Honda preparing Dakar assault

if it was it would have been fixed by now............

Not sure if they can change a bigend through that opening, but the Japanese mechanics do have small hands

A Japanese gynocorrigist mecharric...

now now....

What's the latest on Felipe Zanol?

Sadly, from my perspective, it seems like badly injured riders like this quickly drift away from the headlines. It seems the official channels don't want to talk about these unfortunate accidents. Does anyone know if he's even out of the hospital? Conscious? On the mend? Or possibly suffering long-term effects?

http://www.advrider.com/forums/showpost.php?p=20391764&postcount=1149

All the pics I see HRC has the high fender, Has anyone seen or heard of the option of low or high??

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Does this mean that a HRC "Kit" is available?

Me too. We'll all benefit from KTM and Honda doing their best to beat each other, not only in the race we watch but the products we buy.

The fuel issues are interesting, my suspicion is that there was farther between gas with soft sand today than there has been for a while. Honda pushed the edge of how little fuel they could bring, and the long section of sand drained it.

I was hoping they would not have fuel issues with this new bike as it was just two years ago when Quinn Cody on the old crf450 had to switch to a bigger front tank because he was running out of fuel...while pushing for top 15. Helder is trying to win and we all know what that does to fuel mileage.

But that's the crazy thing, Helder was always going for the win and there was always a lot of dune sand at the beginning - with all the effort this year it's hard to believe that something as basic as this hasn't been got right - and from what we have seen it isn't right!

The top end speed you can undertsand as to develop a new engine, as opposed to a few strengtheners, in 6 months would have been a big ask.

I believe we are getting at the point where this Honda exercise might be showing it's true colors. In order to justify any racing expenditure,the HRC boys always have to convince the marketing dept. of real world applications. Fuel consumption has long been their justification in MotoGP (the abominable 21lt rule). They might be thinking along the same lines for the Dakar effort (introducing the same fuel efficiency exercise to the offroad market).

In the mind of Honda, the lessons gained by tweaking and pushing the EFI to the limits might be more important than a first year win.

I might be completely wrong though

So around August the ASO will release the 2014 regs which will has a PS - 30ltr max fuel capacity this year

Regarding the fuel issue, has anybody considered that they didn't fill their tanks to the brim? Many riders are know to fill only what is necessary for the stage without taking into consideration a little extra in case of getting lost.
Remember Hélder last year (or 2011, can't remember) when he was leading the stage whilst everybody else got lost with navigation. He turned around thinking he was wrong, then went back the way he came from because he was correct. He had to stop because of a slight extra few KMs. I believe it was the Aussie Jacob Smith who gave him a few litres in his Camelbak to him!

I can understand holding back on the extra weight for something like the prologue, but for a full stage of 242kms?

You may be correct, but I still think it's suicidal to skip the extra -what- 2,3,4 litres for peace of mind?

Has anybody considered that his tripmaster was faulty and he wasn't aware of the distance travelled?



















Tony

It is in a way suicide, but many doe them including Verhoeven. Usually the golden rule is fill up (and eat up) whenever you can!

You won't believe how anxious I am every day hoping that it doesn't come to that!!! So far we already have a stage wing from yesterday together with 3rd place