Cycle World4 min readAutomotive
Racing To The Virtual Cafe
One thing you have to say in favor of COVID-19—if you’re semiretired and somehow still among the living—is that it gives you a lot of extra time, not only to ride motorcycles, but also to practice guitar. I was noodling around on my ancient Gibson ES
Cycle World5 min read
Kenny Cummings
“Vintage motorcycle racing has taught me that you can’t always have absolutes in things,” Kenny Cummings says as he regards the 1936 Norton International sitting on a lift at his third-floor workshop in a massive old industrial building in Jersey Cit
Cycle World1 min read
Componets
Issue 4 BIG TWIN HAYABUSA CREATIVE TOOLS ■
Cycle World1 min read
At The Limit
Through all the business of publishing, from the shaky early days when Joe Parkhurst sold everything to start Cycle World to the time in the late 1960s and early-’70s when the magazine hit it big, his pure love of riding remained at the center of his
Cycle World3 min readTechnology & Engineering
Forces Of Creation
The defining engine of American motorcycling for more than 100 years? The Harley-Davidson V-twin. The form of this engine we know today is as expressed by the Milwaukee-Eight Big Twin—still a large-displacement 45-degree V-twin turning on rolling bea
Cycle World5 min readAutomotive
The Suzuki Hayabusa
The Hayabusa made you consider things you’d never considered before. Take the definition of “corner.” We all know what that means, right? We find them on winding back roads, or at intersections with other roads. But is there really a corner on the fr
Cycle World3 min readAutomotive
Creative Tools
Ahead of the R 18’s release, BMW looked to two custom shops to provide the public’s first view of the engine. As Custom Works Zon’s Departed and Revival Cycles’ Birdcage stirred our imaginations, these master makers also provided feedback, allowing f
Cycle World6 min readAutomotive
Little Hero
The phenomenon of riding the 2021 Honda Trail 125 ABS off-road is that everyone you see looks like Captain Overkill. Even that rider I saw on a Yamaha WR250R. “NICE BARGE, BRO! SEE YOU AT STARBUCKS.” I didn’t actually get quite that wound up. It’s si
Cycle World11 min readAutomotive
Assault On Pikes Peak expedition II
One Sunday morning in the summer of 1977, I was sitting in my living room in Madison, Wisconsin, reading the paper and scanning the motorcycle classifieds, as usual. One item that caught my eye that day was an ad for a 1964 Honda 50, a C100 step-thro
Cycle World8 min readAutomotive
Altered State Of Adventure
The adventure motorcycle segment kicked off in 1980 with BMW’s R 80 G/S. At the time, many wondered who would want an overweight, undersuspended dual-sport. Turns out, more riders wanted one than anyone would have guessed. The segment has gained more
Cycle World8 min readAutomotive
Berlin-built, American Soul
Why would BMW, with all of its technology and engineering and forward-thinking design, build a stripped-down, black-and-chrome, big-bore American-style cruiser? Despite declining sales, American cruisers remain the bestselling segment in the States.
Cycle World3 min readTechnology & Engineering
The PULSE
When 39-year-old Max Friz was designing BMW’s 1923 flat-twin R32 motorcycle, he brought to the task his extensive experience in aircraft propulsion. Good cooling was essential to reliability, and low vibration was a necessity, both for lightweight st
Cycle World8 min readAutomotive
2020 10 Best Bikes
Just about the time manufacturers figured out basic electronic ignitions and how to keep oil inside engine and transmission cases, there began an ongoing chorus of “bikes are so good these days, you can just pick your favorite color.” Not true, never
Cycle World6 min read
Adding A Dimension
“Before you ride,” they tell you, “have a plan.” Big words. So big, they make you write them down—on the front of your lesson booklet, while sitting in class: B-E-F-O-R-E and so on, everyone in the room saying the words aloud, and then you are there,
Cycle World1 min read
Cycle World
Editor-in-Chief/Vice President, Editorial Director MARK HOYER Executive Editor JUSTIN DAWES Technical Editor KEVIN CAMERON Editor-at-Large PETER EGAN Road-Test Editor MICHAEL GILBERT Art Director JUSTIN PAGE Custom and Culture Editor MORGAN GALES Off
Cycle World1 min read
Makers
Issue 4 The RACER The THINKER The PIONEER The TUNER ■
Cycle World5 min readAutomotive
Working For The Reader
Safe to say in 1962, when founding Cycle World publisher Joe Parkhurst started the magazine, he hadn’t envisioned how big a truly independent motorcycle publication that served the reader first might become. And before his death in 2000, could he hav
Cycle World6 min read
Kenny Roberts
It is a comforting fiction of our settled life that intelligence must be identified in early childhood and cultivated by professional educators to produce the leaders and creators of the future. Yet there are schools without classrooms that focus int
Cycle World2 min read
Original Enthusiast
Before Cycle World Vol. 1, No. 1, in 1962, motorcycle magazines were just mouthpieces for the industry network, but Joe Parkhurst changed all that. As Peter Egan once said, Cycle World was finally a magazine “for those of us who wanted to buy motorcy
Cycle World3 min readAutomotive
Steve Storz
If you’re into AMA Flat Track or Harley-Davidson performance, the name Steve Storz is surely familiar. The self-taught tuner, fabricator, and engineer has been involved in flat-track racing for nearly 50 years, and has developed Storz Performance pro
Cycle World4 min read
Writing By Accident
Here I am, writing the last print “TDC” column of a series that began by accident 38 years ago in the exasperation of the late Phil Schilling. In 1982, he planned a set of new monthly columns for Cycle magazine, to be written by staff in rotation. No
Cycle World3 min read
Effie Hotchkiss
Amid the women’s suffrage movement—five years prior to the ratification of the 19th Amendment—daughter-mother duo Effie and Avis Hotchkiss took a journey that would cement them into motorcycling’s history as the first women to take a motorcycle/sidec
Cycle World1 min read
Cycle World
Editor–in–Chief / Vice President, Editorial Director MARK HOYER Senior Editor JUSTIN DAWES Technical Editor KEVIN CAMERON Editor-at-Large PETER EGAN Road-Test Editor MICHAEL GILBERT Art Director JUSTIN PAGE Custom and Culture Editor MORGAN GALES Off-
Cycle World3 min readAutomotive
The Spring
The word “spring” usually applies to an intentionally created elastic element, such as the helical coil springs used in vehicle suspension or engine valve trains. It can also apply to the compressibility of gases, as in the pneumatic valve springs us
Cycle World2 min read
Wait, What?
Like the rest of the world, we went from planning things, working, and living our lives to a great screeching halt. The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus meant the time between being out on the road with our testing crew to hiding out at home mos
Cycle World3 min read
Superstructure
The safety bicycle, which exploded into a popular craze around 1895, can be regarded as a confluence of technologies that matured at that time—the ball bearing, pneumatic tire, seamless-drawn steel tubing, roller chain and sprocket drive, and super-s
Cycle World1 min read
New Perspective
My normal day job is shooting all manner of car racing around the planet. From Formula 1 in Monaco to the Le Mans and Nürburgring 24-hour to the Indy 500, I’ve shot it all. I enjoy car racing, but I adore bike racing. In fact, my professional photogr
Cycle World4 min read
Style Unifies
When I had accumulated some basic experience as quite a young man, I realized there were clear national styles in motorcycle engines, but in this new century, I see such diversity receding in favor of a new international style. I saw that British des
Cycle World8 min readAutomotive
Radical Rerun
In 1980, Cycle World dubbed the four-valve Suzuki GS1100 “the best all-around superbike in history.” It turned the quarter-mile in 11.39 seconds at 118.42 mph. It was arguably the finest-handling Japanese production motorcycle of the time. It was pra
Cycle World4 min readAutomotive
Design Macht Mut(h)
Gather round, meine Damen und Herren, because we’re about to explore one of the most fascinating motorcycle backstories of the 1980s: how a Japanese company hired a German wunderkind to design a motorcycling icon of the Blade Runner era—Suzuki’s orig
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