Being outside on your bike with your mates tops everything, as MG, Al and Damo proved when they took to the Welsh hills as Team PS in this year’s Taffy Dakar Rally….

Dealers are struggling to find decent used 2000s era bikes that can turn them a meaningful profit. Alan explains why the modern used market is overheating

Special Build of the Year is go. Out of a sackful of entries, we’ve whittled them down to 10. And what a 10 they are: MotoGP and WSB replicas, a flat tracker, cafe racers, 2T hybrids, a brutal Turbo, and a seriously funky ‘moped’. All very special in their own right.

When is enough, enough? Or indeed too much? Former Florida bike dealer Earl Harrington Jnr became the owner of more than 2000 bikes before he – or more accurately his wife – decided to call time on his commendable but nonetheless unregulated habit. …

World Superbikes has become tediously predictable in the last few years, with only Kawasaki and Ducati having any chance of lifting the title; the former taking the top prize in four of the last five years... Zzzzzzz…..

Kawasaki missed a trick. Had they complemented their excellent 1100 and 1200 ZRX retros with a punchy middleweight, they may well have knocked Suzuki’s Bandit 600 right out of the park.

Mick Jagger may have struggled to get any satisfaction, but here at PS we’re burning it by the tankful. In my case it’s all down to my now much improved DT125R. Having spent a day last month at tuner Mick Abbey’s place fitting a Zeeltronic ignition to my Yamaha, and fine tuning it on his dyno, I’m now basking in the satisfaction of a 19 per cent power increase and 160bhp per litre from my 125. Pleased? Hell no, I’m delighted. See how we achieved it in this issue.

Good and evil. Can something be both? This month I’ve found the proof: Kawasaki’s KR-1R. A what, you say? Less than 200 of these SP two-strokes were built so they may not be familiar but, trust me, it’s a bike you most definitely need on your radar...

Welcome to the newly fettled PS. All the things you love about PS are still here, plus a raft of new stuff too: more in depth resto stories, bigger and better buying guides, new projects and amazing specials, plus more top tech advice and inspiration to help you get the best out of your bikes

In the October issue of Practical Sportsbikes our reader resto is a Suzuki GS750 gets modern makeover with GSX-R hardware. There's a European 40th birthday bash for the Kawasaki Z1000 and we ride a the sharpest Yamaha FZR400 ever. 

Plus there's a head to head between a Bimoto SB4 and a Suzukli GSX11 and 20 pages of workshop wisdom to help you keep your ride alive.