Table of contents for May 2016 in Cycle World

The XDiavel is Ducati’s interpretation of a full-out cruiser motor cycle with forward controls, belt drive, and all. The Italian com pany got the cruiser thing mostly wrong, we’re happy to say. Ducati got the low seat right, at 29.7 inches. The bike also has an obligatory relaxed rake of 30 degrees. And it has an insanely long wheelbase of 63.6 inches, which is even longer than Ducati’s own Diavel. The resulting stance and silhouette can encourage enthusiasts into thinking it might be a cruiser, but riding the bike reveals that it’s something more like a superbike dressed up all odd like. The XDiavel performs… Part of that performance comes from the XDiavel’s larger, 1,262cc Ducati Testastretta Desmodromic Variable Timing (DVT) V-twin engine and a full complement of all of…

1 GOT A LIGHT Illuminate those dark recesses while working on your bike whether in your garage or roadside. The BikeMaster Work Light with Adjustable Base ($9.95) is a triplefunction LED flashlight with a magnetic swivel base. Powered by three AA batteries (included), it features a bright spot flashlight, flood pattern work light, and emergency flasher. (877) 848-1320 bikemaster.com 2 LIFT YOUR SPIRITS No need to slouch down or crawl while wrenching on your bike with the Auto Lift AL-1000M ($784), an air-powered motorcycle lift with a 1,000-pound lifting capacity. The platform measures 84 inches long by 24 inches wide and elevates your bike 30 inches above the floor. Recommended compressed air supply is 90 to 100 psi. (855) 275-5141 bestbuyautoequipment.com 3 TOOL TOTE Keep your tools intact and portable…

What’s an undisputedly great motorcycle name worth in reaching customers? Just ask Polaris how much it invested in Victory over 15 years and to compare that with the comparatively easy ride the Indian name has provided. In Indian’s first year, Polaris motorcycle sales doubled. That’s the magic of strong brand recognition and a place in two-wheeled history. Great product doesn’t hurt, but the name means so much. Norton in the USA, and the world, has been woven into the very fiber of the rider’s mind. Even after the company’s death in 1975, the strength of the name and the impact of the Commando, introduced in 1968, carried the legend forward. The forwardcanted engine, the sweep of the pipes, the shape of timing and primary-drive covers—and the sound!—were burned in. Meanwhile,…

BUILDER: Jeff Palhegyi of Jeff Palhegyi Design NOTHING WORTH DOING IS EASY. This is true in life and in custom frame fabrication, a part of the motorcyclebuilding process that stems from a budding desire (if not necessity) to make a bike uniquely yours. What, after all, could be more rewarding than rolling down the road on something you welded together with your own two hands? Those hands won’t need to have been brazed by countless hours spent in a metal shop either. Sure, experience with a TIG welder and grinder will go a long way in making the job go more seamlessly, but trained hands are no more a mandate than a commitment to planning and willingness to learn something new. Jeff Palhegyi of Jeff Palhegyi Design, a custom fabrication shop…

BUILDER: Buchanan’s DON’T THINK YOU CAN’T LEARN TO lace wire wheels. While today many builders turn to a specialist like Buchanan’s Spoke & Rim for convenience, not so many decades ago wheel building was a part of every motorcycle mechanic’s skill set. Wire wheels, so perfectly geometric, are attractive, artistic objects, easy to admire. They go together only one way, so in that sense they are like picture puzzles. Faced with a pile of spokes, a hub, and a rim, despair not. Just go find an assembled wheel of the same type and copy it. Puzzle fanatics first find all the edge pieces. With spokes, you begin by grouping them into outers (inner ends are more bent) and inners (inner ends are less bent). With the hub flat on a table,…

Naked sportbikes have been a favorite category of the Cycle World staff for decades. The attraction predates CW ’s CBR900RR project (April 1994) in which we stripped that revolutionary Honda down to its bare essentials and fit a onepiece handlebar. Almost every major motorcycle manufacturer now has skin in the game with a naked or sport standard in one form or another. Suzuki has hedged its bets with both faired and naked versions of the new GSX-S1000. We opted for the latter, with intent to unleash true street-fighter performance and character from this more practical and affordable alternative to the GSX-R platform. Not long after our 600-mile break-in service ($206 in parts and labor), we got off to a rocky start when a member of Bonnier Motorcycle Group’s brass suffered…

FULL-FRONTAL INGENUITY Bimota’s $60,000 centerhub-steered second-gen Tesi 2D defined the word “exotic” back in 2006. READER INFORMATION Editorial/Production: Offices are located at 15215 Alton Pkwy., Ste. 100, Irvine, CA 92618; (760) 707-0100. Editorial contributions are welcomed but must be guaranteed exclusive to Cycle World. We are not responsible for the return of unsolicited material unless accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Letters: All letters cannot be answered, and neither can all Service inquiries be answered. We appreciate correspondence sent or emailed to the editorial offices and will use the most interesting and appropriate letters in the magazine. Slipstream: We’re looking for stunning photos that capture the essence of our sport and remind us why we love motorcycling so much. Send your best shot to intake@cycleworld.com, being sure to include the…

Yamaha has been stepping up its game with all-new models designed to address more specific types of riding. With its latest bike, the 2016 YZ450FX, the Blue Crew started with its 450F MX platform and set out to build a bike that satisfies the GNCC/woods racer’s needs and capabilities. Based on the 2016 YZ450F, the FX gets the same updated frame, engine improvements, and larger front brake disc as the motocrosser but also longer radiator shrouds, an electric starter, kickstand, plastic skid plate, and 18-inch rear wheel, changes that are intended to— and in fact do—help it become a more versatile machine. So, hammering wide-open desert or grinding it out in the technical stuff, the FX is meant to be there for you. Increased radiator-fin pitch and 30mmlonger radiator shrouds,…

BUILDER: Teddy Boyko, Boyko Racing PRODUCTION LINES HAVE ALL necessary controls and inspections engineered into them, but an individual building an engine must take responsibility for fits and tolerances. This is the case in a race shop or for a home builder. The basics are in the available manuals for all to see, and you begin, as one man put it, “By just getting into it.” We all begin with just the desire to do it and a willingness to learn from mistakes. Experience causes the unfamiliar to become familiar. I got a call from two club racers who’d decided to change the crank in their Yamaha RD350. They basically wanted someone to tell them they could do it. They had the manual, some tools, a new crank, and desire. It…

EXPERT: Pete “Hot Dog” Finlan, Hot Dog Kustoms PAINTING HAS A SIMPLICITY AND approachability that many other crafts do not. Everybody who’s been to preschool picks up a brush, right? But there’s never engine building or welding classes at that age. At least not at my public school. Despite our early exposure to painting, few ever master color, graphics, and finish. Great paint with the right striping can make or break the presence of any motorcycle, hand built or otherwise. Why should the dedicated hobbyist or aspiring hand-builder concentrate on pinstriping? Because for about $40, you can buy a couple cans of quality paint and a few brushes and you’re in business “pulling lines,” as Pete “Hot Dog” Finlan calls it. What does Hot Dog know about striping? He’s been painting…

THE VIEW FROM INSIDE THE PADDOCK Many have worked night and day to embody an innovation or two in a motor cycle, but the late John Britten tackled the entire vehicle-designing by building his own big V-twin engine from scratch, fabricating carbon-fiber chassis and wheels in new ways, developing a novel front suspension, creating a ducted under-seat cooling system, and taking on a fresh approach to aerodynamics. What struck me about John when I first met him at Daytona in 1991 was his boyish enthusiasm. He wanted to make useful things and was enjoying every minute. Effort was clearly involved, but it all came so easily that, for him, this was play. Somehow he and a group of enthusiasts had designed and built a complete original motorcycle and had brought…

MotoGP riders have the opportunity to test and ride in the latest safety gear. That’s the good news. The bad news is that they’ll, generally speaking, also end up conducting a more thorough evaluation of that safety gear than the average consumer would. In the first preseason MotoGP test of 2016, at Sepang International Circuit, Loris Baz reaffirmed that point in a 180-mph crash that not only made headlines but also put his Alpinestars Tech-Air airbag-equipped race suit to the ultimate test. The crash itself was a result of the soft-compound Michelin tire that Baz was using coming apart, which resulted in Baz sliding feet first down Sepang’s long front straight. In photos, it was a grim scene, and in person we’re sure something even worse. Fortunately, Baz walked away…

The first Norton Commando I ever kickstarted was the Kenny Dreer-built, alloybodied VR880 that graced our September 1999 cover. I’ve been scarred ever since. It was then, and remains now, one of the great motorcycle experiences of a long and varied riding career and directly resulted in buying my own lowmileage original 1974 850 Commando. That very VR880 was the detonator that set off the human energy bomb that is Kenny Dreer and put the Norton name on a path to its modern rebirth (see sidebar page 50). Even if Norton had been dragged through many terrible attempts at “rebirth” (remember the plastic and cotton-candy “prototype” Nemesis V-8 of 2000?), Norton’s strength, legend even, in the consumer mind was as strong as ever. Perhaps even stronger, thanks to the warm…

ADAMS’ STREET VERSION OF THE INTENDED RACER IS NOTHING LESS THAN INTERNALCOMBUSTION BRITBIKE DEVIL PORN. If the devil lives in the details, this Yamaha-powered Norton “Clubman” special built by Northern California’s Paul Adams must be totally possessed. Exquisitely crafted with various leftover parts from 1950s and ’60s Nortons that Adams had restored over the years—plus a 1985 Yamaha FJ600 engine found at a motorcycle wrecker—it quite literally represents what the storied English firm might have built if it had not fallen on hard times 60 years ago. As evidenced in the 1962 book Built for Speed by John Griffith, during the 1950s Norton’s racing department had absolutely designed a 500cc liquid-cooled transverse-four DOHC engine to power its Grand Prix bikes, a clear response to Gilera and MV Agusta competition. Five…

ONE BENEF IT OF TROLLING EUROPEAN BIKE SHOWS IS BUMPING INTO EX - FACTORY RACE BIKES HAULED FROM THE VAULTS. Munich’s BMW Museum was in a generous mood in 2013 and toured a pair of its crown jewels—Ernst Henne’s 1932 and 1937 land speed record racers—to both the Concorso di Villa d’Este and its opposite, the Wheels & Waves festival in southern France. I’m a moto-judge at the Concorso and crawled around that supercharged ’32 750cc LSR machine like a horny snail. In as-raced condition, it’s among the most beautiful wheeled vehicles ever built, with elegant shapes cladding brass-balls technical savvy. In Biarritz, it sat defiantly amidst a sea of Alt.Customs, which paled beside it. It was clear others saw the same glory: The next year, Japan’s Cherry’s Company…

Few realize how devastatingly well John Britten’s V1000 circulated a racetrack. Some may remember that it won a BEARS championship in 1995 and Sound of Thunder at Daytona with Andrew Stroud a few times, but those victories came while competing against other twincylinder machines. By 1995, I had raced Jim Hunter’s V1000 three times, twice in twins races, carding one win. I then led CCS’s Unlimited GP class at Daytona for three laps against some of the biggest AMA teams of the era (on open-class machines) before crashing because of a loose steering damper that jammed into the exhaust system. I was just a journalist and not Scott Russell, proving how good that bike really was. A few months ago, watching a Britten slowly circulate Barber Motorsports Park at the…