27th November - Racing in the Street

Good Evening

This is not a spam letter but a request from a legitimate, mainstream motorcycle event organiser. If it has reached you in error, or you would simply prefer not to receive any further communication from us, please let me know and we will be pleased to respect your wishes.

Clearly, we do not, and would not, pass on, disclose or sell your contact details to anyone else for any reason. We loathe spam as much as you do!

Having got the introduction over, I would be very grateful if you could please let your members know the date of next year’s Thundersprint, which is the weekend of Saturday and Sunday May 12/13 in Northwich, Cheshire, town centre. Admission is free, as is parking. Here is a press release giving some further information or if you would like to contact me directly I would be pleased to speak with you.

My e-mail address is: frank@thundersprint.com  and my ‘phone number is 01928 740 498. We are open from 8am until 8pm. There is lots of information about the Thundersprint on our website which is www.thundersprint.com 

Thank you for your help in this respect.

Best wishes

Frank

Not far from me, might take a look at this.

26th November - More from Jose in Spain

Hi John, hello how do you do. Thank for publishing the photos, the motorcycle is 80% finished and functions very good, the tyre is Michelin rain it's very well on clima invernal (wet?), very effective. The little black behind the rear seat is a GPS module. I study English level one, in February and go to college at Dublin for three days.

Good bye. Thank you.

I've semi translated this email, but you get the gist. I haven't included all the shots Jose sent, just those that intrigued me. The tyre he refers to looks just like a full wet that racers use. I bit it sticks well but what it's like in the dry and how long it will last?  Notice the hole in the silencer, he's been grinding that away. There also seems to be a lack of rear brake. The brake carrier is also in the wrong place for a mk2 SV.

1st November - NEC Bike Show.

Ed DarylB and I visited the NEC Bike show today. I was left somewhat under whelmed at the end of the day. There was a time when I wouldn't have got out the door much before 5pm, but these last few years I've been done by 3pm.  MCN usually have a big stand but this year I either missed it or it wasn't there. Much the same to be said for the Italian bike manufacturers too. I also noticed a big presence from the emerging far east countries such as China and Korea. I can imagine how the biking generation before me felt when they first saw Japanese motorcycles, something to mock but at the same time worry about. I think history is about to repeat itself.

I was curious to see what Suzuki had in mind for the SV in 2007. The Suzuki GB web site clearly shows an SV with the twin spark head as well as a nice close-up shot of a front wheel with ABS attached. Nothing like that to be seen at the NEC. Only the DL had the two new features.  Having said all this, Suzuki have yet to make an official announcement and may be holding off whilst there are large stocks of 06 SV's present.  Time will tell.

You may have noticed that the title of this page has changed. I don't get enough correspondence these days to justify having a fresh page each month, so I'm just going to have a single rolling page. I'll drop older items off the bottom after a while and put them in an archive page.

John