Hello and welcome to the long-awaited (well, about a month) Front End Chatter Episode 65 – supported as ever by our magnificent colleagues, pals and beneFECtors at www.bikesocial.co.uk and Bennetts, the bike insurance specialists.

 

This week FEC bangs on about subjects as wide and varied as:

 

• how does three-time World Superbike champ Jonathan Rea’s win-race ratio match to Carl Fogarty’s, and how to fix World Superbike (again)
• did the three-way Showdown final British Superbike round at Brands and the subsequent love-in make us want to watch it next year?
• ...and compare all that to an epic MotoGP race at Motegi

 

PLUS! words of gossip about what we know about 2018’s new bikes (or do we?) including

• the 2018 supercharged, sports touring Kawasaki H2R GT...
• ...and their Z900RS, and how close it’ll be to the existing Z900
• Honda’s NSC ‘New Sports Cafe’...
• ...and if the motor is based on the CB650F inline four
• Honda’s new Goldwing with its funny front end...
• KTM’s 790-800cc Duke parallel twin which probably won’t have bungees pulling the pistons back to TDC
• Yamaha’s MT-07-based T7 budget adventure bike
• Triumph’s, er, well, definitely not a 765 Daytona, say Triumph...
• Harley-Davidson’s new Softail range of, er, big V-twins including the rather splendid Fat Bob

 

PLUS! listeners’ questions, including:

• what supermoto as a second bike
• the law around on-bike dash-cams – and can plod nick you using your own sat nav’s ‘snail-trail’ as evidence?
• are smaller bikes less likely to get you in trouble?
• can you buy a decent used bike for the price of a new iPhone?

 

Thank you for listening and putting up with us – and please email any biking questions (or any questions you like) or comments to

 

[email protected]

 

or get us on Twitter @SimonHbikes

@Mufga

 

And don’t forget to check out www.bikesocial.co.uk and get your bike insurance with Bennetts.