This is something that has some real value to every single person who rides dirt bikes. Right now it's difficult to tell if the magazines or web sites can test bikes without bias shown to the manufacturers that spend thousands in advertising with them and give them free stuff and bikes.
Some thoughts and ideas about the Independent Testing of dirt bikes.
What if was a selection of riders along with their bios as the testers?
How about comparing the bike side-by-side with it's competition? No testing a bike in a vacuum or spreading them out all throughout the year.
How about using video to compare one to the other? Not just a fluff piece showing how cool one bike is without stacking it up against real competition. But show the bikes in a start situation with a real gate and switching riders on different brands. Would this help to give a better impression of which bike did what?
Obviously the logistics of this could be challenging. Why? Well in order to test without any bias we would have to borrow or rent the bikes for testing. We would have to get these new (newer?) machines all in one place a few separate times to do a thorough job of testing.
Would you want a one day riding impression or something a bit more in depth?
Do you want allow some small modifications to the bikes of obvious faults (like grips, tires,etc..) that most racers would change before they rode?
Then there is the case of money to perform the test. Possibly the rental costs of the bikes. The rental fee for the track or paying the practice fees for those involved. Some food for the testers. A video shooter and a photographer. Fuel for all the bikes. And probably some other expenses that don't come readily to mind.
This has been the biggest stumbling block to getting this off the ground, until one of our members came up with an idea worth pursuing. Here is a quote from a post from JETZcorp:
Maybe it could be us as a collective. There could be a sort of drive where we draw out a plan to create such a test, make up a budget and start taking down names. People volunteer to donate however much money they want to contribute to the test. When one signs up, he/she is committed to donate the amount of money they say to, if and only if the target amount gets promised.
Let's say we need $2000 to make it work (I have no idea) and I'm going to promise $50. I could say I'm going to do that now, and not pay a cent. Then, once the "promise balance" or whatever reaches $2000, we know that the drive was a success and everyone pays. If $2000 isn't reached, there's no wasted money. We could also go around, talk to dudes at races, make posts on other forums and such to help spread the word for the idea of an unbiased shootout with independent, unaffiliated test riders. What do you guys think?
What do you guys think? would this be something that you would want to see? Would you be willing to pay a small fee to see it happen?
Just as I wrote the last line I thought about the whole money thing. To do this right there would have to be a full disclosed accounting. How much money was brought in and the cost of all expenses. Would this be fair? Do you think folks would be more likely to donate to the tests if they knew how the money was spent?
Let's hear some feedback, additional ideas or criticism about whether you think this would work or not.
