What a weekend! Should have been working on the site all weekend, but simply had to get away from the computer for a while.

I had planned for a while to build another alternative of a mid pipe in stainless, the most minimalist yet performance oriented design - similar to what Akro is going to bring onto the market - but with a few 'extras'.

Finally! This sure was a busy week. Long work days with multiple late night meetings, come home, jump onto the Mac and continue working on the site after last weekends migration to the latest and greatest software versions.

Still plenty of work left - most noticeably the wiki is still missing.

This is what weekends are for! ;-) Well almost.

On Tuesday I had a chance to put the FXLiner back on the dyno and do some adjustments to its fuel mapping. Many of you have seen the bike either in person or on various Yamaha posters and Advertising.

As you might know the bike is setup with a 10 lbs NOS bottle inside the left rear bag, pushing in excess of 140 rwhps on juice.

This was written by one of my riding group friends Geoff (drz400s), he's a Moderator at a local forum ridetherock.com , that's  well respected around my area and brings 35 years experience, countless bikes and on top of it all is a really good rider who had a gen 1 Vmax.

"Mike and I managed to get out for a couple of hours of riding along the coastal roads before supper, this evening. We left my place around four o'clock and ran the roads through Marine Drive, Flatrock, and Portugal Cove. I'm glad Mike asked me to go for a run, since it turned out to be perfect weather for riding. But the best part of the afternoon was Mike insisting that I take a test ride on his beastly new Vmax rocketship. He really seemed to want me to discover the differences between this new version, and the old version that we had both owned in the past. Not being one to let a friend down by giving him less than a complete and honest assessment , I decided to really put Mr Max through his paces, once we traded bikes halfway through the ride. First let me say that, if I hadn't just hopped off my FZ1, I think I might have soiled my shorts the first time I pegged the throttle in third gear and let the Vmax spin up to 8500 RPM. This thing hauls ass in a way that you had better damn well be hangin' on bloody tight if you're going to whack the throttle WOT, from 4500 RPM and upward. There is torque and horsepower ontap in literally obscene quantities from just above four grand to redline.

Aside from checking out the super-sized full meal deal of Mr Max's straight line trajectory, I was even more interested in seeing how the thing handled in the twisties, because as anyone who has ridden the old version will tell you, that's where the old bike could really let you down. Not this new version, however! As Mike pointed out after our ride, I had the Vmax cranked all the way over to the edges of the tread surface, as the lack of chicken-strips indicated. The beast handles much closer to the way my FZ1 does, than it handles like the old version of the Vmax did. In fact, it felt like a super-sized version of the FZ1 to me. As if I had been shrunk down to about three-quarters of my normal height and body-mass, and was riding an FZ1. The seating position is not quite as sporty as the FZ1, but it's no where near the sit up and beg, feet forward, foolishness you'll find on many cruisers. Your feet are beneath you in way that makes hard cornering feel natural, and the wide but relatively flat bars allow for the kind of upper-body leverage you'll need to man-handle the big beast through tight turns at swift velocities.

The experience certainly left me feeling like I'd be open to returning to the Vmax brotherhood in the furture, if the opportunity presented itself. I'd highly recommend a ride on one of these things, to anyone who loves to ride motorcycles which have their own very unique personality, and who like to scare the crap out of themselves, now and again, just for the burn. I guarantee that the new Vmax will not let you down where the latter is concerned.

Thank you Mike, for the chance to ride what can only be described as one of the most thrilling motorcycles on the planet. I'm still smiling!"

Its time to upgrade if you are still using Internet Explorer 6 as your browser. With the latest upgrades to our site we are discontinuing the support for IE6.

Microsoft has stopped supplying patches to it in 2004 - over 5 years ago. Any security holes identified since then, are still there.

In addition IE6 does not support many new multimedia features we use more and more on our site. Youtube will soon discontinue the support for IE6.

Just got back from a 1st run up through the tach...  I love this bike, it's so quck to enter "warp speed" stopped for a few pictures, you can find them in my profile pics.... 

Canadian Max

A Monster Marathon Weekend is finally coming to its end. Starting Friday night after some dyno sessions, we took on a massive site migration that replace virtually every single line of code on our website. Its like going from 32 to 64 bit.

We change the foundational software (Joomla), converted PMs and profiles to a new community system, upgraded the forum software, installed new blog and review modules and then put everything back together.

Its not perfect yet but the community response has been overwhelming. Thanks for all the PMs and messages. Many of you seem to like what we did to the site. There is still much work left to be done, but it will take a couple more days until our to do list is all crossed out.

I now have 1000kms and have done the 1st service..Weather looks good tomorrow! Time to Unleash the beast.. 

So here is the fun part about our new blog setup:

Every registered member can blog their own day to day activities around the VMax and motorcycling in general.

Go give it a try. It is super easy and you get activity points for your profile.