The sad thing about being a serious motorcycle geek is that most people don’t really understand my obsession with and enthusiasm for weird motorcycles. Even other motorcyclists. I was thinking about this today as I was poring over the engine of a friend’s Velocette Venom, trying to suss out the function of the little cable-actuated…
If you’re looking for a track bike, your best bet is something as modern as possible, with broad parts availability. A reliable tool for going fast as effortlessly as possible. Something completely disposable. There’s a reason you see a ton of GSX-R600s and 1000s, R6s, the occasional SV650, even a new crop of Ninja 400…
Ducati’s air-cooled 750SS might seem like an unlikely candidate for a racebike build. By 1993, a two-valve Desmo twin was antiquated technology, a quirky, charming curio by the sportbike standards of the day. But although competition duties had been handed off to the liquid-cooled, four-valve superbikes by the early 90s, it’s important to remember that…
Today’s Honda RS125RW might be a bit obscure for most of our readers, and is certainly older than the bikes we usually feature here, but a genuine Honda Grand Prix machine is certainly worth a look whenever one comes up for sale! This one has plenty of patina, period stickers, and an apparently rare dry…
I love seeing race and trackday bikes built out of unlikely candidates like this well-prepared, race-winning Triumph Daytona T595. After all, the whole point of the Daytona in the first place was that it wasn’t pretending to be just a numberplate away from placing at Brands Hatch. Instead, it was intended as a fast roadbike,…
By 2001, the entire quarter-liter sportbike class was basically dead, leaving the Aprilia RS250 Cup a bit of an orphan. Yamaha TZR250 production ended in 1995, Honda’s NSR250R in 1996, and the Suzuki RGV250Γ held out until 1998. But I guess Aprilia still had some of the older 90° RGV250 engines lying around, so they…
Laypeople often love cars and motorcycles with gratuitous stylistic frippery: air vents leading to nowhere, extraneous “engine beautification” panels to cover up the oily bits and wiring, unnecessary surface details to break up large panels. They don’t really understand the function of all those parts, or aerodynamic styling, so if it looks right, it is…
We don’t post too many racebikes here on RSBFS. Ex-racebikes are tricky to value. By their very nature, they evolve and change over time to remain competitive and, unless a bike is retired immediately after an historic race win, it’s not likely to be in anything like “original” condition. That very word contradicts what racing…