Even though manufacturers and importers usually contact owners when a recall is issued, the bike may have been sold privately to a rider unknown to the company.
If you believe there is an endemic problem with your bike that should be recalled, contact the ACCC on 1300 302 502.
To check whether your motorcycle has been recalled, click on these sites:
Triumph has issued a global recall over wiring issues for its 900cc Street Twin and Street Scrambler models.
The issue revolves around the movement of the handlebars which inputs could damage the wiring harness over time due to a misrouted harness.
The wiring harness may make contact with the lower lug on the main frame headstock.
Constant steering inputs may cause the harness to rub the lug, resulting in wear and potential damage to the wiring over time. The engine may end up stalling unexpectedly.
The official Australian Competition and Consumer Commission notice has not yet been released but Triumph Australia has attempted to get in touch with owners to alert them to the issue.
Since some owners may have sold their bikes privately, we have published this recall notice to advise those new owners.
The issues affects 2019 and 2020 Street Twin and Scrambler models.
Owners are asked to book non their bike wth a Triumph dealer to have a VIN plate protector installed that will reroute the harness.
They will also inspect the harness and replace it if necessary, free of charge.
The “Bonneville” range has been the subject of several embarrassing recalls since they were introduced in 2016:
Even though manufacturers and importers usually contact owners when a recall is issued, the bike may have been sold privately to a rider unknown to the company.
If you believe there is an endemic problem with your bike that should be recalled, contact the ACCC on 1300 302 502.
To check whether your motorcycle has been recalled, click on these sites:
It is a certain bet that BMW will introduce more variants of the R 18 – their first cruiser in 16 years since the R 1200 C – like this solo-seat custom model.
The R 18 First Edition, which features classic double pin striping paint and chrome will be available in limited numbers for $30,190.
The initial batch of R 18 First Editions allocated to Australia arriving this year will be fitted with “reverse assist”, bringing the price to $31,690.
Now they have unveiled the “Blechmann” which is the nickname of Austrian customiser Bernhard Naumann.
Bernhard changed little on the frame or the technology.
It features a sporty solo seat, a modified tank, Kellermann taillight, kidney-shaped headlight and a narrower, cleaner look to expose the massive 1802cc engine.
The custom also comes in classic BMW black with white pin-stripes to reflect the 1936 R 5, after which the R 18 is styled.
In total, the team around Blechmann worked 450 hours on his version of the BMW R 18.
“My work begins by removing parts of the original version until a white canvas remains,” he says.
“As the construction progresses, the design develops. I call this ‘rapid-prototyping-Blechmann-style’.”
Whether BMW Motorrad will produce a custom like this is debatable, but it shows they are searching for customer reaction to model variants.
Unlike the Roland Sands Dragster, customers won’t be able to personalise their own Blechmann. Whereas Roland has created two design collections of milled aluminium parts for the launch of the R 18 Cruiser: “Machined” and “2-Tone-Black”.
They include front and rear wheels in different dimensions from standard, plus speedometer housings, handlebar clamps, risers, handlebar grips, hand levers and mirrors as well as engine housing trim elements, filler caps, intake silencer covers and much more.
Therapeutic benefits of motorcycle riding were also highlighted in the ING study.
More than half (51%) of motorcycle riders surveyed said the positive mental health effects of riding was the top reason for them choosing the biker lifestyle.
ING Head of Wealth Cathy Duncan says the research indicates that “riding a motorcycle could be providing many with some of the same benefits of practices like yoga and meditation”.
The study of 1006 Australians aged 18+ years throughout the nation this month found that almost half (48%) of the motorcycling respondents said riding is a form of mindfulness that helps them de-stress.
Other highlights include:
41% say they love the sense of freedom that comes with riding;
more than a third (34%) enjoy the fresh air and taking in nature;
35% got into riding because of their friends or family;
24% of riders vow to keep “biking” as a family tradition;
26% will teach their kids how to ride;
43% want to share their joy of riding with friends or their partner.
The study also found riders were aware of their safety with 36% saying their riding gear was their ‘second skin’ while 47% said it gave them confidence on the road.
As many as 60% said their gear and leathers were more important than other personal belongings such as their car, computer, phone, watch or wedding ring.
While 40% of Aussie motorists said they found it difficult or stressful to find parking, only 23% of motorcyclists complained about parking.
Destinations and commuting
Great Ocean Road
Riders also nominated their top five Aussie motorcycling routes as:
The Great Ocean Road (VIC)
Kangaroo Valley Southern Highlands (NSW)
Adelaide Hills (SA),
The open roads of Tasmania (TAS)
Palm Beach (NSW)
The research found that Aussie motorcycle riders aren’t only benefitting mentally from their practice, they’re also saving time and money.
More than one in three (36%) motorcycle riders said they love riding for: the convenience of getting around, the ease of finding a parking spot (35%) and saving money (34%).
A quarter of riders said they started riding because it helped them avoid busy public transport and is a quicker commute.
Even non-motorcycle riders can see the commuting benefits amid COVID-19, with a fifth (18%) considering riding a motorcycle as an easy way to get around and almost one in 10 (9%) believing it is a way to escape busy routes to work.
“The research suggests the pandemic has many reassessing their daily commute and how they get around,” says Cathy.
“With price and convenience benefits along with mental health and wellbeing perks, why wouldn’t you consider it?”
Two 250cc Benelli Grand Prix racing motorcycles have broken the auction world records for the marque at the live and online Bonhams Summer Sale last Sunday (16 August 2020).
The auction was Bonham’s most successful motorcycle sale to date, achieving a total of £3.67 million over three days.
Benelli records
1964 Benelli 250cc Grand Prix (left) and 1950 Benelli 250cc GP bike
A 1950 Benelli 250cc Grand Prix motorcycle, ridden to world championship victory by Dario Ambrosini, was the first to set the new record.
It sold for £138,000 (about $A252,500).
Minutes later that record was shattered by its stablemate, a 1964 250cc Grand Prix machine winner of that year’s Spanish Grand Prix, ridden and signed by two-time world champion Tarquino Provini.
It sold for £149,500 ($A273,560), the top lot of the weekend’s sale.
They were part of a collection of motorcycle gathered over 40 years by motorcycle manufacturer and Grand Prix boss Giancarlo Morbidelli.
It was be the largest single private collection of motorcycles yet offered by Bonhams.
“He spent day and night in the museum,” says his son Guianni. “He had no other life.”
Giancarlo Morbidelli and a Morbidelli V8
Giancarlo’s collection includes international brands such as Harley-Davidson, Honda and Benelli ranging from immaculate restorations to prototypes and barn finds.
They represent the passion of the farmer’s son and former woodworking machinist who, while building up a successful engineering firm as his day job, spent his spare time on tuning, racing and later building his own motorcycles.
Another record was set at the summer sale was with a concours 1979 Ducati 864CC Mike Hailwood Replica, a landmark model paying homage to ‘Mike the Bike’s’ historic Isle of Man comeback victory in the 1978 Production Race.
It sold for £36,800, a new UK auction record for this particular model.
So what is the fallout from the 80th annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rallylast week, the biggest mass gathering in the world since the pandemic was declared?
Organisers had predicted attendance would be about 250,000, down from an annual average of almost half a million.
However, official figures are 365,979 which is only about 7% down on the previous year. Fewer people aged 60-70 attended as this is the age group statistically most vulnerable to COVID-19.
It seems many riders chose to thumb their noses at the pandemic.
This is despite 63% of the town’s citizens voting not to hold the rally. It went ahead anyway after a gift wholesaler in nearby Rapid City threatened to sue the council.
The world’s media was there to record the event, leaving some scratching their heads and others cheering for freedom.
Rally fallout
The fallout in infection rates and deaths is yet to come as the incubation period ranges from two to 14 days.
However, the damage to motorcycling’s image may already have been done.
One of the results of the rally in the small town of Sturgis is that many of the 7000 residents, especially the elderly, will now go into a 14-day lockdown.
Robert Pandya, a motorcycle industry veteran and founder of the GiveAShift motorcycling lobby group that initiated the fund drive, says they had hoped to raise $US8000.
Instead, they raised $15,750 online and collected an additional $1408 in cash along Lazelle St during the rally in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
That’s a total of $17,158 from motorcyclists and motorcycle brands both attending and electing to skip the rally.
”This was wild and completely unexpected,” says Jamie Helms, manager of the Sturgis Meals on Wheels program. “Due to COVID-19 some of our donations coming in have slowed down in the past few months, this fundraiser from the motorcycle community will help so many here in Sturgis! I am overwhelmed by the generosity!”
Riders in the Black Hills of South Dakota
While the number of infections and deaths from the spread of coronavirus is not known, we do know that there were 50 crashes reported over the 10 days of the rally.
That’s up from 41 last year.
There were four fatal crashes with five people sadly losing their lives.
Ross works with the Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety – Queensland (CARRS-Q) at the Queensland University of Technology in the areas of both motorcycle safety and safety at roadworks.
Here is his take on roadworks speed limits:
Readers’ comments on the article offer a range of perspectives, some of which seem highly speculative. The article also makes a couple of potentially misleading points.
One of these is that roadwork speed limits in the US are only advisory. Although ‘work zone’ traffic management does vary across the many US jurisdictions, the country has produced comprehensive research and guidelines on work zone speed enforcement (see NCHRP Report 746) and has both regulatory and advisory limits. Highways in the US typically have many more lanes than Australian roads and the additional road space often allows more moderate speed limit reductions than required in Australia where roads are narrower. The US approach doesn’t achieve safe outcomes, with a current yearly average of around 600 fatal work zone traffic crashes according to NHTSA data.
In the UK, the trialling and subsequent approval of 55 – 60mph (~100km/h) highway roadwork speed limits applies, according to Highways England, to situations ‘where they could be safely implemented’. These situations include specific scenarios and conditions, including implementing the higher limits for non-workdays and when no workers are present. They are not default limits for highway roadworks. While higher speed limits can be expected to produce greater compliance, this does not necessarily lead to greater safety. As noted in the TRL report on this issue, selection of roadwork speed limits ‘should be made on a case-by-case basis’. Calls for uniformity in roadwork speed limits are understandable. However, uniform limits would logically be set low to address the highest potential risk scenarios. This conflicts with other calls for flexibility, where different speed limits may be applied as appropriate to specific conditions.\
Australia
In Australia, highway roadwork speed limits are typically progressive, with initial warning signs (e.g. Roadwork Ahead/Reduce Speed) placed at least several hundred metres upstream of (before) a work area, followed by speed limit reductions down to 60km/h, and in some situations 40km/h. A 40km/h speed limit will only normally apply on high speed roads where there are no barriers in place and when workers may be operating close to the live traffic lane. Otherwise, the typical reduced speed limit on highways will be 60km/h. There would be very few, if any, situations where an immediate 100 to 40km/h speed reduction is applied without prior warning at roadworks. However, poor compliance with reduced speed limits on approach to work areas indicates that many motorists either fail to see or do not respond adequately to warnings and speed reduction requests. As noted in a 2017 Austroads Report, this is a source of downstream traffic conflicts and a major factor in rear-end crashes which are the most common roadwork crash types. Tailgaiting doesn’t help.
The issue of roadwork speed limits at unattended and apparently inactive sites (and associated complacency among motorists) is one that has attracted considerable research attention and of which road authorities are acutely aware. From a safety perspective, there are several important issues here. One is that the task of installing and removing signage is in itself a high risk activity for traffic controllers – this is a situation where workers are known to have been killed or injured, such that in many cases it may be considered safer overall to leave signage in place. Reduced speed limits may also be left in place at inactive sites where conditions may be hazardous. The most obvious for motorcyclists may be loose or rough surfaces, but there are other potential hazards such as altered delineation, lane width and lack of line markings, for example. Speed reductions may also be left in place for some time after the completion of work to allow loose aggregate to be embedded in newly laid asphalt by passing traffic. While a roadwork site may not present any apparent hazards for some road users, numerous serious and fatal crashes do occur at inactive sites.
We all want better roads, for our safety as well as our enjoyment. Improvement and maintenance of this infrastructure unfortunately involves some disruption and inconvenience, for motorcyclists as well as other road users. I wonder if some of the people complaining about road conditions are also among those who complain about roadworks. Current arrangements and traffic control measures are far from perfect, but work is ongoing in Australia and elsewhere to improve the safety, efficiency, and management of roadwork operations. Driving or riding through roadworks sometimes causes delays, which can usually be anticipated and managed with a little preparation. Working on roads is a high-risk occupation and those involved have a right to return home safely at the end of the day, just as all road users do, including motorcyclists.
They also protect you from hitting insects and wasp and bee stings; and
If you are on a multi-day trip, it means you don’t have to pack shaving gear and you have more time in the morning for an extra cup of coffee before hitting the road.
Beard disadvantages
I’ve only had a full beard once when I was at uni and didn’t ride much.
Every subsequent attempt at growing a beard has been thwarted by the disadvantages of growing a beard.
The biggest hurdle is in the early stages where your face gets itchy. It can be a distraction having to frequently scratch your face to relive the itch.
In those early stages of beard growth when the hairs stand straight out, they also get caught in the chin strap and can be quite painful.
A neck sock or face mask can alleviate this, but it makes your neck and face extra hot in summer.
For many mature-aged riders, a beard can make you look much older as they often have more grey hairs than on your head!
Then there is the comical and embarrassing phenomenon “beard lift” for those with long, established beards.
It’s caused by turbulence behind the windscreen. As you go faster, the windscreen pushes the air away causing a negative air pressure zone behind the windscreen and right in front of the rider. Air rushes in to fill that vacuum and it lifts your beard.
It not only makes you look comical, but also causes buffeting which is noisy and jostles your head around. It’s no joke, either. Over long distances, it can cause neck pain from the constant jostling as well as fatigue from the noise.
However, there are several strategies for beard lift. Some plait their beard, some use a series of elastic ties, some tuck it into their jacket, face mask or neck sock.
A beard “ponytail”
Motorcycle companies have also spent a lot of time researching aerodynamic windscreens to reduce beard lift and buffeting. The turbulence from large windscreens on big touring bikes is the most difficult to resolve, but the best solution seems to be to allow some air to flow up behind the windscreen to negate the back pressure effect.
The Honda Goldwing was the first to use this method with a vent the rider can open. Harley-Davidson also added an adjustable vent on its Rushmore Project Touring bikes.
Bike fan, Hollywood actor and “Long Way” collaborator Ewan McGregor gets to keep most of his impressive collection of motorcycles in his divorce settlement with former wife Eve Mavrakis.
The pair were married for 22 years and even though Eve did not sign a prenuptial agreement, she gets to keep half of his assets up to 2017 when they split.
Eve joined Ewan for several days on his 2007 Long Way Down adventure in Africa with partner Charley Boorman.
Charley and Ewan work on a BMW in Long Way Down
While his marriage wth Eve soured, his friendship with Charley has persisted and last year they joined for their third Long Way instalment, Long Way Up.
It consists of riding electric Harley-Davidson LiveWire motorcycles from the bottom of South America to LA.
In the divorce settlement, Ewan will get to keep 30 vehicles from his extensive collection which also includes some cars as well as bikes. Eve gets five vehicles.
It is not known which bikes he will keep.
However, among his collection are the BMW R 11250 GS he rode around the world in 2004 for Long Way Round, the R 1200 GS from Long Way Down and the LiveWire from last year’s trip.
Ewan has had a long affection for Moto Guzzi as his father owned one.
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