Bike & Product Reviews

Well it's been a while since I blogged. The last few months have been getting colder, havent done much distance riding. The 'family' has grown by three more bikes in that time though, and in the process I did a few test rides.

TMAX - ok it's a scooter, but performs pretty well. I tried a new one from a dealer. I was a little disappointed, maybe because I had seen too many youtube vids where the acceleration from zero is very good, or ...

I was browsing around Ricoland again recently and felt compelled to take a pic of the prices for aftermarket parts so I could bitch about them on my blog. The three units in the first pic are around NZ$2100 each. I have bought whole bikes for less than that! And how about those 'fenderless kits' which are just an alternative mount for your number plate to allow you to take the rear fender off. They ...

I came across this one parked near me in a supermarket bike-park. As well as having the typical outrageous muffler and various blingy bits, this one was another step above the rest. It had some kind of pneumatic system to raise and lower the whole swingarm. To park it he doesn't use the side-stand, instead the whole bike lowers right down and rests on a couple of small runner wheels underneath the body. You cant see those little wheels too well in ...

There's no doubt about it, this is one mint scooter. As the rest of the caption says "Take it easy, for delightful time" you know this is a ride you'll enjoy.

I finally managed to get everything done properly for the VFR, and it is on it's way to me at last. As Murphy would have it though, we are right at the beginning of tsuyu, aka the rainy season. The forecast for the next three days is full-on rain, and if history is any ...

For some, customizing your scooter is just as cool as customizing a bike. This one has been done up quite a bit, have to admit I liked the brake discs.
Usually these will have a loud muffler on them - since the engine cannot be revved at will for 'look-at-me' attention like a real bike, they need to make up the difference somehow. It's kind of annoying actually because with the way the clutch works, these things are deafeningly loud even when ...

I see bikes like this fairly regularly around Tokyo. As far as I can tell it's a TW200 with a lot of modifications to make it look as bare as possible, and then the swingarm has been changed to a longer one.
I've seen hotted up bikes in the US with long swingarms (stupid looking imho), dunno if this is anything to do with that. Only reason I can think of to have a long swingarm like this (apart from trying to look different) would be to help ...