The F5 Bivouac (rallye raid news) and W2RC - World cross country rally championship

Bugger

my browser is open on advrider, dakar.com and my bank


Hold thumbs peoples of the palace....

How, when will I know if they accept my entry?????(no I have not finished my entry...)

You'll get a nice letter in the post

Hearing good news through the grapevine in Aprilia's effort for 2010, highlights include;

• New dedicated manager for the rally project, coming in from engineering
• A major sponsor to be signed next month
• Plans to have at least 17-20 bikes on the start
• Figures being named of up to 40 bikes in total
• Engine update with 7bhp extra without reliability issues!
• A 20kg ligther bike
• Design to be done by Behego for new tank setup
• New swingarm
• And a few more thingies...

Might hold off on that Yaktmhon kit and go Italian if I were some of you :)

Prices will run similar to what Yamaha with the JVO kit and Honda Europe would be offering is my understanding.

This new Aprilia might close the gap to KTM's 450RR and be more dedicated then Honda or Yamaha effort..

Got myself a new set of Michelin Deserts from Pal Anders' mechanic Vlado today. Snatched the opportunity for a chat. He's now busy completing the KTM 450 EXC-R Factory Edition with a Mecasystems kit - solely made for the Sardegna rally. After that it's for sale. Talk about tailormaking for the challenging euro-enduro terrain tracks at Sardegna.



It has a separate gearbox and crankcase oil setup. Originally with only 0,6litre of engine oil ( That's Zero-point-Six litre, yes... ) now being expanded to at least a litre or so more. And a few other mods to make it rally-raid ready.

Gorgeous bikes, but 20kg (44 lbs) -lighter- with no reliability issues?

The kilograms will not be coming from the engine, but a redesign off the exhaust, roadbook frame/holder, tank thickness and setup, moving from 2 separate fuel pumps to a single setup serving from a small 'feeder' tank etc...

I assumed as much - I was more referring to the fact that the rest of the bike has shown reliability problems (cracked frames / broken suspension) and 20kg(!) seems like allot of material to be trimming from an already high-spec bike.

Like I said the Aprilias are gorgeous. I do hope they can pull it off.

Matthew

I am not aware of any frames that have cracked but they do tend to flex a little.. They have benefitted from some additional bracing last year. Chaleco's connection between the swingarm and linkage was torn off as we all have seen in 2010 too. Only bike that I know it had happened to, could have been due to the extra bracing on the frame which might have exposed a flaw...or not...

Gotta wait for some updates and see what these will bring!

Keep you posted

I had understood that Rally Aprilias kept the welders busy, but I don't know that first hand.

Thanks for the info, and contributions to this thread. In any case I'm sure the bike will be awesome whatever it weighs.

Cheers,
Matthew

they sure did in Dakar 2010 at least................saw that first hand, pretty much every day or 2 they were getting surgery to patch them up

dont recall hearing that kind of feedback for 2011 Dakar though

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enjoy!

Si Pavey has announced his entry for The Big One 2012 on Facebook.

Top man, the gnarley bugger keeps on going back for more!!!!

GO Simon! Wonder if he'll do the same class as last year.

Wonder of Kemal Merkit has entered again this year?