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I worked with him filming "ON ANY SUNDAY" and had the pleasure of riding with him at Bruce Browns Ranch ...Great guy! RIP https://www.cyclenews.com/2024/11/article/godspeed-malcolm-smith-1941-2024/

Hope you have a great day celebrating God, Family, and Country. For my friends outside of our great country, I wish you the very best too!

As always, I am thankful for this community. Without you, my Sport would be a shambles. I'm sure I wouldn't be as well . . .

I want one. Not the only reason I like the XJS, but one of the reasons, is the TWR car that competed in the Australian Touring Cars races for a couple of years. The thing went really well... Incidentally, this is the circuit shown in the video. https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/172987017#map=15/-33.44861/149.55710 It has been used as a race track for ages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Panorama_Circuit Apart from race meetings, it is public roads, and I have driven around it. When you drive around it with the pictures of the race broadcasts in your head, you think they must all be completely insane. Really steep, and really tight, and then that really long straight. The bit on the long straight labelled "the chase" was put in in the '80s to slow them down a bit. One too many cars got airborne over the humps. EDIT: just watched the video again. "The Chase" was apparently not yet implemented at the time of the video. The "in-car" camera towards the end shows how it was: the steep and tight descent down the mountain, and then this really long straight with a couple of humps in it.

You mean how many wires need to be re-connected when the battery was out, don't you? I assume the original state is only one (fat) wire to each terminal, like most vehicles. The thing is, one never knows, on a bike one isn't familiar with, what may have been added to or altered in the wiring loom. For instance, my Breva 750 has only one additional wire to +, the modification to get battery plus direct to the starter solenoid. From memory, my V11 has 2 wires on minus and 3 on plus, but the wiring loom has obviously been modified, so that is nothing to go by. It looks like it was only the two fat ones originally. My V35 Imola is the clear winner: 3 (or 4?) on minus, and 4 (or 5?) on plus. It also originally only had the two, I believe. However, it has acquired a mount for the navigation device, a different alternator and electronic ignition, all of which brought additional connectors to the battery with them. I really should build some sort of "connector busbar" so there are only the two wires on the battery. PS: I've gotten into the habit of binding the connectors from each pole together when I disconnect them. Experience shows that is too easy to miss one out when reconnecting if I don't do that.

Happy Thanksgiving to you sir. I have much to be thankful for this year.

IDK what the OEM number of ring terminals are to a V11 + and - battery terminals are but look / dig around everywhere to find everyone of them . AFA the N light not working , lay the bike over GENTLY to remove the N light switch wire ant touch it to a good ground w/KOEO and see if it comes on . IF it does remove the switch and clean it thoroughly w/contact cleaner and work it a lot to get it working . You can buy a new one but this is easy to do .

Chinese ownership: Benelli, Moto Morini, Pirelli. Manufacturing/Tech agreements: KTM and who else? Chinese money has been the quick fix, but you might as well give them the company as the CCP will steal everything it can. Remember that "China" is a 75 year old, amoral nation, where the national motto is 可以的话作弊 (cheat if you can).

I checked with them today since I need one too. They are no longer available. So it is back to getting it recovered. Too bad, my daughter lives in Austin and could throw it in overhead when she comes home to visit. Good conversation starter.

The Coppa is looking great, @wavey_davey1. Welldone, sir! I love how the (gorgeous) Volvo vagn qualifies to join the Fat Bottomed Girls . . .

Mate I too have driven round it and MY GOD you don't really get how steep and tight it is until you do. HUGE RESPECT for anybody who races ANYTHING at Bathurst. Cheers

Back about '99 I got to tune and test drive a kitted '53 XK 120 with the triple Weber carburetors. I put about a hundred miles on it, and would have liked to put a hundred thousand. The only car I've ever driven that was a more rapt experience was a '72 Ferarri Dino GT.

What it could'a, should'a, been without the forerunners of the green weenies stepping on it's neck. This with a 6 speed TT sequential gearbox, blackout coating, Heads-up FLIR and active LIDAR jamming.

Eternal rest unto a him!

Great job Davey and it saved me doing it

Alright, alright - I'll report myself to myself (again). Pretty cool that the bassman, Brian Wilson, also sings falsetto in the original Beach Boys. Here they are a couple years ago . . .

That has a Spine Raid beat...

It's not my fault, Davey started it Great to hear that the old girl is up and running again.

I mentioned further up that I got to ride a TZ 350, a pure race bike on slicks. That was on a closed circuit, of course, and I had done a number of laps on my Z900 before I rode the Yamaha. That was here: https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/11692249#map=17/-37.216168/145.083636 The first time round going down the longer straight, I braked for the right-hander at the end of the straight where I had been braking on the Kawasaki, and actually accelerated again to get up to the curve. Even then, the bike could have no doubt got through the curve a good bit faster than I was able to ride it.

From the ad: I wonder where that came from...

Without a doubt, the most beautiful Ferrari ever made....the Dino! Saw one last year at the Ferrari festival in Arkansas...easily must have been a million dollar collector car. Just gorgeous!

I call this pic "Fat bottomed girls"

Well here she is in all her glory! About 99% there (apart from inevitably painful registration process). Just the alternator cover and one horn to repaint and later on, new dust seals for the Ohlins forks. I suspect the steering bearings will be dry (the ones in my greenie were toast after 2 years!). I had an illicit run round the block for a few hundred yards just to check everything works ok, which it does except for neutral light. Clutch and gearbox fine, ticks over and responds to (limited) throttle (new tyres, wet roads, not registered!) cleanly. Haven't touched the TB settings yet apart from the TPS. Pretty pleased with how she turned out cosmetically, looks pretty much the same in the photos before/after but huge difference close up with 17 years of crud removed. The wiring loom in particular was in a horrible mess, but fine underneath it all? I found a better glue residue remover (this one if you ever need it for UK forum members ). https://www.screwfix.com/p/scrubb-adhesive-remover-250ml/513ve It turned out to be paint friendly (I think, see later comments) and didn't remove the existing tailpiece decals, but not before I'd already damaged both sides in a couple of places with early attempts, despite being very careful and literally spending 3-4 days just on this with the original glue remover and fingernails. Will attempt a silver paint touch up remedy as decals not available anymore (though could probably get custom made ones). So far no oil leaks from bell housing but very early days and I did add some "seal doctor" type additive in the engine oil? Biggest concern is, despite drying the tank out (stored all those years I suspect with about 3 pints of horrible stale fuel the colour of tea) for over a fortnight with the filler cap open and pump plate removed, it now has 3 tiny bubbles on the top surface which definitely weren't there before?? MIGHT be the glue remover but I doubt it somehow, and could spell bad news in the future? Will have to wait and see but the tank hasn't swollen like on my old green one (I serviced that etc a year ago and had to redrill the frame mount), same as my friends early multistrada. Once I have it registered (will need an MoT) I'll drain the tank again for the winter and see if it helps. It would be a crying shame as the paint, apart from a couple of obvious scars, is in lovely condition. But why would it bubble now, it has only had a few pints of E5 (UK 5% max ethanol but actually 0% I put in fresh? Ho hum.

My two cents. They are in deep issues, but I think they will emerge out of this okay. They have had similar issues in the past. Their biggest issues affect sales of their bikes, things like poor quality control and baked in mechanical issues like cams shaft failures that they tried to bury. There are plenty of KTM owners that had cam shaft failures, and some of them were denied warranty repair despite it being a common known issue because they did not have their KTM serviced at the KTM shop. Imagine being told your design / build induced engine failure is your problem because you did your own oil changes. That doesn't help sell motorcycles. They also acquired a number of other brands that compete against KTM, and they really did not create a separate market for those brands. Currently you can buy a KTM dirtbike, a Husqvarna dirtbike, or a Gas Gas dirtbike, and they are all the same dirtbike with little more difference then the bodywork. That just isn't smart business. They need to separate the different brands into different market segments. I like KTM, we own a pair of Husqvarna 401's and I have an old mid 90's 440 dirtbike. But I would not buy a current gen 790 / 890 / 901. But, as far as MotoGP goes, much of the money to race in MotoGP comes from Red Bull, and the actual MotoGP race team is a separate company. So, as long as KTM doesn't actually fail I don't see them folding the MotoGP team. They may reduce their footprint in other forms of racing, but I would think they will keep racing. If you think about it, KTM likely race more per motorcycle sold then any other brand.

I find that both smaller, lighter, better handling motorcycles and larger, more powerful, motorcycles are both fun. They are different, but I enjoy both. At least half of my motorcycles over my riding career have been smaller, lighter, better handling, motorcycles. But the other half have been larger motorcycles with more power. Then there is the aspect of what sort of power the larger motorcycles can have. Most of mine have been larger displacement twins, that have as much or more torque then horsepower. I have ridden large displacement fours with more horsepower then torque, but I have never actually owned one. But I have not owned one mainly because I don't think I am mature enough to ride one in a responsible manner and worry I would kill myself on something that fast. A larger displacement twin gives me a middle ground, a motorcycle that feels fast without really being obscenely fast. I do look at bikes like the V4 Tuono and think I want one when I grow up. But so far I haven't yet grown up sufficiently. I might add, I have never thought "This is a good motorcycle, but it would be even better if it had less power". Whether it is a smaller, better handling, motorcycle or a larger displacement twin cylinder motorcycle, I have always found that more power is a good thing. Likely that is no longer true once you get to the level of some modern fours that make 200 hp or more. They probably would not be more fun with more power unless you were on a race track. But those motorcycles aside, more power is generally a good thing in my book. YMMV.

Love my Guzzi's and Honda V4s, but it is a mental adjustment going back and forth between them. People who think HP=fast just need to go ride an NSR250 or similar bike. Riding my buddy's on good mountain roads, I kept going into corners thinking I was fast, but upon exiting them, thinking to myself, heck, I could have carried another 10-15 mph.

BTW . "starter interruptus" has 300 variations , so ........

I think this advertisement would have gone over better...

While waiting for the High Current relays, investigate the battery: See if you can find a date code on it (I can't see what brand it is). With a good voltmeter, record the voltages after it's been off any charger six hours: >Static voltage (key off) >Key on/ headlight on >Attempt to start voltage edit: That battery is not oriented correctly relative to the OEM application. It makes me wonder about how the wiring and terminal connections had to be modified.

Have you seen that TWR is bringing the XJS back in limited numbers? Super Cat https://twrperformance.co.uk/global-dubut-for-twrs-v12-super-gt-supercat/

hahaha!