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Gear Brands


A Good Cause, A Cool Little Bike As many of you know, I’m a sucker for little motorcycles. When I met Tracy and Kellie Schooler of Lil’ Bikes Restoration at a friend’s get together, they had a cool little 1969 Honda Z50A K1 with them. It was painted pink and in immaculate condition. After chatting …

Rent Yourself a Two-Wheeled Ride The car rental company Hertz is pretty well-known when it comes to renting a four-wheeled vehicle. Well, now it might become pretty popular with motorcycle riders, too. The company recently launched motorcycle rentals in Europe and the U.S. The service is called Hertz Ride. Currently, the service isn’t available in …

A Bike Worth Considering I’m still a little miffed at Yamaha for not letting Jim and I ride the Niken at 2019 AIMExpo, so I considered letting this one slide right past my radar, but that would be doing our good readers a disservice. So, here it is in all its glory, the Yamaha MT-03. …

Bringing the M Badge to Bikes BMW Motorrad is thinking about using M badges on its motorcycles like the car branch of BMW does. This could be an interesting development for the brand. According to Visordown, recent trademark filings indicate that BMW will change its naming scheme and add special “M” models to its lineup. …

A Lot of Money for Men’s Health The Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride is one of the coolest things supporting men’s health in the world. This year, the ride took place on September 29, 2019, and managed to raise almost $5.5 million for charity.  The event consisten of 678 different rides across the world. It involved over …

The Ultimate Z? Kawasaki recently shared a new teaser of its upcoming Z model. This comes on the heels of a previous teaser that first let us know that the bike existed. Now, you get a bit more about this bike. The bike will officially unveil on October 23 of this year. It will indeed …

Get That Riding Jacket For This Fall Every week, I look over the deals that are out there and try to find the very best ones. This week, I noticed that women’s motorcycle jackets are at a good discount. I also noticed I haven’t done a deals article strictly for women riders. That’s my bad. …

KTM Grows in Strength a Bit More There have been rumors of a KTM and GasGas partnership of some kind. The companies announced the deal recently. GasGas Motorcycles is owned by Black Toro Capital is now officially in cooperation with KTM. The company is mostly a trials and enduro bike company. The company has a …

Two Days at the American International Motorcycle Expo As many of our readers know from our social media pages, we spent two days in Columbus, Ohio, at the 2019 AimExpo on September 26th and 27th. Jim, Cameron, and I did our best to connect with the right folks to get our hands on the latest …

Redefining the Aggressive Street Helmet The Icon Variant was an important street-riding option, but now the company has an all-new helmet that builds on the success of that helmet. The Variant Pro helmet takes what the original Variant did and made it better. It has a refined fit, improved functions and features, and a lighter …

It Is Possible but Unknown It seems the rumor this morning is that Kawasaki bought Bimota. However, these rumors are as of yet unsubstantiated. According to MoreBikes, Kawasaki purchased Bimota from Swiss entrepreneurs Marco Chiancianesi and Daniele Longoni. MoreBikes isn’t the only publication reporting on these rumors, and that suggests there may be some validity …

It’s Not Far Off The upcoming Triumph Street Triple RS has been speculated on and spotted several times in the last several months. We knew it was coming sometime in the near-ish future, but we weren’t sure when exactly that was. Now we know thanks to a teaser video that Triumph recently put out. In …

Artificially Intelligent Suspension? If you thought that suspension wouldn’t be impacted by articficial intelligence, then you were wrong. Honda just patented new technology that makes its suspension smart. Basically the system uses AI to decide what damping is correct based on the terrain.  The system utilizes both passive and active suspension components to decide what …

Get A Good Jacket This Fall The best jacket weather is upon us, and that means you’ll be able to start putting up your summer mesh jackets and breaking out the leather, waxed cotton, and other textile jackets. This is also a good time to buy a jacket if you don’t have a good one. …

The New Twin Is In We knew already that Honda had a new 2020 CRF1100L Africa Twin coming, and now there are images, specifics, and video of the bike. The company made the new bike with a bigger engine and a lighter weight. Two very good things. The bike now tips the scales at 498 …

The EJEAS Quick 20 Systems were provided by EJEAS Industrial for this review Introduction Technology in all forms, with a particular bent for communications, especially wireless forms, along with motorcycling are life-long passions that haven’t been diminished by time. As such, the opportunity to review another new or unknown Bluetooth helmet system is never one …

Proceeds Support Nicky Hayden Memorial Foundation The 2019 Ducati Panigale V4 Nicky Hayden Tribute was announced a while back and was moved around to different tracks. The plan for the bike was for it to be auctioned off at the end of its tour round. That time is now. The bike is now up for …

A Race Replica At the Spanish MotoGP race weekend at the iconic Aragon circuit Aplinestars released a new special ‘Randy Mamola’ Legends Series Supertech R Race Replica boot. The boot is a tribute to Randy Mamola, who was an extremely successful racer from 1979 through 1992. He competed in 151 races in 500cc racing and …

Introduction The INNOVV C5 Helmet Camera wasn’t unexpected really, in that it is a logical adaptation of the rugged versatile INNOVV C5 Moto-CAM reviewed late 2017 – two of which continue to cope with the ups and downs of adventure-oriented/off-road activities. It does make for a bit of déjà vu though, in that one of …

Sena Gains (a) Momentum Anything to do with technology, motorcycling, and relatedly safety education and training gets my utmost attention – always has, always will. So, when Sena announced the first Momentum helmet in 2017, it got flagged, and Sena’s evolution of this product has been followed with interest. Quite incidentally, in jumping into a …

Saga Could Get Less Than It Paid for the Company The well-known Bennetts Insurance company that operates in the UK and is owned by Saga is now up for sale. This news comes after the interim results for the company came in. The Evening Standard reported that the company was up for sale. In case …

The Future for the Future We all know that we need to get younger people on bikes. A good way to do that is to target them when they’re little kids. Harley has its Stacyc stability cycles, but if you want something that’s really badass and can take on the dirt, then KTM has a …

Can You Wait Until 2021? Ducati recently celebrated the Multistrada’s 16th birthday. The company also announced that it built 100,000 units. During that celebration, Ducati also made another big announcement. The company confirmed that the V4 Multistrada will be coming. However, it won’t be here until 2021.  What exactly was said about the model was …

Introduction In seeking a replacement for a well-aged Bell Mag 9 Sena (less the Sena) three-quarter helmet that was used primarily to testing Bluetooth systems, we were on the lookout for something similar but with some updated features and a better build. And in checking the wBW review listings, coverage of LS2 products has indeed …

First Impressions A Niche Filled Getting stuck without suitable riding gear when encountering challenging riding conditions can be uncomfortable, even painful or dangerous. Anyone who’s spent any serious time in the saddle can relate and share an experience or two illustrating this. Many manufacturers will tell you they can build convertible gear to meet a …

Plenty of Electric Bike Goodness Zero Motorcycles has recently announced its 2020 base model line. The company has a good crop of bikes, including the Black Forest DSR as an all-new global model. The bike used to be an EU-only model, but it now is available in all global markets. In terms of the whole model …

An Improvement Over Previous Lids The Arai Corsair-X model was a very fine helmet. It was a top-of-the-line-lid, but now Arai has a new model. The Regent-X. Built using many of the same ideas as the Corsair-X and offering the same protection, the Regent-X takes things up a notch. The Regent-X is also much less …

You Can Forget the Motorcycle Endorsement in Some States Most of the time, if you don’t have a motorcycle endorsement, you’re not allowed on anything with two wheels except a bicycle, but now Vespa will allow you to ride around in Italian style on its new line of 50cc scooters with a speed limiter installed …

Supercharge All the Things! I love superchargers. I love them on cars and motorcycles. I love the look and sound and result of a supercharger, so more supercharged motorcycles from Kawasaki is just the kind of thing that will get me fired up in the morning. Recently Kawasaki released a teaser video on its YouTube …

The Bikes That Honda Should be Building It appears that Honda wanted to make some bikes that harkened back to the Honda CB750 four-cylinder that really changed the world. That’s why the company reached out to 5Four Motorcycles to have the company created a limited run of CB1100 RS motorcycles that have been reworked with …

Get a High-Dollar Lid for a Low Price Every week, I go through the deals on some of the gear sites out there and then I pull together my favorite deals. This week, I came across some excellent deals on Schuberth helmets. However, I have to warn you before you click through and get all …

It’s Coming Stateside No Matter What Leaning trikes are one thing, but what about a leaning quad? That’s the question that the Swiss company Quadro has an answer to. The company will announce its entrance into the North American market at AIMExpo. If you don’t know what a Qooter is, you’re not alone. Think Yamaha …

Finally, Official Confirmation Yep, Honda will debut the new Africa Twin at AIMExpo. The bike will be revealed on September 23. The company released a teaser video for the motorcycle that I have included below. In the video, you don’t see much of the bike. It’s all shrouded in darkness with the only truly visible …

It’s Coming Up While it’s not clear what Honda will reveal, the publication Asphalt & Rubber revealed that the company will debut an all-new model at the U.S. motorcycle show. The show is happening at the end of September, so this is really just right around the corner. With all that said, there are all …

Two Power Variants? Why Not A while back I reported on the fact that the Kawasaki ZX-25R could gain two cylinders. That information came from the publication Young Machine. Now it seems that the model has been confirmed for the Indonesian market and will debut at the Tokyo Motor Show, according to RideApart. That’s not …

What Mad Scientist Shadetree Mechanic Thought This Up? I love people who get crazy ideas into their head and then actually execute on them, and that’s exactly what the Stunt Freaks Team has done. The guys took a Suzuki GSX-R1000 and added dirt bike suspension, wheels, tires, and more to it to make it an …

Two New and Different Bikes Benelli and its parent company SSR aren’t huge players in the North American market, but they are players. The companies each put out a new motorcycle for the 2020 model year. The bikes are very different—SSR’s is a dirt bike called the SR300S and Benelli’s is a naked street bike …

Scooters, Trikes, Motorcycles, and More BRP connected up with Alta Motors a while back. Now the company has seven interesting, new electric concepts. The company showcased these models at its recent Club BRP event in Las Vegas, Nevada, according to electrek. The company also showcased its other product offerings but the concepts got the most …

Proof Surfaces There’s been a lot of speculation about what the next Africa Twin will be. I’d heard it would be a smaller displacement machine and that it would be a bigger displacement one. The jury is still out on the smaller displacement model, but Motorcycle.com has confirmation that the CRF1100 is coming. According to …

A New Generation of Electric Powerhouses Energica has a couple of new electric superbikes in the works. The company has some new versions of its Ego and Eva EsseEsse9. Those bikes should come in 2020, and Morebikes recently posted some spy shots of the motorcycles out testing. To be clear, Morebikes, reported that it was …