Looking for the best mods that would be easy enough to plug/unplug to my 2026 MT-09 SP to make it into a livable sport touring when needed for few hours of highway riding and back roads combo.
Anyone who’s done something like this? Appreciate tips of best wind protection, baggage and other stuff.
If you were to buy a used middleweight street legal sport bike to have it mostly as a track bike, which one would you go for? Model and year, why?
The ones that I’m considering at the moment are the 2015-17 Daytona 675R or a 2017–2020 R6.
About 6 weeks ago I’ve bought a brand new 2026 Tuono 660 Factory. I was very excited with my choice, I’m a big fan of Aprilia Racing and admire their recent developments on MotoGP.
By spec, looks and sound this bike is amazing, supposed to be the best value for the money, with all the best components and perfect for my use case.
Unfortunately, passion aside, my experience with the bike was quite bad.
Started in the very first ride with a series of annoyances that at first I was willing to live with, the infamous squealing rear brakes, squishy feeling and very loud embarrassing squeal that makes every other driver look at you at the stop lights, supposedly it should go away after a week or so of “bedding” the pads, but it never did.
Then the vibrations, I understand twin engines vibrate and a certain level of buzzing vibrations at highway cruising speeds is expected, but I believe mine had something wrong, the vibrations were very high, to the point of numbing your hands and feet in 20 min of riding, the worse was around 5k to 7k RPMs specially in 2nd and 3rd gears, but also high in other ranges and gears.
I’ve mentioned both issues to the dealer (Southeast Motorcycles in Douglasville, GA) but was told these are known issues and part of the bike’s “character”.
Annoyances aside, after 2 weeks and about 250 miles, one day I was riding the bike for about 30 min when I noticed it was overheating pretty badly, Ive stopped and saw it was dumping coolant by the tube coming from the water pump weep hole.
Ive called the dealer and they picked up the bike a few days later, they told me it could take a few weeks to fix it due to having two other brand new 660s in front of mine to fix for the exact same issue. I did a quick research online and easily found 6 other reports of the same problem with brand new 660’s bought over the last 3 months. For 3 of them the owners reported the issue coming back or turning into oil leaks over the next few months after the first fix.
The dealer fixed mine under warranty as expected and I went there to pick it up. I had also asked them to take a look at the squealing rear brakes but they just ignored it and did nothing for that.
I learned later that another customer of theirs has found a procedure recommended by Piaggio to fix the brakes and took his bike there with the instructions which they applied, so supposedly now they would know what to do for other bikes with same problem.
I picked the bike up and rode about an hour from the dealer, it indeed did not leak coolant but to my surprise the vibrations got way worse, now vibrating pretty bad not just the handles and pegs but the tank and seat as well. I had to stop a couple times to rest my hands a bit. Whenever I parked and restarted the bike I noticed a weird rattling sound as well. Of course the brakes also continued to squeal.
End of story, as much as I wanted to love this bike, rationally it just doesn’t make any sense, owning and riding bikes for me is a mix of stress release and hobby and should never be another source of work and stress, even if they would eventually fix all these issues under warranty, the future ahead would be one of many trips back and forth forth to the dealer.
I’ve looked for other bikes, tested both the Street Triple RX and the MT-09 SP, both way superior riding experiences, smooth handling, power delivery, no vibrations, everything better than the one I was having with my Aprilia so far.
Ended up trading it for the MT-09 SP, and after 2 weeks and about 300 miles I couldn’t be happier, absolutely nothing to complain about and amazing riding experience.
I do hope Aprilia at some point makes justice to the spec and design of their bikes and improves significantly the build quality and consequently reliability, if they did I would certainly consider trying one out again, otherwise buying Aprilia 660’s is a coin toss on whether you’ll enjoy a nice bike or become best friends with your dealer’s mechanics.