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Aprilia RSV4 Factory

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After discovering a faulty component was used in a select number of RSV4 motors, Aprilia is recalling nearly 300 V4 superbike motors worldwide, including ever motor shipped in bikes to the United States. While the faulty component isn’t being named, early rumors peg the bike’s connecting rod bearing, which sidelined the company’s track day debut to the press several months ago, as being the problem piece.

To-date, there have been no known engine failures on customer bikes, but Aprilia isn’t taking any chances, and has motors already on the way from Italy. The company hopes to have the recall finished by February, and will be personally contacting each RSV4 owner. Press statement after the jump.

The Aprilia RSV4 hasn’t even reached dealers in the US yet, and there’s already speculation for what’s to come next year. With BMW finally spilling the beans on its pricing structure for the S1000RR, it should seem clear that Aprilia is going to have a lot of trouble hocking the long awaited RSV4 at the likely $6,000 price surplus that the RSV4 is going to have over the Japanese and new BMW.

To combat this, there is speculation starting to go around that Aprilia will release a “base” model (they don’t like calling it a base model, but that’s what it is) later in 2010, in order to compete with the cheaper models. Rumors peg the base model price to be about $4,000 less than the Factory model, which is due to come out later this year.