Church Of MO – 2001 Suzuki RM250

In racing lightness is everything, and that was the main objective when designing the 2001 Suzuki RM250 motocrosser, the subject of this week’s Church feature, the first one of 2016. Yep, we’re going back 15 years and checking out what MX’ers were looking as the hot ticket. Every facet of the RM250 was approached with optimum racing performance in mind, and according to author Mark Kariya, the Suzuki two-stroke didn’t disappoint. Read on to see what the RM250 was all about. 

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Church Of MO – Moriwaki MD250H Vs Aprilia RS125 Shootout

There’s an old saying that we’ve said many times on the pages of MO: It’s more fun to ride a slow bike fast than a fast bike slow. Never has that adage held more truth than during this, our comparison of the Moriwaki MD250H and Aprilia RS125 in 2010. One (Moriwaki) was designed to be a purebred track machine, while the other (Apriila) distilled the company’s long-standing history of 125cc two-stroke racing into a street-legal model. Considering the difference in performance between the two machines, it was a no-brainer the Moriwaki would be the superior machine around the Streets of Willow Springs racetrack, but it isn’t every day that two small-displacement motorcycles as unique as these two come around our direction, and the opportunity to pit the two of them together proved too much to resist. For more photos of both bikes ripping around the track, be sure to visit the photo gallery.

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Suter MMX500 Unveiled

Swiss outfit Suter, most recently known for its chassis used for the past few Moto2 seasons, including the one Marc Marquez rode to the title in 2012, unveiled a 576cc V-4 GP replica this week. The bespoke two-stroker boasts numbers like 195 hp, 280 lbs and 120,000 Swiss francs (approximately US$123,000). That’s $60k cheaper than Honda’s new RC213V-S.

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50 Years in the Grand Prix Paddock

With 50 years in the world championships of motorcycle racing, Giancarlo Cecchini is almost surely the most experienced mechanic currently active in the MotoGP circus. He has eight world titles on his C.V. and has worked with legends like Saarinen, Pasolini, Provini and Carruthers. He remains in the paddock still today, helping out his son, Ongetta Rivacold, who helms a Moto3 team with rider Niccolò Antonelli. But his roots in Grand Prix racing stretch back decades.

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2015 Yamaha YZ125/YZ250 First Ride Reviews

The proliferation of modern four-strokes has changed the dirtbike world in a profound yet very subtle fashion. We take today’s high-winding four-stroke MX and off-road engines for granted simply because they have been in the mainstream for nearly 15 years. Today’s thumpers are amazing examples of modern engineering. Technology has made them cleaner, more powerful and easier to ride than the two-stroke machines that dominated the marketplace from the mid-1960s to the end of the millennium.

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Church Of MO – Honda EXP-2

The Honda EXP-2 is a tease of what could have been. As two-strokes have been phased out in this country due to emission requirements, many thought (and so far rightly so) that the two-stroke would be a thing of the past. At least in regards to road-going motorcycles. Honda, being the might that it is, attempted to change that. With the EXP-2, Honda was hoping to bring a competent road-legal off-roader to market that would also burn clean. Hindsight tells us the experiment didn’t quite go as planned, but the EXP-2 is still no less a technological marvel to investigate further. In this week’s Church of MO, Contributing Writer Ely Kumli takes us on a tour of the EXP-2. The two-stroke that could have been…

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Church Of MO – 1997 Bimota 500 V Due

Hello and welcome to yet another installment of the Church of MO. Every Sunday we’ll take a look back in the MO vault for stories, maybe forgotten, deserving of revival. For this, our second week, we pay homage to the 1997 Bimota 500 V Due, one of the last two-stroke production motorcycles to be sold stateside, made even more unique because of the technology it employed and the cult following it still enjoys. Now, here’s Colin MacKellar with the story of one of motorcycling’s more obscure models.

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