Modifying our motorcycles is an essential part of owning and riding them. From personalization through aesthetics, to hunting horsepower and slashing lap times, it's as much of an art form as it is a complete pain in the wallet Times are hard though, and methodical selection of any extra is critical to gain the most amount of bang for your money.

For many sport motorcycle owners carbon fiber wheels are the ultimate indulgence. 100,000 THB is a whopping amount of money to be spending on some set of wheels for your motorcycle – and carbon fiber wheels aren't the easiest things to hide from the missus when she's after a new car, telephone, or want to go shopping with her friends at The Emporium in Bangkok. But, if you're serious about going quickly using effective modifications, the truth is you can't afford not to go for carbon fiber wheels.

Levers, screens, end cans and seat units are all pleasing on the eye, but do very little to nothing for lap times and performance. Full systems and engine tuning boosts the ego and helps the rear tire spin more, but you won't get the instant success, and gratification, against the stopwatch. Likewise, unless you spend a huge amount of money on new suspension, you're unlikely to reap any benefits from slinging stuff in.

The biggest compliment I can pay the ride-by-wire system is that it goes unnoticed most of the time.

Ride-by-wire systems work by removing the physical connection between the throttle twist-grip and the throttle plates – allowing the ECU to over-ride any 'unacceptable' rider inputs. The throttle is actually connected (by wires) to a sensor that measures throttle position. The ECU then processes this signal and uses a geared electro-motor to actually move the throttle plates.

Most motorcycle manufacturers have spent a long time finding the limits of what the engine and chassis are capable of handling at any point in the rev-range of every motorcycle model, and set this in the motorcycle's ECU. It's the same idea used on aircraft. If the pilot or rider asks for something that's unachievable or dangerous, the system simply delivers a refined version of the input. In most cases, this predominantly means controlling the power delivery, and most ride-by-wire systems have 3 or more riding modes to choose from: sport, touring and rain.

How do you create a sport motorcycle glove with great feel and keep it waterproof? Previous generations of Gore-Tex gloves got the waterproof construction right but, essentially, you had to wear two gloves: an outer leather shell and a fabric glove inside it that had the waterproof laminate.

This two-glove concept kept water out at the cost of tactile feel. Five years ago, Italian company OutDry released a new technology that expanded and bonded a waterproof liner directly to the inside of boots and gloves, but that is still seeing limited use in motorcycling, Gore-Tex responded with its X-Trafit technology, which uses a closely fitted, waterproof inner liner bonded at a number of locations to the outer shell. Among the companies using the X-Trafit liner is REV'IT! for its Phantom GTX motorcycle glove.

The REV'IT! Phantom GTX glove design lives up to its promise, with feel as good as a typical roadracing glove and waterproofness demonstrated during some hour-long rain showers on an unfaired motorcycle. In addition, REV'IT! Added a number of protective features that are not typically found on touring motorcycle gloves, including hard-shell knuckle and pinky-finger protection and energy-absorbing foam for the thumb and pinky.

In some way, engine development is still in its infancy, i.e. without zero; the smallest number of cylinders you can have on your motorcycle is one. There was one exception, the Wankel rotary engine. It had a single combustion chamber divided between three piston face. You can persuade most people, after several alcoholic drinks, that the Wankel counts as a 0.3 cylinder engine. Apart from this one unusual case, a single-cylinder engine remains the first and smallest engine layout to power motorcycles.

But how does it fit in with today's multi-cylinder power engines? Surely CAD design, modern materials and new machining techniques should have rendered the old single-cylinder redundant. Yes and no. There's no doubt the single-cylinder engine has been superseded in many ways, but, in lot of other ways, there's just no way to beat it.

For starters, it's epitome of simple: one piston, reciprocating in one bore, requiring only very small crankcases. From a manufacturer's point of view, that means less investment,. Fewer parts to go wrong and an incredible amount of flexibility about where and how you position the engine within the chassis. And, of course, it weighs less too. So, in some respects, where you position the engine in the frame is less critical than with a heavier block.

There are two main types of brake pads; organic and sintered. Organic pads tend to feature materials like Kevlar and other natural materials, all of which get bound together in a special resin. Sintered pads, on the other hand, are metal based. Copper and alloys form the majority of the pad's make-up, producing a material that has a higher ceiling temperature and a lesser wear rate than an organic pad.

Motorcycle brake pads vary according to the application they're intended for. Just like motorcycle tires are speed rated, motorcycle brake pads are friction rated. Take HH for instance. You'll typically find that reference on a sintered brake pad and it determines that the product has twice the friction rate of a single H brake pad. This would suggest it would be better suited to a higher performance machine, or a heavier dissertation of energy to slow it down.

Within sintered and organic brake pads, most manufacturers have several different options of product, tiered towards their usage. At the top end of brake pads technology are race-spec brake pads. As well as a compound better suited to a higher initial bite and faster deceleration, they feature special backing plates designed to withstand the extreme forces they're submitted to.

Tank-slappers are complicated to describe, but are basically caused when the motorcycle's steering is knocked out of line. But rather than correcting it-self back into line, the momentum of the steering assembly carries it past where it need to be and actually turns it he other way. The process repeats the other way and becomes more severe – eventually causing the rider to lose control.

It's the job of the steering damper to stop this from happening while still allowing the steering to move freely in normal conditions. That's the main reason why steering dampers are now hydraulic. In the past some manufacturers used friction to slow the steering down, but there were two problems with that. First, the steering damper slowed the steering down all the time which did nothing for the motorcycle's handling. And second, although the friction was high, it wasn't high enough to stop a really bad slapper.

Now steering dampers are hydraulic just like suspension dampers, meaning the faster your try to move the steering, the more resistance the steering damper will offer. So your steering remains responsive at low speeds, but if a tank slapper does start, the steering damper resistance gets stronger as it gets stronger.

The Icon Overlord Sportbike SB1 motorcycle jacket may be mesh, which makes it ideal for Thai (tropical) riding, but the new Icon Overlord Sportbike SB1 Mesh jacket for women also comes with a removable insulted wind-resistant vest liner that makes it usable all year round.

The feminine- and sport-cut motorcycle jacket has removable Icon Field Armor at the shoulders and elbows, as well as a removable Icon dual-density foam back pad, and Icon External Injected Plastic Plates on Shoulders, Elbows and Back. Gather stretch panels improve the fit and provide flexibility. Finally, the Overlord's pre-curved arms and strategic flex zones position the rider in a sportbike-oriented attack posture.

Born from a pedigree of racing success in Championships across the globe, YEC Racing Parts continue to be the right choice for all R-Series machines in 2013. The full catalogue for the Yamaha YZF-R1 and R6 motorcycles is now available to order through the first of three distribution windows; the first deadline being November 30th for delivery by March 2013.

Yamaha’s YEC division continues to work closely with the teams and riders racing their R1s and R6s at the highest levels and uses their feedback and experience to forge an indispensible set of modifications to ensure optimum competitive performance. With public track days becoming more and more popular, the YEC Racing Parts range is the perfect solution for riders looking to maximise the potential of their Yamaha ‘track tools’.

Recent years have seen multiple champions benefit from the successful combination of Yamaha’s R-Series machines and YEC Racing Parts. 2011 saw Chaz Davies dominate the World Supersport Championship whilst Tommy Hill swept the board on his R1 in the British Superbike Championship. Hill was back again in 2012 as one of the main protagonists in the fight for the title, taking the challenge down to the last round. The R1 also marked its strength by recording multiple race wins again in the German Superbike Series with Matej Smrz, finishing on podia at several rounds of the incredibly grueling World Endurance Championship and with American Josh Hayes winning his 3rd consecutive AMA-Superbike title on the Yamaha in dominant fashion.

Why some people refuse to wear a motorcycle helmet? When confronted, the response from a motorcyclist typically includes excuses such as restricted vision, unbearable heat, breathing trouble, no need during short-distance travel, low-speed riding, and many others. Are any of these worth the risk of injuring oneself?

Recently, when in whole Thailand the authorities decided to enforce the helmet rule, there were the usual noises of dissent, with one particularly innovative excuse: “I only ride without a helmet in the neighborhood where I live, with an average speed of only 18km/h, so helmets are not needed”. They need to realize that our heads are not made for bouncing off the concrete at any speed, be it 5km/h or 50km/h!

If you were going on a long-distance motorcycle trip with your girlfriend to, say, Vietnam, then you probably wouldn't want your girl to do it in a figure-clenching one-piece motorcycle suit. No, you'd want her to slip into something more comfortable, like this stylish 2-piece Alpinestars Women's Stella Monza motorcycle suit.

Suitable, this one is just in white and black, but if you think that white gets easily dirty, then the all black option look equally as classy.