The Harley Davidson Riders Club Northern Ireland are holding their 2010 May Day Weekend rally running from April 30th – May 2nd. It will take place at Dromore Rugby club, Dromore, CoDown, and any Harley, Indian or Victory riders are most welcome to attend. Check out their poster below and for further details you can visit their website. You’ll also find contact details for the club on our UK Bike Clubs page.
RTWW got a Super Tenere Newsflash this morning and it sounds like Yamaha are organising a dream ride-out for a very good cause. The message reads;
Are you ready to Go Beyond on one of our five Super Ténéré bikes?
To celebrate the launch of the new Super Ténéré, we’re organising an adventure ride like no other.
We’re calling it Ride for Life 2010. It’s a long-haul, continent-hopping adventure that will see five new 2010 Yamaha Super Ténéré bikes go all the way from France to North Africa.
Ride for Life starts in Paris, on May 4th 2010 where Yamaha Dakar legends will kick off the ride. They’ll be taking the Super Ténéré squadron as far as Lisbon, Portugal. Then it could be your turn.
Guided by Yamaha Dakar star Helder Rodrigues (4th in Dakar 2010), you’ll be riding from the Portuguese capital down to the North African coast, and through Morocco – towards your final destination, the exotic and ancient city of Marrakech. Yamaha will then donate these 5 Super Ténéré bikes to the Riders for Health organisation.
As a bike born on the Paris-Dakar rally – where previous Super Ténéré bikes won multiple titles during the 80s and 90s – it’s a chance for the new Super Ténéré to return to its roots.
Five riders will make that happen! Could you be one of them? Do you have your motorcycle license for more than five years and are you the adventurous type we are looking for, then click www.super-tenere.com/ride-for-life and find out how you could become one of the members of the Ride For Life 2010 team.
Below we’ve got a couple of videos featuring the new Suzuki GSX1250FA. Early word on the bike is very positive with the general consensus being that it’s a good all-rounder capable of commuting, weekend blasting, and touring. Also it’s the price that’s drawing most attention with the UK price tag of £6795 which is more than reasonable for a bike with the GSX1250FA’s spec. The first video is Suzuki’s own glossy teaser for the bike, and the second is from MCNs brief try of the bike at its launch in Spain.
RTWW featured the Suzuki GSX1250FA in an earlier post here.
On the navigation tabs above you’ll find a new page featuring information about The UK Bike Test. Yes the dreaded UK Bike Test, the one that breaks arms, almost causes fatalities, etc etc. While the test may change at some point and a recent government committee reported huge flaws in its implementation and execution (RTWW reported on that here) for now we’re stuck with it and it’s not an insurmountable task.
With good training and a cool head the test is passable and hopefully the collection of DSA videos we’re featuring on the UK Bike Test page will help. RTWW is in no way justifying the new test or the scandalous way it was introduced leading to jobs losses at training companies, but the future of UK biking will be badly affected by the loss of tens of thousands of new bikers that have turned away from taking the test in the last several months.
Motorcycling is under attack from so many different angles at the minute from Brussels Buffoons and some of our own Government expenses rich rip-off merchants, that RTWW wouldn’t want the next excuse to curtail motorcycling to be that the lack of people becoming bikers shows it to be a ‘niche hobby’ and therefore ends up being restricted to a track. I know that sounds a bit heavy but we have to defend and nurture our lifestyle, because if we don’t I don’t have faith that the organisations that are supposed to are up to the job.
So check out the new test, sign up, pass it and get out there on your first big bike. Ride Safe and have a great weekend!
30-year-old Lincolnshire resident Colin Fruze is an innovative chap. Sick of car drivers trying to mow him down he has fitted a flamethrower to the back of his scooter! Initially tested on a BMX the 12 foot stream of fire is activated by a button on the handle bar. You’d think the host of buttons on BMW’s new RT1200 should most certainly include something like this!
Help I’m Choking!!!……cough……cough…… Ok better now, but still a bit light-headed.
Why the drama? Yamaha have just officially released the UK pricing for their new Fazer8 and FZ8 models. Now before I cause you all minor heart attacks let’s look again at the bikes in question.
The new Fazer8 is Yamaha’s new 779cc middle-weight sports bike. It’s half-faired for a bit of weather protection, comes with ABS, and is built around an aluminium frame to keep its weight in check.
The FZ8 is the Fazer’s naked cousin with all the same spec just minus the fairing, and personally I prefer the look of it to the Fazer8.
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Now to the heart-stopping stuff. The Price for the Fazer8 is £8799, and the FZ8 is £7799! Come on now pick yourself up off the floor.
The last time I used the ‘Pay how much’ title for an article was for another Yamaha, the Super-Tenere and its eye-watering £13499 price tag. However while the Super-Tenere is in a class of similarly priced machines, the Fazer8 and FZ8 have priced themselves out of the market for middle weight sports bikes. The list of similar, or better, machines that are £1000, or more, less than the Fazer list price is too long to mention here, but a good example comes from a story we did at the start of the week on Suzuki’s new GSX1250FA, a fully-faired, ABS included, 1255cc sports tourer priced at £6995.
Yamaha is supposedly in financial difficulty …. pricing bikes like this won’t help.
The picture above was a leak of KTMs new electric moto and supermoto bikes which sprung from a German Motorcycling magazine ahead of their unveiling at the Tokyo Motorshow later this week. Visor Down as now got its hands on more pics which you can find on their web site. KTM’s sudden entrance into the electric bike market is a big boost for E-bikes given the status of the well known manufacturer. No doubt ZERO motorcycles will be looking long and hard at both the spec and pricing of KTM’s offerings.
Check out Visor Down’s pictures here.
The UK’s beleaguered Government has been described as being ‘inept’ for its botched handling of the introduction of the European Bike Test last year. The test which is still controversial, having caused injuries, including a recent near-miss fatality, and damaged or destroyed dozens of training businesses, has resulted in a huge drop in people graduating from L-plates. The knock on effect to all areas of the industry has yet to be fully felt, hidden amongst the general downturn, but should the UK pull free of recession in any meaningful way, the lack of new bikers spending in showrooms could be disastrous.
The cross-party Transport Committee has said “the new combination of tests is likely to help improve road safety, provided that the government and the industry work together, and that training for other road users to improve their awareness of motorcyclists on the road is improved too”. However the Committee also said the smaller test sites could have been retained saving millions of pounds, and the DSA had failed to listen adequately to the motorcycle industry.
The committee’s chairman, Louise Ellman, said: “Many candidates and trainers now have to travel too far for their motorcycle test. “This adds to the cost, and in some cases, exposes candidates to fast and dangerous roads on the way to a test site”.
It has been quoted that some riders are negotiating 100+ miles of a trip to get to a test by which time they’re exhausted and in no fit state to be taking a fair crack at passing. No doubt this issue will rumble on for some time to come. Unfortunately the longer it does the worse the longterm effects on motorcycling in the UK will become.
A spokesman for the Driving Standards Agency said the organisation would respond fully to all recommendations in the report at a later date.
It may take some time for them to make up even a half-assed excuse!
It took a while to get there, and many mentions on Twitter that it was happening only for it to be delayed, but finally Ride The Wild Wind has made it on to Facebook with our new page. Looking forward to making connections with bikers everywhere and if you or your motorcycle club has a Facebook page get in touch and RTWW will friend or fan you ….. assuming you’re not a raving wackjob!
The Press have been out in force at the launch in Spain of Suzuki’s new sports-tourer the GSX1250FA, unfortunately that didn’t include RTWW this time around but we can give you the heads up on the bike’s specs in readiness for first ride reviews which should start appearing soon.
Based on the Bandit 1250 this bike uses the same well-respected engine and, while made to a sensible budget, it’s not without a few useful basics including ABS as standard, adjustable seat height, gear position indicator, and centre stand. The full fairing should give decent weather protection which will be most welcome if, as Suzuki intends, this bike becomes your tourer of choice. Accessories for the bike show it to have a complete tour outfit and with a starting price of around the £6700 mark, this could be a great success for the company.
While it’s great to see the Multistrada, and Super Tenere in all their high-tech glory it’s worth remembering it comes at a cost that is beyond a lot of us in the current economic climate, or any other time for that matter, as I watch moths flutter out of my wallet. The technical spec of the GSX1250FA is below along with some more images.
Technical Specification for the Suzuki GSX1250FA
| Engine Type | 4-stroke, 4-cylinder, liquid-cooled, DOHC | |
| Bore x Stroke | 79.0 mm x 64.0 mm | |
| Engine Displacement | 1255 cm3 (1255 cc) | |
| Compression Ratio | 10.5 : 1 | |
| Carburetion | Fuel injection | |
| Oil Capacity (overhaul) | 3.7L (3.9 US qt.) | |
| Ignition | Electronic ignition (Transistorized) | |
| Starter System | Electric | |
| Lubrication System | Wet sump | |
| Transmission | 6-speed constant mesh | |
| Primary Drive Ratio | 1.537 (83 / 54) | |
| Final Drive Ratio | 2.388 (43 / 18) | |
| Rake/Trail | 25.2 degrees / 104 mm (4.1 in.) | |
| Suspension | Front | Telescopic, coil spring, oil damped |
| Rear | Link type, coil spring, oil damped | |
| Brakes | Front | Disc, twin |
| Rear | Disc | |
| Tires | Front | 120/70ZR17M/C (58W), tubeless |
| Rear | 180/55ZR17M/C (73W), tubeless | |
| Fuel Tank | 19.0 L (5.0 US gal.) | |
| Overall Length | 2,130 mm (83.9 in.) | |
| Overall Width | 790 mm (31.1 in.) | |
| Overall Height | 1,235 mm (48.6 in.) | |
| Wheelbase | 1,485 mm (58.5 in.) | |
| Seat Height | 805 / 825 mm (31.7 / 32.5 in.) | |
| Curb Mass | 257kg (567 lbs.) | |
NOTE: Specs. are not final
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