Daily Motorcycle Blog roundup April 11, 2007

April 11, 2007

budlight

This is something I’ve been planning on doing for awhile now. Its simply a roundup of all the current posts in the motorcycle blogosphere. There are quite a good deal of motorcycle blogs, but they aren’t always as interconnected as you see on the technology blogs.

• Mike Werner has an interesting post about a “helmet hair” addon for helmets. This product doesn’t really seem like it could ever catch on to me. Mike also has another post on using garbage bins to cover speed radars.
• A boy and his bike has posted a new video of his drive down Washington state highway 11. It seems pretty typical of all the other youtube videos I’ve seen with some obnoxiously loud music playing, but I will admit its not was bad as some others.
• This is from a few days before but its pretty important news. BMW has launched three new models into its G series, naming them all some derivative of X (Xchallange, Xcountry, Xmoto).
• Forty Years on Two Wheels has some great coverage of the 23rd annual Antique and Classic Motorcycle Show. Really a gem here with some really clean pictures by Doug Klassen. He also has another great post at
• Gaijin Bikers has an interesting post relating bikers to open source hackers. I would agree with it seems like a good deal of very technical minded people love bikes, but I still think its a case of vocal minority and silent majority. I think he does make a good point about how customizing your bike to make it your own is in ways similar to making your linux distro your own, both take a great deal of work, but once you have it like you like it you know you’ve accomplished something.
• Helmet Hair has posted a video about Paul Yang’s design process with this really outrageous custom bike he built. I agree with Jesper’s sentiments though this video isn’t that interesting, I’d much rather see a video like this from one of the mainstream manufacturers.
• Kapital moto has a post about the Buildbase Ducati Team’s appearance at Brands Hatch GP circuit.
• Kropotkin Thinks discusses the fall of the Ilmor MotoGP team’s decline. Apparently they were a former F1 team that took on MotoGP as well. It seems that the team’s engineers had problems understanding that riding a motorcycle is not like riding a F1 car as you can’t simply hold steady one rpm, thus why most MotoGP bikes will have a wider powerband than say a F1 engine. This reminds me of how a car dealer always wants to start a motorcycle dealership and rarely does it work with the success they imagined. I’m not really that up on MotoGP news, and I should probably fix that.
• Old Guy has a post about how driver awareness month is fast approaching (May).
• The Kneeslider covers Timeless Motor Company’s reproductions of early Harley Davidson bikes similar to the Model 7. These machines are quite pricey at $10,000 but look to be of almost perfect quality. There is also a new post about the Art of Racer custom which is like all extreme customs interesting to look at but just doesn’t seem practical.
• Tim Kreitz has a post on the Superbike blog where the main thing of interest to me is he claims that BMC air filters are superior to K&N. I think I’ve heard this before, but is there any data to back it up? Also would it matter on the application? I could imagine a world in which K&N was superior in some situations.
• Whybike - discusses a rider he saw wearing a $500 Arai and flip flops on a scooter.
• This is old, but this site is always worth checking out. Worldrider has some newer pictures posted, I highly recommend going through his archives as they are some of the best pictures you’ll see.

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Wordpress and vBulletin integration part 2

budlight

I still have a little more work to go on getting the plugin working exactly like I want it.  I need it to rewrite the whole comment page part.  I think it would be best to show the three most recent comments in the form (if they exist) and then allow the person to easily post a new comment.  I’ll get to doing this eventually. 

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Wordpress and vBulletin Integration.

April 6, 2007

budlight

I think I now finally have wordpress and vBulletin integrated like I want.  I still need to do some work on the editing interface for this system however.  I have made it resemble the system in place at www.sitepoint.com.  Hopefully it works well.

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2008 Hayabusa

March 28, 2007

budlight

UPDATE you can read about the 2008 Hayabusa here.
Discuss the 2008 Hayabusa here.

All the guesswork about about the new Hayabusa will end Wed June 27 between 5:30-6:30pm at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas Nevada during the Suzuki Dealer meeting. The rest of the world will know Thursday whether it is a Hayabusa 1500 or Hayabusa 1600 or a new iteration of the 1300. This will be an ahead of schedule release, as new models are normally introduced around September. Suzuki says they plan to release many new models.

Let’s hope it’s something way more innovative than the 2007 Hayabusa’s simple color changes. We will update the 2008 Hayabusa wiki entry as more information becomes available. Anyone else with more information can feel free to contribute.

Here are some artist renditions:

This one is supposedly from the UK motorcycle magazine. They say that the new B King due for release later this year is a test for the busa engine it is basically a naked busa version hence the name B-king (Busa King). This rumor says that the Hayabusa will use the same engine as the B King but tuned for more performance. Supposedly the exhausts will be Dual but triangular and underseat. I say it could still be a photoshop.

These two are obviously photoshops but quite funny.

Here is a picture of the B King which I seriously doubt will come stateside. But who knows. It is supposed to be released in England soon though.

Also in a very similar vein as the B King is the GSR600 they are delivering to Europe. I don’t really think it will look like these two bikes, but you could see some similarities such as in the swing arms or frame design.

Now if this is the engine I think every other motorcycle manufacturer should just quit now.

Here’s an obviously fake busa from Raptors and Rockets.

Another Obviously computer generated pic.

Just remember that if you see any allegedly true pictures this applies:

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Harley reaches tentative agreement

February 21, 2007

budlight

So it appears that Harley Davidson’s strike may not last much longer. According to the AMA, they have met a tentative agreement which has yet to be revealed. Tomorrow morning the union members are expected to hear the details, and then vote on the contract.

Technorati : Harley, Motorcycles

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Indy Motorcycle Show

budlight

There’s a great article about the 39th Annual Dealernews International Powersports Dealer Expo on AMA.com. In the U.S. this is the definite motorcycle show, with many dealers making the trip annually. I’ve been myself 2 times to Indy and 3 times when it was in Cincinnati before that. It’s quite odd going into the RCA dome as it’s a pressurized dome. The AMA article has just a small sampling of all the new products that were shown at the show this year. This is a dealer only show, and is run by Dealernews which is the voice of the powersports industry. Check out either one of these sites they have lots of info on the show and the products at it.

Technorati : motocycles, motorcycle show

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