Practical Sportsbikes

Practical Sportsbikes magazine is about buying, fixing, restoring and riding sportsbikes from the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. Every issue of PS – the magazine home of new-wave Japanese and Italian classics – is packed with: - The most inspiring and ingenious reader restorations - The most in-depth road tests and buyers’ guides - Unmissable workshop tips and how-to features Practical Sportsbikes gets under the skin of the bikes that really matter to our readers and explains how best to maintain, rebuild and enjoy them. So if you’re in to sportsbikes from the 1970-1990s, PS is essential reading.

Practical sportsbikes welcome

The team • The second-class minds and hopeless frauds behind your two-fer-one PSPB

Longest day 2020 is go • It’s all for charity, mate: LE-JOG in a day on £300 bike challenge route announced

Mean, green scene

Tick tock win a Yamaha clock

No business like show business

SPA bikers’ classic goes bi-annual

Winner Phil!

Win a banner!

special we like • THREE BANGIN’ BUILDS from around the globe ticking all the right boxes

IN YOUR SHED • Part way through a restoration? Just completed a trick special? Send us your pics, and details

Of Our Lives • EDITOR CHRIS’S UPBRINGING IN ’90S SUPERBIKE BRITAIN ROCKED HIS WORLD: HERE ARE THE BIKES THAT MADE HIM THE MAN HE IS TODAY

The good, the bad & the Fugly

ps mail • Write a letter to The PS and if it's the Star Letter you win some gloves. Last month's lucky winner won a jacket

PSPB social club • Bikes and goings-on from our Facebook group and web forum

MILLENNIUM FALCO • Aprilia‘s SL1000 didn’t get many takers first time around. But Marcus Westcott’s worked over 2000 model shows what a lot of us missed

Marcus’s top tips

Specification • Aprilia SL1000 Falco

“The one-of-a-kind, hand-built Blade flown in all the way from Japan went cartwheeling into the tyre wall” • With money-no-object, hand-built HRC Fireblades to contest the 2004 BSB series, Michael was in a better position to win than he’d ever been before. But it didn’t happen and he lost out to John Reynolds by just 29 points. He also got dumped from the all-important Suzuka 8-Hour line-up for insisting on a thumb-rear-brake. But at least the North West 200 was still a happy hunting ground for him

OLD FIRM DERBY D • The Suzuki GS1000S and Kawasaki Z1000R are the original rivals from the AMA Superbike golden years. How do an untouched pair of street versions stack up?

AMA SUPERBIKE DAWN • It started out as ‘heavyweight’, became open production, and then morphed into what we now know as superbike. This is the story of those pioneering days

THE AMA WAY • Many motorcycles have inadvertently spawned hordes of replicas (to varying degrees of authenticity), but no bikes have captured builders’ imaginations quite like the AMA Superbike machines of the late ’70s and early ’80s

STILL A CLASS ACT • Like fine wines most Bimotas improve with age. Now even more of a head-turner than it was 30 years ago, the YB10 was the final Bim to be powered by an FZR1000 engine. So what, you might wonder, is this iconic 1991 Italo-Japanese superbike like to ride today?

MAGIC TRX TRX • Yamaha’s MT-09 engine is a three-pot gem crying out for a trad sportsbikes chassis. Ian Cox knew this and made moves to ensure this job was done – and to the highest standard

IAN’S TOP TIPS

SPECIFICATION YAMAHA TRX/MT-09

Emma Airey, Head of RH Insurance, advises on insuring a special like this TRX850 correctly:

ONE LIFE • The R1 has been with us in its various guises for 22 years now. Tyro Tarran Mackenzie rides the original, old-timer Trevor samples the latest version

THRILLER DUCATI'S NEXT BIG HOPE • Jack Miller...