I’m zooming around East Anglia on David Willis’ GT185E giving it the beans and luxuriating in the exhaust note as the bike comes on pipe – those period Allspeeds do make a rather delicious sound you know!
It’s a fairly warm day and despite doing some decent runs and fast turnarounds for the riding shots the little twin hasn’t shown the slightest nuance of overheating, but I’m pretty certain its reliability has precious little to do with that strange Ram-Air cylinder head cowl – more on this later. In fact, encouraged by its owner, I’m giving the small twin something of a workout to see how it compares to my own Yamahas of similar capacity… and it’s stacking up rather well to be honest.
Like most, smaller stink-wheel twins, the GT185E needs revs to get it off the line and nothing much significant tends to happen sub 4000rpm. Another grand on the tacho sees the blue touchpaper starting to burn, fizzle and then, WHAM, we’re up and away when the needle hits the magic ‘Number 6’ on the gauge. According to the spec sheet, maximum torque arrives just 500 revolutions later with a full 21 horses rearing up on their hind legs at 7500. I’d liked to have confirmed some or all of this in the name of journalistic
