2011
07.26
07.26
Over the years, we’ve seen people load, transport and tie-down their motorcycles in the most preposterous ways imaginable using a myriad of different kinds of straps. Resulting in us being witness to all kinds of motorcycle mishaps ranging from failed loading practices to straps failing and causing the bike to topple off the top of the trailer. In the meantime, we’d successfully transported hundreds of different motorcycles thousands of miles without a single mishap (knock-on-wood). So we decided to take a little bit of time and share the techniques we’ve used for years that have given us such good results. Watch our newest video; How to Load and Tie-Down your Motorcycle »
With a name like Skwoosh, it must be good, right? Well, that’s what we set out to find out. With the cost of custom or replacements seats hovering around five bills, the idea of a much more affordable alternative is very appealing, particularly in these tough times where our motorcycle dollar must go farther than it had to a few years ago. Our biggest fear about these seat covers is that they wouldn’t stay put or would add unnecessary bulk to the seat. Find out what we learned about the 
We know it has been a while since our last trip report (
We recognize that Michelin produces the most popular line of sport touring tires – the Pilot Road. But despite the popularity and rave reviews from other sources we’ve never been able to fall in love with the tire. Now, potential problems with Michelin’s newest version of the venerable sport touring bun have started creeping up. Forum claims and photos say that the Pilot Road III will literally melt if ridden on hot days! Now we can’t confirm or validate these claims, nor verify the air pressure was correct, but we’ll let you check it out and come to your own conclusion. 
Dynjot has been providing tuners with the means to modify their air/fuel mixtures since the era of Malcolm Smith, but does their plug-and-play fuel injection module still cut the mustard nowadays when there are scads of fancy new systems all promising to make your bike as powerful as the WSBK spec machines, but coming in at more than double the retail price? We grabbed hold of a Power Commander V and a crazy new thing they call “The Optimizer” and installed them onto our Ducati 848. Our results are not what anybody expected and if we didn’t have the dyno-chart to prove it, you probably wouldn’t believe us either. 
In case you haven’t heard, there is a new American sport bike company evolving, one that has nothing to do with Erik Buell or Harley-Davidson engines. Motus is currently developing a V-4 sport-touring machine that they’ve coined the MST-01. The motor is basically half a Corvette V-8, complete with pushrods (just like Harley). The bike is currently running (you can see the Video’s on their webpage 
If you are anything like us, you probably had no idea that Continental made a running change to their impressive Sport Attack tire line adding some stuff they learned from the race track such as their Continuous Compound Technology and some crazy thing they call “Black Chilli”. Do these improvements make this already very good tire any better? We were certainly curious. So we run a set of these buns through their paces on the race-track as well as on the street. Read what we found out.
Continental has been one of the leaders is making some of, what we consider to be, the best road going tires available. But a new line of tires with the word “race” in the title had us wondering if they could take that same street dominance to the track. The Sport Attack Race has a similar tread pattern and the same zero-degree belt construction that they say provides greater feedback and stability when braking and accelerating out of corners. They also say the front tire profile is revised from the Sport Attack and Road Attack to give a larger footprint at more extreme lean angles. Here’s what we learned when we burned through a set. 
Alpinestars seems to have evolved into almost two different companies. You can get a full-leather suit for around $300 while a half-mesh, leather jacket can cost upwards of $675. This is a massive variance in price, which got us wondering; does the higher price item rate compared to the more affordable Alpinestars equipment that we are more familiar with? To find out we tested the Alpinestars SM-X Air Flo leather/mesh jacket.