The General Motorbikers Discussion Thread

Spectre

I just ordered a ton of Chinese 194s, IIRC. Maybe Spectre remembers the vendor.
 
I have had good luck with this eBay supplier, speedlife2011. https://www.ebay.com/itm/SL-20x-T10-...gAAOSw0TxZZzai

IIRC, that's the supplier I recommended to Der Stig. The above actually has the double sided contacts that are very important - and the design allows much better lateral light than the Philips one can generate. Honda's IP lighting typically is piped from the sides of the bulb and there's a cap or shield in the bulb cavity preventing forward lighting and visual (but not thermal) hotspots. You need bright perimeter lighting to feed the light pipes.

I have used these extensively in my cars and this set is currently in my 919's instrument pod.

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I had the brilliant idea to take my motorcycle to go meet a friend of mine for lunch downtown today, with my 7 year old daughter riding backseat.

The weather was not too bad when we left home, but on the way back, it reached 41° C with the humidity factor (105 F in Freedom unit).

I was wearing my black leather jacket, and my daughter was wearing a textile jacket that severely lacks ventilation. And downtown is a mess of construction everywhere, so the ride back took twice as long as it should have.

It got to the point where I started riding in a way I never do, taking a lane that go straight at an intersection and turning double file, cutting in front of other cars just before intersections to cut a few minutes at every chance.


I need :

- To plan ahead better for that kind of weather when I have my daughter with me.
- To get her a mesh jacket or something with more ventilation than what she has.
 
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Or you know, what riding a bike is like in Europe. That's pretty much SOP around here. :)
 
Just got back from a fairly epic 3 day trip - and I'm thinking of selling the ST1300 for a Multistrada.
 
Blind_Io;n3553568 said:
Just got back from a fairly epic 3 day trip - and I'm thinking of selling the ST1300 for a Multistrada.

Do you have a bunch of disposable income to dispose of into your Multistrada? Ask Der Stig about how his is requiring wheelbarrows of money at regular intervals. :p
 
I have quite a few friends here (most of them actually) who ride and wrench on their own Mulitstradas. The ST1300 is a great bike, especially the way this one has been done up by the previous owner, but it would be nice to drop about 200# of weight. On this trip I was riding the ST1300 about as hard as one can be ridden.
 
Do you hate money? :p
 
Oh my, Tuono?
That V4 sounds SO ANGRY AND AWESOME
 
Do eeet! You can never have enough italian mistresses. ;)

Speaking of bikes, I'm pretty serious on getting a dedicated wee lil' track bike this year. I'm torn between the KTM RC390 and a Yamaha R3... believe it or not, there's a KTM in town that's cheaper than an R3.

I may consider a CBR300R or a Ninja 300 as well. Apparently, the Ninja 400 has been blowing the lid off of the competition this year... but I doubt I can find one within budget (=<$3k).
 
Got it. Yeah, I heard there was a head gasket issue (haven't researched it thoroughly yet) on the Kato, but I was telling @Blind_Io the same thing about, "Dude, I've never bled orange before!"

It's pretty likely I'll go the R3 route when it's time to pull the trigger ... there are a bunch of track prepped R3s and if I can get one within the budget, it may be more cost-effective than a fresh street bike.

...but then, the fun part about having a streetable track bike is, extra vehicle for friends flying in for sport touring!

Yes yes, I'm just teeter tottering. This is what happens when I'm stuck in winter mode. :(
 
For a cheap track bike, why not go SV650? Lots of those are available track prepped for little money.
Parts are cheap and plenty.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I will let Kiki talk about it if she wants, but some of you might remember that she had an SV650S for a while. Although it wasn't a bad motorcycle, she and that bike never bonded; it was eventually sold and became the Monster 696.
 
Oh, all good. The SV650 is a great bike - believe it or not, locally, the cheap ones are becoming harder and harder to find. There are fewer residual track prepped SVs left (at least according to the local grids). If I find one, I will consider it for sure.

On a semi-related note, the topic of 600cc class dying off has been interesting.

From MotoAmerica (sorry, forgive it being an US racing centric article), this week:
The Silence of the Supersport: Are 600s Going the Way of the Dinosaurs?

For the past three decades, the American Motorcyclist Association has sanctioned a class of professional motorcycle racing that features 600cc sportbikes. The 600 Supersport class debuted in 1987, and the very first race was held on March 6, 1987, at Daytona International Speedway. Doug Polen won the race aboard a Honda Hurricane 600. It was early days for “race-replica” 600cc sportbikes, with the Kawasaki Ninja 600R essentially inventing the new motorcycle category in 1985, and the Honda Hurricane 600 joining the fray in 1987. Soon afterward, the Yamaha FZR600 came along – in 1989, to be precise – and finally, in 1992, the Suzuki GSX-R600 was introduced, giving each of the Big Four Japanese motorcycle manufacturers a dog in the middleweight fight.

The Supersport class launched the careers of hundreds of road racers in America, including virtually every American AMA Superbike Champion, from Thomas Stevens, to the aforementioned Polen, to Miguel DuHamel, to Ben Bostrom, to Cameron Beaubier.

In those three decades, the name of the class changed a number of times. It was called “600 Supersport” from 1987 to 2001, then just “Supersport” from 2002 to 2008, then “SuperSport” from 2009 to 2014 (with separate “East” and “West” Championships during that era), and in 2015, it went back to simply “Supersport” with the dawn of MotoAmerica.

Also, from 2009 to 2014, there was a separate, higher-spec AMA-sanctioned 600cc road race class, and it was called “Daytona SportBike.” Now, here’s where things get really interesting or really confusing, depending on your point of view.

Daytona SportBike was a race class and an idea instituted by Daytona Motorsports Group (DMG), the previous owners of AMA-sanctioned professional motorcycle road racing and the immediate predecessors of The KRAVE Group, who owns MotoAmerica. Call it a simple act of branding, if you like, but the fact that Daytona Motorsports Group created a middleweight race class called Daytona SportBike had a deeper and, some would say, more sinister meaning. “Daytona” was obviously the common key word in “Daytona Motorsports Group” and “Daytona SportBike,” as in “Daytona International Speedway,” the very racetrack where, ironically, the 600 Supersport class raced for the very first time back in 1987.

By 2009, it was apparent that Superbikes had outgrown the high banks of Daytona. The speeds, the tires, and those omniscient and omnipresent walls at DIS proved to be an exceedingly dangerous proposition for Superbike racers. So, DMG’s solution was to designate that the iconic Daytona 200, arguably one of the greatest motorcycle racing events in the world, would be run with 600cc motorcycles instead of Superbikes. And, since DIS was clearly DMG’s crown jewel, they decided to change the name from what was formerly known as the “600 Supersport” and then just the “Supersport” class to the “Daytona SportBike” class. And so, “Daytona SportBikes” raced not only at Daytona, but at Road America, Utah, New Jersey, and all sorts of other venues that didn’t have anything to do with Daytona.

During the DMG era, from 2009 to 2014, Superbike racing was relegated to a sideshow. It’s not clear, had DMG continued, if they would have eventually eliminated Superbike racing altogether, but that’s something we no longer have to worry about.

In 2015, MotoAmerica reinstated the Supersport class, along with a Superstock 600 class, with a long-range plan to eventually combine the two classes (a plan that came to fruition in 2018). But, more importantly, when the MotoAmerica AMA/FIM North American Motorcycle Road Racing Championship debuted in 2015, the Superbike class was reinstated as America’s premier motorcycle road racing class.

But, let’s back up a moment and talk about 2008, the year before DMG took over AMA-sanctioned professional motorcycle road racing. Remember 2008? That was the year of the Credit Crunch, and it sent the prices of Japanese motorcycles through the roof. The MSRP of a 600cc Japanese sportbike suddenly was more than that of a 1000cc sportbike from the year before. But sales of 600cc sportbikes had already started to wane as many sportbike riders shunned hardcore middleweight “race replicas” and moved to roomier literbikes, standard-style machines, naked bikes, and adventure bikes – all motorcycles better suited to modern riding and lifestyles.

600cc sportbike development began to slow as a result. The once-ubiquitous Honda CBR600RR saw little more than changes in color and graphics, and their numbers dwindled accordingly on road racing grids. The Suzuki GSX-R600 hardly changed at all. The Yamaha YZF-R6, which supplanted the CBR600RR as the “it” bike in middleweight road racing, evolved a little but not radically. And, the Kawasaki ZX-6R didn’t change much, except for its much-welcomed lower MSRP in 2019.

So, even when DMG was in the process of making 600cc sportbikes the premier race class in America, their popularity was decreasing.
Don’t shed a tear for the Supersport class quite yet, however. Last year’s grids were large, the racing was compelling, and it’s still a class that breeds future American Superbike champions. In fact, all indications are that the 2019 MotoAmerica Supersport Championship is going to be another great one, just like 2018 was.

Also, remember this: everything has a beginning and end. If the world still wanted 600cc sportbikes, then the factories would still make them.
Meanwhile, the current crop of lightweight and middleweight single-cylinder sportbikes like the KTM RC390, Suzuki SV650, Kawasaki Ninja 400 and 650, and Yamaha YZF-R3 and MT-07 provide just as much fun on the street, at a trackday, or while ridden in anger on a racetrack, and are just as valuable as steppingstones to literbikes and Superbike. The 600cc sportbike era may be coming to an end, but the age of lightweight/middleweight singles and twins is just getting started.

Best of all, Superbikes are once again king in American professional motorcycle road racing.

It's not a new topic - here are some articles covering the same thing:

May 2018 from Visordown: Are 600cc Sportbikes dead and buried?
May 2018 from Bikebandit:
The Slow Death of the 600cc Supersport
June 2016 from Revzilla: Is the 600 cc race replica doomed to extinction?
 
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