Now What?

Our tank is ready, but our bike is most definitely not. As you can see it exploded over the week-end. We've got a pile of parts that would make a junk-man shiver.

The new tank-seat unit proto-type stage is complete and the first tank is free from the molds and is perfectly sweet. The first production run is being made as you read this, and we've got the mounting system and hardware sorted out. If you're considering one call us and place your order now.

Back to our pile.....what are we ever gonna' do with this mess? We are going to make the sweetest and most competitive TLR200-X (X for Extreme) that has ever been seen on the shores of North America. The Honda TLR200 Reflex that was imported here was a dumbed down version, turned into a trail bike for the U.S., of a true competitive trials bike that was available in Europe as a TLR200 and a TLR250. To put this in perspective, those of you that are familiar with the Bultaco's, can remember how the Bultaco Alpina was a trail bike derived from the very competitive Sherpa T trials machine. The Reflex is the Alpina of the Honda world. We have discovered that you can make an Alpina return to it's Sherpa T heritage, and we intend to do the same for our Reflex, only more so.

So, what have we done so far? Well, we've talked about the tank-seat unit that saves approximately four pounds from stock. We also have the new WES Exhaust system that shaves a similar amount of weight and flows better than the stocker. Plus it looks way better than the p.o.s. stock exhaust. We're going to trade the steel rims in for some alloy units.

Bob has already taken the plasma cutter to every excess bracket on the frame, there were sparks everywhere. We don't know how much weight this saved, because he didn't give us a chance to weigh it, when the frame hit the floor it was whisked to the welding bench and he simply started cutting.

Motor. Our motor has some internal worn out parts, it remains to be seen how many. We know that the cam-chain is a goner, as it doesn't seem to want to stay on the sprockets. We are going to do some mild performance gains while in the motor, and will be working towards a balance of cams, compression, displacement, and flow. This part does not happen over-night so bear with us as we work through it during the season.

The Guru has had the slide-rule out (utilising his sly-drool) and has been working on a new valving design for our Falcon Shocks especially for the TLR. We're terribly happy with the Falcons that we're producing now but, as usual, he's never satisfied, it can always be better.

That's enough for now, stay tuned as the TLR project unfolds. Ah, ITSA Twin-Shock class look out, here we come......