Episode 9 of the Brap Talk podcast is out for your two-wheeled audio pleasure, and once again this is a marathon show full of good two-wheeled conversation.
We hope you’re ready to plug in, because this episode is all about electric motorcycles, as there has been a lot of movement in this space since we last recorded.
Great efforts are underway in the State of Oregon to legalize lane splitting, and now we see Oregon’s lane-splitting law moving to the next phase of its legislative process.
With testimony already heard in the Joint Committee on Transportation, the time is now for Oregonians to contact their state representatives about House Bill 2314.
Harley-Davidson has been slow to release concrete details on its Livewire electric motorcycle, and to be honest, today is no different.
This is because the Bar & Shield brand remains mostly mum on the hard specs that we crave, but with today’s release, we do see that the Harley-Davidson Livewire is stacking up better than many had once thought.
The reason for this is two-fold. One, Milwaukee continues to finalize the specs on this highly anticipated machine. And two, Harley-Davidson is getting closer to its summer launch and is building its marketing momentum.
However you look at it though, today marks another garment removed in this two-wheeled strip tease. We hope you have your dollar bills at the ready. We still have a few months more to go.
A few years ago, I had the fortune to hop on the Zaeta 530 SE for a quick romp. The eye-catching machine was stupid-fun, as it rattled just about every bone in my body. Beautiful, but completely unrefined, the lithe Zaeta was intriguing to me until I saw its $25,000 price tag. Ouch, on so many levels!
Too rich for my blood, too unpolished for my senses, but still very drool-worthy – the potential here was strong, and the small Italian brand was making strides on fixing some of the machine’s more troublesome gremlins.
The 528cc single-cylinder thumper (and it is a thumper!) is from TM Racing, a unique Italian brand in its own right, but the real highlight of the Zaeta was its CNC’d aluminum chassis, which was just gorgeous.
This made the 266 lbs machine a tough one to forget, so when I saw in my foreign news feed that the fearsome Zaeta was coming to the US for American Flat Track racing, I was quite excited…even more so when I saw that a twin-cylinder machine was also in the works.
Erik Buell’s latest venture has taken another step forward, and gained a new name in the process.
What was once called the VanguardSpark motorcycle venture (a name mashing from Vanguard Motorcycles and SPARK Racing partnership) now goes by the name “Fuell” – a nod to the company’s other founding partner, Erik Buell.
The EV mobility company is still on path to create two machines on its first outing, a small-displacement equivalent electric motorcycle that is called “Flow” as well as a pedal-assist / moped bicycle named “Fluid”.
Is a new middleweight bike coming from BMW Motorrad? That’s the debate on the internet right now, as the company’s UK office has released the above language to dealers via a brochure.
Not so fast says BMW Motorrad UK though. While a sport-touring version of the F850 platform would be a pretty interesting model, the company says that the use of the “F850RS” handle was a mistake, and they instead meant to use “F850GT” in the brochure’s text.
Honest mistake? Freudian slip? A sign from the Flying Spaghetti Monster (All Hail His Noodliness!)…well, that is up for you to decide.
In a few minutes, I will be getting back on a plane to the United States, after having spent some time with the folks at Energica in Modena, Italy. There is a lot to say about this electric motorcycle company from Italy, so keep an eye out for those stories, but I wanted to whet your appetites with this machine, the Energica Ego Corsa.
The racing version of the company’s electric superbike, the Energica Ego Corsa is the consumer model to what the Grand Prix paddock will be racing in the new MotoE World Cup, which will see 18 riders from 11 teams battling it out in sprint races at 5 venues on the MotoGP calendar.
With some big names on the bikes (Sete Gibernau, Randy de Puniet, Bradley Smith, and more) the spec-series should have some close and hard-fought races. I think the electric series is going to surprise some race fans, and start making some petrol heads into EV freaks…but that is a different story.
European pricing for the Yamaha Ténéré 700 has finally hit, and while the United States still have over a year of waiting for when this mid-sized ADV bike will hit our soil, the price details gives us an indication of what to expect from Yamaha’s “T7” motorcycle.
Depending on what country of the European Union we are talking about, pricing for the Yamaha Ténéré 700 is set in the mid 9000s. For example in Italy, the Yamaha Ténéré 700 is priced at €9,490.
Episode 93 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and in it we see Steve English joined by Gordon Ritchie on the mics, as they are now our WorldSBK reporting duo for the 2019 season.
Before we get into the show details, we should apologize for the audio quality on this episode. The circumstances of the weekend meant that it had to be recorded in a busy café, rather than a studio setting.
Rather than kill the show, we thought we’d publish it for those who can get through the clamoring dishes and noisy kids, because there is some really, really good WorldSBK knowledge shared between these two industry veterans.
It was just a few weeks ago that we told you how Pirelli was making purpose-built tires for the 300cc racing category, and now we get word that Dunlop is doing the same.
Creating the all-new KR448 front tire, and KR451 rear tire in sizes and compounds for bikes in the 300cc to 400cc range, Dunlop its making sure that it has a firm grip on the small-displacement categories that are filling grids on race tracks around the world, but especially in the United States.
We just published a long story for our A&R Pro readers about the new rev limits in the WorldSBK Championship, and how the Ducati Panigale V4 R is ringing out to 16,500 RPM in the production racing class.
One of the ways that Borgo Panigale was able to bring such a high rev limit to its Desmosedici Stradale engine was through the use of lightweight titanium connecting rods. The red bikes are not alone on this, as the big go-fast change for the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10RR is also titanium con rods, courtesy of Pankl.
Pound for pound stronger than steel, titanium has been helping raise the roof on rev limits for quite some time now…and maybe it is time to give another element on the periodic table a chance. Like say…carbon?