es, I knew my new-to-me 2000 R1 Craigslist naked bike was losing a little air from its balding rear tire at the rate of a few pounds a day, but I’d only had it a few days. So I thought I could make it to the Hansen Dam vintage ride and back easy. I even [...]

It’s easy to tell which books in my collection are most frequently referred to: They’re the really second-hand-looking ones. One of the tattiest-looking is Motorcycle Engineering, by P.E. Irving (designer of Vincents). The specific motorcycle models described therein date to the 1960s, but the principles described are as solid as physics. The next pillar is [...]

It interests me that electronic rider aids were at first greeted by cries that they were “impure” and detracted from “the true fight” of rider against rider. But now that so many of these critics have personally felt their own skills magnified in test rides of the new electronic production bikes, most have fallen silent. [...]

I recently read a 1960s report, made by an Air National Guard unit, on their experience with the air-cooled Pratt & Whitney 28-cylinder R-4360 radial engine. Much of the report was devoted to the problem of the exhaust valve-seat rings coming loose in the aluminum heads. As it happens, this has also been a problem [...]

Motorcycles and small towns have long been portrayed as adversaries, from Brando in The Wild One, to that overrated pile of crap Easy Rider, to my personal favorite of the genre—The Wild Angels—in which Peter Fonda, Nancy Sinatra and a bunch of other spoiled Hollywood types play “biker.” At one point the “gang” rides to [...]