It’s still the rainy season here in the UK and if you ride a learner or commuter bike (specifically those in the 125cc class) you might be interested to learn that Avon have launched a new range of tyres that sound as though they were designed with our weather in mind. Continue reading
WHO CAN CATCH A KAWASAKI? screamed the cover of Kawasaki’s 1984 range brochure and racing across that cover was a Kawasaki Z750 Turbo looking pretty much just like the magnificent example above. Resplendent in its two-tone Ebony/Firecracker Red livery, with gloss black engine and black chrome exhausts, this 1984 ZX750-E1 model looks box-fresh and ready to go. Continue reading
This weekend brings the 22nd Carole Nash Classic Motorcycle Mechanics Show in Stafford and, with it, Bonhams’ 2015 Autumn Stafford Sale. Being unable to make it in person, I thought I’d console myself with a game of Fantasy Auction. What’s that? You’ve never played? Allow me to explain. In Fantasy Auction, you choose a real-life auction and then you set yourself a budget and then you pick the lots you really could be tempted by and what your maximum bid would be. After the auction, you can check the results to see whether you’d have been successful.
OilySmudges recently posted an article asking Yamaha to bring back the iconic “Speed Block” design. Imagine our surprise when today (18 September 2015) Yamaha announced that a limited edition 60th Anniversary version of the YZF-R1 will be produced for the 2016 model year featuring this iconic design. Continue reading
They are one of the most enduring motorcycle branding exercises of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century and have graced both race and road machines but when were the Yamaha “Speed Block” graphics first seen and where did they come from? Continue reading
When Lars Schau decided to build a cafe racer, he knew he wanted something different, to ride the road less ridden. But that wasn’t all; his cafe racer would be different on a tight budget. He achieved the first of these objectives through his unusual choice of donor machine and the second by tackling the fabrication of most of the custom components himself. Continue reading
Over the past few years the market for retro motorcycles, those machines that conjure up memories of the past, has really expanded and now many of the mainstream manufacturers have at least one retro model in their range. With that in mind, I thought it might be entertaining to compare these machines with the ones they take their inspiration from. Continue reading
A question every budding motorcycle restorer will have to answer at some point is “What sort of restoration project do I want this to be?” which really means “What sort of motorcycle do I want to have at the end of all my hard work?”.
Ultimately, to a large degree, this will depend on what you want to do with it when it’s finished… Continue reading
Sometimes it can be hard to visualise how that box of bits you bought as a ‘project’ will look when finished. This is one of the many challenges that will face the new owner of this circa 1938 Triumph Tiger 80 up for grabs with a guide price of £2,800 – 3,600 (US$4,200 – 5,300) at The Spring Stafford Sale being held at the Staffordshire County Showground by auction house Bonhams on 26 April 2015.
Owning and running any motorcycle sets you apart from the ordinary, the run of the mill. And it’s this desire to be distinctive, different from the next person, that Yamaha is tapping into with the Yamaha Yard Built initiative. Continue reading