TIDBITS / NEWS / EVENTS
Make your motorcycle fit you! There are many ways to do this, but in this tidbits I am going to talk about seat height. You tall riders don’t know the problems we shorter riders have, not only with getting on and off the bike but coming to stops and various riding situations. I remember when Cyndy was riding her Ducati 748R on a very windy day, and when she stopped at the top of an off ramp the wind gusted and blew her over. You just can’t be as stable holding the bike up on your tip toes. I used to battle with the Honda engineers, when I was a Product Research Engineer in the eighties, because all of the bikes were frankly too tall for shorter riders.
Well, now a days not only are the bikes more user friendly for us shorter ones, but they can easily lowered for even shorter riders. Unless you are a road racer and need every bit of the abundance of ground clearance today’s bikes have, you can lower your bike and never notice a ground clearance issue. If you lower it a lot you have to be aware of speed bumps, and may have to have your kickstand shortened. Both Cyndy and I have lowered most of our bikes and never had a problem. We just put 1” lower shocks on Cyndy’s new Triumph Speed Twin, and it is awesome. You just can’t beat the sense of security and ease of handling your motorcycle will have if you make it fit you. Of course there are a myriad of things to adjust and possibly change, like adjusting levers and pegs, seats, windshields and more that will make your ride perfect for you. If you lower it improperly there can be safety issues, so definitely consult a professional.
We here at So Cal Motorcycles are very experienced with making your bike work great for you, so just come see us.
Suzuki wins
2020 MotoGP World Championship
Suzuki has won the 2020 MotoGP world championship, with Joan Mir crowned champion after finishing seventh at the penultimate round of the season at Valencia. Mir becomes the sixth rider to win the biggest prize in motorcycle racing with Suzuki.
Mir becomes the sixth rider to win the biggest prize in motorcycle racing with Suzuki, after Britain’s Barry Sheene first took the premier class world title for the Japanese manufacturer in 1976.
The 23-year-old Spaniard is in only his second season in MotoGP, after joining Suzuki for the 2019 season. He showed impressive pace in his rookie year, but allied to his unwavering consistency in 2020 – despite a rocky start that saw two crashes in three races – that pace saw him finish on the podium seven times in nine races on his way to the title.
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2021 Ducati Diavel 1260 Lamborghini
If you think hard, Ducati’s power cruiser, the Diavel, remains a big question mark 10 years on from its introduction. Then-CEO Gabriele Del Torchio was negotiating the acquisition of Ducati by Audi and he really wanted to polish all the silverware in order to trade the Borgo Panigale motorcycle brand at the highest possible price. Ducati was VW-Audi boss Ferdinand Piëch’s special gift for his 75th birthday. He wanted Ducati badly because he had been a long believer of Dr. Taglioni’s desmodromic valve actuation.
Del Torchio wanted to add new models into Ducati’s Pandora box, and so he forced his technical team to give life to something absolutely outstanding that would add more value to the marque.
Enter the Panigale 1200 and the Diavel. The Panigale 1200, powered by the most advanced and fascinating V-twin in history, built in the Ducati tradition of supreme superbikes. Diavel was almost the opposite, a model that was treading on unknown turf. In the Ducati way, the Diavel was loaded with power never seen before on a cruiser and was styled to the extreme. Sure, it proved the most powerful, the fastest cruiser in production, and it did it in good composure thanks to a sportbike-derived chassis. But how the Diavel was perceived by cruisers communities around the world and how well it fared on the market we will never know for sure. “Mixed” is the best way to interpret the market’s reaction.
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