Honda

Date : 01/02/2012 Weather : Dry Temperature : Air: 32 degrees, Ground: 55 degrees Humidity : 66% The Repsol Honda Team has enjoyed a productive second day of testing at the Sepang circuit in Malaysia with Casey Stoner topping the time sheets. After missing the first day of testing yesterday due to a ...    Read more

MotoGP Official Test | Sepang Date : 31/01/2012 Weather : Dry Temperature : Air: 34 degrees, Ground: 45 degrees Humidity : 64% Today the Repsol Honda Team officially kicked off the 2012 MotoGP season with the first of three days testing at the Sepang International Circuit, Malaysia. Due to early morning rain, the track conditions ...    Read more

The Repsol Honda Team, 2011 Triple Crown Champions, hosted the media at a Team Presentation in the Pan Pacific Hotel in Kuala Lumpur tonight with a press conference and welcome party. After the winter break, team riders Casey Stoner and Dani Pedrosa returned to the media spotlight refreshed and eager ...    Read more

Torrance, CA: Team Honda Muscle Milk rider Trey Canard was involved in a crash on the opening lap of last night’s Supercross event at Dodger Stadium. Canard injured his back in the incident, and an MRI this morning showed fractures the doctors are evaluating. Canard has 100-percent feeling in ...    Read more

By Aaron Frank | Photography by Honda The only serious electric superbikes so far have been one-offs from upstart manufacturers like Brammo or design firms like Mission and MotoCzysz. That may change now that Honda has revealed this stunning RC-E concept at December’s Tokyo Motor Show. It’s no surprise that Honda ...    Read more

Torrance, CA: The 2012 season of the Monster Energy AMA Supercross, an FIM World Championship series kicked off this past weekend at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California, to a sold-out crowd of 45,050 race fans. Anaheim marked the debut of Team Honda Muscle Milk, with Justin Brayton finishing fourth in ...    Read more

It’s been quite a while since the Mechanical Meditations blog has been updated, because instead of wrenching on and writing about the MB5, I’ve been riding it! The bike has been tuned and registered (temporarily, anyway) and has carried me to work in shrieking style a dozen times in the ...    Read more

Saturday morning I sprang out of bed and was at the workbench by 8:00 am. The frame was back from the Doctor’s and the only thing keeping me from starting the MB5 for the first time was assembling the thing! I forwent my normal morning mountain bike excursion and dove ...    Read more

Viewed from the street, John “the Frame Doctor” Fromberg’s shop just looks like another crowded mechanic’s bay in a busy industrial park. But walk past the racks of metal stock and rows of dusty bike frames into the back room and you’ll see this is no ordinary chop ...    Read more

At some point in the last three decades, the MB5 must have been crashed. Hard. As it turns out, both Comstar wheels and the beautiful powder-coated X-frame are badly bent. The frame and fork have been perched on the center stand in my living room for several weeks now, and ...    Read more

Those who read Motorcyclist on any quasi-regular basis probably remember how much our Aaron P. Frank loved the automatic dual-clutch transmission version of Honda’s steamy, 1237cc V-4 in Japan. But the basic manual-shift six-speed didn’t exactly hit one out of the old road test ballpark a few months later. Extra ...    Read more

The contents in the various boxes and crates are steadily dwindling. When I started this project 3 months ago the shoebox-sized plastic bin I use for random fasteners weighed about 10 pounds and was fist-deep. Now the tub weighs less than a pound and the layer of hardware is shallow ...    Read more

A few posts back I had Rusteco purge the MB5’s fuel tank of 28 years worth of rust. The procedure was a success, but removing all that iron oxide left quite a few pinholes, and that bare metal is awfully susceptible to corrosive coastal air. Brazing the holes would only ...    Read more

It’s been a while since I’ve posted; the MB5 project was put on the back burner while I flew to my hometown on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to marry my girlfriend of 9 years. Now I’m back in LA, and with the sun just rising in the sky, the wife still ...    Read more

My dad taught me that you can clean up a rusty tank with a handful of nuts and bolts and some serious shaking. That rudimentary remedy has worked on countless tanks, but the MB’s reservoir is rustier than anything I’ve encountered before. In my last update I’d noted the tank’s ...    Read more

The tranquilizing effect of this project is a godsend. While I run near redline most of my waking hours, when I’m wrenching I am able to roll back the throttle and idle for a while. The din of Santa Monica Boulevard traffic fades from my awareness as I chase damaged ...    Read more

Not too long ago I had a habit of keeping a project on the backburner, some ongoing mechanical venture ready to collaborate with a cold Dos Equis to placate my mind after a hectic day at work. Sometime between now and 2008 I strayed from that therapeutic practice. Maybe it’s ...    Read more

Our buddy Justin Fivella over at Super Streetbike magazine turned us on to this radical V12 Honda CBX built by Andreas Georgeades, an ex-pat South African currently residing in Southern California. Consisting of two six-cylinder CBX blocks mated Siamese-style to a single, custom-fabricated crankcase, Georgeades’ monster motor is mounted in ...    Read more

For those of us who misspent the mid-70s campaigning a procession of 125 Yamahas, the only thing more loathsome that Marty Smith was Marty Smith’s Honda RC125. Being roosted by a rapid procession of CR125-mounted dilettantes every weekend was bad enough. But watching that Smith guy take the National MX ...    Read more

Few people have had a look around inside the Palatial Motorcyclist Dyno Room, mostly because it's not much to look at. The guys in the shop where it lives don't have time for guided tours even if it was. We like the loyal Superflow. It gets the job done, ...    Read more

“The Factory at the foot of Mount Aso, where humans and nature are as one.” That’s how Honda literature describes the Kumamoto factory, the largest motorcycle manufacturing facility in the world. By any measure, Kumamoto is impressive. Covering almost 1.7-million square meters, the Kumamoto plant blankets as much area as ...    Read more

Honda probably thinks it’s too weird for Americans, and maybe it is. But I, for the record, don’t have a problem with weird. Maybe American Honda will surprise all of us and stick the CBR1000R into its 2010 Redbook. Stranger things have happened. The 09 DN-01, for instance. But for ...    Read more

It was a bad break: your basic spiral fracture of the left lateral malleolus – that’s hammer in Latin – otherwise known as the end of the fibula. I know. People have slipped on an icy patch of sidewalk and ended up with worse. But a few weeks after tipping ...    Read more

There are three words I'm training my doctor not to use, but they still lead off most of his monologs on caffeine, porterhouse steak, dirt bikes and dragging one knee on the ground. "At your age..." he says. The guy gets paid out of my checking account and the limited ...    Read more