Cycle Torque - Features

Deus MT-01, Stripped to the soul

IMAGINE a motorcycle which, in standard form, is a very outlandish looking machine, has loads of torque and a presence which gets the rider, shall we say, 'noticed'.
That's the Yamaha MT-01. Then get a customising and tuning house to go to town on the very same bike and you'll get a loud, obnoxious and anti-social bike that just cries out to be thrashed.
Ride this baby in town and babies will cry, women will drool, men will be envious and police will be looking for a place to stop you.

Story by Chris Pickett | 07 Mar 12

Touring Feature – Riding through Romania – Part 1

Transylvania’s touring charms include amazing scenery, ancient architecture, crumbling soviet-era infrastructure and great food, Oh, yeah, there’s also some great riding roads and driving a stake through the undead to make them dead, too…
My wife Kerrie and I were there as guests of tour company Transylvania Live, having accepted their offer of a seven-day tour: I’d had to convince Kerrie the place was not fictional first though: Transylvania is a region of Northern Romania.
Once I told her we would be staying in Count Dracula’s castle for a night she became a definite starter. She’s watched too many Twilight movies I think. Organising it all was easy via email, and although I’ll have to admit I was a bit sceptical about it all being kosher I was prepared to give it a go and book flights etc.
Plus, when I mentioned the trip to my good mate Glen, he invited himself and his wife Sue along for the journey, and if Glen got ripped off I knew I’d never hear the end of it. Glen and Sue headed off two weeks before us for a bit of a European holiday and we met in Munich the day before our Transylvanian tour.

Story by Chris Pickett | 07 Aug 11

Case for change - Stoner moves to Honda for 2010

THE fall-out from the seismic moves on the MotoGP chess board will last right until the first green light goes on at the opening round in 2011. A year ago who would have believed that Casey Stoner would sign with Honda and Valentino Rossi for Ducati?
After dominating 2007, the Stoner-Ducati combo was a match made in heaven, a match that had all the hallmarks of lasting the distance. And Valentino’s affection for the homely atmosphere at Yamaha after fleeing the bureaucratic air of Honda too would stand the test of time, right?
But this is MotoGP where changes of loyalty can happen as quickly as a passing move at 330km/h.

Story by Darryl Flack | 14 Jul 10

Lauren Vickers - MotoGP's hot new Aussie

AUSTRALIANS working in the MotoGP paddock are few and far between, especially on the European-based teams, but this year there’s a new one – Lauren Vickers, PR and media liaison for the LCR Honda Team. Lauren’s come to the role from a background in modelling, university and riding bikes: while her Supermodel good looks make her a star of the grid while she’s doing the umbrella girl role, her multi-lingual skills are also helping the team raise its profile, especially to sponsors and potential sponsors. Like so many people working in MotoGP, she’s expected to be multi-skilled and adaptable to anything which might arise for the team.

Story and Pics by Nigel Paterson | 07 Jul 10

Touring Turkey with Ferris Wheels

HERE I am in Istanbul, Turkey, about to embark on the Ferris Wheels ‘Turkish Treasures’ motorcycle tour. Owned and operated by Mike and Denise Ferris, the first tour started with Mike and a group of Australians 15 years ago across the Himalayas and has grown from there to include Morocco, Nepal, Bhutan, Shangri-la, Inca, Rajasthan, the Andes and Dalmatia. All the tours are approximately three weeks in duration and the bike hire, fuel, mechanic, support bus with driver and tour guide (all local), accommodation and meals are covered in the cost.
This was my first bike trip in a country unfamiliar to me, on a bike that doesn’t belong to me. All my riding has been inside of Australia, unless you class the one from WA to my homeland ‘Tasmania’ as overseas, just kidding!

Story by Sarah Wright | 06 Mar 12

Triumph 675 - Union Jack racing

LAST time we talked about our long term racing Daytona 675 (March issue) we covered the basic set up of the bike and how things had gone during testing. Since then we've competed in the 600 Superstock class at the Phillip Island world superbike round and the first round of the Formula Extreme series at Wakefield Park.

Story by Chris Pickett | 06 Nov 11

MotoGP 2010 - All Change

VALENTINO Rossi’s crash at Mugello has thrown the 2010 championship wide open with Jorge Lorenzo in the box seat to win his first MotoGP Championship. Dani Pedrosa’s stellar victory has thrown a different light on proceeding - this championship isn’t over by a long shot. Looking back over the last few years, the top riders can budget for two to three race crashes per year. Casey Stoner has already filled his quota and can’t afford any more offs, hence his cautious disposition at Mugello and Jerez. It is a far cry from the sizzling performances from Casey of old, but hopefully both and he and Ducati can come up with a solution post haste to get Casey back where he belongs - at the front.

Story by Darryl Flack | 19 Jun 10

Sherco - Trials Virgin

IF YOU’VE ever watched the top world trials riders you must have been amazed at their ability and machine control. Vertical rock faces, massive gullies and huge logs. Then you get the indoor man made stuff – crazy.
With a number of top level road racers turning to the trials discipline for training, Cycle Torque thought it would be fun to put our resident road racer Alex Pickett straight into the fire to see exactly what trials competition involved. Alex’s only experience on a trials bike prior to this little adventure was limited to riding in his backyard on an old Honda TL250, a purpose built trials bike, close to 40 years old.

Story by Chris Pickett | 16 Jun 10

Ross Noble - 'Round and 'Round

CYCLE Torque recently caught up with funnyman Ross Noble. Ross is a Pommy Expat who's made Australia home and recently completed a 'round Australia trip combining bikes and over 80 stand up comedy gigs.
"The important thing here is that I did it on a bike" said Ross. I mean your readers would be wondering, 'why are they talking to a comedian'? It was a 26,000 kilometre trip because I zigzagged backwards and forwards, right, left and centre, gig gig gig, five states, five months, right 'round OZ.
"It's the best way to see anywhere really. We made a film about it which was shown on channel 10 and now the DVD has been released. In fact it was released on April first which I thought was a daft time, I mean everyone would be thinking, 'he's just kidding'.

Story by Chris Pickett | 02 Jun 10

Ducati MotoGP - Screaming Success

HAS Ducati killed the goose that laid the golden egg by making the Desmosedici more rideable? And did it irrevocably damage its relationship with Casey Stoner when it offered Jorge Lorenzo a massive amount of Euros in the depths of the Australian’s mystery sabbatical in 2009? The answers to those questions will come in the months ahead, and will reach a crescendo come the annual silly season that kicks off with pre-silly season testing in August until the all-important final contracts are inked later in the year. With Valentino Rossi bristling with Yamaha’s public inferences that he may have to take a pay cut to stay allied to talk of him going to Ducati and the impact all that has on Lorenzo against the backdrop of the Stoner to Honda rumour, the rider line up at the upper echelons of MotoGP that has remained very stable since 2007 is likely to be blown apart for 2010.

Story by Darryl Flack | 27 May 10

Two wheeled freedom – on a global scale

MATHIAS Schmid (Matz) has spent the last five years exploring the world on adventure bikes. He's found freedom, excitement, pain and even love on his journey. We caught up with Matz at the recent World Superbike round at Phillip Island so you could get a glimpse of his travels. But it didn't just happen, it took a desire to explore nurtured over a number of years in the early part of Matz's life to put him on this path.

Story by Chris Pickett | 22 May 10

Harley-Davidson - Nine days and a Fat Boy Lo

IT seemed like such a good idea at the time. Before we left. A ride from Newcastle, along the back roads to Melbourne then on to the Great Ocean Road and back through Victoria’s Gippsland, over the Snowy Mountains, a bit of freeway to Goulburn, the back roads to Sydney and home to the Hunter Valley, in the company of a variety of other bikes. That’s nine days and 3775km on a Fat Boy Lo with my better half (Poppi) hanging off the back. I must have been mad.

Ray Macarthur | 13 May 10

Teething problems in Moto2

It will take a while for the world to get used to the brands of the Moto2. Browsing through a Grand Prix programme, you won’t find big manufacturers such as Honda and Yamaha, KTM and Aprilia. Instead, you’ll see strange names like Sutar and Moriwaki, FTR and RSV, Kalex and BQR in the line-up. MZ from Germany and Bimota from Italy are probably the best-known motorcycle producers, and they are the only ones out of the lot to produce street bikes besides their racing activities.
All the others are just known to insiders. And, looking at 14 different brand entries, even people from the paddock ask themselves who might be behind some of the abbreviations and what the hell qualifies them to take part in the world championship.

Story and Pics by Freidemann Kirn | 30 Apr 10

From Russia with Love...NYET

WOULD you offer your throat to the Wolf? Meatloaf’s words raced through my mind as I approached the Sexton Club, the lair of the Night Wolves’ motorcycle club just outside of Moscow.
What an intimidating site it was – the wolf and claw logo at the entrance, the huge steel doors at the entry and surreal Mad Max movie set style of the club house, nightclub, bike shop and restaurant….it all really confronts the visitor.

Story by 'Turk' | 29 Apr 10

Cycle Torque Torture Test – 2010 Husqvarna TE450

JUST before Xmas Cycle Torque’s dirt bike maniac Darren Smart picked up Husqvarna’s 2010 TE450 and over the next six months Smarty will be bashing the big Husky all over Queensland’s tracks and trails in an effort to give definitive feedback and tips on life with Husky’s mighty dirt blaster.
So far the Husky has been through a day of testing on the Gold Coast that can be viewed on YouTube (type in Cycle Torque Test Husqvarna TE450), it survived a day among the steepest climbs and intense trails at a mate's place north of Brisbane then several days of mud trails and tracks out in the Lockyer Valley.

Darren Smart | 31 Mar 10

Dunlop Sportmax Q2 - A race tyre for the street

DUNLOP’S Sportmax Qualifier set standards for grip when it was first released around four years ago. The Sportmax Q2 is the next generation sporting Dunlop. It’s quite different to the old Qualifier in design and much closer to the race tyres which have passed on their genes.
There’s no doubting the fact that racing technology eventually gets passed on to road going machines. Dunlop has used its experience in developing the race N-Tec and Sportmax D211GP multi-compound race tyres to give life to the new Q2.

Chris Pickett | 23 Mar 10

BRAAAP - Brad Smith Mini MX

TASMANIA'S Brad Smith is a man on a mission. His mission is to have 50 motorcycle shops selling his BRAAAP brand of pit bikes in the next three years. Just talking to Brad you can feel how much passion he has for his products, so you wouldn't bet against him realising his dream of getting the 50 franchise stores up and running. Add the fact BRAAAP has just won the Australian Small Business Champion Award for specialised retail small businesses – two years running – and you can see he's racing towards his and BRAAAP's future.

Chris Pickett | 18 Mar 10