Dealer Show

[RAD]

Scott or anybody find any new supermoto items at the dealer show?

[BaconCRF]

ill find out what we found on tuesday, ill be sure to post.

dan

[smrscott]

Lots of cool stuff. Dunlop supermoto tires, tubless spoke wheels, catch cans, Braking and Magura complete brakes, Avon's new supermoto front tire. Supermoto minis and more stuff like that.

SMR

[RAD]

I liked the helmet device for testing shock - already in your new magazine addition and the tire warmer that had a digital temp on it and you can set it to what exact temp you want them to stay at all day.

Magura's new set up did look pretty cool. Cycra's hand guards now have a plastic protector available.

[Ron Hamp]

im suprized there wasnt only a couple of booths that were dedicated to super moto i was impressed with the spoke wheels with the external spoke nipples so tubless tires could be used .

[Stripes123]

Who is making the tubeless wheels?

[MonsterJ]

RADD.... more info here: http://www.mototechs.com/XTAR.htm

[sigar]

Wow, tubeless & cush drive. Cool ?

[ProCycle]

BST has some 7 spoke carbon fiber supermoto wheels just about through

the test phase. They had their 5 spoke street/roadrace wheels on display.

No photos of the new ones yet but they swear they will hold up fine for

Supermoto use.

[RAD]

It's kind of odd everyone who trys the 5 and 7 spoke wheels hates them because too much vibration but people keep trying to manufacture them.

I guess road race Mfg. keep thinking it will work. ?

[MonsterJ]

?

Too much vibration?? How do you figure? Just about every major motorcycle manufacturer puts five spoke wheels on thier bikes... 72 degrees apart. I've got five spoke Marchesinis on my Monster and never noticed any weird vibrations. If there's a manufacturing flaw I would understand some sort of vibration... but it is irrelevant how many spokes the wheel has relating to some sort of vibration. (unless of course you had 1 spoke ? )

[Fillmore]

Yeah, not sure where you're coming from with that, as prior to the Marchesini 10-spokes (which are really just lightened forged 5-spokes) most of the major players in the road race segment were 5 spokes (Marchesini, Marvic, OZ, etc..)

On the subject of the BST CF wheels, I spoke with the BST guys at length at the show.

The seven spoke design is evidently to meet some race rule in some countries about not being able to fit your arm between the spokes of the wheels on dirt bikes.

They aren't really just a simple derivation of the existing BST road race wheels, but an entirely new design with a more bladed spoke. They estimated two months befroe the production versions are available.

On the plus side for consumers is that the current design aims at having a common wheel for all of the planned applications that would use different hub hardware to fit the wheel to different brands. If a bike was sold, the owner would be able to purchase just the fit kit and use the wheels on a new bike.

--Fillmore

[FFRacing79]

It's kind of odd everyone who trys the 5 and 7 spoke wheels hates them because too much vibration but people keep trying to manufacture them.

I guess road race Mfg. keep thinking it will work. ?

Tell that to Performance Machine and the racers that use their wheels. ?

[RAD]

Derrick and Mark both said the same thing independently, "they telegraph too much road vibration for the supermoto bikes." ?

For some reason you guys you guys think the wheels work the same on a street bike as a light supermoto bike.

[Fillmore]

That may just be mag wheels vs. wire spoked wheels, but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the spoke count on the mags.

--Fillmore

[Fillmore]

Here are some of my general observations from the Dealer Expo.

I was there as a distributor of supermoto related aftermarket products, so I got the hear comments from both dealers and manufacturers regarding how they feel about supermoto.

- Many manufacturers and vendors are very enthusiastic about supermoto. When we talked to them they all wanted to know how they could better position themselves to meet the needs of the SM market. While this is especially true for the aftermarket (brakes, suspension, gearing, exhaust, etc.), we did spend some time with corporate representatives from both KTM and Yamaha who also wanted to know where we thought supermoto was going.

- Dual sport supermotos seem to be at the front of the list of concerns for many of the dealers and vendors. They realize that for SM to become an economically viable niche in the motorsports market, people other than racers need to be buying the products. The Magura radial supermoto brake kit actually comes with a brake light switch installed. Unfortunately, I believe that we were the only people showing a dual sport supermoto in our booth at the show, and in fact may have been the only people showing supermoto bikes that weren't Pro level racers (We had a KTM 525 MXC factory dual sport and YZF 450 race bike owned by one of our employees).

- Several of our foreign vendors commented that they felt the US supermoto market was behind everywhere else in the world. This was usually attributed to the lack of street legal supermotos.

- On the racing side, many of the dealers and vendors made comments that they didn't feel that the AMA was promoting supermoto racing in a way that would maximize the growth of the sport.

- Most of the manufacturers and vendors with supermoto specific products seem to be offering high quality products, but are basically saying that they are giving the products a year to take off. They feel that they need to sell a significant number of to justify keeping them in their product line, but also feel like they need to get out there and in use in order to get feedback from the users to improve the products.

- Many brick and mortar, franchised dealerships told us that they felt like they were missing out on supermoto movement. They said that they had customers looking to do supermoto conversions or buy supermoto parts, but that they didn't have the knowledge or access to parts to help their customers much. Several also stated that they felt that they were losing potential supermoto sales to the internet.

-- SM related things that I thought were cool --

-Magura Supermoto Radial Brake Kit

We did actually have one of two Magura Supermoto kits in the US on display in our booth. It looked like a nice, well put together kit, but since we had to give it back to Magura at the end of the show, we didn't have a chance to mount it to a bike and check it for fit/function. The kit utilizes a radial mount caliper and requires the consumer to replace the brake side fork bottom with the one supplied with the kit. Expect broader consumer availabillity next month.

-Braking Supermoto brakes

Braking was bought by SunStar several month ago and has been in the process of re-introducing their product line to the US. Their new supermoto brakes look to be an excellent start. The caliper is no longer a one piece unit, but a common caliper that will be mounted to motorcycle specific brackets. The caliper will work with the familiar Braking wave rotor and a very cool new radial master cylinder that incorporates a built in reservoir similar to the non-radial Brembo "coffin box" master cylinders.

-XTAR Wheels

I've been working with the XTAR wheels for a couple of months, so it's had for me to say that they excited me at the show, but they received a lot of attention and the feedback that we got on them was pretty enthusiastic.

-Vibram Supermoto replacement soles

Another thing that we've been working with, but probably the second most looked at item in our booth. These are replacement soles for most MX boots that add screw-in replaceable sliders to your exising boots. They currently have three different plastic compounds available for the sliders. We had a set mounted at our local shoe repair shop to a pair of well worn Alpinestars Tech-8s and they added new life to a set of boots.

--Fillmore

[TeamScream]

Good post Fillmore,

Thanks alot for the details, much appreciated.

[MadMarche]

Thanks for taking the time to post that! It was VERY infomative. Hope to see you at the Stateline Supermoto Challenge on April 2 & 3 at Buffalo Bills.

PM me if you are interested in coming out to set up a vending booth.

[Darrick_Lucchesi]

A lot of products you have been hearing about are finally being prodused and were at the show. I have a few new products that I am testing now. Some are very cool!!! ?

Darrick

www.westcoastsupermoto.com

[RAD]

As far as new products coming out as a whole I would say the dealer show was a flop compared to most years, even though Supermoto did a better job of having new products than the show as a whole. Most of the dealers I talked to were a little disappointed. Most were very aggravated again at the amount of import zero quality brands of motorcycles at the show. The best one is when a guy put a bike on an attached stand and the bolt holding the stand popped out and shot across the floor, yes it was a supermoto bike too next to the fast 50's booth but I forget the brand. LOL

GP Tech had the Xtar wheels at last years show. they still look pretty cool.

Just curious what did you tell the two Mfg. you talked to where you think Supermoto is headed? The Mfg's you spoke with are at opposite ends of the spectrum from each other as far as getting involved in Supermoto.