Having a new bike on the way to join the stable, I need to make room. My loss is your chance!

Grab this unique Custom Star Stratoliner at a fraction of the build cost.

This is the bike that defined the new line of Liners from Yamaha/Star. Winning various awards including the 2007 Star Motorcycles Bike of the Year Calendar - that crowns the top custom builds in the country. This unique, 2000cc big-bore, custom painted, 240, NOS injected cruiser monster will surely turn heads for you just like it does for me.

I have received a lot of questions about how to mount the all new GoPro Hero HD camera on the new VMax. 

One of the nice things about the Hero HD - when you get the motorsports package - is that it comes with a ton of mounting options. Stick on mounts for straight and curved surfaces, a major suction cup, that holds on thigh to anything smooth and flat and various extensions to get any angle you like.

In addition you can get rather cheap options for handle bard clamps and roll cage clamps (used for the massive front forks).

Gotta have some fun. A short break between two storm fronts hitting NorCal. 

Recipe: 1 VMax, decent leathers, 1 GoPro Hero HD

2h of riding, 4h of editing

Santa was kind enough to drop of a brand new GoPro Hero HD mini camcorder including the full vehicle mounting kit. 

The new model now support full HD up to 1080p and 30fps or 720p at 60 fps - amonts other various resolutions. When running with a 32GB HDSC card that's good for at least 4h of video footage, 8h and more at 720p @ 30 fps. 

Given the need for the occasional slow motion clips, I opted to run the 720p@60fps for the first trial runs. 

This morning was just too good to pass it on. Had to roll out the Vmax - even though a couple parts are missing and others need to come off for powder coating.

Took the SLR with me and shot some 450 pics in just about 1h. Fresh air, the day after a little rain, just perfect.

I hope I was able to capture the moment. Here are a few shots of the VMax. Once I am done here I need to take her for a spin. ;-)

Time to look under the cover of tuning a Big Air system. Beginning of the year 2009, shortely after the 2009 VMax had arrived we tested various kinds of Big Air configurations to find the one worthy for the VMax. 

Now that we have access to the new leader in exhausts: Akrapovic - we re-ran a handful of tests - some 150 runs - to re-validate if the exhaust would have a significant impact on the Big Air Design. Long story short - The Monster Big Air still trumps all other designs we did by a significant margin. 

I am getting a lot of questions about which exhaust is the 'BEST' for the new VMax (2009++).

While in general it can get tricky to say which one is THE BEST, for the 2009/2010 VMax it seems to be pretty clear at this moment. Of the available contenders we had the chance to test the Stock System, our own member's (blueta71) designed X-Type Cat Eliminator which uses stock mufflers, the Akrapovic midpipe+mufflers and a 4-1 full system.

Naturally one would expect the best numbers coming from the full system.

After being able to test the Akrapovic exhaust systems on the 2009 VMax, I had to come up with a bolder look for the setup. The baffles definitely had to go, not only for performance reason.

The black end-caps are a little to mild for the look of a wild VMax. 

Here is one of the designs that I came up with that leverages a separate base and invisible mounting screws. 

Yesterday I finally had the chance to install the Akrapovic exhaust system for the 2009 VMax.

Installation was easy and painless and my first ride felt very good. Got too late in the afternoon to test the bike on the dyno. Will do that later today. 

Once I have the dyno results, I will post a detailed comparison of all the exhausts I have been able to test to-date. Should be interesting if the Akros will beat all of them.

We had an awesome VMax this past weekend. Seeing so many VMaxes in one place does not happen too often out here on the West Coast. Great Bikes, Great people and awesome races.

To top it off Motorcycle.com just published their event coverage article. Go check it out and leave some cool comments!

To read the article on Motorcycle.com see here: http://www.motorcycle.com/events/starvmaxcom-dragfest-2009-88881.html