Table of contents for September 2017 in Performance Bikes

‘I think it’ll be a big part of the road racing next year; more top riders will come out’ MICHAEL RUTTER won the Imatranajo road races in Finland the first time out, coming out on top of a fierce battle with Penz13.com team-mates Dan Kneen and Alex Polita, who took the other two podium spots for the German team. The Finnish road race returned to the calendar last year after it suffered a series of accidents in the 1980s, which led to it losing world championship status and gradually hosting smaller events, before finally being closed for 1990. Now, it forms part of the International Road Racing Championship, comprised of a number of northern European events held on closed road circuits. “It’s a really fun event to race in,” said…

EX-AMA Superbike racer Chris Fillmore rode a KTM 1290 Super Duke to the outright lap record at Pikes Peak in his first outing at the infamous US 12.4-mile hillclimb. He won the Heavyweight Motorcycle class, and took 3.554s out of the previous record set by race regular Carlin Dunne on a Ducati Multistrada. It nearly ended differently, though... “I did have a scary moment coming into the 19-mile corner when the bike went sideways at 120mph near the side of the cliff. Luckily, I was able to keep it under control but it was definitely a nerve-racking moment and I’m happy to have finished safely with the win!”…

Your wish… A quick question... are you going to have a tyre test in 2017 ? If yes, do you know which issue that will be in? The July issue is just for sale on the newsstands here in Norway. I enjoy every issue and especially The Rutter Test. Frode Andre Pedersen. JM: Funny you should say that... We’ve tested slicks in this issue, but if you’re after treaded sports or track tyres, our previous tests are available as back issues. Nearly all the tyres are still current, so the results remain perfectly valid. Super Duke is simply super Amazing performance around Donington, faster than the new Blade and a gnat’s hair off the R1 lap time only because of scraping pegs; please stick the factory rearsets on the Super…

DOVIZIOSO MAY be in the fight to win the biggest road race gong of them all, but he’s actually a motocrosser at heart. “I was a motocrosser when I was kid, like my father. I never thought about road racing. I rode bikes because I liked riding bikes, nothing more.” But Antonio Dovizioso had other ideas: he entered his son in his first motocross race when he was four and in his first minimoto race when he was six years old. The minimoto craze was huge on the Adriatic coast in the early 1990s. It launched the careers of Dovi, Valentino Rossi, Marco Simoncelli, Alex De Angelis and Mattia Pasini, who were all born in the area. Dovizioso and Simoncelli were big minimoto rivals but soon fell out over their…

1 Blue-Point grip pliers ‘Grip pliers have serrated teeth and the more you grip and turn them, the harder they bite the metal. They are brilliant for getting crankcase studs or exhaust studs out when you have tried everything else and failed. Blue-Point is another part of the Snap-on group and they are a quality product – one of the few I’m actually happy paying the extra for.’ 2 Snap-on 3\8ratchet ‘This is such a good tool and well worth paying the premium for to have a Snap-on item rather than a cheap copy – it feels far nicer to use. The 3/8 size is nice in your hand and you can apply far more accuracy than with a 1/2-inch ratchet, and with more finesse. I bought this in 1991…

 TO ANSWER THE first, and easiest, question of how much faster slicks are than road tyres, Johnny datalogged the ZX-10R wearing its OE Bridgestone RS10s before the testing began. On average, he was five seconds per lap faster on slicks. It is the sort of jump in performance that puts a different set of demands on a bike and rider once grip is no longer the limiting factor. Ground clearance, brakes and slipper clutch come into play with later, harder braking and bigger wheelies. Physical strength and endurance become deciding factors. It’s a huge performance gain, bigger than any upgrade you could make to the bike, especially for the money. ‘All five sets of tyres transform the on-track experience beyond even the best road-biased track tyre’ The big increase in…

‘The cause of the vague feel was apparent – the same ‘marmalade’ cleaned from the brake reservoir was behind each piston bore’ 2003 MV AGUSTA BRUTALE 750 CHRIS NEWBIGGING SIX-PISTON BRAKES come in for wide and repeated criticism. And mostly, it’s justified: the Tokicos fitted to Suzukis and Kawasakis from the mid-1990s offered a brief window of just-about acceptable stopping, before dropping off in a spiral of sticky pistons, uneven pad wear and probable seizure thanks to poor build quality. There’s barely a bike equipped as such that isn’t better for a four-piston replacement – better, more consistent and reliable performance, and less unsprung weight. Nissin’s efforts are a little different. They’re rare: the ZX-7RR and first-gen MVs like mine are one of the few OE fitments. They are still…

HOW LONG FIVE YEARS COST $146.73 CONTACT WWW.BARNETTCLUTCHES.COM EARLY R1S use a single diaphragm spring to apply pressure to clutch plates and it’s not known for being the strongest or most consistent in operation. I used a Barnett SR-3 kit to convert my 2003 bike to individual coil springs before eventually upgrading the whole thing to a full-on slipper clutch. The kit comes with a selection of varying strength springs (I used three of each to fine-tune it) and the result was smooth and dependable clutch operation without making the lever action heavier. Extends the life of clutch plates, too.…

‘Raising the front is free and easy. Then clip-ons, new brake pads and throttle work to make the power easier to use’ 2017 SUZUKI GSX-R1000R CHRIS NEWBIGGING IMPROVING AND PERSONALISING the GSX-R, without feeling like it’s just for the sake of it, is difficult. Japanese engineers are no mugs, and it works well. I’ve ditched the money-saving OE tyres, and the EU-pleasing monster silencer is in the bin. The next step is difficult: it can comfortably qualify for both short-circuit and TT Superstock races out of the box – so why meddle with that? I don’t want to blunder in and upset the fine balance of its performance. But the point of my bike is to test and learn. So I’ve taken a shortcut to discovering the worthwhile mods, by…

ENGINE So understressed it will lead a long and happy life if treated to the occasional service. A very few early examples suffered pitted cams but should have been sorted by now. CHASSIS Fork compression adjusters can seize and legs can pit. Shock damping can go off as the oil grows tired on high-mileage bikes. Eccentric chain adjusters must be torqued right to avoid stripped threads or cracked housings EXHAUSTS Kawasaki had a seemingly endless supply of cheap mild steel in the 1990s. Headers rot where four pipes become one. WHAT TO PAY MINT: £3800 ROUGH: £1000 BEST MODIFICATION Once you’ve got a Kerker exhaust system on there, the next best mod is an aftermarket camchain tensioner to sort the one arguably weak point of the motor.…

CHRIS NEWBIGGING EDITOR chris@pbmag.co.uk Blundering around at Dirt Quake on a Harley. Filthy, inappropriate fun. AUSTIN SMITH ART EDITOR austin@pbmag.co.uk A sunny ride home on PB’s GSX-R. I forget how good it is, then ride it again. JOHN McAVOY ROAD TESTER editorial@pbmag.co.uk Pretending I didn’t bring Rutter a sandwich to this month’s test. Ha! MICHAEL RUTTER TRACK TESTER editorial@pbmag.co.uk Nicking a fiver from Johnny’s wallet to buy a sandwich. MARK WHITE TECHNICIAN editorial@pbmag.co.uk Feeding vegan brownies to unsuspecting meat-eaters on the tyre test. JOHN McGUINNESS COLUMNIST editorial@pbmag.co.uk I bought a tractor. It’s a quiet old life, this convalescing lark... KAR LEE FORUM EDITOR editorial@pbmag.co.uk Getting my 2017 R6. I don’t know why everyone is down on 600s: it’s great. CAROLINE BARRETT EDITORIAL ASSISTANT caz@pbmag.co.uk Licking Mark’s bowl (wahey!) when he…

FITS LIKE A GLOVE FORCEFIELD PRO L2K DYNAMIC FORCEFIELD’S NEWEST CE Level 2 back protector features a soft protective layer, which allows it to mould to your back more quickly. It also has breathable vents, to keep you as cool as possible on the hottest days. Forcefield’s Repeat Performance Technology ensures the back protector will withstand multiple impacts, if you happen to be particularly crashy. It comes in men’s S, M or L, and women’s size M, with a higher waistband. Price £134.99 Contact www.forcefieldbodyarmour.com RACE-READY BOLT-ON BONAMICI RACING 2017 GSX-R1000R REARSETS FIT THE choice of World Superbike racers to your new Suzuki GSX-R1000 with these billet aluminium rearsets from Italian brand Bonamici Racing. They’re adjustable up/down and fore/aft for the best riding position, and feature a reversible shift linkage…

OH HONDA! What is wrong with you? Not so long ago, you were the epitome of innovation, quality and reliability. But now? What with the underwhelming and electronically challenged 2017 Fireblade and the farcically unreliable, underpowered F1 engine, you have lost the plot. If Soichiro himself was still with you, all the senior designers and engineers would have been lined up in his office for a ceremonial face-slapping. Someone in corporate headquarters needs to take a leaf out of Honda-san’s book. And quickly. David Scott CN: The great Soichiro Honda slapping someone? We can’t imagine such unseemly behaviour from the gentleman himself, but your bizarre imagined managerial beasting made us laugh, so have some free oil.…

 BOTH THESE bikes are a lot faster than the standard bikes which they are based on, and with nearly a £4000 premium over them, so they should be. ‘I can’t say I was surprised that the R1M is the quickest 2017 bike I’ve tested’ Once we got the suspension dialled in on the Fireblade SP, it handled brilliantly. I love the way it turns and holds a line. It’s just what you want from a race bike, and the riding position is also very focused. It’s a small, compact bike that really means business; I wouldn’t want to ride it any distance on a motorway. I’m certain that if it had the electronics to match the chassis, it’d go much faster again, but they’re just too conservative. I’m still not…

2017 ZERO SR CHRIS NEWBIGGING PB HAS LONG been in favour of advanced technology in principle – it doesn’t always work out, but we’ll root for anything looking to improve life on two wheels. But it’s taken a long while for us to warm to the emerging choice of electric bikes: largely, because they’ve been shit, useless and expensive. But, they’re rapidly advancing and catching up on internal combustion engines (or ICE). The insane, money-no-object Mugen Shinden wheeled out once a year to clean up in the Zero TT being at the pinnacle, and now at a stage where it’s faster from a standing start than a Lightweight will manage on a flier. Granted, it’ll only do it for one lap; but in eight years of zero-emissions TT racing, that…

‘There are some free, easy wins, like the redundant exhaust valve servo: 254g lost before we trim the useless wiring’ 2008 HONDA FIREBLADE CHRIS NEWBIGGING WINDMILLING IN AND ordering loads of parts to cut weight from Project Fireblade would be sheer folly. Sure, there are some obvious wins: lightweight (probably carbon) wheels will be a big, easy loss we’ll tackle early on. But modern bikes are well produced, and it’s not as straightforward as changing as many parts as possible – we want to try and match the weight of a Ducati Superleggera, not the asking price... PB’s resident spanner-twirler, militant vegan and performance improvement obsessive spent 10 years turning a three-year-old 5PW R1 from a nice used bike into a skeletal monster with a power-to-weight ratio over 1bhp/kg, still…

HOW LONG ONE DAY COST £159 CONTACT WWW.FLATTRACKSCHOOL.CO.UK IN PREPARATION for racing at Dirt Quake (see page 52), I spent a day on Pete Boast’s own flat-track school, run on a farm near Market Rasen in Lincolnshire. I attended the level one course – for people who’ve never tried it before. The day is split in two, course attendees spread across three small groups with an instructor each. The morning is about simple body positioning and bike control drills – building up, with each aspect of correct positioning added one at a time until it becomes natural. Then, in the afternoon you’re let loose on two different iterations of an oval (one tighter, one faster) and finally a ‘TT’ course, which throws some right-handers into the mix, where each teaching…

HOW LONG FOUR MONTHS/1800 MILES COST AROUND £300 CONTACT WWW.PIPEWERX.COM CHEAP, LIGHT and effective aren’t usually a compatible trio when it comes to performance exhausts, but this affordable slip-on we fitted to PB’s Project Blade manages it. We had gripes early on: an overly snug silencer/link-pipe junction made fitting tricky, and it caused the bottom cap of the can to crack. We sent it back, the firm acknowledged the fit issue, and revised the interference fit. Since then, it’s been fine, and has lost the wobble it had when it didn’t fit right. It was good for power: sacrificing the oh-so 2008 belly silencer (and snaking, restrictive link pipe) for a side-mount and a full length can give a decent pipe volume without awkward bends to affect flow. Unlike some…

‘It’s exciting to ride, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a frustrating bike to own’ 2017 HONDA FIREBLADE JOHN McAVOY THE ONLY thing standing between the Fireblade being what it is and being a genuinely fabulous motorcycle is a smoother, more predictable throttle. That, and a much lower price tag – or higher spec. I’ve ridden all the 2017 litre bikes, and can honestly say that the Fireblade is in a different class when it comes to handling. It makes the others feel overweight. I don’t mind the fact that it is tiny, and has a cramped riding position, or that the power delivery lacks grunt in favour of a mad rush of top-end power – that’s its identity. It genuinely has the body, attitude and personality of a 600,…

IT’S WEIRD SITTING around the garden at home while the world – my world, really – continues to go on without me. I’m several leg operations deep now, and while it’s going in the right direction, it’s a long way from being right and being able to make a call on whether I can race again. Everybody who’s usually around me is gearing up for the Ulster GP, and even though I’ve not raced there for years, it’s something I still go to if I can. I’m too old to be banging elbows between the hedges there, so I’ll let them get on with it! More than the speed, or the excitement of a mass start compared to the personal challenge of riding alone at the TT, what I love…

SOMETIMES YOU have to ask riders questions even when you know the answer. So, I ask Andrea Dovizioso what predictions he has for the last half of the 2017 MotoGP season. He doesn’t even speak, he just grins and makes a zero with his right thumb and forefinger. Then he says, “Also, the same for this weekend.” The Italian is talking about those black and round things which, more than ever, decide who wins and loses in MotoGP. Michelin’s MotoGP tyres work over a narrow temperature range, which explains the thrilling unpredictability of the racing. One weekend, one rider manages to adjust his bike to generate the right temperature in the tyres, the next weekend he misses that window and is left behind. That’s why we see someone like Maverick…

ANORAK FACT: THIS isn’t strictly an NSR500V. It’s a TSR AC50M – TSR standing for Technical Sports Racing, officially a third-party Japanese Honda tuner/race bike builder. But as Andy Grant, one of the men responsible for curating these surviving 135bhp/100kg marvels, explains, they’re closer to HRC than they’d ever admit. “Basically, they would develop and test things for Honda first, unofficially, so the factory teams wouldn’t look bad if they didn’t work out!” The TSR is one of a small number of NSR500Vs (and frame-kitted versions of HRC’s ‘standard’ customer GP 500) not only in the UK, but in ready to ride condition worldwide. That’s largely due to GT Motorcycles, Steve Haith and a small team of HRC devotees who’ve turned a side-line specialising in NSR250 road bikes into a…

1 HEADLIGHTS These are unbranded LED motorcycle headlamp arrays off the internet. One is set for the track edge, the other for dive under braking. They don’t consume much current but both riders complained the beams weren’t bright enough. 2 TESTING “There’s a lot of crossover with the Classic TT XR69. We use the same yokes and forks, and we know what geometry works, so we have kept the same traits on this bike. We took Grant’s bike (this bike’s twin, raced at Spa by a private Kiwi team) to New Zealand and ran it around on the roads round Graeme Crosby’s house. It was a big relief that it turned and steered and was stable.” 3 FRAME GEOMETRY “We drew out a stock Katana frame on paper, and took…

SIMON’S TOP TIPS FOR BUILDING A SPECIAL Buy a good one! Don’t buy a cheap knackered bike as a base, buy one that at least runs. Otherwise, you will end up chasing your tail trying to get a nail to start. Always spend a few quid more on a runner that is physically a bit tatty. Look long-term When you build a special, you need to look at the wider picture, not the rapidly mounting short-term costs! When it is all finished you will have a unique machine that is worth more than the sum of its parts to you. Aim for a rolling chassis Getting your build to the stage of a rolling chassis is the major turning point in any project. Once you get to this point, everything…

2016 BMW S1000RR ALEC TAGUE WELL, WE FINISHED the TT – got that out of the way – and got back on the Monday. I went home Tuesday, put my washing in the machine, hung it out, took my wife out to lunch, and was straight back into the workshop on Wednesday morning to completely empty the truck from the TT. Then we re-packed it and got on the road to Knockhill. Myself and Michael’s other mechanic-cum-truck driver Fred were knackered. It’s a long old drive up to Scotland from here, heading north in an artic at 56mph for six hours. It was pissing down and blowing a gale while we were setting up the awning, too. It probably took us a few days to get into it – even…

HOW LONG THREE YEARS COST AROUND £30, SIZE-DEPENDENT CONTACT WWW.OXPROD.COM WHY SPEND thousands of pounds on a bike, then cover it in a shabby old curtain that your teenage son might have wiped his co... nose, on? These springy lycra covers are the same sort of thing used to tease the buying public before bikes are unveiled at big shows, and for home use they keep your bike clean while allowing airflow to reduce the build-up of condensation. As long as you ensure you get the right size (there are four options), the cover clings snugly and also allows you to see exactly where indicators, handlebars and mirrors are, so you’re far less likely to snag up and damage parts as you move around your garage. They’re not dirt cheap,…

‘The new R6 is apex-accurate, revvy and has an enthusiasm to lean as far as you dare on its Bridgestone S21s’ 2017 YAMAHA YZF-R6 KAR LEE THE YEAR IS 2006, I’m running the all-new R6 as a long-termer. It’s a beautiful thing with aggressively pointy styling, fly-by-wire throttle, slipper clutch, an astronomical 17,500rpm redline (which turns out to be 1000rpm too optimistic) and very little midrange to speak of. However, over the course of the year it gets tweaked and fettled to the point that it’s so good I can’t bring myself to give it back, so I promptly buy it from Yamaha. Fast forward to today and I get the keys to another R6 to lodge in my garage for a while. This one looks like it’s done the…