Cycle News

FIRST RIDE P94 BENELLI BN600 EVO ity of exactly 600cc. Although it's potentially safe to 16,000 rpm in Supersport race guise, on the BN600 Naked model its rev-limiter is more conservatively set at 11,500 rpm. The short, compact design running an 11.5:1 compression ratio sees the double overhead camshafts chain-driven up the right side of the engine, with the six-speed transmission's oil-bath clutch mounted quite high up, and the cylinders inclined forward by 10 degrees - mounted on a strong crankcase that was originally intended for use as a frame with Benelli designing it to sit in a Benelli Bimota Tesi. The BN600 employs a nowadays conventional composite frame, which does however use that robust engine as a fully stressed member, with a tubular steel upper subframe attached to twin cast aluminum chassis plates, in which the double-sided cast aluminum swingarm pivots. It's worth noting that the quality of the aluminum castings - and indeed the whole finish of the Chinese-made Benelli four - is very high, fully on a par with anything made in Europe, and in Japan, too, except for little things like the old-fashioned switchgear. Priced to sell, this doesn't look like a cost-cutting motorcycle in terms of manufacture. That's especially the case with the Italian hardware now fitted to the BN600, with its nonadjustable 50mm Marzocchi fork offering 4.7 inches of wheel travel, matched to a Sachs cantilever rear monoshock offset to the right with 4.8 inches of travel, and readily accessible for spring preload and rebound damping adjustment but not compression damping. There's a 56.2-inch wheelbase, and the twin 320mm Brembo floating front discs are gripped by the latest design of radially mounted Brembo Monobloc four-pot calipers, with a twinpiston caliper and 260mm disc at the rear. The good-looking lightweight cast aluminum wheels are shod with Metzeler Sportec rubber. Dry weight of the good-looking bike - whose styling is based on the original post-Tesi design by Benelli's then designer, Spaniard Carlos Solsona, as later refined in China - is 458 pounds, with the 3.9-gallon gas tank empty. Fitted with a Euro 3-compliant twin-catalyst 4-1-2 exhaust exiting via two underseat silencers, with a lambda probe oxygen sensor on each header pipe optimizing the fuelling that's controlled by the American-made Delphi ECU, the Benelli's four-cylinder motor delivers a claimed 82 hp/60kW at 11,500 rpm, with 52Nm/5.3kgm of torque peaking at 10,500 rpm. A day's ride along the Adriatic Coast from Pesaro aboard the

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