Enduro Sneak Preview

Newcastle Herald

Wednesday March 26, 2008

Brent Davison

FIVE-time world endurance champion, Belgium's Joel Smets, will head up BMW's Motorrad Motorsport team in this year's Australian Four-Day Enduro (A4DE), campaigning the company's new G 450 X Sports Enduro months ahead of its international launch.

The Australian event is one of many on the team's 2008 calendar, with plans to contest not only the world endurance championship but also the German cross-country championships.

Smets will ride an almost-stock G 450 X in next month's Australian event at Warragul, Victoria, with the only modification being a performance exhaust system.

The new bike is scheduled to appear in Australian showrooms late in the year.

Grass-green Radical

BRITISH racing team Eco Racing wants to show that motor sport will still have a presence when we are all as green as grass. They will use a Radical SR10 sports-racing car to prove it..

The Radical's race-tuned V10 engine, sourced from Volkswagen Touareg, runs on clean GTL diesel fuel, but the team intends to make that a 50:50 diesel/bio-diesel blend later in the year. But that does not make the Radical completely radical.

As well as the biofuel thing the team has made some of the bodywork from biodegradable hemp fibre and the whole car has been painted in water-based paint. Discreet solar panels have been fitted to power some of the car's electrical systems and its tyres will be recycled at the end of each race.

Do adjust your airbags

A FIDDLE here and a twiddle there and an airbag problem encountered with Nissan's Navara is no more.

Last year Navara's front airbags underperformed in European crash testing because of delayed deployment, the issue serious enough to send Nissan's tech department back to the drawing board to find an electronic fix.

The software modification went into production in December and in the last round of Euro crash testing Navara's airbags scored a three-star rating.

Nissan Australia has begun implementing the changes through its dealer network. All Navara models sold here since the 2005 model launch can be upgraded.

© 2008 Newcastle Herald

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