Growing up, my only experience with two-strokes was in leaf blowers: I didn’t ride dirt bikes, and two-stroke sportbikes were long gone by the time I got into motorcycles. A thudding v-twin sounds like sex, and the technology that allows a four to scream to 16,000rpm boggles my mind while the noise makes my hair…
A pure homologation special never intended for mass-production, the Yamaha YZF-R7 OW02 was a spiritual successor to the storied OW01 that took the fight to the famous Honda RC30 and the Ducati 851 Corsa featured this past weekend. But where the Honda used a different engine configuration than their more common mass production sportbikes and…
The term “race replica” can mean different things: a stock bike with a graphics design that mimics a famous competition machine, or an homologation machine that will be used in part or nearly whole in some form of production racing. But all that goes out the window here: this is a genuine World Superbike Ducati…
Although the mid-1980s 750 F1 may not have represented the very best from Ducati, the TT2 and later TT1 race bikes that inspired them certainly did. Lightweight, perfectly formed, and highly effective, they epitomize Ducati’s racing ethos of the period. The original TT2 displaced 587cc and used the belt-drive Pantah motor, with the later TT1…
Normally, the goal here on RSBFS is to feature rare, unusual, or quirky sport motorcycles and we generally try to stick to machines in good, stock condition or bikes that have been tastefully modified. But today’s MV Agusta F4-1000 track bike is exactly the kind of thing I’d love to put together myself, if I…
We normally try to post unmolested, rare and exotic motorcycles here on RSBFS. Not customs or kit bikes, no matter how nice. But this little flyweight track-day terror based on a YZF450F seemed like a good excuse to break our own, self-imposed rules. Racing is an expensive hobby, even if you’re doing everything you can…
Most peoples’ basements are filled with boxes of moldering old magazines, holiday ornaments, clothes destined for Goodwill, and maybe the odd dry well for storing kidnapping victims, but at least one individual has a nice vintage Yamaha TA125 racebike hiding in theirs. A relatively inexpensive production racebike, the TA filled a gap in Yamaha’s racing…
The Yamaha TZ125 was an evolution of the company’s TA125, a privateer GP machine in miniature. It might look like a glorified scooter but, although the TZ’s displacement was small, it came with sophisticated specification to match much bigger machines: liquid cooling, dry clutch, disc brakes, and a six-speed gearbox. The highly-strung engine made a…