'03 R6: A Film By Randy Mamola

Re: Oh just you wait!

That's good to hear, but there are a lot of things I'd love to see more of. Big thing #1 would be long term ride/reviews. Keep a bike or six as a staff daily driver for a year. Still into it? Think it needs a new seat? Which leads me to big thing #2: aftermarket customization.

Very few motorcycle owners (in my experience, anyway) have a 100% stock bike. You guys criticize the brake, the suspension, the seat, the bars, etc. So do riders and the aftermarket listens! But there's no really reliable information about it. No magazine will run a story on a modded bike except for the occasional turbocharger story of an already outrageous sportbike with 220hp or something equally over the top.

When I started looking at the Sprint ST as a "better than VFR" sport tourer, I found a very slim story here on MO with a few poorly explored criticisms, then found one of the ST websites and found some very interesting but seriously incomplete information about aftermarket pipes available for it, different bar geometry, suspension mods, etc. which may make the bike completely dominating or may be money thrown down the toilet. But there's no help except to ask people who own one or two bikes at most and can't do a controlled experiment to save their souls.

It would be flat out awesome if a magazine checked out some of the claims of aftermarket pipe manufacturers, of PowerCommander, of any of this stuff and gave us some real data to work with. The story about the modded RC51 vs. the Aprilia could have been this type of story, but the effect of the various mods got completely lost in some silly grudge match story. I wanted to know more about those carbon fiber wheels. What did the reduction in unspring mass do to lap times? How did they feel on the road? Any worries about longer term use? What about the Ohlins rear shock? What kind of differences can I expect from a $1000 investment in my rear suspension? Etc.

For anything that's not just style, the aftermarket can be awfully confusing. A little help could go a long way and who knows, at least the headline won't read "Whirry, not an ounce of fatty" for weeks at a time.

Regards,

Ross

Excellent ideas!

Ross,

I think you make some very insightful and sophisticated points! The good news is that you folks seem to feel as though we are doing a pretty good job so far. The better news is that there is still lots of room for improvement and we plan on improving a whole lot in 2003 and beyond. We always appreciate reader feedback, especially when people make a reasoned recommendation rather than just "MO sux" or something equally useless.

Just so that you know, there are a few obstacles to the kind of journalism you are proposing. First of all, few OEMs are willing to part with a bike for extended periods of time. A small number of test bikes gets circulated through all the media. Second of all we have this terrible problem around here in that there are usually 6-8 of the latest and greatest new test bikes stashed in our garage and only 4 of us to ride them. Tragic, I know! So frankly, we tend to lose interest in anything that's been here longer than a month or so. Honestly one of our greatest assets here is the astonishing depth of knowledge possesed by readers like yourself.

Do you think putting up BBS' devoted to individual OEMs or even popular models of bike would be valuable?

What about if we asked readers to identify what kinds of bike they own in their profile and then provide a searchable database so you can contact someone who owns a bike you are interested in?

Got any other bright ideas?

As far as the slow content month, we have a ton of stuff in the works and just got a little constipated. Don't worry, the Pepto Bismol is taking effect and you should be up to your waist in fresh stuff soon!

Eric Bass