Cycle World Podcast

Mecum's 34th Annual Las Vegas Vintage & Antique Motorcycle Auction will feature 2,000 motorcycles! https://www.mecum.com/auctions/las-vegas-motorcycles-2025/ Bid live at the South Point Hotel & Casino or register to bid online or by phone, January 29-February 1, 2025. Have a bike to sell? Consigning with Mecum is easy. Don't want to go out of pocket on your auction purchase? Mecum...

Mecum's 34th Annual Las Vegas Vintage & Antique Motorcycle Auction will feature 2,000 motorcycles! https://www.mecum.com/auctions/las-vegas-motorcycles-2025/ Bid live at the South Point Hotel & Casino or register to bid online or by phone, January 29-February 1, 2025. Have a bike to sell? Consigning with Mecum is easy. Don't want to go out of pocket on your auction purchase? Mecum offers s...

Mecum's 34th Annual Las Vegas Vintage & Antique Motorcycle Auction will feature 2,000 motorcycles! Bid live at the South Point Hotel & Casino or register to bid online or by phone, January 29-February 1, 2025. Check out the auction here: https://www.mecum.com/auctions/las-vegas-motorcycles-2025/ Have a bike to sell? Consigning with Mecum is easy. Don't want to go out of pocket on your auct...

Harley-Davidson's famous racing boss Dick O'Brien was looking in the 1960s to strike back at Triumph and its 500cc twins that were winning Daytona. With the help of star tuners Jerry Branch and Neil Keen, plus some clever work at the Caltech wind-tunnel, Harley came back with a race-winning flat-head 750 AND tested a strange prototype called the Midget that was even faster but is lost to history....

It went from You Meet the Nicest People to You Meet World Champions on a Honda in a very short span of time. In 1959, Honda was selling scooters in the U.S. Ten years later it was the CB750--and Honda's GP racing effort in those intervening years drove this change. Technical Editor Kevin Cameron talks with Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer about Honda's meteoric rise in Grand Prix racing during the 1960s...

MV Agusta four-stroke Grand Prix racers howling through their megaphone exhausts are legendary! Cycle World's Kevin Cameron and Mark Hoyer talk about MV from its first little modest little machine built in post-World War II Italy to world-dominating racing motorcycles that continued to compete into the 1970s. Sometimes slow to change and other times rapidly updating designs to stay competitive wit...

Rim brakes, under-engine exhausts, extreme frame geometry, Harley-Davidson engines—so much has happened with Erik Buell and the motorcycles he's made, from Buells and its closure by Harley-Davidson in 2009 to reborn EBR and its partnership with Hero Motorcycles only to close again. Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer talk about Erik Buell the AMA Expert road racer in the...

The remarkable evolution of slowing down: No brakes to rim brakes to drum brakes to discs, we convert the energy of movement into heat to slow down. But there is so much detail to discuss! Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer talk about braking in detail. Looking to buy? Get prequalified https://octane.co/flex/1?a=171

Kevin Cameron starts from the beginning of two-stroke exhaust expansion chamber development in the 1950s to the present. What were its origins and how did it explode power output in these simple, lightweight engines? How did we go from 8-hp single-cylinder commuters to 200-hp 500cc Grand Prix four-cylinders? Kevin knows, and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer rides along with him. Looking to buy? Get preq...

Honda blew minds with the V3 Concept that uses an electric supercharger to boost intake pressure. Why an electric supercharger? Why a V-3 layout? How much power could it make? How much electric power would the supercharger use? How could perfectly constant boost or instantly variable boost be used to improve the riding experience? So many questions about this incredibly interesting concept—AND Hon...

Honda decided to go dirt track racing in the 1980s and it wasn't long before it was winning—a lot! Technical Editor Kevin Cameron was the AMA observer at the resulting dyno tests as restrictor plates were tested to restore "parity" with the XR-750 and he followed the development of the Honda flat track racer from the early "sideways CX500" to the proper built-from-scratch RS750. Of course there is...

What do Rake, Trail, Wheelbase and Offset mean for your motorcycle and how it turns, stops, accelerates? Are there magic numbers that result in "good" handling? What is good handling anyway? Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer talk about motorcycle handling and the fundamental improvements that have made new bikes so good.

Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief visited Barber Vintage Festival and watched Kenny Roberts ride his world championship winning 0W48 Yamaha on some epic (and great smelling!) demonstration laps. The guys talk about Yamaha two-stroke tech, Hoyer vintage raced a 1972 BMW (and won!), the amazing Barber Museum and so much more about this epic motorcycle cultural event. There were 500...

Weird, wonderful, precise, strange, or brutal, these tools shared by Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Mark Hoyer make working on motorcycles easier, more repeatable and more fun. How many do you own? How many have you heard of? Thanks for watching! Shopping for a motorcycle? Get a no-impact credit check and find out about your pre-approved buying power now: https://octane.co/flex/1?a=171

How many Yamaha RD350 crankshafts has Kevin Cameron rebuilt? How many cylinders ported? KC and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer talk about Yamaha’s sporty and quick two-stroke twin, from its origins in the 1960s all the way to the RZ350 of 1985. Hoyer’s first streetbike was a 1979 RD400 Daytona Special—lots to cover. Breathe deep!

The Honda NS500 and NSR500 two-stroke four-cylinder grand prix bikes were hotbeds of innovation and showed exceptional dominance in the hands of genius riders such as Freddie Spencer, Eddie Lawson and, particularly, Mick Doohan, winner of FIVE consecutive world championships in the 1990s. Technical Editor Kevin Cameron has deeply studied the NSR500 and it shows in this podcast—he knows a lot of st...

75 percent Win Rate! From the first FTR750 engine to the final legal season for the bike and 8 championships, Cycle World was there. Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer talk about the origin and development of the motorcycle that dominated American Flat Track since its introductory 2017 season. There is, of course, a deep tech dive, plus all the extras you’ve come to expe...

Gasoline has a lotta BANG per pound, making it pretty ideal fuel for the motorcycles we love. Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer discuss the future of petroleum fuels, synthetic fuels, ethanol and more, plus electric battery storage and the prospects there for motorcycling. Much to cover! Kevin says, "Pounds per horsepower hour," "light molecules" and...

Can you imagine a motorcycle universe without the Adventure Bike? But before the 1980 BMW R 80 G/S (Gelände/Strasse) there really wasn't such a thing. Now ADVs have spawned an entire culture of two-wheel adventuring. Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer talk about the origins of the BMW GS and its evolution to the new R 1300 GS. Join us on our hour-long adventure! Shop...

So much of great-working motorcycle comes down to precise heat management of the engine, tires, gears, brakes, and more. Technical Editor Kevin Cameron takes a deep dive with Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer on the many effects of heat and the cascading influence it has on overall motorcycle performance. Shopping for a motorcycle? Get pre-approved for you dream bike: https://octane.co/flex/1?a=171

Get pre approved on a motorcycle here - https://octane.co/flex/1?a=171 Almost as old as dirt, the Harley-Davidson XR-750 flat-track race bike was introduced in 1970 and the design has endured to this day. Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer dive into the origins of the XR-750, its evolution, and how it is still capable of winning national races five decades later. They&#3...

Get Pre Approved on a Motorcycle Here: https://octane.co/flex/1?a=171 The joke goes, "The only way to get suspension to work in the 1970s was to not let it!" We've come a long way, and that was the beginning of the suspension revolution that brings us to today's generally great components and all the world-class stuff going on in racing. Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer and Technical E...

Metals are absolutely key to our good times on two wheels. Steel, Aluminum, Chromium, Nickel, Copper, Brass, Magnesium ("electrified dirt") and all the alloys make up our most loved form of transportation and good times. As ever, CW Technical Editor Kevin Cameron knows a lot of key details which he shares with Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer and the rest of us. Thank you for all the support o...

What are opening and closing ramps on a camshaft profile and why are they so important? Why do we use nested or beehive valve springs? When is it best to use pushrod valve actuation or DOHC shim-under-bucket tappets or finger followers? Should we drive cams with gears, chains, or belts? Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer (but mostly Kevin...) talk about the intricate det...

A long-time US KTM employee described in the early days when the head of the company mortgaged his house to buy some box vans. Contrast this to KTM's American HQ opened in 2023 that cost $53 million and racing on the world stage from hard enduro to MotoGP. Yes, a lot has changed for KTM, once the builder of quirky dirt bikes but now making every kind of motorcycle with an obsession for high-pe...