Browsing the motorcycles for sale listings I spotted this 1968 Suzuki T500 Cobra, a nice vintage 2 stroke, but the condition of the bike is far beyond what you would have found in any dealer showroom back in the 60s. I just can’t see any flaws, so I thought I would check out the fellow […]
Category: Two-stroke
If you’re one of those people that loves to learn, you’ll simply learn, all the time at every opportunity. If you keep learning long enough, sooner or later your mind will begin to overflow into the real world. That pretty much describes J. Joachim Hall. He’s a self taught and home schooled builder and college […]
In July this year, there will be a rare opportunity to see Barry Sheene's 500cc championship-winning bikes from 1976 and 1977. Oliver's Mount is where the action will be, next month!
Forty years ago, Barry Sheene won the first of his two 500cc motorcycle grand prix roadracing world championships. For Barry, and British fans of motorcycle GP racing, 1976 and 1977 were the glory years – no other British rider has ever won the 500cc crown after Barry's last championship win in 1977. Now, as part of 40th anniversary celebrations of Sheene's first world title, his championship-winning racebikes will be displayed during the Barry Sheene festival at Oliver’s Mount next month. The bikes have already arrived at Suzuki GB from Australia and are now being readied for display in July.
'With it being 40 years since Barry’s first world title, this year’s Barry Sheene festival marks a very special anniversary. The display of his two championship-winning bikes is the first time that they have been displayed together at such an event in the UK,' says Suzuki GB’s Tim Davies. 'Suzuki's commitment to the Barry Sheene festival at Oliver's Mount is absolutely fantastic and for them to step it up again this year by displaying Barry Sheene's actual race winning machines is every roadracing fan's dream. This could be the only opportunity in our lifetime that we see these machines and we are very proud that Suzuki has chosen Oliver's Mount to display them,' added Scott Beaumont, Oliver’s Mount’s Marketing Director.
The Barry Sheene Festival will take place at Oliver’s Mount on 23-24 July, 2016. For more information visit Oliver's Mount
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With close to 200bhp and a top speed of more than 300kph, the Suter MMX 500 could be a force to reckon with around the formidable Isle of Man mountain circuit. IoM TT fans really have something spectacular to look forward to this year
Suter Racing have confirmed that the MMX500, which is powered by a 576cc, 195bhp two-stroke V4, will race for the first time at the Isle of Man TT races this year. The bike, named as 'the most desirable motorcycle' at the EICMA show in Milan last year, will participate in the Superbike and Senior TT Races. "The fact that the Suter MMX has a 580cc two-stroke engine evokes almost hysterical emotion with the association of the wild days of 500cc Grand Prix racing, where legends like Kenny Roberts, Eddie Lawson and Wayne Gardner, to name just a few, regularly fought for podiums. The furious, explosive power of the former two-stroke bikes is still memorable for real fans and is considered the golden age of motorcycle racing," says Suter CEO, Eskil Suter.
"Suter has awakened the charismatic two-stroke 500s era with the MMX 500, bringing those GP bikes back to life in a modern context. We are equipping the MMX 500 engine with high-end components, of which one could only dream of back in the days of 500cc racing, including an electronic fuel injection, for example, and counter-rotating crankshafts," says Eskil. "Suter has built up knowledge and understanding on the specifications in recent years, by constructing modules, complete motorcycles, or as supplier to all Grand Prix classes. We have a phenomenal good power to weight ratio – the MMX 500 rides like a bike with rocket propulsion. For us, this is the perfect testing ground and that's the reason why we want to go to the toughest road race in the world. The Senior TT, over six laps of the 60km long Snaefell Mountain Course, is just something for the toughest guys among the racers," he adds.
Suter will soon announce the names of the two former TT winners who will race the MMX 500 at the IoM TT this year. The Swiss company is building 99 units of the MMX 500, each priced at CHF 120,000 / £85,000 / US$125,000 / €109,000. For more information, visit the Suter website.
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The bike on top is not Wayne Gardner's Honda NSR500, it's actually a Suter MMX 500 in the NSR's Rothmans Honda livery. Yes, the MMX 500 looks gorgeous and, with its 195bhp two-stroke V4, the 127-kilo bike will blow the fairing off almost any other motorcycle on the planet…
Owned and managed by Eskil Suter (former 500cc GP test rider and 250cc GP racer…), Suter Racing Technology (SRT) has been around for the last 20 years. The Swiss company designs and develops engines and chassis for motorcycle GP racing teams. They've worked closely with the Fogarty-Petronas team, the Ilmor outfit, the Kawasaki ZX-RR MotoGP effort and, of course, developed their own Suter MMX racing bikes, even participating in MotoGP from 2012 in the CRT class.
Eskil Suter, the man behind SRT, misses the two-stroke 500cc days and the bike you see here – the Suter MMX 500 – is his bid to bring back the glory days of the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. A limited-edition machine that is priced at all of 120,000 Swiss Francs (that's 111,000 euro or US$119,800), the Suter MMX 500 is fitted with a fuel-injected 576cc two-stroke V4, with double counter-rotating crankshaft and a redline of 13,000rpm. The bike weighs 127 kilos and the V4's power output is 195bhp, which means that power-to-weight ratio is an astonishing 1.5:1. The MMX 500's top speed is in excess of 310kph.
As you might expect, the Suter MMX 500 has all the right, top-spec running gear, including a CNC-machined twin-spar aluminium chassis and swingarm (with adjustable ride height, steering, wheelbase and riding position etc.), fully adjustable race-spec Öhlins fork and shock, 17-inch OZ wheels (you can choose from magnesium or aluminium hoops…) shod with 125/75 and 205/75 rubber, Brembo brakes with twin 320mm steel brake discs and radial-mount 4-piston calipers. The bodywork is all carbonfibre, the Akrapovic exhaust has Titanium chambers, the 6-speed cassette-type gearbox allows ratios to be swapped quickly, and 2D data logging is optional.
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Even after two decades, the 1994 Cagiva C594 still looks utterly beautiful!
Two decades ago, back in 1994, American rider John Kocinski was winning races and getting podium finishes on one of the most beautiful 500cc GP bikes of all time – the glorious, gorgeous Cagiva C594. Powered by a two-stroke 498cc V4 that produced 177bhp at 12,600rpm, the C594 was fitted with a hybrid carbonfibre/aluminium twin-spar chassis, had a carbonfibre swingarm and weighed just 122 kilos. It was a very high-tech machine, with programmable EPROM chips for variable ignition timing, a sophisticated fuel-injection system, electronically contolled semi-active suspension, and even an experimental traction control system, which could cut out one or two of the V4's cylinders in certain situations, to reduce wheelspin. All this, back in the early 1990s!
Back in January 2003, Cycle World magazine ran a story about Cagiva's announcement that they would build and sell 25 replicas of the C594 grand prix racer, which would be built in Varese, Italy, by the same team that had built the original, 1990s Cagiva 500 GP race bikes. Production was supposed to start in mid-2003 and prices for each of the GP replicas was expected to be in the region of US$100,000. Nothing came of these plans, unfortunately.
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