Tragic news, gifted 24 year old Italian rider Marco Simoncelli died after a freak crash at the MotoGP in Sepang, Malaysia on 23rd October 2011. From the footage it looked like there was a loss of control on lap 2 when Simoncelli’s #58 Honda veered across the track in front of Valentino Rossi and Colin Edwards. Both riders were unable to avoid the split second collision and during this, Marco’s helmet came lose resulting in severe head injuries as both riders collided with him leaving Marco motionless on the track.

The race was immediately red flagged and then canceled as the tragic event unfolded, perhaps more tragic were the so called ‘fans’ who started throwing stuff from the stands because a race had been delayed and then cancelled which is shocking behaviour whether the injury was fatal or not, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

When you see the crash, I think it’s safe to say that any bike rider will be left feeling shocked and a bit uneasy – apologies for the graphic content that follows, taken from a screen capture of the MotoGP footage.

It’s a real shame and great loss not only for Marco’s close friends and family but also for any fans of the MotoGP as Simoncelli’s riding style was unique although aggressive it was always thrilling to watch him race and a reason why I watched MotoGP so avidly since he joined. Given time I’m sure that he would have become a true legend on the track with the amazing abilities that he demonstrated.

RIP Marco Simoncelli 1987 – 2011.

Unable to organise a piss up in a free brewery by all accounts let alone the paperwork going from this rant of the planning of the MotoTaxi Junket

And for those who actually take part, seems your left high and dry going by this account of the “Adventure” waiting around for 7 days and then having to fly yourself off to finally get to your vehicle. Great!

Of course you don’t know what the MotoTaxi Junket is – it’s meant to be a rally on tuk-tuks/ mototaxi’s across Peru using a cheap knock off motorbike converted to have a sofa on the back. Sounds like a laugh, but instead by all accounts it seems to be more of a shambles with various injuries, breakdowns etc… which I’m sure adds to the ‘adventure’. Though to be fair it does look like most people survive, take some good pictures and make it in the end. Trouble is I bet it would have been just as much hassle to organise it all yourself, probably a bit cheaper and you’re at the mercy of only yourself and your own organisational skills.

Which just goes to show, if you really want to have an adventure, go with someone who can organise it. Take a look at some of the guys below who do bike tours through Peru, same adventure but seems far better managed and something I’ll end up doing my self. I did research a fair bit and while The Adventurists seemed like a good idea and alot of fun – they also do other events, I didn’t feel comfortable booking with them and I’ll go with the experts instead such as:

http://www.perumototours.com/
http://www.incamotoadventures.com/

If you operate similar tours add your links to the comments.

For starters it has to be the instant thrill it gives you. The feeling of riding on two wheels and zipping from one place to another really is unparalleled. There is a sense of freedom you get from that which you won’t forget in a long time. Feeling the wind on your face and travelling at a good speed but at the same time being almost at one with nature is certainly a unique feeling.

Another thing about using a motorcycle over another vehicle has to be cost. Of course you have to get insurance, an MOT if it is over three years old and also breakdown cover but you can save elsewhere. Take petrol for example, you pay so much less than you would for a car, normally you’ll get double the fuel economy that you do with a car.

Again the motorcycle has to beat the car in terms of parking. Gone are the days of trying to find a space for your big car, and gone are the horrible days of trying to parallel park You’ll find spaces all over the place which you can quickly pop in and out of.

When you ride a motorcycle it is almost as if you are part of a club. Riders will tell you about ‘the wave’, this is what you do when another rider passes. You don’t get that in a car do you? There is a sense of community which you get with this and you’ll find yourself instantly with a whole new gang of friends to share your passion with.

After an afternoon of bike work, we took a quick trip down to the Ace Cafe for a well derserved cup of tea. Trouble is by the time I’d finished and got my camera out, most of the really cool bikes had already left. But there still a few awesome ones around, my favourites were a red/ yellow Triumph – which I don’t know the model name (please help me out) and a black/ gold Ducati 900SD.

There were a few others around like a rather smart Triton and a stunning (and very loud) Ariel, but I didn’t really get the chance to get any pictures of them, still maybe next time – can’t wait to finish the engine on my CB750F2 so I can take it down there. My Ducati Monster is cool, but sometimes just not cool enough when compared to some of the vintage bikes

Other than that there were the standard Gixxers and Harleys. It was also great to see a few wheelies outside and a couple on a Triumph sports bike in their tracksuits, by tracksuits I mean shell suits – not racing leathers! Lets hope they didn’t crash because I’m sure no ones wants to see their tattered remains tattoed on the asphalt.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of my two favourite bikes from this afternoon.

Ducati SD 900 Darmah

Triumph

(please let me know the model, if you know it)

However, this one looks insane, aptly called Frontal Lobotomy, it looks like a turbine that’s had a set of forks and a swingarm added to it. To anyone that may ‘dabble’ in physics it may look like having the rear wheel behind the jet is going to be an issue – though in all seriousness there would probably be some massive heat sheilding or a way to deflect the exhaust, maybe take some advice from the guy who made giant exhausts for his bike – either that or it’s just a publicity attempt but I doubt that, this looks serious.

Course, then there’s the factor of braking, not sure that convential disc brakes are up to stopping the force of a giant jet turbine, so i’d love to see how this works – I guess with a parachute in a very long straight line to slow down. Can’t imagine from looking at it that handling… well anything other than a straight line… is going to be feasible. Still this would make a pretty cool drag bike if you fancy having one of these jets between your legs.

Got to admire the people who build this stuff that shows the rest of us what real men do with their spare time, this isn’t a fail, it’s a win waiting to happen. Not much more info, but a few more pictures are found here.

Lets hope they were smart enough to not use their direct IP when I go through the log files later on, although we already know that they’re French Arabic calling themselves a lame name of: Sh4rp H4x0r T34M which I think we can all agree is pretty pathetic and far from cool, personally I would create a name that kicked ass instead. You kids are all alone without a friend in your sausage fest, this much we can be sure of… have a laugh at the scary names they came up with to sound cool: Mr.L4iVe that ’4′ in the sure makes you look cool… but otherwise not too bad where as Xraptr0r sounds so humiliating to call yourself that – imagine introducing yourself to anyone using that name, what a twat! Even better is that you can’t spell raptor. Then there’s K!tr0 who obviously couldn’t have the name kitro as it was taken so had to use the exclamation mark. These are the kind of people that give genuinely good hackers a bad name and why hollywood makes films like ‘hackers’ to take the piss out of you.

Then there’s the logo to go with the bad spelling… a fist. Great. No really, when we see a fist, like that we think of power, revolution and not fisting. Don’t worry, everyone know’s real revolution starts with defacing a web page of a random blog site. In the end I feel sorry for whoever Dmar Subaie is, I’d be embarassed to be associated with this.

But, wow, seriously I am chuffed that bikearama.com is a target for Arab miscreants who can do nothing better than run a script. Guys on the very rare chance that you read this, why not grow a set of balls and drop me a line on the comments for this post, I’m calling you out!

Perhaps you should get a girlfriend instead of flashing your dicks to each other on chat roulette.

Curious exhaust system – is that a lift up flap on it or is it some kind of pulse jet. I think I’m going to take what I said earlier about it being a real runner back. There is no way that this will run, if that is the exhaust system then having it angled like that is going to do lethal things, the frame itself looks like it’s built to skid down the road. Still I would love to see the craziness of this running.

Still that’s a nice bit of stitching on the saddle – well bit of leather to separate you and the turbine, it’s not really a saddle is it? Seems there is a whole subculture of homemade jet powered motorcycles all of which don’t or physically can’t run. So this ones a fail I think.

So MotoGP has announced that they want to hold a hearing to discuss the Rossi-Stoner collision during lap eight of the Jerez crashfest on the weekend.

While Valentino Rossi caused the crash and has admitted as much, the track side marshals are under scrutiny because they aided Rossi first (who was trapped under the bikes) but then subsquently all marshals favoured helping Rossi get his bike back in the race, had they split to help both racers then no doubt Casey Stoner would have had a finish as the damage looked superficial. When you look back through the replays you see at no point was help offered to Stoner until they begin walking away and Casey signals to them that yes he does need help.

The MotoGP will meet at Estoril in Portugal on Thursday 28th April with the clerk of the course and the chief marshal during the next round of the championship to go through the incident. But they have already confirmed that any decision made will not effect the overall results/ standings and points allocation.

One thing is for sure, this is going to be an ongoing feud between both riders. The above picture was taken from the MotoGP website and there’s plenty more pictures of the crash at the MotoGP site

Whether tubeless or not, the process is pretty much the same (apart from removing the inner tube). The only additional thing you’ll definitely need with a tubeless is a way of breaking the bead. You’ll want decent tire irons about a foot long/ 30cm with as thin an edge to them as possible to aid getting them under the tire.

So let’s assume that you’ve removed the wheel, this one is a scambler/ dirt bike wheel and tyre but you can use this method for any type. It’s no different to changing your bicycle tires, just a bit more effort as they’re bigger and need balancing.

1. Remove the Schrader valve – this is the valve you use to fill the tyre with air. This valve part is the pretty much the same across all tires and they’re dirt cheap, so always replace them when changing a tyre. There’s a special tool, again it’s really cheap, designed specifically to remove the Schrader valve (also known as an American valve). Why kids don’t remove this valve instead of deflating the tyres by holding the valve in is a mystery.

2. The tire’s now deflated, so next thing if needed is to break the bead. The bead on a tire is what runs around the rim of the tyre that locks in to a groove on the wheel, when inflated this is held in place and there’s no need to have an inner tube. However, without a fancy machine, breaking/loosening the bead can be hard work. You can get a specific and tool to do the job or you can just jump on the wheel or use something heavy like your friends van.

3. Now we’re ready to lift the tire off, first use some rim protectors – especially on soft metal/alloy rims. Clip these on to the rim where you intend to insert the tyre irons against the rim – I’m not using them on this wheel it’s already knackered. To make things easy apply plenty of tyre fitting soap around the rim to lubricate the tire to help it over the rim.

4. Starting with the valve closest to you push in the opposite end while inserting the first tire iron at the valve side, leave this towards the center of the wheel to lift the tire from the rim, repeat this step with a second lever a short distance away from first iron you inserted.

5. Keep repeating until you get at least half way round and can get the tire past the rim.

6. If you have an inner tube, then push the valve inside the wheel and then try to reach inside to pull out the inner tube – you need to do this to avoid damaging it in the next stages.

7. Now insert a tire iron past the rim to pull the tyre up towards you to lift it clean from the rim, it’s the same as stages 3 to 5 but is a bit more fiddly, after you’ve worked around just over half of the rim, you’ll probably find that if you turn the wheel over and brace the tire against the floor, you can lift the rim out away from the tire.

8. To refit the tyre, first check for the direction of roration (DOR) on the tyre, then check for a small dot or 2 dots which will be orange, blue, yellow etc… this signfies the heaviest part of the tyre and needs to be directly opposite the valve to balance out the weight of the valve.

9. Refit the tire -  just reverse the process, replace the valve and inflate (remembering to repair the inner tube if you needed to)

10. Check that the tire is holding the requred pressure and is reseated properly. Remove any old wheel weights (if applicable) and re-balance the wheel – which is an art and another post all in its self.

First time I did this took no more than 30 minutes to get the tyre off and back on.

You can find out about more Rat Fink stuff here. I don’t even care what this sounds like, probably… Awesome! Anyone update me with any info on this please?