Janardhanan - The bike freak

back to blogging

2010-11-05T23:58:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time since i sat down to write anything. But I guess its time for me to pen down some things which have been in me for a long time. I have moved out infy and write now pursuing my masters in singapore. more of it later.

my RTR fi - Part 2 , braking

2009-09-27T17:23:00.000-07:00

Braking -

I need to do a special post for the braking dept of apache RTR fi .Needless to say it has the best brakes among all indian biks in the segment. The front 270 mm roto pedal disc offers shar[ braking and u can stop the bike where ever u want to.

The rear discs makes things even easier and better. My confidence level has grown many bound after rifing this bike for 4 months. The brakes are too good and makes the bike a pleasure to ride .

New ford mustang

2009-09-27T17:19:00.000-07:00

The price of the limited edition Iacocca Silver 45th Anniversary Edition Ford Mustang will be from $89,950 (£55,500). Compared to the present Mustang GT the price is three times

and the Iacocca car is coachbuilt by Gaffoglio Family Metalcrafters.

Moreover, it is motorized by a 296bhp 4.6-litre Ford V8, even though purchasers can choose for a Ford Racing air filter kit that ups power to 316bhp or a supercharger that ups power to 394bhp. And a five-speed manual gearbox is standard.

With stitched leather seats, aluminium trim details and a leather steering wheel the inside section is modified and the handbuilt bodywork in addition.

Also only 45 Iacocca Silver 45th Anniversary Edition Ford Mustangs will be made with all painted in silver.

Bajaj to launch Kawasaki Ninja on October 5

2009-09-27T17:13:00.001-07:00

FInally another most anticipated bike is going to hit your nearby showrooms. Bajaj will officially launch the Kawasaki Ninja on October 5th. Upping its ante against the mighty R15 and newly launched Hero Honda Karizma ZMR, the Ninja is powered by 250cc engine and churns out 30PS of max power and an impressive peak torque of 21Nm.

Ninja is expected to be priced between Rs1.5 to Rs.2 lakhs. The good news is that deliveries of Ninja will begin before Diwali. “The bookings would start just ahead of Diwali and the deliveries would happen immediately,” Bajaj Auto MD Rajiv Bajaj said.

Ford unviels FIgo

2009-09-23T07:47:00.000-07:00

Ford small car named Figo launched…Ford small car Figo first time on any media…

Ford has unveiled its much expected new small car, Figo in the Indian market today. Figo, which is an italian slang for “Cool”, will be completely produced in Ford’s Plant in Chennai, India. Ford Figo will be sold in India and exported to international markets.Pricing information of the new car is not available at the moment however company sources said it will be priced competitively to win the much crowded small car segment.Ford Motor company has reserved other details for the commercial launch which will happen in early 2010.Ford is betting big of Figo to capture a notable marketshare in the Indian small car segment, which acccounts for 70% of Indian new car MarketFord has unveiled its much expected new small car, Figo in the Indian market today. Figo, which is an italian slang for “Cool”, will be completely produced in Ford’s Plant in Chennai, India. Ford Figo will be sold in Indian market and also will be exported to international markets. Pricing information of the new car is not available at the moment however company sources said it will be priced competitively to win the much crowded small car segment.

Ford has reserved other details for the commercial launch

which will happen in early 2010.

Ford is betting big on Figo, to capture a notable marketshare in the Indian small car segment, which acccounts for 70% of Indian new car Market.

Karizma ZMR launched press report :)

2009-09-21T06:02:00.000-07:00

As you read it, HeroHonda launches its much expected Karizma ZMR FI in India. The new Karizma ZMR comes up with the Programmed Fuel Injection(PGM-FI), a technology patented by Honda Motor company. As for as the technical specifications are concerned, the new Karizma ZMR comes with 17.6 BHP max power at 7000rpm and a peak torque of 18.35Nm at 6000 rpm. Hero Honda claims the max speed of new Karizma ZMR as 135Kmph. The PGM-FI 223cc mill is oil cooled and is mated with a five speed gearbox. Karizma ZMR uses 6 sensors to scan the engine environment (read as speed,rpm,driver’s input). It also uses auto-enriching system and eliminates the need for manual choking. Hero Honda claims karizma ZMR engine uses HECS (Honda Evolutional Catalzying System) to reduce exhaust emissions.

Karizma ZMR has telescopic hydralic shock absorber suspension at the front end and 5 step adjustable iGRS (inverted Gas Reservoir System) suspension at the rear. Karizma ZMR uses disc brakes – 276 mm at the front and 240 mm at the rear. Its Front tyre measures 100/80 and back tyre 100/90. Karizma ZMR weighs 159 kgs. The dimensions are changed completely – the length has gone from 2125mm to 2110mm, the breadth is now 805mm (755mm earlier), its 1175mm tall and the ground clearance is now 159mm.

The new bike comes with lot of interesting cosmetic changes including the attractive body graphics. The Karizma ZMR FI gets full fairing with integrated turn indicators. The sporty visor sports collapsible rear view mirrors. Similar to CBZ X-treme the karizma ZMR also gets diamond shaped LED tail lamps, racy red colored rear cushion spring and split grab rail. Gold colored engine,front forks and iGRS is carried forward from Hunk. The dash is new with digital speedo and circular analog tacho. The Karizma ZMR will be available in Five colours – Blue, White, Yellow, Red and Black.

Update – 1 : Karizma ZMR comes at an exshowroom price of Rs. 91,000 (Delhi).

Update -2: HeroHonda has no plans to phase out Karizma carburetor version and will continue selling the version along with this new FI version.

So lets hope the price of the old bike to be slashed down.

My RTR fi part -1

2009-09-21T05:50:00.000-07:00

hello folks ,

As this is my own bike i thought i would share abt this in more detail to u guys. :) . I got this bike on june 9 th 2009. So its almost 4 months old, and the experience i had with this has been mind blowing.

Looks-

Well will i have to comment about this. You guys know better anyday. But still i was in a huge confusion of whether to gor for RTR Fi or the yamaha FZ -S, atlast i decided i would go for the RTR for its looks and yes it has been my dream machine right from college days. And to say the bike looks stunning in any angle, the tank scoops do add to a great road presence and the bike looks majestic from the pilot seat ;-) . The racing strip is different from the carburattor version and this makes the bike even more unique.

more later guys .

Pulsar 180 2009 UG4 test drive

2009-09-21T01:20:00.000-07:00

I rode this bike long back when i was in mysore , courtesy - my friend vaisakh :) . He was the first guy to get this bike in mysore and it was a black one.

The bike looks like the 200 and in ways better than that too. It doesnt have the oil cooler unit of 200 . This bike has a beefy rear tyre and come Sans kick start, it has rear set foot pegs to get a sporty riding position. Pulsar bikes have a posh ride and this is the same in this nike too.

Well now coming to the ride. It was like 2 km distance. And at first i was riding the bike real bad.
wasnt riding it smooth by any chance, after some metres i got used to the bike and to say the truth it was really good. The bike had good road grip thanks to the bulky rear tyres. The pick was good enough , but the only thing was the engine. I really felt its roughness . it wasnt smooth or may be i wasnt riding it that way. The torque has been reduced from the previous version and that has been the thing many have been discussing about.But i could not feel a big deal of difference in this case.

Well finally i can say this bike is a real competition for the Apache Rtr 180. Neverthless all magazines have judged Rtr as the better one. Well i would say its ur choice because this bike is not going to go down without a real fight .

later guys ....

Dimension:
Length: 2035 mm

Height: 1115 mm

Weight: 143 kg

Ground clearance: 165mm

Wheelbase: 1345 mm

Engine:
Engine type: four stroke, air-cooled, DTS-i

Displacement: 178.6 cc

Bore: 63.5 mm

Stroke: 56.4 mm

Valvetrain: SOHC, 2 valves per cylinder.

Comp ratio: 9.5:1

Carburettor: UCD 29

Max power: 17.02 PS @8500 rpm

Max torque: 14.22 Nm@ 6500 rpm

Power to weight: 119.02 PS/ton

Fuel tank capacity: 15 liters

TVS Apache RTR 180 TEST DRIVE

2009-09-21T01:00:00.000-07:00

Finally i got a chance to test drive this beast. Ya i missed her by some 15 days or else i would have been riding on her. Anyways coming to the point , i got a chance to test drive her last week when i took my rtr fi for service. The test bike was a black one .

The show room guy popped behind me and was like instructing me how to ride the bike, i said come on man stope kidding. And pushed the start button. The first thing i noticed was the exhaust note , it wasnt even near to the one in EFI . I started moving and gosh i was able to feel vibrations in the bike even at 45 kmph. I thought what the hell and asked the guy what was the prob . He said that the fork was bit loose and thats the reason for the vibration.

Well now it was time for me to ripe her and i did, gosh i really felt the pulkling power of her. It was just awesome. But after getting used to Fuel injection's throttle response it wasnt even near to that. Neverthless this is a 177 cc mill where as the fi is just 159cc . It does make a big deal of diff.

The acceleration was too good and i was at around 70' s in few second. The showrroom guy that started like take left . take left. I had to give in for him and i took a left into a narrow street and then it was just street with poor road's all along i was not able to rip her more than that. But still the handling was spot on, thanks to the new tubeless TVS rubbers and the extended wheel base . I still feel the road grip can improve loads if it was an MRF Zapper.

It was the end of my test drive and i had tested the Menace. I would rate the handling and acceleration better than the EFI . But it didnt have the exhuast note or the response as that of my efi. Overall i wil give in for 180 because of the crazy prob's which i face in my bike. I feel this is a real VFM bike for you guys.. Ride on guys :)

TVS Apache RTR 180 Specifications:
Engine capacity: 177.4cc
Engine type: single cylinder, air cooled 4st
Max Power: 17.3bhp @ 8500rpm
Max Torque: 1.58kgm @ 6500rpm
Gear box: 5 speed constant mesh
Fuel system: carbureted
Front brake: 270mm petal disc brake
Rear brake: 200mm petal disc brake
Front suspension: Telescopic hydraulic fork
Rear suspension: gas shocks
Front tyre: 90/90 x17
Rear tyre: 110/80 x 17
Height: 100mm
Length: 2085mm
Width: 730mm
Ground clearance: 180mm
Kerb weight: 137kg
Fuel tank capacity: 16 liters

Karizma ZMR

2009-09-20T21:35:00.000-07:00

guys now back to business . Lets do a pictorial reviwew of the brand new karizma - ZMR .
To be frank i have never been a fan of the HH guys. Their designing has never been something to take home about ,and this just repeats again in this case too. The new bike has a new fairing and thats the only thing new on this bike adding too that is the new digital console which looks great and new. I havent seen something like this in indian bikes , it looks like having a digital RPM indicator too . Well to be frank i really like the console it just looks awesome.
The rear looks to be taken out from the cbz extreme , the bike looks like made out of three diff parts. firstly the new fairing , the existing karizma R body panels and the cbz extreme's rear with the hunks GRS suspesion. Come on HH you can do better than this. And for heaven sake stop doing this stickering works on your bikes. It just doesnt make any sense launching the same bike with same engine with diff stickerings. Well in this case we have the same old karizma engine with PGMFI , it does look to have a liquid cooling system. Wow thats some news.. The rear tyre seems to be the same from the old Karizma,well thats not a great thing either.

The front visor looks like the one in GSR 150 or am i feeling that way . well i am not sure. looking at the specs doesnt impress me either .
223 cc mill with pgmfi ,
liquid cooled engine (i guess),
and 17.6 ps i heard..
i am not sure abt the torque

but the specs aint impressive and with 95k on road things dont look good. Well i may go wrong in my judgement because Indian customers are crazy . They buy stupid bikes and let good bikes go down the ditch.
Do look out for for my apache RTR fi ownership expereince ... later

First team dinner

2009-09-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

It has been almost a year since i joined infosys, and i got the oppurtunity to have dinner with people from trizetto team. As of now i am not a integral part of the team. I am just a trainee but still considered to be a part of the team by all means.
Coming back to the point, the venue was a hotel in t nagar called barbeque which i havnt heard of till last thursday morning (17/09/09). The team consisted of 28 people and we reached there at around 8 pm. The traffice in Omr took its toll and i was covered with dust and mud all over me .
The dinner begun and people in there started serving all sorts of starters , chicken , lamb , fish , prawn , chicken leg. It was the best i had ever tasted and was so good. But it does come at a premium rate , 460 bucks for a person was too much asking any day but neverthless i wasnt bothered as it wasnt my day with the cash. we had the starters for some thing like one hour before moving to the main course. But i was completely full by that time :) .
And yes , did i mention there was some good performances there, the serving people came up with a traditional african kind of tribal dance as it was some african barbeque food festival this month. there was also a guy who with two bottles filled with some kerosene kind of liquid and fire at the bottle neck was playing with it like a toy. He was just awesome and i really enjoyed the show.
After which i had to leave home , but nevertheless i had a great evening.
more later...

my bike

2009-09-20T10:27:00.000-07:00

hi folks,
Finally i got my hands on a apache Rtr fuel injection on june 9 th, my one year of saving went for the bike. I was bit early as rtr 180 got launched after 15 days. But still the bike is good and i am happy with it.
And yes, there have been niggling issues in my Bike . The idling often went down below the recommended 1400 rpm. The bike stalled and was getting into my nerves , i mailed the TVS guys. To be frank i never expected a reply from them. Alas i was in for a great surprise!!, a tvs
called me the very next day and bingo he took my bike for inspection. Got my bike back after 2 days and she is fine as of now.

And yes i am in love with her :) ..

i am back

2009-09-20T10:20:00.000-07:00

hi folks ,
it has been a long time since i blogged. Indeed more than a year. I think its time now for me to be back with my blogs. I have decided to dedicate atleast some time every week for my blogs. So you guys can see me often in here with new topics and yes more on bike :) .

my dream bike....

2008-07-19T19:49:00.000-07:00

Well now into the best part of me.. Relationship between me and bikes. It all started whn i was in my tenth standard , i started riding my fathers kawasaki 4s bike. It was not a powerful bike but i managed to do bit of wheelies at that time..
But the real part came into me whn i went to coimbatore to my cousins home. My cousin had a yamaha rx135, and this i where i learnt the art of biking very well.
It gave me the confidence to ride ant bike and changed my driving style a lot.

I used to go to coll by cycle till 6 th semester , This was when my father got a transfer to pondy and his old bike came into my control. It was a 2004 yamaha libero with 107 cc displacement. not the greatest bike for a bike enthu like me.

But the bike has helped me to touch 100kmph mark in the early moths, but slowly the bike lost it charm and now it vibrates at post 80 that i hate putting pressure to the engine more than 80 kmph.

But about my dream bike, i want a bike which can easily cross 100kmph, which doesnt skid under vigorous braking, has good cornering and handling. and i need a bike which is not less than 150 cc displacement.

Well i fell in love with this beast called as apache RTR.. well it has been a unfulfilled dream to me till now. My parents refused to get me own. Now i am going to work for a MNC, so the first thing i will do out of ma salary will be getting myself this beast.

well i am not a professional racer. But still i am good at riding bikes and i think i deserve to ride a RTR.....

My college life....

2008-07-19T10:09:00.000-07:00

welll i just dont have words to express my thoughts out here....

I did my graduation BE Production engg in st peter's engg college, chennai.

Well many know the coll is not that best ones in chennai. But for me it is the best .

It changed me from a nothing to something.

In my school days i wasnt confident in anything. i was not good in english, my marks were always poor. I uesd to be the bad exapmple for those people who were said to be good..

This is what made me do bad in my 12th board and i got just 87% . where as people manage to score as high as 98%. I dont know hw those guys mangae that..

Well back to my coll life. The first day was august 27 ,2004. We had a orientation program for about a week. The first day i met a person and he turned out to be my closest friend in coll and even now.. he is the only person whom i call evryday.. Well and ya his name is Daya.

He was sitting next to me and we became frnds really quick.. and the imp thing is we have never had a single fight between us till today... we understand each other very well..

after the first week i was put in the mechanical class.. we were abt 70 guys and had the greatest fun of our life..!!!

then came second sem.. I still remember the first day when few people from mech came to me and said " jana i am going to miss u"..

Second semester wasnt that great for me .. I got my only arrear in engg in 2nd sem.. The paper was engg mechanics..
Time flew very fast . semesters flew ayay like hours. I still cant believe i have finished my degree, and i am here writing this one...

I spent my other six semesters in my dept. well the class strength was 40 , but it kept decreasin slowly . We were 36 in out final sem.

As i hve mentioned it was the best period in my life. i was appointed as the class rep.. well i havent done anything use ful for the class except arranging them iv's to pondychery..

yes those Iv's were just unforgatable.. we enjoyed to the core.... it was fun , enjoyable and wat not..???

then we did our symposium ebulientz 07 - i was in charge of the non technical events... And i hope i did a good job. this is when i found i have transformed a lot.. From a shy, with no good dress sense, moody type of person to a talkative friendly, confident person . and many people have commented about my change inthe way of dressing..

i Owe all these to my coll... I cant forget the tree under which we spent most of our hours in coll... it was a heaven ..

the tree would be the first place my legs will take me as soon as i enter my coll everytime..

Then came the last day.. many people had tears and they were hugging me saying bye jana... it was surprising i never cried but may be after ten years there will be tears in my eyes if i see this heaven again..

i Miss my coll life... my frnds... life will never be as joyful as it was in St peter's...

To be continued........

First day into blogging

2008-07-19T09:57:00.000-07:00

Well all these days i felt why should i do this blogging stuff...

But today i have decided i must do this.. after all its the best way to express myself.

My english has always been, but this is a time to test my writing skills.. well wat can i write abt ?

anything right..?? yes i can do that.

welll expect more from me.. have to think abt wat to write in here...