Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Is'it selling in Germany? New Three Cross Guzzi British Guzzi guru Amedeo Castellani's Raceco UK tuning company surely produces the fastest and most powerful V- . twin shafties ever built. Pint-sized former Australian GP star Paul Lewis clinched the 1995 British BOTT title on the Raceco Guzzi (shown above), as well as thrilling 50,000 spectators at the Brands Hatch World Superbike round tha t year by dueling with the pair of Brittens in the BEARS World Series support race. Ou tings for the fuel-injected eightvalve bike, which now produces 136 bhp at the rear wheel, were limited in 1996 while Castellaru moved his business ou t of London and into the Suffolk _countryside. But he used the time off racing to good effect, developing the most potent Moto Guzzi street bike ever offered for sale through official Guzzi channels. British Moto Guzzi importer Three Cross is one of the Italian marque's principal distributors, and has in the past been responsible for commissioning several of the most tasty short-run performance specials to come out of the Mandello factory, like the B-htted Dr. John Daytona and the C-kit Daytona Racing. Now, though, with constraints on production capacity for short-run models as the Italian factory gears up to manufacture a big range of new bikes and with 'the approval of Guzzi management, Three Cross has entrusted Raceco U.K. with the production of the next in the lineup of Moto Guzzi sports specials, based on their ultra-competitive racer. Taking the current flagship of' the Guzzi range, the Daytona RS, Raceco has increased capacity to 1100cc by fitting forged Omega 95rnm pistons and Carrillo mds, matched to a balanced, lightened crankshaft and flywheel. Factory C-kit race cams help deliver over 100 bhp at the rear wheel in street guise, with revised mapping for the Weber / Marelli single-injector EFI, with the option of further increasing performance with bigger valves and ported, flowed heads. There's a substantial increase in torque, too - though till is hardly at the top of a Guzzi customer's performance shopping list. The single biggest improvement, Castellaru says, is that the irritating flat spot around 5000 rpm on the stock Daytona RS has been completely filled in on the big-bore version. Chassis setup is essentially unchanged from stock, though uprated brakes, suspension and carbon bodywork can be fitted at extra cost. The price of the Three Cross Raceco Daytona standably clocks in third with 3894 units sold, just in front of BMW's best-seller, the RIlOORT on 3731. Honda's top model was the CB500 in sixth on 3664 bikes sold, just in front of the BMW F650 Funduro on 3461. Captain Sensible completed his stranglehold on the top 10 hit list with the Yamaha XJ600' in eighth place and the Suzuki GS500 in 10th, sandwicillng the country's' best-selling Supersports model (sorry, don't count the GSF600 - when ilid you last see one of these on the race track?), the CBR600 Honda. But the betting must be that Suzuki's powerful German sales operation will have the new GSXR600 cranked up ahead of the Honda by the end of 1997. Germany has for some years been Eu rope's la rgest motorcycle market, so the sales figures should be a barometer of what happens on the rest of the continent. Or maybe not. At a time when the Honda CBR900RR was the best-selling bike over 250cc in the admittedly smaller British market, the German statistics for the first 10 months of 1996 (bike sales are minimal for the last two months of the year, so this is effectively an overall picture for the year) have just been published in the magazine Das Motorrad, and make interesting reailing. spring, with a range of optional tuning parts for the l002cc four-cylinder engjne which Over also is developing, alongside its free-flowing exhaust system already available for the YZFI000 engjne. The OV-19 will be available both as a frame ht and a complete bike, and will be available for export around the world. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again - and you may get lucky the third time. Italian motorcycle enthusiast and woodwork macmnery tycoon Giancarlo Morbidelli has at last unveiled the final prod uction version of his 850 V8 sport tourer (shown below), due to begin production this spring on the basis of 10 bikes per year, each ~old at a price of just under $150,000 from a single dealer - the factory. After a barrage of criticism for the weird looks of its first two efforts, car Especially since Suzuki has retained its grip on the number-one slot in terms of manufacturers, with 37,586 bikes sold - 22.3 percent of the market compared to second-place Honda with 20.6 percent, from 34,759 units. Yamaha is in third spot with 18 percent, Kawasah fourth with 14.5 percent, before, not surprisingly, BMW as the best of the rest, having sold 19,818 bikes (in the year they built 50,000 uruts for the first time) in their home market, for a total share of 11.8 percent. HarleyDavidson was next with 5259 bikes (making their 4000-plus bikes sold in Australia - a vastly smaller market - all the more remarkable), followed by KTM with 3106 units and Ducati with 2675. Tril\mph? Well, now you know why John Bloor went all out to develop the T595/T509... The best-selling bike, out of the total of 168,610 motorcycles sold during tills period - a slight 2.9 percent drop on the same 10 months the previous year? Great subject for bike trivia, because most people would never guess it: the humble, obsolescent, cheap Suzuki GSF600U with 5807 sales in tho e 10 months, ahead of Yamaha's XV535 which sold 5484. Suzuki's GSF1200 Bandit under- stylist Pininfarina has come up with sometillng more generally acceptable, while Bimota has developed an all-new 1460rnm-wheelbase chrome-moly steel frame, with the 847cc 90-degree V-eight engjne underslung from it, acting as a serru-stressed chassis component. The fuel-injected 55 x 44.6mm engjne with single-plane crank !las now been developed to deliver an electrorucally restricted 120 bhp at 11,000 rpm at the rear wheel, 20 percent up on the version originally unveiled two years ago. Suspension is by Paioli, with a 46rnm cartridge fork up front and a single offset cantilever rear shock mounted on the outer casing for the shaft final drive. The gearbox is a five-speeder, and claimed top speed for the bike weighing 440 pounds dry is 148 mph. Instru- r:--... mentation is fully digital, with an LCD 0\ disp.1ay monitoring speed, rpm, ~ oil/water temp and oil pressure. There's a passenger seat benea th the squab fitted to the prototype, but no luggage as standard equipment, though Morbidelli is developing an @ optional range of hard. panniers for "<::' those who want to use their bike for ~ sometmng more than impressing their friends a t the yacht club. l:.'\: check;ng out and almost certainly moiliEying their own bike after doing so. This is intended to be the first of two companion volumes and Volume 1 leaves one loohng forward to Volume 2. Anyone, even the more, er, experienced motorcycle journalist, can expand his knowledge from reailing this book. In Europe, John Bradley's book is available directly from him at Broadland Leisure Publications, P.O. Box 438, York YOI 3YQ, England. In North America, contact Euro Spares, 1451 46th Ave., San Francisco, CA 94122, 415/665-3363, or e-mail racebook@eurospares.com. Price in the States is $69.95. Morbidelli's sport tourer RSll00, scheduled to go on sale in April, will be between $19,000 and $21,500, depending on the customer's chosen specification. For more information, fax Raceco UK at 44/1728-602103. Amust read Every so often a motorcycle book comes along that stands out from the rest as a must-have addition to the serious enthusiast's bookcase. John Bradley's "The Racing Motorcycle - A Technical Guide for Constructors: Volume 1" is one of those. It's literally inilispensable if you want to extend your understanding of how all bikes - not just racers work, and why. The best complinlent I can pay "The Racing Motorcycle" is to say that, on the basis of producing it, author John Bradley deserves to be ranked right up there alongside Phil Irving as a writer gifted with the capacity to explain complicated technical concepts in a way laymen can understand. Like the author of "Tuning for Speed" and "Speed - and How to Obtain It," Bradley writes in a direct, straightforward style about a wide range of aspects of contemporary motorcycle design, scorrung the use of jargon or esoteric terminology in favor of plain English. "The drag area of a medium-sized classic bike with no form of streamlining is about 0.35m 2 with the rider prone, and about 0.55-0.6Om2 with the rider sitting upright. As you can see, these figures are a reasonable reflection of the drag area represented by 'average man' alone." This comes as part of a fascinating exploration of the origins of drag and how to combat it, in turn a vital topic for anyone interested in racing. Those with, er, above-average personal bulk may not necessarily find the conclusions encouraging. The subtitle - "A technical guide for constructors" - is a bit of a red herring, because really the book is a bible for anyone interested in understaniling why the people who built a bike did so the way that they did (mistakes and all), rather than seeking to do so oneself. On the other hand, it's a great how-to manual. I invite anyone to read the chapter on Swinging Arm Geometry to resist i3 5

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