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Boost your bike skills

#### …and he’s cut the lockstops off. _Bike_ asks five masters of extreme skills to explain how to be a summer riding god

**Former British MotoGymkhana champion Rob Fox reveals the secrets of low-speed sorcery**

**‘W**hen I started in Moto Gymkhana I was getting my knee down, taking wide lines, riding like a maniac. Loads of fun, but my times were appalling. I started scrutinising videos from Japan, and learned it’s not about riding fast, it’s about riding the shortest distance. I changed my technique.

‘In Gymkhana we need to lean the bike over so it can turn tightly. I keep my bum in the middle of the seat and grip the tank with my legs. Don’t slide about, don’t hang off, don’t move my hips. I lock the bottom half of my body.

‘It’s all in the arms, elbows and wrists. You must be relaxed, but keep control. You’re going to be turning the bars more than you’ve ever turned them. But you’ve got to bend and twist your wrist, so you can turn the bars without adding more throttle or brake. Turning to the right is easier because your right hand comes back to your tummy. When you’re turning left your right hand is pushed out as far as it’ll go, and it’s hard to keep precise control of throttle and brakes.

‘I don’t touch the clutch. My 1990 Honda NSR250R is geared to do tiny little turns on idle, with the smallest front sprocket (13T), and a huge rear sprocket (51T). It gives precise, instant acceleration – such fun.

‘Coming into a rotation I’ll brake as late and as hard as I can, almost all with the front brake. Before I let it off I start getting the gas back on, just a few millimetres, and at the same time start turning. So I’ve got the brake on, the gas on, and I’ve got the thing on full lock. The NSR has a good steering lock, but I hacksawed off the lockstops on the bottom yoke so I could turn the bars even tighter. I can get the fork stanchion to touch the frame.

‘Get round the cone, let go of the front brake, wind on more gas and I’m on to the next obstacle – which hopefully I’ve remembered from the morning’s course walk. Generally I’m riding in a state of panic.

MotoGymkhana isn’t for everyone, but it gets my adrenaline flowing.’

**»** **Find a list of MotoGymkhana clubs around the world at :a[motogymkhana.org]{href='https://motogymkhana.org' }**

**DTRA National Pro champion Jack Bell makes a Ducati Scrambler 1100 dance like a dedicated dirt-tracker**

‘In some ways a Hooligan-class bike is easier to ride than a standard 450cc flat tracker. My Ducati Scrambler 1100 sounds like a beast, but the power is so linear at the bottom end. You have to move around on the bike more, you need to think about your lines more, and you must predict what’s going on. But they are heavy – if you crash one, you go down with a thud.

‘I’m at the top of third gear down the straight, using the rev limiter as a guide on when to brake. As I tip in I’m sat more to the front of the seat, then I throw the bike in, stamp on the rear brake and control the slide. In flat track we’re turning left, so I’ll have my right butt cheek off the side of the seat, and my right elbow up in the air. I have a steel shoe on my left foot, which wants to be coming off parallel with the left footpeg, and my right knee is pushed up against the fuel tank.

‘In the corner I want to scrub the speed off, turn the handlebars in, and get a feel for what the dirt’s doing. By the middle of the corner I’m starting to think about getting back on the throttle. The Ducati has about 90bhp, but you don’t want loads of power straight away otherwise it’s going to spin up like crazy, then you’ll be full-lock sideways about to high-side. It’s all in the throttle control. You just feed it in, get a feel for the slide – if you add too much, you might need to roll off slightly to find traction. Then on the straight I’m back to full throttle.

‘It’s a big bike, it’s a beast and it’s got some power behind it. But the Scrambler is the most fun bike I’ve ever ridden. I can come out of a corner, get both feet on the pegs and it just goes where I want it to go. On a 450 you’re having to work for it a lot harder. But a Hooligan bike is really nice to ride… when you treat it with respect.’

**Five-time world enduro champ Iván Cervantes rode a Triumph Tiger 1200 for 2493 miles in a day – all completely pinned**

‘From the beginning I say, no, it’s impossible. To break a world record, Triumph asked me to ride a Tiger 1200 GT Explorer at Nardò Technical Centre – a 12.5km (7.9-mile) circular test track in Italy – for 24 hours.

It’s very tough to ride for this long, especially at high speed. Even at the Dakar Rally I ride for a maximum of 12 hours. Then I think: ‘Why not?’

‘I trained for two months, physically and mentally. I rode a Tiger 1200 nearly every day, starting very early in the morning. Then two weeks before I sleep during the day and ride at night.

‘I prepared my stomach, too. On the day I had a good breakfast, then didn’t eat much during the attempt. From when I start the challenge at 7am until 10pm I have only energy bars and electrolyte drinks. After that, my stomach wants some pasta!

‘On the bike I was always at 204kph (127mph) – that’s the Tiger’s top speed because it has a limiter. At 204kph a 30-litre tank of petrol lasts 80 to 90 minutes, then I need to stop for refuelling. After a couple of hours, the biggest problem is that it gets boring, just passing the same signs every 12.5km.

‘When it gets dark and rains I get nervous. I touch the white line and it’s slippery, but a bit of fear makes me focus again. After four hours I think, if the rain continues I don’t know if I can keep on riding.

‘Around 3am I hear my team cry ‘We did it!’ and I can breathe normally. They tell me, now we have broken the record it’s time to sleep. But I cannot sleep – I want to get over 4000km (2485 miles), to make it difficult if someone attempts this again in the future.’

**British Superbike superstar Tommy Bridewell explains how he stops his Honda Fireblade on one wheel, with one foot**

‘How quickly I add front brake depends on the corner, but most of the time I’ll go straight to maximum pressure (12 bar, 174psi) instantly – bang. I used to brake with one finger, but I wasn’t able to pull as hard as I wanted, so now I use two.

‘This picture from Jerez is me initially grabbing the front brake, which lifts the rear wheel. I’ll then judge whether I want to continue with the same pressure, or whether I slightly let off to regain rear contact. You stop faster with both wheels on the ground, because when the rear wheel lifts you’re not getting any engine brake assist, either electronically or mechanically.

‘If I’m upright and it’s dry, I won’t lose the front – I’m more likely to go over the handlebars. I lock my arms out, so my upper body can’t rotate over the front of the bike, and dig my knees into the tank. I’m trying to push my body as far back as possible. The more weight over the back, the better.

‘Sticking out my right leg moves weight to the side, which helps turn the bike. I tend to drag my boot on the floor – I can wear through two right boots in a weekend. I rarely dangle my left leg, because it doesn’t feel natural.

‘Initial braking is all front brake, then I add rear brake to help turn the bike. By corner entry it’s 50/50 front and rear. I use a scooter-style rear brake lever on the left bar. I’ve never used a foot rear brake, and a thumb brake is okay on corner entry but I don’t like it on exits.

‘Using the rear brake on the exit is where I really gain an advantage – I use it to control wheelspin. I can go straight to 100 per cent throttle, then control the powerslide using rear brake pressure. There’s a bit of an art to it.’

**Stunt rider Jonny Davies fulfilled his childhood dream by jumping off the back of a moving bike – and then accelerating**

‘The record for being dragged behind a bike was held by my childhood idol Gary Rothwell. He set it in 1999, when I was maybe seven years old. I became a stunt rider in 2015, and as my career progressed I started to believe that anything was possible if you put enough practice into it.

‘Kawasaki offered me any bike – H2R, H2 – but I needed stability. With the H2 SX being quite long, with a low centre of gravity, it was ideal. Kawasaki fitted a grab rail with a secondary thumb throttle, plus a kill switch in case it went tits up. I added a steering damper, some crash protection and a tail tidy. The original numberplate would have hit my knees…

‘I had just three practice days before the attempt. I managed 80mph at first, then built up speed from there. For the actual attempt I had to jump off at 110mph to carry enough speed. I’m riding along in fifth gear, holding the throttle in my right hand, then my left hand’s going back between my legs. When I’m ready I let go of the twistgrip, reach right through to the grab rail with my right hand, then jump straight off the back.

‘As I jump, my left hand moves from the seat to the grab rail in one move. As soon as I’ve landed, I’m pushing the thumb throttle to accelerate as hard as possible. Once the supercharger starts boosting, it’s a wild ride.

‘Hitting the ground is less chaotic than I had imagined. I can look through the front screen, I can see the speedo, and I can steer the bike from the back as well. I had titanium plates made for my boots – they’re lighter, more durable, and dissipate heat better than steel.

‘Once I’m being dragged, I’m on full throttle all the way. I went through the timing beams at 159.52mph… then I had to get back on. I was running out of tarmac so I had to jump back on at 110mph. I’d practised this a lot with the bike parked on the centrestand, but in the end I just shut my eyes, leapfrogged and landed. It was the biggest relief of my life.’

**»** **Check out Jonny’s stunt shows at :a[jdstunts.com]{href='https://jdstunts.com' }**

#### :a[Head into stores to grab your latest issue, or why not subscribe to Bike Magazine and enjoy 3 issues for just £5! What are you waiting for?]{href='https://www.greatmagazines.co.uk/bike-magazine?utm_source=bikemagazine.co.uk&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=bau_bike&amp;utm_content=article' target='_blank' rel='noreferrer noopener'}

#### Triumph’s **Tiger Sport 800** could be their greatest bike ever. To find out, we challenge the ‘world record’ set in 1905 by the first all-Triumph machine on this summer’s must-ride bike

**S**hafts of late evening sunlight scatter like strobes through a great arch of birch branches reaching overhead, enclosing the arrow-straight road in a clawed tunnel. I frown, dazzled by the flickering contrast. We’re ten hours into the ride, lost in that beautiful, mesmeric zone of furrowed concentration where the Triumph’s haptic feedback – suspension, engine response, tyre grip, steering – is entirely absorbed into the rider’s perception of the world.

The road is bumpy and ill-kempt, ripples and potholes shuddering through the bike – and, thoughts drifting in the flashing daylight, my imagination plays tricks. For a moment this isn’t 2025; it’s 120 years earlier in 1905, right back in the formative years of motorcycling. And the Triumph isn’t a brand-new Tiger Sport 800, it’s the very first all-Triumph motorcycle: a three-horsepower single sputtering along this very same ancient trackway in pursuit of the very same goal we’re attempting now. Still dreaming, I pull over for a moment at the side of road, step off the bike, and guzzle from a water bottle to reset my wobbly head.

In 1902, the Triumph Cycle Company – a Coventry bicycle manufacturer founded by German Siegfried Bettmann, soon joined by countryman Mauritz Schulte – began bolting Belgian engines onto their pushbike frames (as did numerous bicycle manufacturers across Europe). In 1905 they released the first model powered by their own engine: a single-speed, 363cc four-stroke single making three horsepower. No fancy model names 120 years ago: it was simply called the Triumph 3hp Motor Bicycle.

Motorcycling itself was barely a decade old, but already two magazines catered for riders. One, _The Motor Cycle_, featured a popular writer called Canon Basil H Davies, going by the pen name Ixion, who went on to write for the magazine until his death in 1961, aged 81.

In 1905 he proposed using the Triumph to establish, in his words, the following: 1: ‘Whether long-distance motorcycling is as fatiguing and nerve-racking a pursuit as the halfpenny press pretends 2: ‘Whether it is ultra-expensive in the matter of repairs 3: ‘Whether the modern machine can be trusted to run long distances in the hands of a man who is destitute of mechanical training and ability?’

Damn, he’s literally describing me… Anyway, to this end, Ixion planned a six-day, 1279-mile challenge riding over 200 miles a day to six destinations and back again, radially, from a base at a hotel in Oxford – along with an official timekeeper to check authenticity. His targets were Bournemouth, Taunton, Ludlow, Shrewsbury, Derby and Grantham – each just over 200 miles there and back from Oxford.

One hundred and twenty years later, Triumph have just released the Tiger Sport 800. It’s a bike that, on paper, represents a summation of the modern Triumph factory’s journey since its rebirth in the early 1990s; it’s an aggregation of its engine and chassis technology, production expertise and practicalities, marketing positioning and hard economics. If Hinckley is a dartboard, the Tiger Sport 800 is the bullseye: the right engine, performance, chassis, ergonomics, build quality, market position and, crucially, price.

Or is it? To find out, we’re going to recreate Ixion’s 1905 ride and his target of 1279 miles – in three days, not six. We’re adapting his radial routes to something more circular and in keeping with today’s motorcycling – but still riding on roads the man himself bestrode 120 years ago.

Nick Jonckheere is a Belgian veteran motorcycle rider and restorer, who owns the world’s sole remaining functional 1905 Triumph (the only other 1905 bike is a non-runner in the National Motorcycle Museum in Solihull). He came by the bike via a series of happy coincidences – in 2010 he was looking for a spare wheel for another bike, and found a seller in the UK. ‘So I went to the chap’s house and bought it,’ says Nick. ‘While I was there, I casually asked him what else he had; he said he’d got an old Triumph frame. When I saw it, I instantly recognised the double front frame tube as 1905.

‘When I got it home, I started looking for an engine, but couldn’t find one; they’re just too rare. A couple of months later I got a message from the same gentleman – he had a couple of Triumph engines under his bench, from a pile of parts his uncle acquired 50 years previously. One was smaller than the others, marked number 314. He thought it might be the engine for the frame – and when I tried it, it fitted exactly. It’s the engine from that frame. It’s even still using the original piston. At that point, I had a project.’

Nick rebuilt the rest of the bike from another source of period Triumph spare parts, with the exception of the fuel tank which he had to make using the other 1905 bike, in the National Motorcycle Museum, as a template.

In 2015, to commemorate the 110th anniversary of his bike, Nick himself rode a leg of the Ixion route, from Oxford to the New Forest, on the 1905 Triumph, on the exact same day. He avoided busy areas because they’re so much hassle with no clutch, but otherwise followed the same route, and managed the distance back to Oxford in 14 hours, and with only one mechanical hiccup, when he needed to adjust the magneto.

‘The 1905 is so easy to ride; I’ve had so much fun on it – it’s my favourite bike,’ says Nick. ‘But I’m not going to come over and have another go – the logistics are a nightmare!’

Triumph used Ixion’s successful ride as proof of reliability in their advertisements for the 1905 machine, and in a small way his efforts helped make the company Britain’s biggest bike manufacturer. But was it actually a paid endorsement rather than an independent test?

In his later years Ixion remembered the idea’s origin, saying it was dreamed up between Triumph’s Mauritz Schulte and himself: ‘He was so sure of its merits that he asked me to suggest some stunt which might convince the public.

Together we decided if it could be ridden 200 miles daily for six consecutive days, it would obviously be a good buy for any citizen who desired cheap personal transport.’

This wasn’t reported in Ixion’s original story. Neither was the fact it took two attempts – on the first, the twin-tube frame fractured after five days, so Schulte arranged for a second bike, this time with a single-tube frame, and Ixion restarted the entire test again the following week. He also fitted and ground-in a new exhaust valve every night. And there’s even a hint Schulte himself paid for the entire enterprise – it’s unlikely _The Motor Cycle_ magazine would’ve paid for a fortnight in a hotel, plus the services of a paid timekeeper.

Every great ride starts with breakfast. Ixion said so himself: ‘Breakfast rides are one of my favourite fads.’ Bikers, eh? I’ve just ridden 30 miles from _Bike_ HQ and opt for a bacon bap at the A1 Stadium Diner. We’re kicking off from Great Gonerby, just north of Grantham in Lincolnshire, and the north-eastern tip of Ixion’s ride. He mentions riding the ‘twenty-one miles and twenty-one hills’ between Grantham and Stamford – by which, according to archive maps, he can only mean he rode the A1 when it was called the Great North Road and, at the time, likely a Macadam surface of crushed stone, with no tar.

The surfaces Davies faced in 1905 would have varied from basic compacted stone, to cobbles in town (made slippery by horse dung and tramlines), to rural trackways. Modern tarmac – with tar as a binder – had only just been invented in 1902 and was still being developed.

Today, the Tiger makes short work of the A1, filtering off at Stamford and following Ixion’s likely route on the A43 to Corby, then Kettering and into Northampton. The morning traffic is chaos, pressing the 800 into maximum overtake mode, slipping past cars in small bursts of acceleration, filtering to the front at traffic lights with despatch-rider vigour. It’s brilliant at the job, 113bhp inline triple rippling with short-shifting poke between 5000-6000rpm, impeccable quickshifter favouring gentle, seamless changes rather than jerky race-style shifts. The 798cc motor has an eye-opening whiff of Street Triple midrange about its performance, barking when the grip is twisted. And its commanding riding position tilts gently forward, narrow bars and slender form sliding into gaps that would have been quite a squeeze for a 1905 Triumph. Not that Ixion would’ve needed any of this. In 1905 there were fewer than 15,000 motorised vehicles in the whole of the UK, and the only things he’d be overtaking were pedestrians and livestock: ‘Chief annoyance was the number of domestic animals on the road; pigs, sheep and cattle made the hill climbs exciting.’

One by one the towns tick past on my loop – in Northampton I visit Bridge Street in the centre of town where, according to Ixion in 1905, ‘the knobbliest and cobbliest paving in the world may be found.’ There are indeed still cobbles, but only a strip a few feet wide, doubtless health ’n’ safety-approved and not the wonky old polished sort Ixion would’ve faced. At Towcester I visit the Saracens Head hotel, called the Pomfret in 1905, where Ixion stopped for tea. The Venus and Apollo statuettes set into the hotel walls would’ve gazed down on Ixion’s Triumph and, 120 years later, they look down on another. At Oxford I visit Ixion’s base for his trip, the George hotel, but it’s long gone, replaced by a bank.

We ride on through Reading and Basingstoke, where shimmering glass towers, raised carriageways and concrete tower blocks would be horrifyingly alien to Ixion, in the same way his Triumph would be horrifyingly alien to a modern rider like me. It’s an interesting thought experiment: which would you rather have – Ixion’s remote, rural, bucolic simplicity with a prehistoric machine and ancient oilskins to ride in, or our traffic-fouled urban jungles and choked roads but a modern bike with all its sophistication and performance?

I forgo motorways as long as possible – Ixion wouldn’t have dreamed of them either – but I have to use them eventually; even with a modern bike, it’s a tall order to cover 1279 miles in three days on just England’s As and Bs. But right now I take the A33 instead of the M3 between Basingstoke and Winchester – ramrod straight, it’s an old Roman road which fell into disuse (like many trunk roads) in the middle of the 19th century when railways arrived, but by 1905 was in the process of rejuvenation for motorised transport. Still made of crushed stone, though, making punctures likely and testing the durability of frame welds, wheels, suspension and rider.

We pass through Winchester, where Ixion had to change piston rings at the roadside (he carried spares; they were consumable items) – obviously the Tiger doesn’t miss a beat. We stop for fuel at Southampton, then head into the New Forest where the 800 runs happily between early flowering gorse bushes as it heads south.

Bournemouth arrives, another of Ixion’s destinations. A quick stop by the pier and we’re away again – if I’d known it, I’d have ridden past the house where Canon Basil H Davies spent his last days in 1961; it’s a few hundred yards from here. Next stop is Taunton, so I ride across country via Dorchester and Crewkerne, Tiger piling on the miles. I’ve been on the bike for around eight hours by now, and not a hint of discomfort – I’m over twice Ixion’s age and pretty sure I wouldn’t have managed the hardcore pedalling he’d needed to help his Triumph climb hills. His bike had just one gear, and it was a tall one to enable it to achieve a 40mph top speed, so he had to help the bike along and deliberately avoided steep climbs. ‘Machines at this date were habitually geared too high. Buyers desired speed,’ Ixion later wrote; bikes might have changed in 120 years but riders haven’t.

By now the day is pressing and the miles aren’t – I need to get a shift on, so the M5 carries me north via my second refill of the day at Michaelwood until I jump off at Gloucester and head for Leominster (Ixion went via Hereford), then Ludlow – and by now it’s getting dark. The Tiger barrels down the A49 into town, then out again, into the indigo countryside to Shrewsbury before setting the sat nav for a hotel in Derby, arriving at gone 10pm. I’ve ticked off all six of Ixion’s destinations in one go – but covered less than half the distance. More miles in the morning.

In my haste to get to Derby last night, I bypassed two towns Ixion makes particular mention of – so, after a morning refuel, I double back to visit Ironbridge, near Telford, the (disputed) birthplace of the industrial revolution. Ixion noted: ‘The bumpy hill down into Ironbridge should be avoided by all motorcyclists.’ Happily, there are fewer bumps today, and the Triumph’s suspension deals with what’s left.

Next stop is Bridgnorth, where Ixion saw a red sign advising cyclists to dismount on the hill between the upper and lower towns. ‘On this a restive horse made me stop my engine round the lowest bend, and it is rather to the credit of the Simms magneto that it picked up again and climbed it,’ he wrote. I stop on the same bend; no horse or sign, but plenty of chevrons. My Triumph climbs the hill as well, without pedal assistance.

I need to make up some time, so fire down the M5 to Taunton and refuel before rejoining Ixion’s trail through Glastonbury, Wells, Bath, Chippenham, Malmesbury, Cricklade, Faringdon and into Kingston Bagpuize, where Ixion had a run-in with the law. Motorcycles were unpopular with the public in 1905 – they kicked up dust and irritated pedestrians. The speed limit had just been raised, in 1903, from 14mph to a heady 20mph – but prosecutions were so common a club was formed in 1905 to help motorists and motorcyclists evade speed traps by sending a ‘spotter’ on ahead. The club was called the Automobile Association – the AA. Ixion doesn’t go into details of his ‘unmerited attention from the police’; maybe, as a man of the cloth, he used his dog collar to good effect.

At Oxford, I relent from my purpose and point the Tiger home north of Peterborough. Tomorrow is the final day, when I’ll head down these exact same roads back to the New Forest for some photography. My calculations are the Tiger will trip past 1279 miles somewhere around Oxford on the way back.

And so it proves – after a long ride back to Southampton, followed by a run around the New Forest – even visiting Lyndhurst, as Ixion did – and hammering back up the A34 at the end of the day, the required 1279 miles trips over at Didcot. It’s been an intense three days on the Tiger, but I’m deeply impressed – with the bike, but also the scale of Ixion’s achievements. What he did wasn’t easy – on a bike with no suspension, over unpaved roads, with meticulously planned fuel stops, even working out hill gradients beforehand to make sure the bike could climb them, sometimes with pedal assistance. And 1905 reliability meant riding with a set of spare parts and the knowledge to use them, not to mention carbide headlamps for night riding and inadequate riding kit. Riders had to be ingenious, self-sufficient, adaptable and durable; saddles back then were bicycle seats. It makes me feel positively cossetted and spoiled silly by modern riding. But then, Ixion didn’t have to contend with endlessly dodging traffic – we should perhaps appreciate more how much skill goes into modern riding’s ballet of hazard avoidance. And also dodging today’s equivalent of ‘unmerited attention from the police’, ahem.

The Tiger’s engine is flush with perky performance in tune with today’s traffic, the chassis is softly sprung and heavily damped – which feels nice on smooth roads but gets aggressive when it’s bumpy – and the riding position and ergonomics are perfect for me (although the screen needs a flip-visor adding to reduce wind noise, and the adjuster sometimes resets itself for no apparent reason). It’s supremely practical; the tank range is over 200 miles if you go steady, yet still over 170 miles if you don’t. It’s every inch a Hinckley Triumph – I reckon it’s the most complete Triumph ever.

At the end of his ride, Ixion said: ‘The ride was intended to prove four things – the reliability, the economy, the comfort, and the radius of a good modern motor bicycle; and I venture to say it has amply fulfilled its purpose.’ Amen to that.

We covered the same distance as Ixion but in half the time, and opted for one big more-or-less loop rather than six one-day trips based in Oxford. This was the intended route…

#### Two per cylinder, or four… or what about seven or eight? 40 years after the revolutionary Yamaha FZ750, **Jamie Turner** explores the reason behind its five-valve layout and explains why everything now has four…

**N**ow there’s a question. We could go down a massive rabbit hole of alternative valve concepts, but let’s restrict our ruminations to poppet-valve arrangements. Obviously, if you’re a two-stroke fan you could argue that ‘none’ is the answer, but I can think of two-stroke engines with up to four, with some of the most remarkable having just one, for the exhaust in ship engines. They’re super, super efficient, but not particularly practical to put in a bike frame.

So, let’s just think about four-strokes, where any number of valves from one to eight have been tried. (Yes, one. The French ‘Monosoupape’ or ‘single-valve’ had a single exhaust valve and piston intake ports – weird in today’s context but interesting in its own way. I can feel another rabbit hole opening up…) While I think we know the answer now, it was not ever thus. Two is clearly the minimum number for separated intake and exhaust functions and using two gives the manufacturer lots of choices of how it lays its combustion chamber out. The best is hemispherical, though even that is quite a complex arrangement requiring rockers – think Ducati – or twin camshafts. The hemi also lends itself to twin spark plugs, helping combustion a lot, but most are single spark. Now, the valves in a hemi are big, and inclined at a wide angle, meaning that engine speed is quite limited by valve kinematics (even if you are Ducati and use desmodromics) and the total flow becomes limited earlier by the ‘curtain area’. This is the area between the valve head perimeter and its seat that the air actually flows through. When the valve has lifted to about 30% of its diameter, the restriction swaps to become the port area – meaning that to increase the flow area, effectively you need to increase the area of the valves. And – bingo! – the reason for wanting to investigate configurations with many more valves… From the practical minimum of two, people have increased to three (with twin valves for either inlet or exhaust), four (obviously), and onwards up to eight. Four is where things really click: you get the benefit of lighter valves on the intake _and_ exhaust, so engine speed can be high; the intake port is an excellent shape for tumble flow, which we now know is what you want in a four-stroke spark-ignition engine (although you’ll take any air motion you can get at part load); and finally, the combustion chamber is compact with quite a lot of freedom on valve angles. Flatter is generally better – I always associate this with Cosworth – and wanting lower included valve angles was fundamental in Ducati moving from the Desmoquattro to Testastretta arrangement. Two exhaust valves aren’t really needed for flow reasons, but they do give a large amount of valve perimeter for better exhaust valve cooling. Crucially, the spark plug is in the middle, meaning the shortest possible flame path for good combustion and knock control.

All of this is why, once it started being adopted, the four-valve-per-cylinder (or 4vpc) juggernaut quickly took the world by storm. But once 4vpc had achieved a critical mass, engine engineers, being inquisitive types, started to wonder whether there was another ‘next level’ layout: if four was so good, surely more would be better, wouldn’t they? And so the stage was set for much weirdness. In a bike context, perhaps the most successful of the ‘higher’ numbers of valves is Yamaha’s 5vpc design, produced in great numbers starting with the FZ750 (see p24). However, it took them a while to decide on that. They looked at 5vpc, 6vpc, and 7vpc, against the backdrop of wondering whether a four-stroke could compete with two-strokes in Grand Prix. A full 7vpc 500cc V4 was built and tested, producing 125bhp – quite the output when it was shown in 1980. Staggeringly, it had a bore of 70mm and a stroke of 32.4mm for a bore:stroke ratio of 2.16:1, a number which would not be approached until the late 1990s in F1. It was a packaging marvel: there were four intake valves,arranged in a sort of diamond pattern with one of its wide ‘corners’ in the centre of the chamber, and three exhausts around the rest of the perimeter. The ultra-short stroke and very light valves allowed a 20,000rpm rev limit (a mean piston speed of 21.6m/s – at least that was entirely normal). To cap it all there were also two spark plugs, one on each side of the central intake valve. Cooling that lot must have been an interesting exercise.

While they built and ran the 7vpc configuration, they also investigated 6vpc on the way (with different numbers of inlets and exhausts and either single or twin spark plugs), and of course, 5vpc. There is stuff online about these remarkable creations, but Yamaha also wrote a technical paper (SAE 860032, if you have a mind to look it up). If you are cynical this was perhaps to justify the company choosing 5vpc over 4vpc in the FZ750, but it does compare flow areas for four to seven valves. Shocker, in that paper the 5vpc arrangement comes out the best and 4vpc the worst. Hmm.

Now, driving the valves is obviously a challenge to meet. And the effects of this are where it starts to become seriously unravelled, in my opinion. If you use two cams and direct drive, then for 5vpc you are going to have to position the valve stems at angles so that one of the intake valve heads is ‘flatter’ than the other two, which just looks plain odd (I have no idea what they did with the 6vpc and 7vpc). In the 5vpc this gives a pretty sub-optimal combustion chamber with lots of squish (popular back then, but it promotes heat loss) and one valve has a worse port shape that leads to masking by the bore wall, which adds to the interference in air flow between the valves in general.

Long story short, it was very difficult back then to make a call between four and five valves, although there is the fact that 5vpc obviously costs more due to more parts and machining. Ferrari and Audi both productionized 5vpc engines, and Ferrari ran 5vpc V12s in F1 for a long time (Maserati showed a 6vpc concept as well, but by then in the car world I think everyone thought that was a marketing gimmick). Audi apparently had a nightmare with thermomechanical stresses due to cooling – hence my comment for the 7vpc in that respect. Ultimately, everyone went back to 4vpc, and I think that decision is now reinforced by the more recent development of direct injection, which also makes a claim on cylinder head real estate and cooling. For Yamaha, that just left the business of justifying the _volte-face_, but I guess they somehow got away with that…

So, 4vpc is clearly best; it also allows the (almost) ready application of radial valves if you want to, further improving combustion chamber shape. Still, we must applaud Yamaha’s lateral thinking. However, history suggests they just weren’t thinking laterally enough – which brings us to the only eight valve I know of, the Honda NR ‘oval piston’ engine.

If you check the definition of ‘cylinder’ you’ll find that – for all that we think they _must_ be round – they don’t have to be. They can be any prismatic shape, Spam tin included. Honda realised this and – given the 500cc Grand Prix limit of four cylinders – essentially took a V8 design and siamesed adjacent pairs of cylinders together. Truly, this was an elegant exercise in rational unorthodoxy, spurred on Yamaha’s work into 7vpc, and actually worked very well – or did once they had ironed out the bugs, which sadly came too late for its racing career. (Again, if you have the inclination, check out another paper – SAE 930224.) One of the key enabling technologies in the end was the manufacture of piston rings with internal springing (this is when the pistons went truly oval, rather than racetrack-shaped with two parallel sides); while that doesn’t seem very exciting, it shows that sometimes you have to solve some odd problems to make a technology work. But let’s not forget – fundamentally they took two 4vpc cylinders and siamesed them. Four valves was still the optimum… So, four valves per cylinder currently rules. And to me, it’s a great example of the old engineering truism, ‘if it looks right, it is right’. But don’t think it’s anything but old. Look at a Napier Lion W12 from 1916. It has 4vpc, twin overhead cams, and a single cam cover – all the architectural ingredients of a ‘modern’ engine. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun…

**Jamie Turner** is Professor of Engines at KAUST. He owns a BMW K1200S, a neat GSX-R125 and loves two-strokes.

Ah, summer. Warm tarmac. Bustling hedgerows. Blue skies and proper lean angle. This special issue is a celebration of summertime on two wheels – from essential tips for perfect sunny rides and the expert word on this year’s unmissable events, to the extreme skills to take your season to the next level. We’ve got this summer’s must-ride bikes too, including the first comparison test with Honda’s smash-hit GB350S, a three-day epic on Triumph’s brilliant Tiger Sport 800, and a first taste of Yamaha’s new R9.

Just in case this isn’t enough, we also sneak inside a secret HRC warehouse in the USA, relive the chaos of endurance racing in the 1980s with Team Bike, go hunting for classics in Italy, and explore a wild 28-valve 500cc V4… plus, all the insight, knowledge and belly laughs you can only get from Britain’s best-selling motorcycle magazine.

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Dry roads? Blue sky? Time to get yer bike out… This issue is packed with compelling road trips from all over the planet. The latest Honda NT1100 and BMW S1000XR battle it out on finest Welsh tarmac, the new Triumph Speed Twin 1200 takes on the UK’s longest B-road, and we tackle the Balkan Rally on a Yamaha Ténéré. There’s epic riding and amazing images from China and Australia too.

Henry Cole, that chap of the telly, invites us into his shed to ogle his collection, talk bikes and drink tea, while elsewhere Mat Oxley natters with MotoGP hotshot Pedro Acosta. There’s also a special feature celebrating 20 years of the Suzuki GSX-R1000 K5, along with plenty of new-bike action too including Honda’s adorable GB350S and the fabulous Ducati Panigale V2 S. Plus, all the insight, humour and opinion you can only find in Bike…

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#### The **Honda NT1100** and **BMW S1000XR** tackle sports touring at different speeds – but which is best for a dash round north Wales?

By **Martin Fitz-Gibbons** Photography **Jason Critchell**

**J**agged shards of rock burst free from towering mountains, trying to pierce the sky. Vast lakes, carved into the landscape by epic glaciers tens of thousands of years ago, sparkle and shimmer under the low afternoon sun. Dizzying drops, bucolic vistas and sinuous strips of empty road delicately thread these patchwork worlds together.

Snowdonia has the lot. In fact, north Wales is such a breathtaking place to ride that it self-selects as our destination now that spring has sprung. We’re heading west for three days and two nights of sports-touring idyll. In the ‘hare’ corner is BMW’s S1000XR, a jacked-up superbike with more high-tech tricks than Penn & Teller, prodigious power and a flashy race-rep paint job. And in the ‘tortoise’ corner is Honda’s NT1100, an approachable everyday all-rounder carved from pure modesty, complete with mutated maxi-scoot styling and a mature palette of beige, blue or black.

The two bikes sit at opposite ends of the sports-tourer spectrum, though both share a smidge of adventure-bike influence, and both promise to be the ideal platform from which to enjoy a midweek, cross-country getaway.

Before romping round Wales comes the small matter of getting there. The first few hours of multi-lane mile munching pass with effortless ease aboard the NT1100. Well, effortless once I’ve sorted out the screen. It’s one of the parts that’s been ‘upgraded’ for 2025, Honda claiming its height-adjustment system ‘can now be operated one handed by the rider from a seated position’. Leaving _Bike_’s palatial Peterborough nerve centre, I have the screen set to its tallest height, expecting to be cosseted in a cocoon of calm. Instead, I get blurred eyeballs and battered eardrums courtesy of brutal buffeting. By the first roundabout – less than a mile from home – my left hand reaches for this new-fangled height adjuster. No joy. In the end I have to set the cruise control, stand up, lean forward and reach over with both hands just to drop the screen down to the middle of its range. Shall we start over again?

Now the NT begins to welcome me like a roaring fire in an old pub. Its enlarged seat is deep, wide and comfortable. Ergonomics are nicely balanced, causing no stresses or strains in knees, wrists or back. And the 1084cc parallel twin grumbles away softly, pulsing politely from relaxed revs. Shared with the Africa Twin, it’s a long-stroke design so isn’t meant to be worked hard. The redline’s at just 8000rpm, peak torque comes down at 5500rpm, but in practice you find yourself riding around at even lower revs.

In part that’s down to this bike’s Dual Clutch Transmission. Honda have been updating and improving their beloved self-shifting auto gearbox for 15 years, and on the latest NT it now listens to a new lean-sensing IMU. This means it shouldn’t try to do anything daft such as change gear while you’re cranked over. In default ‘Drive’ mode it’s still keen to shift gears early – you can find yourself in fifth at just 30mph. But switching to ‘S3’, the sportiest of three sports settings, revs are held for longer, making it feel less like a two-wheeled fuel-saving algorithm and more like a normal bike.

Now we’re cooking. Which reminds me – let’s fire up the standard-fit heated grips. Sixteen buttons on the left cluster, another half-dozen on the right… but none marked ‘heated grips’. Turns out you need to press ‘Fn’ (right forefinger), then a different up/down toggle (left forefinger) to turn them on. Of course you do. Silly me.

Right then. With screen height set, DCT sorted and feeling regained in my fingers, now we’re golden. The NT flows like warm Horlicks through congested Cambridgeshire A-roads, devours the M6 in a single gulp, and spits me out at the end of the M54 within sight of the Welsh border. More than a hundred miles of ease and efficiency, once those few early-morning wrinkles have been ironed out.

We stop for coffee, but road-testing new-boy Lewis Bishop looks to be in no need of caffeine after his first taste of the S1000XR. ‘What a bike,’ he gasps. ‘I think I may need to sell my R1300GS and get one of these instead.’ Blimey. I think we’ve had quite different starts to our day.

The stark difference between the two bikes is evident from the first press of their starters. Where the Honda respectfully rumbles into life, the BMW shatters the silence with a fast-paced, feral, impatient howl through its Akrapovic. This, I suspect, is the S1000XR’s idea of a warning call.

We’ve seen superbike engines slotted into versatile machines before, from R1s in Fazers, to Fireblades in CBFs, to GSX-Rs in GSX-Ss. But few, if any, have retained so much sharp-edged sports character. Alright, in pure technical terms this isn’t quite a full-fat S1000RR lump – there’s no ShiftCam variable valve system, and peak power has been trimmed from over 200bhp to ‘just’ 168bhp. But the S1000XR feels focused, like it means business.

After the Honda’s plush perch, the BMW’s seat seems thin, tall and firm. Brakes bite with intensity and immediacy. Even letting out the clutch lever commands attention – partly because the Honda doesn’t have one, but mostly because the BMW’s tall first gear and light feeling flywheel mean it’s actually quite easy to stall.

Picking up Shropshire B-roads we pass through Knockin (complete with perfectly named ‘The Knockin Shop’), slip seamlessly over the border, and pick up signs for beautiful Bala. Each mile is prettier than the last, hedgerow-lined countryside expanding out into wide-open views of mist-topped hills, brief dives through tree-lined tunnels, before eventually, the rest of the world falls away completely. It’s just two bikes, one road, romping along rolling, rugged, middle-of-nowhere splendour.

The S1000XR relishes this empty space. It feels like releasing a tiger from a zoo cage. Above 7000rpm the inline four really comes alive – not in a peaky, powerbandy sense; it’s just part of the motor’s sporty DNA. Peak torque is uncovered way up at 9250rpm (higher than the Honda even revs), meaning every extra rpm brings the motor closer towards its happy place, simultaneously becoming stronger as it travels faster.

Once you get the S1000XR shifting, the rest of the bike loves it, too. Swapping from ‘Road’ to ‘Dynamic’ mode takes one push of one button and makes a noticeable difference. The engine feels more crisp. The semi-active suspension firms up, making it tight and taut without being harsh. The two-way quickshifter is a joy too, slicing through gears far more smoothly than any of BMW’s boxer-engined bikes, and feeling barely any slower or slicker than Honda’s DCT set-up.

As we drop into Bala after a fantastic, brain-clearing yomp, the price to be paid for the XR’s firepower is evident. The BMW is down to its final few litres of fuel, with a message on the TFT instructing me to fill up immediately. Despite having almost exactly the same-sized tank, the NT hasn’t even started to sweat. At the pumps, the BMW costs 20 per cent more to fill up, despite covering the same distance as the Honda at (roughly) the same speeds. Yeouch.

In the morning we head out through the Tryweryn Valley. It’s a beautiful ride, the quiet A-road snaking slowly around the shore of a huge reservoir, while distant peaks nuzzle gently up through a thin layer of low cloud. Sadly, it’s also the spot where the village of Capel Celyn once stood, before it was intentionally flooded in the 1960s to create said reservoir.

Back on the NT1100, it’s safe to say the Honda doesn’t have much of a concealed dark side. The pace naturally picks up as we slip onto the majestic B4391, which twists and turns spectacularly out through blonde-tufted wilderness, crossing stone bridges and cattle grids along the way. It’s easily the best riding we’ve come across so far, and the NT1100 proves pretty up for the challenge, steering steadily but confidently on its excellent Metzeler Roadtec 01 tyres.

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