A single-cylinder hooligan-maker, the KTM 690 Duke is 330 lbs (curbside without fuel) and 67hp of two-wheeled fun, and we hope that the Austrians bring the KTM 690 Duke R our way as well. While we are on the topic of things missing from KTM’s American line-up, a decent supersport is painfully obvious, yet we can’t see the folks at KTM following the paths of other brands. That’s where our friend Luca Bar comes to mind with his latest concept: the KTM RC4. Using the KTM 690 Duke platform and its LC4 engine, Bar has designed a super-single full-fairing sport bike that takes the Austrian company’s “Ready to Race” DNA and applies it to an idea that is not all that disimilar to the Ducati Supermono.
When I sat down with Claudio Domenicali at the Ducati 1199 Panigale R launch, the now-CEO of Ducati Motor Holding was still just the General Manager of the Italian motorcycle company. Four weeks after our interview though, Gabriele del Torchio would leave Ducati for Alitalia; and Domenicali, a 21-year veteran of both the racing and production departments of Ducati, would take his place at the top of Italy’s most prestigious motorcycle brand. After reading our interview from Austin, Texas after the jump, I think you will agree too.
That Yamaha is working on a seamless gearbox is no secret, with Yamaha’s test riders currently racking up the kilometers around tracks in Japan. Recently, however, Spanish magazine SoloMoto published an article suggesting that Yamaha has already been using its new seamless gearbox since the beginning of the season. My own enquiries to check whether Yamaha was using a seamless gearbox or not always received the same answer: no, Yamaha is not using the seamless gearbox. To test this denial, I went out to the side of the track on Friday morning at Jerez to record the bikes as they went by.
After a very public father/son break-up between Paul Teutul Sr. and Paul Teutul Jr., a steroid-ring scandal involving Paul Sr., and finally a bankruptcy proceeding, it appears that Orange County Choppers is the impossible to kill multi-headed hydra of doom that we all knew it was, as the custom chopper shop is once again headed to the small screen and recruiting some talent, on and off the show. Looking for “someone who will work alongside Paul Senior, running the shop and helping build some of the best custom motorcycles in the world,” OCC says it will be back on television with a new show later this month. Please for the love of god, will someone give this man the attention he craves so dearly??! Or, just shoot us in the face.
We love us some concept bikes here at Asphalt & Rubber, and we have featured more than a few pieces of stunning design and imagination on our pages. Though, we can’t remember the last time one of these works of art were brought to us by a legitimate racing team, but that is what we have here with the Team Alstare Superbike Concept. A nod to the former Suzuki team’s return to the World Superbike Championship as the Ducati factory squad with Carlos Checa and Ayrton Badovini, Alstare has enlisted the help of designer Serge Rusak of Rusak Kreaktive Designworks to ink the shape of its futuristic Superbike concept, while Tryptik Studios handled the 3D modeling prowess.
If you didn’t watch Thursday’s pre-event press conference for MotoGP at Jerez, it is worth a viewing right to the end (assuming you have a MotoGP.com account). Building off the news about the NBA’s Jason Collins coming out as gay in a self-written feature in Sport Illustrated, my good colleague David Emmett had the courage to inquire about the culture and acceptance of the MotoGP paddock for homosexual riders. For the sake of accuracy, after the jump is a full transcript of David’s question, as put to riders Cal Crutchlow, Jorge Lorenzo, Marc Marquez, Andrea Dovizioso, Stefan Bradl, and Scott Redding, as well as those riders’ responses to David’s inquiry.
News that Suzuki plans on returning to the MotoGP Championship in 2014 should be old information for dedicated Asphalt & Rubber readers, and the Japanese company’s inline-four race bike was already spotted doing test laps last year by the eager eyes at Cycle World. Well the American print-mag has another set of eyebrow-raising high-quality photos of the 2014 Suzuki GSV-R to mull over from the Motegi race track, along with some technical insights provided by the venerable Kevin Cameron.
A surprise addition to BMW Motorrad’s 2013 model line-up, zie Germans have announced a new middleweight adventure-tourer, the 2013 BMW F800GS Adventure. Like its larger predecessor, the BMW F800GS Adventure is a more travel-ready and off-road capable build of the recently updated BMW F800GS motorcycle. Featuring a larger windscreen, panniers, and a bigger fuel tank capacity (2.1 gallons larger, for a total of 6.3 gallons of fuel), the BMW F800GS Adventure keeps the same 85 hp, liquid-cooled, 798cc, parallel-twin engine found on the F800GS, as well as the same chassis configuration. Pricing in the US will be $13,550 for the base model BWM F800GS Adventure.
Former 500cc World Champion Kevin Schwantz has certainly been in the news a bit these past few months, mostly for his involvement and falling out with the Circuit of the Americas and the Americas GP, but also more recently for his comments regarding Dani Pedrosa — we also sat down with Mr. Schwantz in Austin, and the Texan gave us some sobering insight into the future of American road racing. As if all that wasn’t enough, Schwantz is making a return to two-wheeled racing, and has entered the prestigious Suzuka 8-Hours endurance race with Team Kagayama racing alongside Noriyuki Haga and team owner Yukio Kagayama.
An interesting development on the aftermarket side of things has graced our desks, as Öhlins has released a “suspension control unit” (SCU) that upgrades the electronically adjustable suspension on the Ducati Multistrada 1200 S so that it becomes a semi-active suspension system. Whhhaaaat??! So, if you’re the proud owner of a pre-2013 Ducati Multistrada 1200 S, and you think that your electronically controlled Öhlins suspension is no longer boss, now that Ducati has released its Sachs-powered “Skyhook” semi-active suspension pieces on its new batch of Multistrada sport-tourers, there is a remedy for your motolust.
Oh SNAP!!!
Is this whole “Technical Hold” a ego/PR move or is there still something bigger behind this? I mean this vrs the common “Recall”. They even went as far as the whole “buyback” thing, coupled with the non-reasons any of it was happening. The strangest move in at least recent memory.
Strange, very strange, all for a valve not seating properly they buyback the entire bike? I’m still on the fence calling BS
PR move? I don’t think so. You don’t build a brand based on technology and reliability by instilling doubt to the consumer on those two elements when you release one of the most important bikes in your line-up.
The reason this was a “technical hold” instead of a recall is because of where in the sales process the problem was found. The USA was virtually the only market where ZX-10R’s made it into the hands of customers, so it looks weird from our perspective (I’m also not convinced Kawasaki has to do a recall for this issue based on US law), but for all the other markets, this was an unreleased motorcycle. While buy-backs are occurring here, for customers in Europe for example, this announcement just means they’ll wait another month or so longer to get their bikes.
I haven’t had a chance to talk to Kawasaki about this yet, but if the process is like similar engine issues, these bought-back motors will likely be going back to Japan to be reviewed by engineers (and shown to parts suppliers, etc), while customers will likely be getting either brand new bikes, or bikes with completely new motors.
The issue here is now that a defect is known, they don’t want it to be the reason a customer comes back with a blown bike in 3 years with a motor issue, and says “well how do yo know it wasn’t because of those bad valve springs.” So Kawi buys the bikes back (there can’t be more than a couple hundred of them out there), sucks up the loss, and knows they won’t have a huge warranty liability hanging over their head down the line. In the process they get some good mojo from customers for addressing the issue quickly, and making a suitable remedy.
PR does not necessarily mean whatever you end up talking about is good. In no way do I think some guys hanging out at Kawi thought hey lets drum up some buzz by saying something is wrong. So in essence you are saying this was purely a ego (nothing is wrong, and if it is we’re not saying) & PR calling it a technical hold.
OK so in the case of Ape and the RSV4, bad connecting rods, found that out, released info and shipped and gave customers brand new engines. In this case yes they stood up said something was wrong, said we will give you a new one. This was within the almost exact same release time and even a more critical fix. They didnt do this “we need to buy back all the bikes” thing and well because of a unspec “Technical hold”. What a month later they are finally saying what the problem might be?
To me they made the nighmare worse, where aprilia had even a bigger fckup and came out for the better. I think the biggest issue with all of it was they knew there was an issue, hence the hold/buyback and then a month later they say what it might relate too? How does that make any sense?
“So in essence you are saying this was purely a ego (nothing is wrong, and if it is we’re not saying) & PR calling it a technical hold.”
No that’s not what I’m saying. There’s a definitional difference between a recall and technical hold . This was essentially a technical hold.
Since a technical hold is an internal process, Kawasaki’s and Aprilia’s protocol in dealing with it is going to be different. I believe the end process is mostly the same, from what I recall Aprilia brought out engineers from Italy to do the motor swaps on the RSV4. It wasn’t a dealer-level maintenance item.
I don’t think Kawasaki made the right decision by holding back the reason for the technical hold in the first place, but it knowing how Japanese business relationships work, if there was a parts supplier at fault (or just involved) in this hold, the action seen here isn’t that uncommon.
I’ve been waiting to see this in person but all these delays and the loss of power has me leaning toward the BMW at the moment
If there was a suspected issue with a supplier, but not completely founded (suspected out of tolerance), then it would have taken awhile to do the proper engineering testing to identify the problem and find a solution. If the severity was there (dropping a valve at redline), then a recall or “tech hold” would have been initiated immediately.
A lot of people don’t realize how intricate and time-consuming tolerance stackups can be. Many times testing is done with “perfect nominal” parts and DOE doesn’t catch a potential issue. Do things slip through the cracks? Yes. Is this still a badass bike (that looks pretty sick)? I’d hit it
Kudos to Kawi engineers for finding & fixing the ohshit problem before it became bigger.
If its a problem with high rpm valve float, you’d think the 750 rpm reduction for the US market would have spared those bikes (or maybe kawak is being nice and fixing them anyway so that when we bypass the lower rev limit it doesn’t have problems).
ha yea definitely see “euro-spec” ecms being the hot item for these bikes…
Kawasaki clearly stated that the issue was gonna be more obvious at racetrack days. Most of the bikes used for this purpose aren’t stock or are ridden way harder then on the street.