got the balls to buy one anyone?

[dave h]

Bit of insight into the build up to Dakar,



Dave.

[Crossrutted]

To be fair, lubrication and cooling of turbos has improved greatly since their introduction.



A few years later, I found myself driving a Ford 7000 tractor... You had to let it idle for a couple of minutes before shutting the engine off, and you could hear the turbo make a sort of sighing sound as it spooled down.

First generation Saab Turbo's needed to be left to idle before turning off, to avoid turbo damage due to lack of lubrication.

Now we all just turn turbo diesels off without issue.

[dave h]

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A ... 1Boe-nzMl8

dave.

[Hall]

Mason Klein's Kove is stuck in Dubai customs and it will be touch and go he makes the start

[dave h]

Mason Klein's Kove is stuck in Dubai customs and it will be touch and go he makes the start

think hes okay,post from usa kove page.

The bike will make it in time after the Kove team spent all night driving to pick it up at the border and all day driving back to the bivouac. The "shipper" wasn't so good at shipping so the guys made it happen!

remember Mason is privateer and not a kove team rider,well done team Kove.

[redbikejohn]

KTM slipped customs a bag of cash to delay them lol .

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

A few years back the deciding round of the 125cc world MX championship was in Argentina.
Fuel in Argentina being poor quality, both Cagiva and Honda decided to ship in their own: a works 125 engine would not last one race running on local fuel.
Cagiva 'arranged' for Honda's fuel to get 'lost' at the airport.
The Honda engine broke mid-race. The Cagiva won..and won the world championship.

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

KTM slipped customs a bag of cash to delay them lol .

In this month's Classic Bike magazine, there's the interesting story of how KTM 'won' its first MX world championship with a Russian rider. It involved putting blocking and ramming bikes into the race to knock down a rival, and when that failed a dodgy claim that the rival rider had jumped the start.

[redbikejohn]

If Mason's engine holds up he could be a real threat this year. He won a round and was so close to overall lead until crashing out. He said tuned race engine feels 'faster than ktm' so should be interesting

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

I'm getting a funny feeling about this year's Dakar. Beside Kobe we also have Hero of India throwing some serious weigh at it. Hero has built 100 million motorcycles since its foundation in 1984! Its factories can turn out 9.1 million bikes a year.

Both China and India have massive domestic motorcycle markets, but their brands are not well known outside of them (apart from three or four 'legacy' once-British brands).

In the late 1950s, Honda wanted to expand out of the Japanese home market, and realised the Isle of Man TT was one of the toughest international tests they could subject their machines to.

They won the team prize in the 125 cc class in 1959, and under 10 years later had swept the established British manufacturers out of the light and middleweight markets across the globe. They were followed by Suzuki and then the other 2.

Maybe this year's Dakar will prove as significant as the 59 TT?