From the monthly archives:

February 2008

It isn’t every day you see 6 Britten motorcycles lined up together, in fact, you simply never see that, period. Well, maybe just this once. Last weekend was the 25th anniversary meeting of the Sound of Thunder – BEARS racing (British European American Racing Society) in New Zealand. Tim, one of our Kiwi readers, mentioned [...]

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We first mentioned Roland Sands’ dirt bike based road racer last year and after several months of work it looks like they’re almost ready for prime time. There are 3 versions, a Yamaha, Honda and Kawasaki, each based on a 450cc dirt bike and then reskinned and reequipped for road racing.
Sands will be offering the [...]

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Harley Davidson Custom Seat Program

by Paul Crowe - "The Kneeslider" on 2/28/2008

in Motorcycle Accessories, Motorcycle Design

Harley Davidson has a new custom seat program where you design the seat online with different patterns, stitching, inlay materials and colors then take the print out to your dealer and order the seat. There’s 800 possible combinations so there’s a pretty good chance yours will be a little different or a lot different than [...]

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Honda Ending Motorcycle Production in U.S.

by Paul Crowe - "The Kneeslider" on 2/27/2008

in Motorcycle Business

There will be one less company producing motorcycles in the U.S. next year as Honda plans to stop manufacturing motorcycles at its Marysville, Ohio facility and transfer production to Japan. Honda will focus efforts on its North American auto operations.

Honda said there will be no layoffs when production ends in spring 2009. The workers will [...]

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Revolution Performance Motors has introduced the RPMHemi 4 valve heads for the Evo V-twin and early Twin Cam engines, Twin Cam EFI kits are currently being tested and will be available soon. If someone asks, “That thing got a hemi?” just install these heads and you can say yes. Sweet! The heads bolt directly on [...]

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Yamaha R1 Girder Front Suspension

by Paul Crowe - "The Kneeslider" on 2/25/2008

in Motorcycle Builders, Motorcycle Design

Girder front suspensions are pretty much as old as motorcycles and you see them on custom bikes all the time but not very often on sportbikes. This Yamaha R1 streetfighter from R1 Engineering is being fitted with a girder setup and it looks pretty neat.
There’s no reason this shouldn’t work great and it will be [...]

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Salt Dreams – a Film by JT Nesbitt

by Paul Crowe - "The Kneeslider" on 2/23/2008

in Down Time

J.T. Nesbitt, formerly of Confederate Motorcycles and now of Bienville Studios in New Orleans, went to the salt flats and made a documentary. A new, just finished film, details the efforts of The New Orleans Race Team to rebuild a 1998 Lincoln Mark 8, damaged by the flood waters of Hurricane Katrina, turn it into [...]

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Kinematic Models – Mechanisms in Motion

by Paul Crowe - "The Kneeslider" on 2/22/2008

in Down Time, Engines, Mechanical

Most of you are probably interested in all things mechanical, not just motorcycles, the term gearhead is a badge of honor around here. With that in mind, you might want to check out the kinematic models website at Cornell University. The site has a lot of photos and diagrams of every sort of mechanical movement [...]

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