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Road Test: MV Agusta Brutale 910
By Roland Brown on 29/04/2008 21:57:58
MV's bonkers Brutale gets a big bore motor, a midrange boost and bags of added usefulness to boot. Roland Brown blags a ride and spills the beans.
CAPACITY - 909cc POWER - 136bhp@11,000rpm TORQUE - 71lb.ft@7900rpm WEIGHT - 185kg SEAT HEIGHT - 810mm FUEL CAPACITY - 19L TOP SPEED - 160mph 0-60 - n/a TANK RANGE - n/a
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Benelli Tre-K 899 first ride review
By Roland Brown on 04/05/2010 13:33:48
From the brink of oblivion (again), Benelli slip their smaller triple into the tall and funky Tre-K chassis. The result is pretty damn fine, but can it save their ass?
-fairing with an adjustable screen.The motor is a mildly detuned version of the smaller TNT’s 898cc, liquid-cooled motor. New camshafts and revised injection mapping combine to boost low-rev power while reducing the peak output from 120bhp to 106bhp at 10,000rpm. Benelli
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2010 Ducati Hypermotard 796 first ride road test
By Roland Brown on 01/06/2010 14:52:45
At a fiver under seven grand Roland Brown reckons Ducati’s revamped baby Hypermotard is worth a sniff
and fun, partly because at 167kg dry it’s seriously light, and especially because the extra cubes and other mods have given the motor a handy midrange boost. Peak power’s up by only one horse, to 81bhp, but there’s ten per cent more torque and it arrives
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First Ride: 2007 Yamaha Midnight Star 1300
By Roland Brown on 02/04/2008 12:12:15
Yamaha's latest Star is an exercise in big-small.
Cruiser engines are getting so huge these days that Yamaha's new Midnight Star is billed as a middleweight even though its V-twin motor displaces 1304cc, the traditional American 80 cubic inches.The liquid-cooled XVS1300A squeezes into Yamaha
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First Ride: 2004 MV Agusta F4 1000S
By Roland Brown on 30/03/2008 20:30:04
With company finances back on track and production delays a thing of the past (for now...), the long awaited F4 1000S is finally, eventually, here. At last...
, splitting Yamaha's slightly shorter-stroke R1 unit and Honda's longer-stroke Fireblade. Those 76mm pistons are lighter than the smaller F4 750's equivalents. The new motor's con-rods weigh less too. The crankshaft has lost more than 1.2kg; clutch and primary
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First Ride: Yamaha YZF-R1 (2005-6)
By Roland Brown on 07/05/2008 20:18:31
Yamaha jumps the gun and launches the 2006 R1 before the competition. Over-confidence, or are the small changes enough to make a big difference?
to the 998cc, 20-valve motor are shorter intake valve guides and smoother ports, to boost intake air flow. That gives an extra 3bhp that raises claimed max power to 175bhp at an unchanged 12,500rpm. The motor also has a new camchain tensioner, a 5mm longer
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First Ride: Moto Guzzi Griso
By Roland Brown on 20/09/2010 21:15:07
Better-looking than the concept bike that spawned it, Guzzi's bruiser is sportier than you'd think - so much so that our man nearly had a 'wardrobe malfunction'.
, which is the same 1064cc air-cooled unit that appeared in the Breva V1100 earlier this year. In familiar Guzzi fashion it's a 90-degree V-twin with two valves per pot and pushrod operation. But it also incorporates twin-plug heads, redesigned lubrication
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First ride: 2010 Kawasaki Z1000 review
By Roland Brown on 14/06/2010 09:28:32
Kawasaki’s naked beast is back, not with a whimper, but with a big styling bang and an engine to back up the new look. Roland Brown gets down with the brand new Zed
to 1043cc. That boosts midrange and so do the larger-diameter downdraught throttle bodies and their long intake trumpets. Claimed max power is up from 123bhp to 136bhp, with the usual gift of more torque throughout the range.The chassis gets most work
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Yamaha XT660Z Tenere first ride review
By Roland Brown on 28/04/2010 16:34:47
Sick of your job? Boss giving you grief? Wife just won’t shut up? Why not sod it all and explore the world on a Tenere. Or just use it to commute
’s Yamaha’s Tenere. The original XT600Z Ténéré, launched in 1983, was a direct descendent of the XT500 that had won the first two Paris-Dakar rallies a few years earlier.That first Ténéré might have had fancy French accents in its name but it was a down
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Ducati Hypermotard 796 launch
By Roland Brown on 12/10/2009 15:14:22
Roland 'Drowned Rat' Brown reports in from a very wet Bologna, Italy
than the 696 which is a bit gutless, this motor has a lot more midrange, hit the torque at 5,000rpm and off she goes. Ducati claim it’s not just a bored-out engine, as it’s got higher compression, smaller crankcase, lighter internals. The chassis
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