SF205

Fresh off the press and winging its way to subscribers' doors right now is the new issue of Streetfighters.


With the wondrous Holly Peers utterly naked, bar a pair of boots, and adorning the centre spread minimalist GSX-R, issue 205 also contains an ultra-trick Kawasaki, mono-wheeling antics from a KR-1S, B-King and turbo Gixer Thou, a cafe racer-cum-flat tracker from the US, a clever Bandit/Gixer hybrid, an elaborate GS750 and all the usual race reports, project updates and irreverant ramblings.
SF205, on sale in newsagents on Thursday 3rd February.

Zed's Not Dead

Over the last year, we showed you a number of extremely trick Kawasaki Zeds built by the Bulldock concern in Japan. To give you an idea of just how big the air-cooled musclebike scene is like in the Land of the Rising Sun, here's a video of a Zed meeting...

Future Shock

Many members of society are firmly of the belief that the future of personal transport lies with electric vehicles. If this is the case, then we should soon be seeing electric bikes that could, loosely, be labelled beneath the 'streetfighter' banner, much like this design project undertaken by Dan Anderson.



The 'Volta' is a design study by Australian Dan, undertaken during his industrial design degree.



Consequently, there's not actually a running Volta as yet, but with electric vehicles very much in the limelight, it's only a matter of time before we see a production electric bike along these lines.





Of course, there are those people who say that the so-called green electric vehicle is no such thing, given the environmental debt inflicted by the mining of the rare metals required to manufacture the high tech batteries, and the fact that those batteries will need to be regularly charged too. Of course, time will tell what happens with private transport...

Road Kill

As you'll know by now, having scrutinised each and every page of the most recent issue, SF204 features Paul 'Sideshow Bob' Kyle's fat-tyred FireBlade.

Since the bike was photographed for Streetfighters, Paul has decided to upgrade various parts of the Blade, and you can follow his progress on the Custom Fighters forum

Finishing On A High

Following on from our feature on French hill-climbing a couple of issues ago, here's a short video of a young man on a GS750-powered hillclimber - a young man who obviously starts out meaning to take it easy but, by the time he gets to the top of the hill...

High Plains Drifters

While car drifting is far too 'Top Gear' for our liking, we do like Kawasaki ZX-10Rs with stretched swinging arms, we do like Nick 'Apex' Brochta and we do like the guys at Icon clothing, who commisioned this here video...

Those Long Winter Nights Must Be Flying By...

Take a couple of disposable lighters...

Take them to bits carefully...

Stick them back together in a different way...

And you end up with...

Something that you'll not be able to use to light your bifter...

There's Fast... And There's FAST!

And this is most definitely fast!
Bill Warner, pilot of the turbocharged Hayabusa in question, clocks 278.6mph on this run. Just check out how fast it's accelerating when the bike passes through the 270mph mark...

Oh, and talking of Greg...

... here's a video of that R1 'tracker that we featured back in SF191, courtesy of American bike magazine Cycle World.

Charity Blade

Built by Greg DeJardins of Gregg's Customs over in California, this CBR 1000RR Fireblade is up for grabs in a raffle to raise money for the Ride For Kids Organisation, with proceeds going to help sick kiddywinks and their families.

Whilst there are a lot of simple bolt-on upgrades to the Blade like the RSD wheels and Sato rearsets, as per Greg's other builds (such as the flat-tracker R1 we featured in SF191, and another R1 that's in the next issue) the Honda has some neat bespoke parts too - a one-off front number board style headlight shroud and the hand-formed sidepanels show what Greg likes to make - and is finished off with a paint scheme influenced by Freddie Spencer's 1981 Superbike Honda.

These pics were taken by Robert Pandya and blatantly ripped off the Cyril Huze blog although this last one was off the Gregg's website...

Bring The Noise!

If you've got volume on your computer, turn it up now!
What, at casual glance, appears to be a cafe racer'd Suzuki Bandit, is far more than that. The engine is a 500cc inline eight cylinder, created from a pair of 250cc inline fours...

And another video of another bespoke multi-cylinder machine, spoilt only by the bloke who's had his arse stolen getting in the way of the camera, shows a six cylinder machine built, again, using 250cc Suzuki engine parts...

Rocket Man

Bonkers Frenchman, Eric Teboul, set a new record on his peroxide-powered rocket bike at the UEM Finals at Santa Pod last September. He also had the foresight to fit a video camera onto the ballistic two wheeler before the run, and here's the result...

Magpul Ronin

Based around the, sadly defunct, Buell 1125CR, the Magpul Ronin is a rework that uses some interesting engineering and brutal design.

As yet, it is unclear whether any parts or, indeed, completed bikes will be available from Magpul, but the team continue to develop the project.

Find out more on the Magpul blog here

FT204

Happy New Year!
And here's something to addle your fuzzy New Year heads...

"As I sit huddled in front of my laptop in my thermals, two woolly jumpers, a beany hat, scarf and 'Scrooge' fingerless gloves, the UK is just coming out of its first fortnight of winter trauma. Councils are whining about running out of road salt, commuters are complaining about trains delayed because of the wrong kind of snow, and students are keeping warm by setting light to riot vans. There's more snow and sub-zero temperatures forecast and it's not even Christmas yet...

They're not ideal conditions for riding motorcycles, and readers in Australia, South Africa and the southern and south-western states of the US will be smug and toasty as they hack around in the sunshine, but there's no excuse for British readers to feel down in the mouth and grumpy. Well, no more than normal.
Winter is, traditionally, the time for us to be spending time in the shed, garage or workshop, although when temperatures are hitting minus ten and below all over the British Isles, it's no wonder that people would rather be sat in front of the fire / telly / lapdancer than be in a bitterly cold workshop, fingertips freezing to any bare metal surface and losing the feeling from their extremities.
Ironically, it does seem, at this point in time, that the 2010-2011 winter is the time when we should all be pulling our fingers out to build some really special bikes for the 2011 riding season, as there's a number of events that are crying out for some extra-special trick builds..."

Read the rest of this Fighting Talk in the new issue, out now!