rows of white stitching in the seat remind me of a winding roadway beckoning me forward . Riding position for the taller rider is surprisingly good and I found myself hugging the tank with my thighs and feeling snug as a bug on board . The rake of the small screen is enough to be barely noticeable , but still deflects the slipstream overhead , and I remained surprisingly free of buffeting even at high speeds . Paint , plastics , graphics , finish and feel are top of the line excellent , ( it was reminiscent of the level of finish in top end BMWs ) and to my eye very appealing . There are very , very few bikes I would consider fitting in the garage alongside my beloved T120 , but I enjoyed this bike so much , I almost felt I was cheating on my wife . There was one issue which took me a couple of rides to figure out , and it seemed to be a problem until I got my head round it . Very simply , if , while riding along , I put upward pressure on the gear-shifter prior to rolling off the throttle
and changing clutchlessly , the bike would hiccup . For all the world like an ‘ out of gas ’ sputter . Realising that I was causing the issue made me stop preloading the selector and the problem abated . Obviously the engine accommodates the quick-shifter gear change with that hiccup , but it ’ s almost unnoticeable in use . But I was used to loading the gear lever prior to snaprolling off the throttle , and it took a couple of rides to accommodate this system in my riding . Frankly , Triumph has hit it out of the park with the 765RS , and this engine has been picked to power the Moto2 racers from 2019 onwards . Why ? The stock output of the new 765cc Triple is 121hp @ 11,700rpm , with more than 80 new parts . The engine has a new crank with longer stroke , new pistons , rods and Nikasil plated cylinders , and a revised gearbox . Triumph ’ s press release tells us that its Moto2 race engines will be “... tuned for a major step up in power and torque , and a look at the numbers suggests 140hp as likely . Crikey . Leaving the Honda 600 behind seems like a major step up . I started by saying that reviews are often unrelentingly positive , that the bar is constantly
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