So as we slip into the last month of summer, has it been a good summer. Bit of a mixed bag really. Weather wise things we looking reasonable up until the middle of June and then it went rather wet.  That was much the theme for July too, and nearly put dampers on the AR08 as most of us got wet at some point on that. So I'm hoping August is going to be better.

MCN (Motor Cycle News) dropped me a line the other day about and auction that one of the forum members is planning to hold in September, more of that nearer the time, but the writer also wanted to raise awareness of the Britain's Got Biking Talent competition. There must be some good customised SV's out there, it would be great to an SV in next years Carole Nash calendar.

James Keen

MCN Community Web Producer"

Hey John,

Here in Canada for '08 we can ONLY get ABS on the SV650S .. Not sure if you knew! Plus we have it in White! Check out suzuki.ca

Cheers!

Reed Parker.

Jeez - Quick call the taste police.

There's always been a demand from readers for SV650.org goodies such as shirts and stickers. I did manage to provide stickers in the past but my supplier has since lost interest.

Paul Wilson (forum name Paul the 6th) approached my with the view to addressing this gap. Paul has his own company GoDesign and offered to produce T-Shirts  for the site. I was more than happy for Paul to take this job on and he in turn offered to provide a slice of the profits back to the Org to help us cover. So it's a win-win situation. Readers benefit, Paul benefits and the site benefits.

Goto and check out the shirts  http://www.godesign.me.uk/svshop1/

Paul was producing stickers for a short spell, but they were based on the main site logo which in turn is the official SV logo. Paul was concerned that he might be impigning on copywrite. We may come back to that.

John

Finally found a few minutes to sit down and write a few word about this years AR.  Firstly thanks to Fizzwheel, Liz, Viper and the team for a great event. So well organised and lot's of nice little touches like the stand pucks and beers on arrival.  The rideout itself was a wonderful tour of the Dorset and Somerset countryside with some great scenery and roads. Corfe Castle, Frampton and Swanage spin to mind. No one got lost and more importantly no one got hurt or dropped a bike. Despite a forbidding weather forecast, the Gods were kind and Saturday was mainly dry, sunny and warm enough to strip naked to the waist in some cases ;-)   The weather did turn very bad for the last half hour or so, but we were on our back to the camp anyhow.

The disappointment for me was the poor effort made by the Halfway House management. They managed to mess up at every chance. They had a gold mine parked in their back garden and failed to see it.  The couldn't cope with the demand for extra meals, the failed to provide showers and they missed out on breakfasts. This is despite the fact that a lot of this was supposed to have been agreed with Fizz and co.

Saturday nights BBQ went ahead as planned but with the appalling weather it was a case of how many people can you cram into a large tent.  It was very cosy.  Saturday nights gale and rain persisted all night and into mid morning. There were a lot of tired faces and wet tents the next day. Another wet ride home and I was glad for some home comforts and a hot shower.

If you missed out, I think the photo gallery on the forum will give you some idea of the weekends events http://forums.sv650.org/showthread.php?t=113345

John

Hi John,

I was hoping you could post some pics of me on my bike. They were taken at a California super bike school. There seems to be a lack of action shots on the site and thought these may spice things up!

If you want any more photo's or info please get in touch.

Regards

Mike Rigby

Turns out that Mike was on the same event as my friend Ed. Read Ed's account of the day here http://forums.sv650.org/showthread.php?t=111913

I often browse google images after typing in SV650, you find the odd gem including this.

Hi John,
I just customized my 00 SV650n to a Cafe Racer. Thought you might like it for the website!  The fairing and bellypan are from France, the Cowl was from Airtech in the U.S. Paint was by 1-OffDesign. Leo Vince High Mount can.

Its been my project for last few months.

Leo

A really nice retro look an feel this bike. Reminds me of the Ducati 900ss from the 1980's

Hi pls have a look at my Pics. Regards Jacques

Not a lot of info from Jacque, but I'm guessing from his email address that English his not his native language. Interesting customisation of an SV1000, some nice little touches here and there, not sure about the brush guards though.

Hey guys, my name is Jay and I'm a member of www.svrider.com. First let me say...Top notch site!!! In my free time I have sat down and made a patch that I felt summed up the way we all feel about our SVs (you can see it here SV Patch).

Well I am asking in if you would be ok with me putting the patch on your web site. As you can see right know it was the svrider web site on the bottom but I would love to put yours there (www.sv650.org).

Please get back to me, thank you Jay AKA DownhomeMoto

I did get back to Jay but haven't heard anything since. Let me know if any of you are interested

1st June 2008 - Summer.

The spring 2008 page was a bit thin on content. This wasn't entirely due to lack of correspondence.  Steven Nance who has kindly been hosting the main site in the US since 1999 wrote to me asking if I could find a new host server for SV650.org.  It wasn't an easy subject for Steve to bring up, but he's a younger chap than I and in recent years he's started a familiy and now has three young children including a pair of twins.  Anyone who has children will be quick to point out how much time they absorb, so Steves passion for IT and home based computing has taken a backseat for some time.

Steve also pointed out that the current server is not getting any younger, all the software is way behind on updates and the bandwidth usage was also a problem, bearing in mind that Steve was also subsidising the site in this respect through a high speed ADSL connection paid for out of his own money.  I was surprised about the bandwidth issues as I considered that most of the traffic was on the forum these days. The forum is hosted on a separate server in the UK.   It transpired that the bandwidth was being taken up mainly by people downloading the manuals.  That's the reason I moved the manuals to piratebay.org. 

I did think about paying for a proper hosting service, but Ricardo Branco (TSM) had mentioned in the past about moving the main site back to the UK and onto the same server as the forum. At the time I was happy to have two separate servers, it's unlikely that both will go faulty at the same time, so we should always have some access to one aspect of SV650.org.  So I went back to Ricardo and asked about hosting the main site. He agreed and after a few delays we've now got the site on a new server.

So a big thanks to Ricardo for coming to my rescue and also a big thanks to Steve for all his help and support over the years.

Cover Page. There's a lot of speculation about what Suzuki is going to do next with the SV650. There's been no major changes since 2004 when the rear end of the pointy was lowered, only cosmetic alterations.  The SV is starting to lag behind the competition as the recent Aprillia Shiva shows. This image was on the cover of a recent french magazine, Moto Revue. It's clearly a photoshop mockup, but it shows that Suzuki don't have to do a lot to bring the SV up to date and keep it's charactor.  With the 10th Anniversary of the SV due next year, it would be an ideal time to launch an update.

AR08 is nearly apon us. I'm sure Fizzwheel will be glad to see this project come to a successful conclusion. Fingers crossed for good weather and I'll see you there.

John