Honda CBR®1000RR Motorcycles, page #55

Moto blog

Honda CRF250L Confirmed for North America

American Honda and Honda Canada haven’t yet officially announced they will import the new Honda CRF250L, but the parent company has outed the dual-sport’s availability in North America. Honda has launched a new micro-site dedicated to the CRF250L describing its features including its CBR250R-derived engine. The section discussing the CRF250L’s muffler explicitly confirms an American and Canadian model, saying: “the model for the United States and Canada complies through additional settings for a spark arrestor.” The section on the CRF250L’s engine also confirms the dual-sport will be CARB-compliant, stating: “the power unit for the U.S.

2012 Isle of Man TT Kickoff Event Will Stream Live Tomorrow, April 18

The most spectacular, and perhaps dangerous, road race in the world is more than a month away — a painfully long wait for fans! — but the Isle of Man is ramping up activities for the 2012 Isle of Man TT with the official race kickoff event slated for tomorrow, Wednesday, April 18, at Villa Marina in the Isle of Man’s capital, Douglas. The launch event takes place at 7pm [GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) or 4pm EST in the U.S.], and will broadcast live via webstream on the TT’s official site homepage: www.iomtt.com.

AMA Supercross: 2012 New Orleans Results

Ryan Villopoto has already secured the 2012 AMA Supercross Championship but that doesn’t mean he’s ready to let up and take it easy over the remainder of the season. The Monster Energy Kawasaki racer clinched his second consecutive title two weeks ago in Houston, Texas, but he continued his dominance in AMA Supercross’ return to New Orleans’ Superdome, taking the holeshot and leading all 20 laps for his ninth win of the season in 14 rounds. The New Orleans round may have lacked some big names currently nursing injuries such as Ryan Dungey, James Stewart and Chad Reed, but Villopoto provided a star effort in the first AMA Supercross race in the city since 2009.

PJ Jacobsen to Make World Supersport Debut at Assen

New York native P.J. Jacobsen has been called up to replace injured racer Pawel Szkopek to race at the Assen round of the 2012 World Supersport Championship for the Bogdanka PTR Honda team. Jacobsen, 18, was originally announced as part of PTR’s six-member WSS team in December but funding issues saw him dropped in favor of Jules Cluzel before the season started in March.

Metzeler Z8 wins Motorrad award

METZELER'S Z8 Interact sports-touring tyre has been classed as the best wet weather sports-touring tyre by the German Motorrad TestCenter. Metzeler decided to develop new compounds for the Roadtec Z8 Interact precisely to meet these needs, tyres with the specific goal of providing riders not only the most recent technological solutions available in the area of wet performance, but also the possibility of having a tyre with a wide range of use that represents the new standard in terms of performance in any weather conditions, from wet and cold to hot and dry. The criteria considered in the wet test by Motorrad TestCenter have been: steering precision and characteristics, line holding during acceleration, ease of handling, grip at lean angle for front and rear tyres, grip during acceleration, limit range characteristics, feedback at lean angle, braking stability during full braking with ABS.

Mick Doohan NSR500 art sculpture

How do you best immortalise the great Mick Doohan and the big bang Honda NSR500 with which he dominated Grand Prix racing in the 90s? An Australian artist has answered this by creating an art installation that sees a hand-created replica of the bike exploded and suspended from the ceiling. The Doohan piece is appropriately titled 'The Big Bang' and as artist Eamon O'Tootle describes, "It is a complex sculpture comprising thousands of parts joining to make up a whole and symbolic tribute to the true inherent nature of art and sport – the creativity of design, where the mechanical is modified to suit the needs of man." Eamon added: "The way the Doohan piece came about was that one of the bikes Mick rode had an engine configuration called the Big Bang.

Frog eBike – the Electric Successor to 1985 Frog FZ750 Concept

San Francisco-based Frog Design released images of a new electric motorcycle concept, just as its influential Yamaha FZ750-based Rana concept gets enshrined at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Frog designer Jin Soek Hwang prepared the Frog eBike concept as an expression of how electric motor technology can influence motorcycle design. In a post on Frog’s blog, the designer says he was inspired in part by Frog’s 1985 FZ750 Rana concept (pictured after the jump).

Honda Metropolitan Returns for 2013

Honda is bringing back its 50cc Metropolitan scooter for 2013 after a four-year absence from the U.S. market. Previously offered in the U.S.

2013 Honda PCX150 Announced – Scooter Now Freeway-Legal

Honda has updated its PCX scooter for 2013 with a larger 150cc engine. The 2013 Honda PCX150 replaces the previous version’s 125cc engine with a 153cc powerplant. Honda hasn’t stated how much of a performance boost the larger engine has over the previous one, though the new displacement means the PCX is now freeway-legal in many states.

Teaser: 2012 Japanese Literbike Shootout – Video

The last time we assembled the superbike offerings from the Big Four Japanese manufacturers to determine the alpha male model was 2009. The CBR won that confrontation, but a lot’s changed since then. For 2012 Honda revamped the CBR1000RR, Yamaha added traction control to the R1, the GSX-R1000 lost a muffler and last year Kawasaki introduced an all-new ZX-10R.