTHY: MkIIs are fetching house deposits. Mine was a beauty too, I just couldn’t afford to fix the busted windscreen. Point taken. But I’m proud of you, mate. It’s always good to live the dream no matter how old that dream is. And now you’ve got one…

“You could ride in circles for at least 13 hours” This could be the bike I break a world record on. Not a race record. A record for time spent riding around a roundabout. The record currently stands at three hours and 34 minutes. An American man recently tried to beat it on a big V-twin but failed after just one hour and 57 minutes. I think we can do better on the Benelli BN251, priced from $4990 (plus on-road costs). I came to that realisation after about 30 laps of my local roundabout recently (while AMCN’s sub-editor Mark Vender was trying to get a photo of the bike – see the pic above). Trying not to get dizzy, I was impressed with how easy it is to balance the…

1918 INDIAN POWERPLUS 61ci MODEL N SOLD: $49,350 Indian introduced the 61ci (998cc) Powerplus in 1916 to replace the C model. The Powerplus was equipped with a more powerful side-valve (L-head) engine instead of the C model’s F-head. The gearbox, clutch, mudguards, handlebars and the petrol and oil tanks of the earlier model were used for the Powerplus. Early in the production run, Indian’s cradle-spring frame (an early form of rear suspension) was fitted as standard. The company encouraged riders to enter their bikes in endurance events. Erwin ‘Cannonball’ Baker is probably the best known. He rode a Powerplus from Canada to Mexico in less than four days. Lesser known are the Van Buren sisters, Adeline and Augusta, who undertook a hazardous coast-to-coast journey across America in 1916 to prove…