The Single GREATEST Motorcycle HANDLING REVOLUTION: What's a FEATHERBED?

Cycle World

Motorcycle frames were just glorified bicycle frames for a long time--spindly, flexible, poorly balanced. That all changed with a pair of clever Irish brothers who designed a motorcycle frame that revolutionized motorcycle handling--and it helped Norton remain a force in GP racing against higher horsepower motorcycles for years. It also changed motorcycling forever and helped us get to the exceptional handling motorcycles we have today.  Looking to buy? Get prequalified https://octane.co/flex/1?a=171  Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6CLI74xvMBFLDOC1tQaCOQ Read more from Cycle World: https://www.cycleworld.com/ Buy Cycle World Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/cycleworld

Transcript

00:00:00Hey, we're back with the cycle world podcast. I'm Mark Hoyer the editor-in-chief and I'm with Kevin Cameron our technical editor

00:00:07This episode is brought to you by octane

00:00:10Octane lending is our parent company. We wouldn't be doing this without them great sponsors

00:00:15There's a link to prequel down below. Click that link. Click it. Go ahead and click it

00:00:20makes a difference and you might actually end up with a

00:00:24Pretty nice rate and ability to go to a dealership and buy a motorcycle

00:00:28So go check it out also a shout-out to the company for octane gives back we

00:00:37We volunteer or organized groups of volunteers I helped out at a food bank in Knoxville, Tennessee at our UTV driver office and

00:00:48Anyway, it's a great company and go shop for a bike get on the road today's topic

00:00:54The

00:00:56Single greatest revolution in motorcycle handling ever. Is that fair to say Kevin? I

00:01:01Think it is. I think that once a certain standard was reached the

00:01:08What remained to achieve

00:01:11Sort of like the curve that goes up and then becomes asymptotic to a limiting value

00:01:18And I almost thought you said

00:01:21Almost thought you said it's rising pretty quickly

00:01:24with

00:01:25The featherbed

00:01:27Mechanical frame and of course, that's what we're talking about is the featherbed frame. It was a big big change in motorcycle handling

00:01:35the biggest really and

00:01:38It just left everything behind it just left everything behind including four-cylinder. Jalaris. Yeah, so

00:01:46Of course that that's a combination of problems Jalara and MV were

00:01:55Although they had up-to-date

00:01:58designed

00:01:59post-war

00:02:01four-cylinder bikes their chassis and suspension ideas were distinctly pre-war and

00:02:08so there was a tremendous contrast between

00:02:11Tremendous contrast between

00:02:14the mechanical chassis, which was made out of

00:02:18Larger diameter tubing. It was a twin loop

00:02:22box shaped

00:02:24Chassis that gave a broad base to support the swing arm

00:02:29And it had all hydraulic damping in the suspension telescopic fork up front

00:02:36swing arm and twin shocks at the back whereas

00:02:40MV had a weird thing with two swing arms

00:02:47They also had a leading link fork and

00:02:51Jalara started out. They had a telescopic but the tube diameter

00:02:57Was 32 millimeters. Oh my cute little thing Oh pencils. Jeez. So what happened was

00:03:05that

00:03:07Norton had been developing their wonderful

00:03:11Manx 500

00:03:13since

00:03:15Really 1927

00:03:17when

00:03:18Walter Moore designed a single overhead cam engine as a follow-up on

00:03:24the model 16

00:03:27That he had been hired to make win the TT

00:03:31Which I gather it did in

00:03:341924

00:03:36Which was a pushrod and rocker engine

00:03:40It took a while for all these

00:03:43Updates to make it on to the Maxx engine

00:03:47But it went through all these wonderful stages of development improved cooling

00:03:53greater fin area

00:03:54aluminum instead of bronze instead of iron

00:04:00Improved mechanicals

00:04:03It was essentially an engine designed to win the TT and

00:04:10What that required was long periods of high power

00:04:16With some time out for for corners, whereas the Europeans

00:04:24Tended to build very light and for acceleration because their racetracks were

00:04:31Often more twisty than the TT but in any case

00:04:39Chassis design for motorcycles was ready for a big

00:04:43revolution because what had been tolerated before was

00:04:48for example the Norton's

00:04:52Derisively named garden gate frame, which was a single plane

00:04:57Chassis not that different from a heavyweight bicycle frame

00:05:03Single plane meaning everything, you know

00:05:05The steering head and then there's a pipe that comes down and everything is as Kevin says in a single plane

00:05:10just like a bike not spread apart tubes like

00:05:15other bed

00:05:16Like later a twin spar where it goes big wide out around gives the gives the swing arm something to hang on to

00:05:23I'll just go ahead and say velocette right now and

00:05:27The vest we know you're gonna say so the vestigial seat tube. That's a single plane frame the swing arm

00:05:36The swing arm is

00:05:38Got a lug basically connected to the vestigial seat tube that lived on from previous

00:05:45eras and so you have a single pipe with a cross pipe and then the the arms of the swing arm clamp

00:05:53like with a bolt

00:05:55Clamp to that pipe and that's the swing arm

00:05:58You know and it's you know, the shock, you know, the shock mounts are pretty stiff and they are not in the single plane

00:06:04They're fairly wide

00:06:06But it's nothing like a feather bed

00:06:07I've ridden ridden a fella said a million miles and the first time I wrote a feather bed

00:06:12I was absolutely blown away. Like I wrote it in modern times and it had a real, you know, I had a Norton twin in it

00:06:22Dominator type thing and

00:06:24I was shocked

00:06:26At how stiff the connection was from the steering head

00:06:30To the swing arm pivot. It was a very precise

00:06:33When there is not when there is an absence of stiffness. What you have is self-steering as

00:06:40the swing arm

00:06:43Wayward that it is when not properly

00:06:47stiffly mounted to the frame can be pulled to one side by the chain pull in lower gears and

00:06:54in corners

00:06:55can

00:06:57Deflect causing the motorcycle to go through the corner in an undulating fashion. And this is why

00:07:03for many years the old-timers

00:07:06Said nothing steers like a rigid. I

00:07:11Own, you know, I've said it before I've owned a overhead cam 350 velocette pre-war 37, you know girder fork

00:07:18Yep, rigid it steered beautifully if you rode that on a smooth road, you'd be like

00:07:24I'll take this over an MSS, which is a swing arm. I'll take it. I'll take this over an MSS any day

00:07:31Now the velocette chassis is a reasonably good handling chassis for the era much better than the Garden Gate

00:07:37Which I rode I rode like a model 7

00:07:41Norton and it was pretty fun, but it was also all over the place and

00:07:48but even with the velocette what you're talking about that deflection and the

00:07:52Things not being in line was very much a deal and on my MSS

00:07:58If I want to really zip down a back road when I'm braking for a corner

00:08:04You're not just using the rear brake to slow you down

00:08:08You're using the rear brake to keep the motorcycle from piling up and bending on the fork

00:08:14so

00:08:15You're hitting both brakes to try and keep the chassis sort of more more lined up. Yeah. Yeah well

00:08:22in 1935

00:08:25Moto Guzzi

00:08:28Added a swing arm to their

00:08:30120 degree

00:08:32v-twin

00:08:33500 and

00:08:35Stan Woods won the senior TT

00:08:39on that bike with rare suspension, so

00:08:44at that point

00:08:46Norton's racing chief Joe Craig said

00:08:51Stanley Woods could not have made those lap times without rear suspension

00:08:57because when you look at film of

00:09:00the old days in the TT the pavement was not glassy smooth and

00:09:06When you hit bumps on a rigid

00:09:10It throws the bike up in the air and it comes down at the rate that gravity

00:09:17Dictates which is fairly gradual and

00:09:22during that time it's

00:09:25You're in a corner. So you're jumping sideways. That's called stepping out and

00:09:32it gets your attention so that you have less attention for things like

00:09:38Engaging the enemy more closely. That was a Royal Navy phrase and

00:09:43Anything that takes the riders attention off of either the enjoyment of riding or the need to absolutely

00:09:52concentrate

00:09:53is bad

00:09:55so

00:09:57Even with a swing arm those pre-war bikes had

00:10:05Stiction laden

00:10:07dry friction shocks

00:10:10They had big

00:10:13Wing nuts on them tighten it down for high speed loosen them off for in town and

00:10:21They didn't move smoothly they moved

00:10:26Jerkily, so yes, they would stop the motorcycle from

00:10:32Continuing to bounce after a bump but not in a gentle way not in a gentle way

00:10:38Not in a good way. The stiction was really hard. So the stiction is the amount of force it takes to get

00:10:44Get it moving get it moving. Yeah, so if you think about a damper, it's like a scissor. It has an arm and

00:10:53Then it's like a stacked clutch pack that you would see

00:10:58You've got steels and then you have frictions in between and then you're turning this nut

00:11:04To squeeze it down. So maybe if you're you know, cruising through town, you could like unscrew it a little bit

00:11:09make it a little more supple, but if you needed that control, you'd have to crank them down and

00:11:15Make it harder to break away

00:11:17so

00:11:19Now let's

00:11:20Advance in time to the two

00:11:24McCandless brothers Rex and Chromie both are good good competition riders

00:11:30Rex is working for short brothers

00:11:35aircraft firm in Belfast

00:11:40They have a triumph twin called it be neal b-e-n-i-a-l

00:11:47God of dragons and fire or some such business and

00:11:53It was their

00:11:55test vehicle and

00:11:57they

00:11:58Rode it under all sorts of circumstances and when they found

00:12:04that

00:12:06What they thought it needed was contrary to commonly held belief. They did not

00:12:14give in

00:12:16They said this bike pushes

00:12:19The experts say we need to have the rider and the engine far back in order to give

00:12:27Traction to the rear wheel. Well if the bike is pushing

00:12:32It must have too much traction at the rear and not enough at the front. So why don't we move?

00:12:39the engine and maybe even the rider forward so they did that and they tested again and

00:12:49These these men were

00:12:52Absolute

00:12:56Try it and see

00:12:59People they weren't going to be

00:13:03Deflected by commonly held beliefs and of course

00:13:08This could be good or bad

00:13:09There are lots of things that have been done in the name of innovation that turned out to be innovation for its own sake

00:13:16But not this time

00:13:19So

00:13:20The activities of the two McCandless brothers came to the attention of Norton management

00:13:28when they gave some assistance to Ernie Lyons who won the

00:13:341946

00:13:35Manx Grand Prix, which is not the TT. The Manx Grand Prix is for

00:13:42Sort of production like bikes and

00:13:47Non-professional riders and

00:13:51A triumph wasn't supposed to win

00:13:54the Manx GP and

00:13:57Norton management wanted to know

00:13:59What the deal was?

00:14:01Well, it's these two guys over here are part of the part of the package

00:14:07hmm, so

00:14:09In due course a relationship was begun in which Norton said

00:14:17What could you do for us and

00:14:21the upshot was

00:14:23that they built a

00:14:26chassis

00:14:27Which is now remembered as the feather bed the first of a long line of such

00:14:35For the factory

00:14:37500 Manx engine and

00:14:40Norton tested it in three different ways

00:14:44they ran it at the Isle of Man against the Garden Gate bike and

00:14:50They found that riders could ride around the outside of the Garden Gate bike on

00:14:57the Twin Loop bike and

00:15:01They tested it at the Motor Industries

00:15:05Research Association track which was equipped for

00:15:14Good timing and arrangements like that and then

00:15:19because they were worried about

00:15:22the method of assembly

00:15:24that was used to put this chassis together, which was a

00:15:29low temperature

00:15:30silver alloy brazing rod

00:15:33which makes nice fillets and

00:15:37fillets are good for

00:15:39fatigue strength because

00:15:41Instead of being a sudden change of section. It's a little bit go more gradual than that. They took the bike to

00:15:48Montlhéry circuit outside of Paris a

00:15:52Lot of records were set there over time and they ran it around and around and around and tried to break it and it didn't

00:15:59break

00:16:01So then they thought all right, we'll we'll send our star rider

00:16:08Jeff Duke

00:16:10to

00:16:11the next race

00:16:13available which turned out to be at Blanford Camp some military operation from the war and of course this was

00:16:22Not that long after and in front of something like 50,000 spectators

00:16:31Jeff Duke did

00:16:33what he was expected to do on the new chassis and

00:16:40Then they

00:16:42Decided there might be something to this

00:16:45and

00:16:48They wanted chassis built for the whole Norton team well

00:16:56Norton didn't have any welding equipment

00:16:58they didn't have

00:17:00Anything but the material the methods they used for their production chassis, which were tube and lug

00:17:08Which is the way old-time bicycles were built

00:17:12the lug is

00:17:15Present wherever tubes join

00:17:17it may be a casting or a forging and it has bored holes in it into which slip the tubes and

00:17:26Which have been wiped with what's called spelter a sort of grease like

00:17:31mixture of flux and brazing powder

00:17:36then the whole thing is put into a

00:17:39furnace and

00:17:41This is the meaning of furnace brazed

00:17:44because the brazing material

00:17:47melts it forms a good bond between lug and tube and

00:17:52They let that thing cool and then they're ready to go machine the steering head bearings and what-have-you

00:17:59but this was unsuitable for what the McCandless brothers had built so

00:18:06And Rex was a Rex was an aircraft person right that's where that came from the tubing in the in the

00:18:13brazing

00:18:16So

00:18:18What happened next is they said well we want you to build all the frames

00:18:24So they had to bring their jig

00:18:27Across the IRC and set up that

00:18:31At Bracebridge Street and do the work there

00:18:36gas bottles were duly brought in regulators the whole works and

00:18:41they made the chassis and

00:18:45They also made the rear suspension units which were said to contain

00:18:51inner parts from

00:18:53Citroen

00:18:55automobile

00:18:56suspension Citroen

00:18:58Always had very radically advanced

00:19:04Suspension after this time I think in 58 came hydro pneumatic. Oh, yeah the spheres

00:19:09they have these really high-pressure spheres and it's uncanny it's they can be a

00:19:15Well, you know, it's it's got hydraulic units

00:19:19Got a lot of stuff going on. But when it's working, holy moly, it's like magic carpet stuff

00:19:25Yeah

00:19:26So what was inside here it appears is is pretty conventional what you would have found in a in a front fork damper in

00:19:351975

00:19:36There's a piston moving through oil

00:19:39It has a one-way valve in it. There's a

00:19:44large

00:19:45compression damping orifice and there's a small

00:19:48rebound damping orifice and

00:19:51single orifice damping is

00:19:53Today a no-no because if the when you increase the speed of the damper piston

00:20:00The damping force goes up as the square of velocity

00:20:03Square damping you're pushing it through the hole. So at low shaft speed the oil is kind of

00:20:09Wafting through the hole you can get some damping you can get some actual damping out of that that doesn't like break your elbows

00:20:15but as soon as that shaft speed when you get hit a big bump and the shaft speed goes way up and it tries to

00:20:21Push a volume of fluid through a tiny hole

00:20:24It just it it's as if the hole disappears because the velocity

00:20:30The friction goes up so quickly

00:20:32It just it's like there is no hole and that makes the bite you you're suddenly rigid and then it turns it into a bang

00:20:38It hurts. Yeah

00:20:40So this was another element of their

00:20:44Change first is the stiff

00:20:47twin loop

00:20:50Twin loop boxy chassis

00:20:53Telescopic fork and swing arm and dual hydraulic shock damping and

00:21:02The next element

00:21:04it took me a while to understand this because

00:21:08Since I was quite a young man. I've been reading about this

00:21:13Mysterious featherbed chassis

00:21:16Well looks like a chassis

00:21:18But then I

00:21:21Measured and I found that the McCandless brothers had moved the engine ahead

00:21:28Something like two point six five inches and they'd moved the rider ahead three inches

00:21:36In comparison with the

00:21:39Garden gate

00:21:41Well, this was the result of the penial testing with their triumph twin

00:21:46It pushes we move the engine ahead it still pushes we move the engine ahead again

00:21:52They wanted answers

00:21:55Not to repeat

00:21:58Catechism from

00:22:01Ancient persons as you may be aware for a long time

00:22:07Handling was held

00:22:09To be a secret known only to ancient Britons

00:22:14Possibly King Arthur in his cave by the sea

00:22:19had an urn in which these numbers were present and

00:22:25That they couldn't be discovered. Well what the McCandless brothers

00:22:29Discovered was very much like what Irv Kanemoto would do years later

00:22:35Let's actually find out what's going on. Let's mess with it

00:22:40Let's change the variables and see their effects

00:22:46so

00:22:47Here we have

00:22:50The last major element in the McCandless chassis, which is

00:22:55Changed mass locations the rider and the engine are moved forward and

00:23:03Sure enough, there's a there's a paper from the early 60s done by

00:23:08Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers on

00:23:12testing of motorcycle stability on a moving belt and

00:23:17They found that mass forward up to a point

00:23:22increased stability

00:23:25And you'll find that most modern motorcycles have something in around

00:23:3153% on the front wheel and

00:23:3347% on the rear wheel and company were were massively dedicated to that process

00:23:40Yeah, I mean that's they had, you know, 22 something degree rake angles and very short trails, you know under

00:23:47Four inches quite a bit under four inches at times. Yeah, and they they were just constantly

00:23:53You know in talking to Steve Anderson who worked in development there in addition to being our writer for us for a very long time

00:24:03He said yeah, the more you do that, you know

00:24:07The more you put the weight on the front wheel just what you said and it's still happening today

00:24:13Yeah, I loved a phrase from the JSME paper

00:24:17which said that when they

00:24:21Tried other weight distributions

00:24:24That oscillations of the vehicle could occur

00:24:29And it had a test rider on a dummy it said and the doll is overthrown

00:24:38You don't want to be the doll do you when you're getting overthrown

00:24:42Terrible feeling so and of course at that time in the in the mid-60s

00:24:47I began to see the little 250 Ducati's the engine moving forward. So I thought hmm

00:24:54Maybe reality is is a single picture and I'm not seeing enough of it yet. Let's see more

00:25:03so

00:25:06They

00:25:08won the TT and

00:25:12They won I think three or four of the Grand Prix's in 1950 but at

00:25:20Spa on

00:25:22The next to the last lap

00:25:27Duke had a rear tire tread separation a big a big chunk of rubber came out and hit him on the back

00:25:35Now people who have run

00:25:38Tightly strapped down bikes on roller dynos have had this same experience

00:25:43being whacked on the back by a piece of tread flung off by a tire that has gotten too hot and

00:25:52Then at Assen it only took two laps for the tread separation to occur

00:26:00and

00:26:03So

00:26:05Duke failed to win the world championship against

00:26:09Gilera by one point

00:26:12the rest of the time

00:26:15The new bike was so superior

00:26:18It didn't matter how much power the Gilera had because if they couldn't

00:26:23Accelerate across rough pavement if they didn't have the stability for

00:26:29Certain parts of the circuit that get things moving

00:26:33Then the engine that they had brought with them was useless. So

00:26:41the second year in 51

00:26:44The Max and Jeff Duke won the world championship

00:26:50Against the four-cylinder bikes and

00:26:55That was by no means Norton's swan song because they continued with factory racing

00:27:04But

00:27:07Jeff Duke switched to

00:27:09Gilera in 53 and won three world championships for them

00:27:15The last time a Norton

00:27:18Manx

00:27:19Scored world championship points was in 1970, which is not bad considering

00:27:25that

00:27:26all the great singles

00:27:29the Manx

00:27:31the Matchless G50 the AJS 7r the Velocette KTT and

00:27:37The gold star 500 gold star ceased production in

00:27:431962 and a few bikes were built from parts the following year, but that was it for the great singles

00:27:51but as far as

00:27:53privateer racing in the 500 class and

00:27:58in the 350 class

00:28:00British singles were all there was

00:28:03So that's what people rode and Kelker others, I was just gonna say it was wrong

00:28:09Yeah

00:28:10Who was long Kenny's crew chief on Yamaha?

00:28:15Said to me. I want you to understand that being the first man home

00:28:22on one of those big singles was a very

00:28:26distinguished accomplishment

00:28:28Because there were so many people

00:28:31So many good talents

00:28:34Applying themselves and the only instrument they could blow was a Matchless G50 or a Norton Manx and

00:28:45So that's why he made that that remark because those people were a

00:28:52university of riding a

00:28:54number of talented riders going at it every weekend on those short British circuits and

00:29:00then

00:29:02at the TT in June every year

00:29:06So eventually the Jalera's and

00:29:10from 56 onward the MV's

00:29:14Became dominant in the class

00:29:17but

00:29:18so wonderful to see that a

00:29:23Motorcycle is so much more than its engine. I

00:29:27I

00:29:29Remember when young fellows were saying oh, I got a friend who's a drag racer. He's gonna build me this

00:29:36Superbike he says it's gonna turn

00:29:3915,000 I'm thinking

00:29:42And

00:29:44If you don't have a handling chassis

00:29:49You could have a thousand horsepower and it would be helpless

00:29:55Helpless helpless helpless

00:29:58because if you can't get it through the tire or if the tire is in the air instead of on the pavement or

00:30:05if the bicycle is is

00:30:07Doing some form of vehicular oscillation as mentioned in the JSME paper

00:30:15You're turning the throttle the other way. Oh my god chatter yikes

00:30:20Save our souls. Oh, man

00:30:24Yes, but if you have a motorcycle whose chassis gives you confidence

00:30:29You become a much better rider

00:30:32instantly

00:30:34Because you're not being

00:30:36Scared frankly scared. I

00:30:39thought that that

00:30:44Lorenzo was a wonderful. He did a wonderful thing for motorcyclists when he said

00:30:50I'm scared when I'm doing this or that

00:30:53Chiefly to do with mixed conditions. It has rained now. It's dry. Some parts are wet. Some parts are dry

00:31:01Some parts look okay

00:31:05Yes, well what so what do you want your chassis to be number one for me, I mean I want it to be good

00:31:11Don't get me wrong. I'd like it to be perfect, but usually it's not

00:31:15What I want number one is it for it to be predictable if if you start with predictability

00:31:20You at least have an idea about the outcome

00:31:23But if the wheels are weaving all over the place, you don't have that if you have something that is flexible, but predictable

00:31:30Okay, I could still cope with that like yeah

00:31:33I know it's going to do this

00:31:35When I do this like when I was racing at barber with Arma on that BMW in the last corner

00:31:40I preferred I would have preferred for my lap time to load the front end a little bit more a

00:31:46little harder

00:31:47Toward the apex before I hit the throttle

00:31:50But it chattered like crazy. I have it on video and it's

00:31:55Terrifying to watch even on video and it doesn't even show what's actually happening

00:31:59And so in that corner, I had to go in and and turn it and not not break as hard

00:32:05Just slow it down early. Let it turn with a little bit of throttle and then pull the trigger

00:32:10But I knew it was going to happen and that was the only thing that that's the only thing that that bike did wrong

00:32:16to me at my pace, so

00:32:20Predictability, uh, let's start there. That's the best and then make it good. Yeah predictability is is important. Uh, when when

00:32:29Mark Marquez came back

00:32:31Mark Marquez came back the second time from his broken arm

00:32:39Uh honda had made some changes to the bike in the interest of making it rideable by

00:32:47Riders who were not mark marquez

00:32:49And when he tried to ride it in the way that he had won races

00:32:54So often before he said I don't know what this motorcycle is going to do

00:33:01I will learn it

00:33:02But right now I don't know

00:33:05so

00:33:07When you have confidence in your motorcycle

00:33:09It is telling you

00:33:12How things are going?

00:33:13You can feel it. You can say to yourself. We have grip here

00:33:17We've this is safe. We could go a little quicker here if we wanted to

00:33:22uh when you're braking when you're

00:33:25Uh leaned over all these different conditions the motorcycle is communicating with you

00:33:32and

00:33:33You learn its language

00:33:36And if it's a good, uh

00:33:38Design a good well-developed machine

00:33:41That's a good relationship

00:33:44but

00:33:45this is why riders like

00:33:48John Sertiz

00:33:49in the 1950s

00:33:51and

00:33:53Bick doon

00:33:54in the 1990s

00:33:56Did not allow the team

00:33:59to make any change to the motorcycle without his

00:34:03knowledge and permission

00:34:06because he said

00:34:07They both said if I don't know what the motorcycle is going to do because of some new part that's on it

00:34:15I'm going to go slower

00:34:17I'm not here to test

00:34:20Your engineering achievements i'm here to win the race

00:34:25So give these parts to the test rider don't give them to me

00:34:30But that's all to do with interfering with the language and the clear understanding between the motorcycle

00:34:38and the rider

00:34:39Doon was pretty famous for not being particularly stoked about test riders either because they weren't as fast as him

00:34:46Because that's it was you know, it was one of the things that came to me while you were saying

00:34:51about

00:34:52uh the motorcycle being predictable and then

00:34:56You know

00:34:57Riding something hard enough until it does something wrong

00:35:00I think that's you know

00:35:02If you're adding speed incrementally over your kind of lifelong training period and you're trying to go faster and faster

00:35:11If you add speed incrementally and your inputs are good and you've you've got

00:35:15You've gone through a thousand corners over and over again and you start

00:35:20Pushing the bike harder and harder and harder

00:35:23Then you find the place where the motorcycle will tell you it's unhappy

00:35:28And I think it's one of the things that slows newer riders down

00:35:32Is not having faith

00:35:35That the motorcycle isn't suddenly going to disappear, but it hasn't actually told them anything wrong yet

00:35:42They're just terrified because they don't know what's going to happen and it was um

00:35:47I think it this is a maybe a nick einatch quote, but he was always like lean and believe

00:35:53You know because there's a lot of people who haven't leaned a motorcycle over that much lean and believe and leaned on a modern

00:35:58street bike like a nice handling street bike

00:36:01I mean something that really can lean over you can lean that thing over till the pegs are dragging

00:36:07You just sit on it you don't even have to hang off

00:36:10It's better to hang off a little bit or whatever

00:36:12But you can just you can drag hard parts and the bike still isn't going to be doing anything wrong david aldena

00:36:18His his advice was like just think of the handlebars as a giant steering wheel

00:36:22And when you want to turn it you want to turn it sharper

00:36:25You want to go just push push them push that steering wheel all the way over just keep going

00:36:31You know, you're going to drag foot pegs that if you're dragging the foot pegs and you're finally somewhere where the you know

00:36:37uh

00:36:39This is a point

00:36:42that involves safety of

00:36:44uh ordinary street riders

00:36:47And I don't mean ordinary as a pejorative. I just mean

00:36:50average folks

00:36:52I was never anything else when I rode motorcycles. I just I rode along I wasn't particularly skillful

00:37:00um

00:37:01But I enjoyed it

00:37:03so, uh

00:37:07Street riders have not experienced high lean angle turning

00:37:11And that's a reason

00:37:14To do track days or to take some form of instruction

00:37:20so that you can

00:37:22see

00:37:23How hard you can turn because you may need to do it one day

00:37:28to avoid

00:37:29unpleasant consequences

00:37:32Because we've seen these handlebar camera videos of people who suddenly realize that they're

00:37:42Going too fast for the corner they're in or they think they are and they think they are and they

00:37:49Don't lean over

00:37:51They don't use the motorcycle's capability to go safely around the corner because they don't know they can

00:37:59And this is a tragedy this is most unfortunate because

00:38:04Here you've bought this thing which has these capabilities

00:38:10You haven't learned to use them so they're not available to you

00:38:16And

00:38:17this is the value of

00:38:19Track days and rider instruction is that you will have an opportunity

00:38:24under benign circumstances

00:38:27Uh, no 10 wheelers bearing down on you

00:38:31uh to

00:38:34Learn this oh

00:38:36And of course, I would say that I know that there are a lot of people who feel they can't go to a track day

00:38:43Unless they've got every part in the Ducati accessory book

00:38:48well, that book is very discouraging because

00:38:52Everything in that book is going to be over a hundred thousand dollars

00:38:56well, and it's actually it's actually the opposite it's it's

00:39:01Use what you have make sure it's safe know how old the brake fluid is

00:39:04But take it to the track and ride it until it does something wrong and what it does wrong

00:39:09Then you can attempt to fix that specific thing

00:39:12That specific thing. Yes

00:39:15and the other rule is

00:39:19Uh, don't learn this, uh

00:39:22Uh advanced riding on a motorcycle you can't afford to crash

00:39:28Crashing is a huge deal for people who haven't crashed yet

00:39:33And they're hoping that they never will

00:39:36but

00:39:37once you have

00:39:38Fallen down slid to a stop

00:39:41Got up looked around sort of stupidly. Uh

00:39:45Something happened

00:39:47And then gradually it comes to you

00:39:49Oh, I crashed and i'm fine

00:39:51Where's my bike?

00:39:53Way down the track

00:39:59So these are things that

00:40:02That could be of benefit and I urge people to consider the possibility

00:40:07of extending your range of

00:40:10responses to circumstance by

00:40:14giving these uh

00:40:17Deals like

00:40:18Track days and rider instruction repetition has helped me a lot, right?

00:40:23like i've had many opportunities to ride at race tracks around the world circuit to cataloonia and magello and

00:40:29you know

00:40:30Aprilia super bikes and it's just been

00:40:33Fascinating and wonderful, but i've taken many riding schools and it's always been of a benefit

00:40:40It's really great to sit down

00:40:43You know you think about it all the time and you think about when you're riding

00:40:46But sitting down in a classroom and getting the other perspective

00:40:50and I think also very importantly jason pridmore

00:40:53has

00:40:54He's done riding schools at various times over the years along with his dad reg

00:40:59And he you know, he worked at those and then he moved on to do his own

00:41:03and I rode a hayabusa up to uh, thunder hill to take his uh class back and when I had a 99

00:41:09Hayabusa as a long-term test bike

00:41:12and um

00:41:14You know i'm riding a hayabusa at a racetrack and going around corners and i've got a lot of acceleration and i'm

00:41:20I've always been a hard breaker ride the front, you know

00:41:23but i'm on a hayabusa and uh

00:41:26I just couldn't figure it out

00:41:28You know, like I was just riding the way i'd learned to ride which is the safety net that you have like you

00:41:34You've gone fast in this way. So we're going to go fast in this way

00:41:38And I went to jason pridmore and I said man, I just you know

00:41:41Especially through that long left, you know, you go up the front straight and get that long fast left i'm like i'm just you know

00:41:47i'm, not

00:41:49Really not

00:41:50Getting through there the way I think I should and people are passing me and I mean i'm on a hayabusa

00:41:54But he's like no, let's let's do a two up ride. So I did a two up ride

00:41:58on a katana

00:42:00750 or 1100

00:42:03And i'm so and jason's not the smallest guy either and then i'm you know

00:42:07220 pounds of american beef sitting on the passenger seat and we go but we go through that corner

00:42:13and I could finally see it because I just I felt it and I witnessed it and he

00:42:18He went into that long corner and there was a point in the corner at the apex

00:42:23Where he sacrificed a little bit of speed

00:42:27And I was always like i've got no if the front didn't feel sketchy. I didn't think I was riding hard enough

00:42:33and actually it's that's

00:42:35Can be true sometimes but there's points where at the apex he sacrificed a few mile an hour

00:42:43And the bike just went zik. I mean it just I just felt it turn so easily

00:42:48And then he pulled the trigger and i'm like I got a hayabusa. This is gonna be good

00:42:54It was amazing like it was a it was a shocking change in um

00:43:00Anyway, it just means

00:43:01Pay attention to your riding and as I was talking about all of this

00:43:06I tie it back to the manx

00:43:09and the featherbed because

00:43:12we are

00:43:13Reaping the benefits of people understanding that a motorcycle could actually handle well

00:43:19And that it could be smooth

00:43:21And predictable and not huck you off when you hit a bump

00:43:25I mean not that they don't still but we went on you know what? I I want to ask you about the steering head

00:43:31design

00:43:32Do you know anything?

00:43:34Why so the the featherbed has the two tubes coming from the back of the motorcycle that will go over the engine that are sort?

00:43:40of horizontal

00:43:42They support the tank. Yep

00:43:44And then they go to the steering head at the bottom and then they take the at the bottom the twin loop

00:43:49The twin loop crashes crosses between and it goes to the top of the steering head

00:43:54do you

00:43:55Have you read well the thinking this is this is good because

00:43:59um

00:44:01a friend who whom i've never met who is

00:44:04an australian and

00:44:07competed in

00:44:08vintage racing in australia until quite recently

00:44:11said that uh

00:44:13with modern tires

00:44:16That the steering head on the manx on the featherbed is exposed as being too flexible

00:44:24It wasn't too flexible with the tires of 1950

00:44:271950

00:44:29But it would be today and

00:44:32it's possible to

00:44:34drive it into brake hop

00:44:36or

00:44:37other misbehavior now, there is

00:44:41a

00:44:43Link from the top of the steering head down to

00:44:46uh

00:44:49It's sort of the head steady for the engine

00:44:52And that looks like it's adding some stiffness but when

00:44:58Suzuki was developing their chassis

00:45:02They decided at some point this is not good enough and they brought two tubes from the top of the steering head

00:45:10back

00:45:11to where the

00:45:12main loops turned down to the swing arm pivots

00:45:16so those tubes were fairly long and they

00:45:20Brought that steering head load way back

00:45:23So that the tubes coming forward to the bottom and those two bracing tubes from the top

00:45:29Join back here. So it's two triangles supporting the steering head

00:45:34That fixed that problem

00:45:37And it also suggested something else

00:45:40If the real problem is above

00:45:43The engine and has to do with how stiffly attached the steering head is

00:45:48Why do we have those loops hanging down under the engine?

00:45:54Why and as time in the in the fullness of time

00:46:03Several uh out several organizations and individuals worked on this

00:46:09Antonio Cobas

00:46:12Decided all we need is strong

00:46:16beams

00:46:17from the

00:46:19steering head to the swing arm pivots

00:46:23uh with enough cross members between them to make a

00:46:28A strong structure out of it

00:46:31And Yamaha went at it more

00:46:34Circumspectly they increased the stiffness of the structure above the engine

00:46:39And gradually what was underneath the engine

00:46:42atrophied away

00:46:45Until finally they were sort of ready to uh, what about this fellow Cobas? That that looks like

00:46:54He's made the leap why haven't we

00:46:57And so Yamaha made the leap to the twin aluminum beams

00:47:02And because they have large section that is the strength

00:47:06Is moved far from the center so that it has a lot of leverage

00:47:12With which to handle any stress applied

00:47:15Uh, the other approach to this was

00:47:21Tamburini's trellis frame which was multi

00:47:26small diameter steel tubes

00:47:29made into a structure that could be as stiff or as

00:47:33Flexible as you like and when you look at the Tamburini chassis

00:47:38In detail, I stood there stupidly looking at it. I said i've got to get this somehow

00:47:44So i'm looking there's a tube. There's another one over there. Hey, there's the third one

00:47:49And then I thought

00:47:51Wait a minute

00:47:52There's nothing preventing the steering head from moving from side to side

00:47:59There's no diagonal

00:48:03That's why Colin Edwards

00:48:06When I asked him why the Ducati's wallow in corners

00:48:11Which is just weave

00:48:14He said yeah

00:48:16They wallow

00:48:17But they dig in and go around the corner

00:48:21What he was talking about was that a small degree of lateral flexibility

00:48:27In the front

00:48:28Makes the difference between the tire skipping

00:48:31from one

00:48:33uh roadway

00:48:35High point to the next with air time in between in between

00:48:41And a steady

00:48:45Reliable confidence inspiring grip

00:48:49And he's of course the one that when I asked him what is feel he said

00:48:55It is the motorcycle telling you how close you are to the edge

00:48:59And I said what does it say he said

00:49:03It slips it chatters. It does a variety of things

00:49:07you have to pay attention to it because

00:49:12Then you'll know where you are

00:49:15And that's why uh one rider

00:49:20Can under certain circumstances simply drop another rider

00:49:26He starts to push

00:49:29The other rider pushes the leading rider pushes harder

00:49:37Both of them are noticing that the little signals are getting bigger the slips the the

00:49:45unscheduled motions

00:49:48They both know that when those

00:49:51Little malfeasances reach a certain size one of them is going to suddenly

00:49:57Take them right off the track

00:50:00If the lead rider isn't at that point yet and the second man

00:50:04is starting to think

00:50:06Second looks pretty good right now

00:50:09He can be dropped. Yeah, the the leading rider just says, okay, i'm gonna leave this guy

00:50:15It wasn't uh, and i've seen it happen over. It wasn't a situation of dropping a rider, but I was watching. Uh

00:50:21Uh

00:50:25It was at andrew lee and uh his teammate on orange cat racing jason uribe

00:50:31in

00:50:32in stock 1000

00:50:34And so they're they're riding bmws and they've raced together and known each other for a very long time

00:50:40And jason uribe is leading the race on the second on sunday

00:50:48And

00:50:49The bike is is really moving around a lot, but he's at he's at a killer pace

00:50:55And he's comfortable with it moving

00:50:58because he can predict what what it's going to do, but I there was just a remarkable amount of

00:51:04Movement and it wasn't just watching somebody go into the corner with their leg out and backing it in

00:51:09You know, the bike was really moving around, you know, and I think like wow

00:51:13That's a ton of confidence and knowing what the bike is is doing

00:51:18And also being comfortable with it being loose. I think one of my favorite racer quotes of all time. I was at manza in

00:51:252000

00:51:26And that's when this is when troy bailess got kicked up to world superbike

00:51:30They plucked him out of vance and heinz because car fogger. He had broken his

00:51:34uh humorous in a

00:51:36Terrible way davide tarazzi

00:51:39davide tarazzi

00:51:41David tarazzi said

00:51:42We pray to god to heal the bone

00:51:45Uh, you know

00:51:46so he was

00:51:47uh

00:51:48We were hoping to have him get better. But uh, anyway bailiff's was going in and passing he did a pass

00:51:55they recently put that out on their instagram world superbike did of

00:51:59Bayless at that passing like four or five riders into one of the chicanes at manza. It was shocking

00:52:05And you say like, yeah, you know never been on michelin's really

00:52:10on a world superbike

00:52:12Yeah, and all of that and I asked bayless after the race and he says I reckon I just squeeze a little bit harder mate

00:52:19And that same with uh, same with um, frankie keely pierre francesco keely riding a corona suzuki at the time

00:52:27he got these phenomenal like

00:52:29fastest laps of the race at the end of the second race

00:52:34And uh, man, he's walking through the paddock like a leather-clad pope man people were just

00:52:39Kissing his fingers, you know, and I was like pierre francesco keely

00:52:43Where did you find those lap times and he just looks to me in the eyes is I break very very hard

00:52:52So it's it being comfortable with that bike moving anyway back to the

00:52:56The greatest quote of all time was I was sitting in the motorhome. Um with uh

00:53:02ben bostrom who was uh,

00:53:04Who had just been taken out of the factory team and put on the ncr ducati team

00:53:09So he was struggling on the factory bike and they put him on an ncr bike

00:53:14And I was watching him in practice and his bike was all over the place

00:53:18he's breaking, you know guys are breaking for chicane and they're moving around and his bike is like

00:53:23skipping and just just wonderful stuff. Yes, like my god, so, you know, like I know him from america and

00:53:30We're hanging out in his motorhome and his crew chief mark was with him. He's an american who went on to work with uh,

00:53:36Ducati at uh in moto gp with uh, nicky

00:53:40and others um, really great guy and uh

00:53:45Ben says i'm like ben your bike's all over the place man. What's what's going on?

00:53:48He's like dude if it's broke loose, I don't have to worry about what it's going to do when it breaks loose

00:53:55Yeah, i'm like fair

00:53:56Fair enough, and there's the whole fascinating thing about traction like in a car

00:54:01They talk about the slip angle that there's some point where

00:54:05the tire slipping

00:54:07Is giving you more grip than you might otherwise get until it really breaks completely loose and then you're all is lost

00:54:13And I think you know, we're witnessing a little bit of that going on

00:54:16with these guys riding on contact patches that are

00:54:20As big as a donut or smaller

00:54:23Smaller than the palm of your hand

00:54:26Amazing

00:54:27grasping the track

00:54:29what what uh

00:54:31I think is so important about the

00:54:34mechanless chassis and the whole process by which it was developed is

00:54:40that it was

00:54:41experimental

00:54:43that it was uh

00:54:46Completely

00:54:48the result of try it

00:54:50and see

00:54:52It did not come off of a drawing board. It was not

00:54:55born from the forehead of zeus

00:54:58Through a mysterious process

00:55:00It was just a bunch of work

00:55:02Well, let's move the engine ahead again

00:55:06And we know that the factories do things like this themselves because I remember seeing

00:55:12A chassis at one of the european shows. It was a ducati

00:55:16moto gp chassis

00:55:18And the engine mounts instead of being

00:55:22little pieces of of tubing with

00:55:25a single hole through it for the

00:55:27engine bolt

00:55:29they were

00:55:30boxes

00:55:32And into each box fit a square insert

00:55:36Into which the engine bolt holes could be placed

00:55:42In a variety of locations so it was obviously a test piece

00:55:49And uh a motorcycle has so many degrees of freedom that it is

00:55:55a

00:55:56Fair-sized problem to predict what it's doing

00:56:00from computer models now

00:56:02It may be that there are such models now that are

00:56:06uh

00:56:07Doing wonderful things. I don't know about it the people who are running them aren't talking to me

00:56:11Well, we just need to get a few minutes with the ducati moto gp team and some lenovo representatives

00:56:18We could just get that set up and have a nice little conversation

00:56:21Have a little chat

00:56:23but um

00:56:25This kind of uh

00:56:30Experimentalism has always characterized the motorcycle

00:56:36When irv kanemoto built

00:56:39an adjustable 250

00:56:42for uh, gary nixon

00:56:45and ultimately for uh, freddie spencer

00:56:49he made the

00:56:52Steering head as a big pot

00:56:55And you could put inserts in there that move the front forward or back a fair distance and you could change the

00:57:03brake angle

00:57:05and

00:57:08He had grown up in that west coast soup of belief in

00:57:17The idea that if you got the rake and trail

00:57:20Just so you'd have front grip

00:57:24And he did all this work and they went testing with the bike and tried

00:57:30moving things around and his conclusion was

00:57:34the only thing that determines

00:57:36front grip

00:57:37is applied load

00:57:42And

00:57:43That shouldn't surprise us because

00:57:46If there's no load on the tire

00:57:49It can't grip at all

00:57:51but

00:57:52there was this

00:57:54This soup of belief that there were these numbers

00:58:00Or that if you went and had your dirt track frame built by so-and-so don't go to this guy make sure

00:58:08It was

00:58:10it was

00:58:11all imaginary

00:58:14And probably those dirt track builders knew it

00:58:17But there's no harm in being a wizard none at all you can charge yeah on your wizard cap

00:58:24Yep, they're purple. They're pointed

00:58:28Get yours today. I think it was or I should say earn yours today. It was fascinating the um, the moto-siz

00:58:36Effort that I wrote about many years ago. I went up many years. It was sort of circa

00:58:42Oh

00:58:442000 2004 something we have a story in the archive on it

00:58:47um, and he was doing some really interesting things and and you know a lot of enthusiasm and

00:58:54Um, but one of the things he had was adjustable inserts in the in his alternative fork lower

00:59:02You know to vary the trail

00:59:05And uh

00:59:08I

00:59:09Just wondered, you know if that was actually effective somebody'd be doing it

00:59:15If it really mattered that if that variable mattered that much

00:59:19It would be it could change while you're riding if it really mattered that much

00:59:25well, if you were to

00:59:27Look through

00:59:28all the available photographs of the honda rc 181 that hillwood rode in the 500 championships

00:59:351966-67

00:59:38you would see pictures of

00:59:40it with a

00:59:42Leading axle fork with an adjustable fork with a bunch of things because that motorcycle

00:59:48Uh when hillwood wrote it it weaved

00:59:52when um

00:59:54Other riders wrote it it didn't weave the explanation given

01:00:00Rather facile I think was that

01:00:05Jim redmond

01:00:06Didn't slide the motorcycle

01:00:09So it was stable for him hillwood

01:00:11Slid the motorcycle so it wasn't stable. Well, I saw

01:00:15hillwood at at the canadian grand prix in 1967

01:00:19and every corner where I saw him as he

01:00:23Lifted and accelerated it would start that. Hey

01:00:27And the motorcycle is sort of saying to you

01:00:31Um an oscillation may have an amplitude that grows rapidly without limit

01:00:38That's called a divergent oscillation and

01:00:43Aviation people talk about then the aircraft diverged

01:00:49From the from the planned flight path one of my favorite michael scott quotes is

01:00:54What he was writing some race coverage for us

01:00:56many years ago and it was uh

01:00:59Such and so left the party at a tangent

01:01:05Yep

01:01:08So, uh

01:01:11Obviously good handling is the result of a partnership between riders

01:01:18and builders

01:01:21All of whom must bring something like an open mind to the process

01:01:26Because if you

01:01:28Are absolutely certain that every motorcycle should be like the one you liked best

01:01:34That's a prejudice

01:01:36It may contain information

01:01:38But you have to be willing to say

01:01:43Um

01:01:44Is this the end of motorcycle design is this is this it we've reached the limit now we

01:01:50There's no place to go. That's not going to happen

01:01:53Well, the best you know is the best the best you know is the best you've tried

01:01:58And um if you can't conceive of a better working fork or better working shock or

01:02:07First time I tried slicks

01:02:10So

01:02:12It's such a gap. It's such a jump

01:02:15That it is hard to process, you know

01:02:17I found that at barber racing the vintage bmw

01:02:21And then getting on the m1000rr also getting on nate kern's alpha racing bike

01:02:27And the turn-in was insane and the grip was so high like it was

01:02:32After a lifetime of testing all this stuff and riding really fast motorcycles. I was very zoned in to ride in the 70 horsepower

01:02:40You know vintage super bike, you know bmw flat twin

01:02:44With pretty good tires we used continental they were great tires actually they were

01:02:49Grip all the time for what I was doing

01:02:52um

01:02:53continentals and uh

01:02:57But just switching over to that other bike and having

01:03:01Modern rubber and and the damping working and then the alpha racing prep

01:03:07Was mind-blowing and it was such a it was so far beyond what I had spent my whole

01:03:14previous four days doing that it was

01:03:17Truly overwhelming it would take it would have taken another couple days to sort of get

01:03:22Out of the old thing and then to start reapplying what you yeah

01:03:27There was something very similar. Uh

01:03:31Cook nelson, uh who transformed cycle magazine, uh into a

01:03:41An oracle rather than a

01:03:44an advertisement

01:03:46um

01:03:49He told me

01:03:51He came back from his trip to visit suzuki where they put him on an rg 500 two-stroke

01:03:58gp bike

01:04:00And he came back and he said i'm i'm troubled here

01:04:06because

01:04:07he said I was I was raised in the notion that

01:04:12What you want is a bike that corners like it's on rails

01:04:16And the ducati is certainly that

01:04:19You know, he put all that development work he and the late phil shilling

01:04:24Put several years of high-class work into making their ducati, uh super bike

01:04:32Uh into something that could win daytona in 1977

01:04:37the super bike race

01:04:40And he said

01:04:42but on that suzuki

01:04:45he said I

01:04:46I found myself in corners wishing I were at a certain place and then I was at that place

01:04:53He said it was like the motorcycle

01:04:56Uh knew what I wanted

01:04:58and

01:05:00He said that's that conflicts with everything. I that I know or I think I know

01:05:06So it's very much like what you're saying about, you know, let's

01:05:10Let's try slick. Well the willingness. Yeah, the the willingness and then

01:05:14It's also just the sheer loads available that you

01:05:19You get accustomed to the amount of load that a 72 bmw is going to take

01:05:25Through tires that are skinny and that you have this much horsepower and this you know this much

01:05:30Squeeze on a lever

01:05:32Is going to give you this much braking force and this much dive and you do all that and you get accustomed to those

01:05:37Loads and like the cornering load that I was

01:05:40You know encountering in the final corner onto the front straight. There was a point where the front end chattered

01:05:45And the load was not that high

01:05:47But it was just there was like an undulation in the track something there that set up a cycling that was terrible

01:05:53That was terrifying

01:05:55and so you you get to the point where like

01:05:58Oh, yeah that load equals death

01:06:03Yeah, and then it's completely and utterly beyond

01:06:07Your comprehension to get on a bike. It was it was just yeah, I mean I needed another day

01:06:14To get back into like i'm gonna go

01:06:17And then I was 12. I was like 12 seconds a lap faster on the bmw without

01:06:21you know

01:06:23Without actually going that fast for for the bike

01:06:27so

01:06:30Anyway, thanks nate. Thanks for letting me ride your alpha racing bike because I rode a stock m1000 double r

01:06:36which was phenomenal and then you try the the prepped one from alpha racing or I also tried nate's uh,

01:06:42hooligan racer r9t hooligan racer

01:06:46and that had an insane chassis and that was you know, that was sort of like

01:06:51the

01:06:52You know the cosmic spacecraft extension of what I had been racing because there was another flat twin, you know

01:06:59And it actually turned the same way, you know

01:07:01One of the advantages with that bike was the flywheel effect and at barber you set up for these chicanes by going into a left

01:07:09And then your exit is rolling to the right and driving out

01:07:13and that bmw was

01:07:15A weapon for that because it you know, it would resist turning in like nate said nate said well it turns in like a thousand

01:07:22In a left turn

01:07:23But it turns in like a 600 on the right

01:07:25And that's what you're getting was like a little bit of reluctance on the left part of that chicane

01:07:30and then as you rolled it over you could just like

01:07:33You just hit the throttle and you rolled it over and the thing just whipped right down where you wanted it to you

01:07:37Hit your apex and you just drove off and it was

01:07:40It was glorious

01:07:43People who flew those

01:07:45World war one aircraft with the rotary engines where the crankcase and cylinders whirled around with the propeller

01:07:53Talk about a flywheel

01:07:55and those things

01:07:57would

01:07:58turn in one direction

01:08:00like

01:08:01miraculous and hardly at all

01:08:04the other direction

01:08:06The gyro reaction is saying no, you don't no. No, we're not doing yeah

01:08:10I guess you might turn right to go left or vice versa just because it'd be easier to go around and then

01:08:18So they soon gave up that idea of having the engine rotate around a stationary crankshaft, but

01:08:24It had an importance at one time because it cooled better. The airplane's going 60 miles an hour

01:08:32The cylinder heads are going 200 feet a second

01:08:37So

01:08:39They needed that for a while then they outgrew it

01:08:43and rotary engines are just a curiosity of history now, but

01:08:47not back then

01:08:49I guess a shout out to the

01:08:51The manx engine, you know, I mean it was not high revving

01:08:56I mean it was no they thought 6800 was I mean it was for what it was but when you look at

01:09:01the difference in the

01:09:04And in line four and how you can split the weight between all the valves and split the weights between the you know

01:09:11every cylinder smaller pistons lighter, you know, your accelerations are

01:09:17Are lower the g's are lower all that stuff allows you to spin it faster, but it still was a very efficient

01:09:24I mean for the displacement and the technology and the number of valves that it had

01:09:29It was a very efficient engine

01:09:32Yeah, you know

01:09:34Well, that was norton's great asset was that they had this unkillable engine right and tested

01:09:40I mean tested at the isle of man tt. So

01:09:43You know joe craig ran these

01:09:46terrible

01:09:48endurance dyno sessions

01:09:51Trying to break the engine

01:09:53Trying to make the exhaust valve fail trying to wreck the big end bearing

01:09:59Trying to make the piston scuff

01:10:02Against the two hot cylinder and each time that a problem would appear

01:10:07then

01:10:08He would get to solve it

01:10:11and

01:10:12In that kind of work you find that no sooner do you solve this problem?

01:10:17Then up ahead. There's another one rushing toward you. So

01:10:22Uh, you'll never be bored

01:10:24Shh

01:10:27So that was their the the engine was their great asset it could be relied upon

01:10:32and

01:10:33with the

01:10:34innovations of the uh

01:10:37featherbed chassis

01:10:39built by the mccandless brothers

01:10:42it raised

01:10:43a

01:10:44motorcycle chassis performance to a new level

01:10:48And it raised it so far

01:10:50That the lack of horsepower of the single versus the italian four-cylinder bikes was

01:10:57not enough to cover the

01:10:58gap

01:11:00So they won that world championship in 1951 and they well deserved to did we not get clip-ons out of this whole operation

01:11:09Oh the clip-on bars. Yeah, that was that was part of the package

01:11:14uh

01:11:15because the mccandless brothers were

01:11:18Really down on frontal area. They wanted the rider to be sort of in the gas tank

01:11:24And if you're having to put your hands up above your head to reach the handlebars, that's

01:11:30That's no good

01:11:32So where do your hands end up when you're tucked in like this and we'll build you some bars

01:11:38That pass through your grip at that point. That's what the clip-ons are

01:11:43and of course

01:11:45Uh, jeff duke saw that one of his norton teammates arty bell had on a set of really close-fitting leathers

01:11:55Bell's bike seemed to be a bit faster

01:11:58he had his uh, duke had a set of

01:12:02tailored handmade

01:12:03leathers to fit his body

01:12:06and

01:12:07He made the same game

01:12:10So once again, it is uh

01:12:13Empiricism

01:12:15in this case

01:12:17People who race at bonneville know that if if you're supposed to wear a numbered jersey

01:12:23If it's fluttering

01:12:25It's taking two or three miles per hour of top speed

01:12:30So pull that thing tight or stitch it onto your leathers

01:12:37Uh frank camilleri and rusty bradley were

01:12:42on

01:12:43identical 250s

01:12:46Frank a fair-sized man

01:12:48Was faster down the straight

01:12:51Than bradley who was a little skinny guy

01:12:56And

01:12:58They traded bikes and the speed went with the body not with the bike so

01:13:06uh frank said

01:13:09Um

01:13:11Let's lower your fairing

01:13:15He said we lowered the front of the fairing two inches

01:13:19And bradley's bike was just as fast as his then

01:13:23Because previously the windscreen had come to the top of his head

01:13:28Frank's windscreen came to the top of his back

01:13:34So

01:13:35Lowering the screen on bradley's bike made this situation the same for him

01:13:41His helmet stuck up

01:13:43the

01:13:44Windscreen guided the flow over his back more than one racer including uh, rich oliver

01:13:50Would come out particularly at daytona would come out of the saddle

01:13:55And take his arch back and move it until he felt

01:13:59The air and so he was completing an arc with his body not just smashed down, you know behind the screen but

01:14:07Moving his body up to either get and you could see

01:14:11Guys raising their hind ends up on the seat back in moto gp

01:14:17where supposedly they've

01:14:19They're just fresh from the wind tunnel. Their hair is all tousled from all that wind

01:14:24uh, well airflow if we start talking about airflow and moto gp we'll be here for

01:14:28Years

01:14:31Want to leave that one aside

01:14:33The new tail section on ducati like what is going on man? I mean like little

01:14:39little streaks with little vents in them and then

01:14:42Stegosaurus things that are at different angles. Yeah, the stegosaurus is lovely

01:14:49Long way from rex mccandless, I guess

01:14:52Well, yes, but

01:14:55Uh standing on the shoulders of giants

01:14:58Yeah, it was it

01:15:00Harold daniel, right? Wasn't he the featherbed? He's the guy who's oh i've yeah i've been i've been lying on a fire featherbed for the

01:15:07last two hours

01:15:09Describing his finishing finishing his first ride on the new chassis. Yeah, so

01:15:15Well, there you go, folks. Uh

01:15:18That is the norton featherbed frame and the handling revolution

01:15:23Most significant chassis of all time I would say

01:15:28Art because it explored all those variables fight me in the comments set things where they needed to be at that moment

01:15:34um

01:15:35You know, I talked about manza in 2000. I will put a link in our video description

01:15:42to the story I wrote from manza in 2000 because I feel like I just

01:15:46I got lucky being there

01:15:49They said go to manza and cover this and we called the story mission to manza, but I I got

01:15:55It was incredibly lucky to be there because I saw bailiffs do what he was doing

01:16:00I got to hang with anthony gobert who i'd seen in american racing, but

01:16:04I got to spend some time in the paddock with

01:16:07A very cool person anthony gobert had his problems obviously

01:16:11But it was a really magical time and i'll give a plug

01:16:14I can link to the story on the website, but also let you know that magazine.cycleworld.com

01:16:19Which i'll put in the description

01:16:21Is our archive website and all the issues are scanned and so you can go read the print story with the layouts and so forth

01:16:27Uh, and uh, you know go check that out. It was fun fun story

01:16:32And again a miracle to be there

01:16:35to watch troy bayless do what he's doing and talk to frank keely and

01:16:40Tardacci and all those people actually learned some good stuff. Yeah, I mean colin edwards was there and and uh,

01:16:46You know, he's riding the rc 51 and that was my chance to ask him, you know

01:16:50versus the rc 45

01:16:52and uh

01:16:54He's like well, you know, the biggest change is the rc 51 doesn't want to

01:16:58F-ing kill me in every corner

01:17:02Because colin was really good with the f-bombs

01:17:05um

01:17:06Anyway, it was uh

01:17:08It was really a time kiri. Yanagawa's, uh, 750 kawasaki

01:17:13Going through the chicanes zero hesitation full lean left

01:17:18Whipping over in a fraction of time compared to the ducatis and even the rc 51

01:17:24Ducatis so wonderful when you see that you just roll over and that was great the great thing about asking colin edwards. I'm like, dude

01:17:31I said you guys like, you know, the ducatis everybody stops at the top of the roll

01:17:35They they lift it for the chicane. They stop and the bike goes. Oh, yeah. Yeah

01:17:40Wiggles and then they're allowed it winds up from lifting and then they got to let it unspring and then

01:17:46Laid into the right didn't stop bailis

01:17:49um

01:17:51And uh, yeah edwards was like I don't care what anybody f-ing says

01:17:55Akira, yanagawa has the best handling bike in the paddock and you could see it in the chicane

01:17:59And it's nice to look at racing and say i've observed this

01:18:03And take it to someone who's in the space and say like hey, I see this and you guys are doing this but not that

01:18:10And he's like, yeah

01:18:12And then he tells you know, he tells you more because you're not asking him how it feels out there champ

01:18:17you know, so

01:18:18anyways

01:18:19Special time to uh to witness that race. It was really cool and uh

01:18:25Check out the archive. It's free

01:18:28All right. Thanks everybody. We will catch you next time

Category

Transcript

Recommended