Honda has issued a recall with the NHTSA because of a fault with the master cylinder on the Honda Goldwing. Affecting 2001-2010 & 2012 models, the secondary master cylinder for the Goldwing’s combined braking system could have a fault that causes the rear brake to engage and drag.
Because this could destabilize the motorcycle, and poses a potential fire danger from heat caused by excessive friciton, Honda is recalling all 126,000 Goldwings the issue could potentially affect.
It is a rare opportunity when a journalist gets to swing a leg over a prototype motorcycle. Virtually assured by definition to have perceivable flaws, effectively all the companies in the motorcycle industry prefer to keep the public and media at arm’s length until they have massaged their work into something that is ready for primetime consumption. Testing the BRD RedShift SM electric supermoto at Infineon Raceway today, we could attribute our good fortune to the fact that BRD Motorcycles (faster-faster.com) does not subscribe to the motorcycle industry’s status quo.
Conversely, we could also just as easily say that the boys at BRD are easily crazy enough to let a couple moto-journalists test the only existing example of what nearly a million dollars in motorcycle technology builds you, and the fact that those journalists are online blogger internet nerd types, well that just proves BRD’s insanity, right?
That notion of craziness comes almost without question though, as you would have to be crazy to think that you can take on the major OEMs in their own backyard. You would have to be crazy to give up the security of your day job to start a new venture in the worst recession since the 1930’s, crazy to convert your successful existing business into a risky startup, crazy to spend your accumulated life savings so every dollar raised goes into the company’s shared vision.
There is something crazy about what is going on with a small motorcycle startup in the San Francisco Bay Area, and as I not-so-prudently signed my life away on the test ride disclaimer today, Asphalt & Rubber got to see what manifestations BRD’s farce had produced since we last saw the BRD RedShift SM in August of this year.
It has been almost a year and a half since we first heard of the third generation Confederate X132 Hellcat, and today we get word that the “more affordable” Confederate has been finalized and is ready for pre-production orders. Borrowing on the namesake of its predecessors, the new Hellcat shares some of the basic characteristics of the original Hellcats, while still bringing a very unique look and style to the custom cruiser.
Set to begin production in January, Confederate is taking orders now with a price tag of $45,000 through February, though that price will go to $49,500 in March of 2012. With only 164 Confederate X132 Hellcats to be made, the Alabama-based company expects to make only two units a week.
We thoroughly enjoyed the 2012 Yamaha Super Ténéré when we rode it last year (yeah..do the math on those numbers). Properly thrashing the machine through the outskirts of Sedona, Arizona, the big-displacement Super T is fun adventure-tourer that balances Japanese bang-for-the-buck economics with a robust feature set normally reserved only for European machines.
So it is hard to imagine how Yamaha could improve on an already fine motorcycle (we guess the tuning fork brand could give the Super Ténéré away for free), but the Japanese manufacturer did so with its Yamaha Super Ténéré Worldcrosser concept.
A more rugged and off-road oriented variant of the Super T, the 2012 Yamaha Super Ténéré Worldcrosser seemed too-polished, and certainly too well received to avoid going into production, and sure enough, we have gotten word today that Yamaha has green-lit the Worldcrosser for production (we’ll take one in competition white, please).
One of the nice things about actually going to motorcycle events, instead of phoning it in like many publications seem to do these days, is that you get to see all the treasure trove items that didn’t find their way onto some press release mill for mass consumption.
Such is the case of the Pierobon X60R, a custom sportbike that will surely cause some revisions to your Christmas wish list to Santa. We’ve featured Pierobon’s work before, with the Bologna company’s Pierobon F042 causing quite a stir earlier this year.
Like the F042, the Pierobon X60R features an air-cooled Ducati v-twin power plant, and the tuning firm’s own proprietary chassis design. There are plenty of performance parts and carbon fiber to drool over, and the design strikes as one that would have occurred had Ducati made a true air-cooled sportbike.
With Pierbon’s extensive experience in the racing scene, we can imagine how much fun an X60R would be on the track, we’ll just have to wait and see if a street model also makes a debut. If you’re a Ducatista and want to stand out from the cappuccino crowd, there are some photos after the jump that might interest you.
Carbon monocoque frame, turbo-boosted v-twin motor, single-sided swingarm, duolever front suspension geometry, and premium components — that’s what French firm Boxer Design’s SuperBob is made of. You’ll either love or hate the SuperBob’s general aesthetic, but you have to admit up close, the details of the sport-naked are superb. Based around an 88° 997cc v-twin motor that was developed by French firm Technologies (the same company behind the stillborn Inmotec MotoGP project’s motor), the Boxer Design SuperBob massages its peak power output to 158hp, thanks to some light turbo work (6-9 psi).
It looks like MV Agusta will be making a “historic return” to the Isle of Man TT, as the venerable road race has announced that the factory-backed of World Performance Racing (WPR) will be entering MV Agusta F3 & F4 motorcycles in the 101st running of the Mountain Course.
WPR, a family-run business based in Chesterfield will be campaigning the exotic Italian bikes with the help from Chorley’s Moto GB, though it is not clear what the Italian factory’s involvement is with the racing effort precisely. According to the TT, the last time an MV Agusta was raced around the TT course was in 2007, when the late Martin Finnegan finished 4th with a 125.685 mph pace in the Superstock TT race.
To say Randy de Puniet had a tough season this year might be an understatement. Seemingly finding his groove at LCR Honda during the 2010 season, RdP found himself going into the 2011 known more for his well-raced finishes than gravel trap disappointments. The Frenchman showed a new maturity with his riding, and many thought his riding style would suit the troublesome Ducati Desmosedici GP11 well.
While the beginning of the season often saw de Puniet the fastest of the Italian bikes, it was clear that the move to Pramac Ducati was a misstep in the rider’s career. Jumping ship for 2012, and clear that he did not want to race in World Superbike or on a CRT machine, de Puniet seemingly had a number of options in front of him despite the 2011 season winding to a close: a return to LCR Honda, a factory ride with Rizla Suzuki, and ties to the well-run Aspar MotoGP team.
Those options would be limited though, as 2011 Moto2 Champion Stefan Bradl was shoe-horned into the LCR Honda squad to keep the pretense alive that Moto2 prepared riders to race in MotoGP. Similarly the rug was pulled out from underneath the Frenchman, as Rizla Suzuki got its plugged pulled almost immediately after RdP tested the Suzuki GSV-R, with promising results we might add. Left with few other choices, and certainly none of them better, it comes with little surprise then that Jorge “Aspar” Martinez’s MotoGP team has announced that Randy de Puniet will be one of its two riders for the 2012 MotoGP season.
De Puniet will be joined by former-MotoGP/Moto2 racer Aleix Espargaró on the two bike team. Dropping Ducati and announcing that Team Aspar will run an all CRT effort, the Spanish team will use Aprilia-powered bikes (De Puniet tested one of these bikes at Jerez last week). While a chassis manufacturer has not been announced, paddock gossip has been suggesting that Aprilia could be supplying a custom chassis for the racing effort. If you’ve been following MotoGP and the CRT movement closely, your eyebrows should be raised right now.
We’ve featured Slovenian motorcycle stunter Rok Bagoroš and his KTM 125 Duke before, and we’ve talked at length about how the Austrian motorcycle manufacturer makes some of the best promo videos in the biz…needless to say, you can see where this post is headed. In the interest of time, let’s assume I’ve already written enough hyperbole about how great this video is, and also enumerated a sufficient number of points about how current motorcycle industry marketing offends me on a variety of visceral levels.
With only a few more weeks remaining in 2011, let’s instead shift the discussion and begin the countdown as to when KTM will bring a larger displacement Duke to the US market. Already building a 200cc version for select markets, KTM is set to bring a 350cc Duke to the US for the 2013 model year. That gives us roughly 350 days before the bike’s public debut (unless of course we see some “spy photos” of the machine ahead of time). If you don’t get excited about a more powerful version of what Bagoroš is riding after the jump, then check your pulse…you might be dead.
Likely to be marked as the start of significant chapter in MotoGP history, the claiming rule teams (CRTs) were out in Jerez the past three days testing their MotoGP machinery, which is comprised of production-motorcycle motors with custom-built chassis. While not the first time we’ve seen a CRT bike on the track, the outing was the first time that a”top-tier” rider was on-board the new racing format motorcycles, as Colin Edwards lead the charge with his BMW/Suter machine with NGM Forward Racing.
Many in the MotoGP paddock have been waiting to cast their verdict on the CRT endeavor, withholding their judgments until a top GP rider took to the helm of a CRT machine and properly put the bike through its paces. With tests earlier in the year showing Mika Kallio on-board the BMW/Suter to be over six seconds off the pace of the 800cc-era machines, the CRT future of MotoGP looked to be in jeopardy. Those lap times improved over the year to be “only” four seconds off that 1,000-era bike pace, showing improvement, yet a gap to the front-runners.
Now with Edwards finally swinging a leg over the BMW S1000RR-powered Suter prototype, surely more comparisons between the factory prototypes and CRT offerings are to ensue. Posting a best lap time of 1’40.188 at the Spanish GP earlier this year, Edwards was roughly 2.5 seconds off his own pace, finishing the three-day test with a best lap to f 1’42.6. That news seems discouraging on its face, though it should be noted that the team dropped 1.3 seconds between Wednesday and Thursday’s tests.
Edwards also rated the bike at about 65% of its potential, while the Texan’s own fitness was questionable, as Edwards was till recovering from the injuries he sustained at the Malaysian GP. WIth all those caveat, does this week’s test equate to excuses for a lackluster performance, or justify that more leaps and gains will be made before the start of the 2012 MotoGP Championship?
Asphalt & Rubber has teamed up with the San Francisco D-Store to bring you Mark Neale’s Fastest, the long-awaited sequel to the hit MotoGP documentary Faster that features Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo, Ben Spies, Colin Edwards, and Marco Simoncelli. The San Francisco Bay Area premiere of Fastest, our screening will be held at 7pm on Thursday, December 8th at the Embarcadero Center Cinema in downtown San Francisco.
Tickets will be available online or at the box office for $10.50, though we recommend purchasing your tickets ASAP, as we anticipate to sell out the movie well before the event date. All proceeds will go to A&R‘s favorite charity: Riders for Health. The official charity of MotoGP, Riders for Health is an international non-profit organization that provides motorcycles (and rider safety and maintenance) to healthcare workers in Africa. We hope to see you there.