- 6/4/2025
Long before King of the Baggers, Harley-Davidson committed to Superbike racing and hit the track in the early 1990s with the VR1000. This 1000cc V-twin had all the right ingredients for success, but what happened? Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer take a dive into the building of the bike, its evolving specs, it ultimate retirement and so much more!
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
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
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00:00This is the Cycle World Podcast. We're back. I'm Mark Hoyer. I'm the Editor-in-Chief and I'm with Kevin Cameron.
00:00:07You know him as our Technical Editor.
00:00:10Hi Kevin, how are you?
00:00:13Ah, I'm present.
00:00:14I'm present too. In the immortal words of Keith Richards, it's great to be here. It's great to be anywhere.
00:00:24This week's podcast is the Harley-Davidson VR1000 Superbike.
00:00:30What a time to witness Harley getting into Superbike racing.
00:00:34You know, I was there. I was there in 96 at the parking lot race in Pomona.
00:00:40Cones everywhere. Poor Pascal Picotte going out for a race start and needing to use the Port-a-John.
00:00:48And he like ran over and bikes are revving and people are running off the grid.
00:00:52And he's like, it's bad enough to try and take a leak when you're wearing leathers
00:00:56because you got to like bend over in half and try and get the zipper down and all that hard enough.
00:01:01And then to have the pressure of needing to make a start, I was dying.
00:01:07But Chris Carr, man, a real bumpy track.
00:01:11And he got a pole, the one and only pole position for the VR1000.
00:01:14And I want to say in the press conference, he seemed as surprised as anyone.
00:01:20So you did a lot with this bike with Steve Scheibe.
00:01:24And I think you saw a lot of the insides of what was going on.
00:01:29And of course, you know, you're better equipped to ask questions than many of us.
00:01:33So we're looking forward to talking this one over.
00:01:36Well, the thing that strikes me looking at all of this is that they planned well.
00:01:48Harley bought themselves back from the AMF deal in 1981.
00:01:55And they had to scratch around for money to put this all together.
00:02:00And it was a house of cards for a while.
00:02:03Worst time to be leveraged.
00:02:04Interest rates were crazy.
00:02:06Everybody threw everything in.
00:02:08They borrowed all this money, the 13 execs.
00:02:11And I mean, the worst time to be leveraged.
00:02:14Yep.
00:02:14And there they were, but they believed.
00:02:18We now know they believed.
00:02:20Yes.
00:02:20Anyway, it was a tough time.
00:02:24And it was touch and go.
00:02:26But they were, they had a plan.
00:02:31They were determined not to fail.
00:02:34Instead of going back into the business as it had been in 1936, which is the conservative temptation.
00:02:43It always worked before.
00:02:45It'll work now.
00:02:46They decided to adopt just-in-time parts availability.
00:02:56I got the tour at Harley.
00:02:58I walked along this long gallery and I was told all along here were crates of engines.
00:03:05And we weren't always sure what was in the crates.
00:03:10And we weren't always sure that it would fit with what we wanted to put on it.
00:03:16And all this money tied up in inventory.
00:03:21And you know what else happens with inventory?
00:03:23You pay tax on it.
00:03:25Which is why dealerships don't have any parts because they're going to be taxed on those parts.
00:03:32They also adopted statistical dimensional control.
00:03:39They looked at the statistics of what was coming off of a given process and they could understand the trends in dimensional errors so that they could shrink that down.
00:04:00And as Dr. Deming said so long ago, an increase in quality is an increase in production because parts that were previously going out the window and into the river, like they did at one outfit in Framingham, Massachusetts, this machinist was famous for quality.
00:04:19Everything he made was perfect because he threw the rejects out the window.
00:04:23So they played this game hard and soon they became the recognized experts in just-in-time statistical process control and the rest of what was at the time being talked about.
00:04:42This is why the Japanese are so successful.
00:04:45Well, they got the company stabilized.
00:04:49They were set straight by their advertising firm about what they had.
00:04:58What they had was a motorcycle that was American nationalism condensed into solid form.
00:05:10If you rode a Harley Davidson, you were a red-blooded American.
00:05:15Harley had these plans to compete with Japan with their V4 Nova.
00:05:20Forget that Nova, they were told.
00:05:23That way lies failure.
00:05:27You can't compete with others by copying what they do.
00:05:32You have to have your own edge.
00:05:35Well, you would want to have your own edge.
00:05:38If you have-
00:05:38For sure.
00:05:40You would want to have your own quality of brand.
00:05:43I mean, that's really, it certainly was, you know, a kind of nationalism and, you know, I'm a red-blooded American, but it was also, oh, that, you know, the cowboy myth, you know, the rugged individualist.
00:05:58Yes, the high-plane strifter.
00:06:00You could be, you could be, I mean, it's really one of the, for me, it's one of the appeals of motorcycling is that it is a fiercely individual pursuit that you also enjoy with other people.
00:06:13Yeah.
00:06:13And I think, you know, you also have that feeling that you get when you ride a motorcycle that's delivering something that you need.
00:06:24And for a lot of people, that is the potato, potato sound, that sound of the 45, clicking it up into whatever your top gear might be, fourth at times, fifth, and then now, oh my gosh, six gears.
00:06:35Yes.
00:06:36But clicking it up and just like, you know, motoring down the road feels good.
00:06:41Puttin' out.
00:06:41Puttin' out.
00:06:43So they began to realize that they were succeeding in their plans.
00:06:50And as early as 88, maybe even earlier, there was discussion of, Harley used to be big in AMA road racing.
00:07:02AMA road racing has turned into super bike.
00:07:04And, oh, one other thing, V-Twins, Harley doesn't make anything else at that time.
00:07:14V-Twins are being very successful.
00:07:16For example, Ducati won three years in a row in world super bike with their V-Twin.
00:07:24And in AMA racing in 93 and 94, Ferracci Ducatis were triumphant.
00:07:33So what could be a better fit?
00:07:36We'll build a V-Twin powered super bike.
00:07:42And to make sure that no one mistakes what it is, we'll paint one side of it orange and the other side of it black.
00:07:50It was pretty cool.
00:07:52I'd like to, so we, it's a super bike and it needed to be homologated and they needed to have 50 units somewhere.
00:07:58And, um, they did it for Poland.
00:08:01That was where they sort of could squeak the thing as a.
00:08:04Where they had no emissions requirements.
00:08:07So they could say, here's our bike and it's for sale somewhere.
00:08:11And they did that.
00:08:12And I was, I was talking to Ferracci, uh, around that time.
00:08:16And Araldo Ferracci is like, he's one of the greatest human beings I've ever met.
00:08:20Um, you know, Italian accent and, uh, a great engineer.
00:08:24And he built, you know, they had varieties of wonderful super bikes and they made their own pipes.
00:08:30And they, you know, they just did a lot of really neat stuff.
00:08:32And I'm with Ferracci and I'm like, well, what about this homologation?
00:08:35And he's, he also was very classic with his, uh, language.
00:08:39And he said, I'll, I'll just clean it up a little bit.
00:08:42And he was like, ah, the fricking AMA.
00:08:44He, uh, and he was like, you know, he says, I had to air, you know, he said that he had
00:08:50the air freight, like 50 bikes.
00:08:52Cause they were like, we need to see all your bikes and see when they had the air freight
00:08:55them over.
00:08:56And it was like before Daytona or something.
00:08:59And he's gone to great lengths to get the bikes there.
00:09:01And he was convinced that there was a circular conveyor belt for Harley.
00:09:06And that, and the bikes were going, they'd go behind a curtain, that same bike would just
00:09:11come out and you go one, and then it would go again, two, and then they got to 50 and
00:09:16there you go.
00:09:17Hit the track.
00:09:18He was, uh, he was convinced that was how it was.
00:09:21We don't know.
00:09:21It used to be counting the bikes used to be your old Flanders job.
00:09:25Not Flanders.
00:09:27It was great.
00:09:29So, uh, they, they, it would, the motorcycle was designed by.
00:09:36Harley engineering, Eric Buell desperately wanted to be involved in it.
00:09:41Uh, there was politics going on, the dimensions of which are beyond this discussion.
00:09:49And, uh, they aimed for an initial 135 horsepower at 10,000, a goal that was easily achievable.
00:10:02And I think they achieved it.
00:10:05And what they built was a 60 degree V twin, not the traditional Harley 45 degrees, because
00:10:13with 98 millimeter, nearly four inch pistons, the pistons arriving at bottom center, close
00:10:23to one another would suffer skirt clashing.
00:10:26And even at 60 degrees, they had to use nearly a 2.2 rod ratio.
00:10:34That's the ratio.
00:10:35A long rod to keep that, keep the, keep the, keep the pistons higher up in the V essentially.
00:10:40Yes, absolutely.
00:10:42And, uh, so the, the bore and stroke chosen were, uh, 98 by 66 millimeters.
00:10:50Um, and if you looked at the Ducati 888, and if you looked at the Britain, which was coming
00:11:00into prominence, um, at this time in the early nineties, they were all around a bore stroke
00:11:08ratio of 1.5.
00:11:10The bore was one and a half times a stroke.
00:11:14And so the VR was right in the, in the place where it needed to be in terms of board stroke.
00:11:22It had a, in place of Harley's, uh, five piece and later three piece pressed together, crankshafts
00:11:31with one piece connecting rods and roller bearings.
00:11:35It was an all plain bearing, um, reciprocating, uh, train.
00:11:41The rods were side by side on a single crank pin.
00:11:46They had plain bearings.
00:11:47The crankshaft was lubricated from one end.
00:11:51The oil went in and lubricated the, the, uh, crank pin bearing by drillings inside the
00:11:59material.
00:12:00What are the advantages of a single crank pin?
00:12:03Uh, you will discover the advantages of a single crank pin.
00:12:08If you build an engine with staggered crank pins and then try to operate it at race RPM.
00:12:14Yep.
00:12:15Uh, Harley Davidson, Harley Davidson, um, engineers were doing their reading.
00:12:23This engine was not designed in a dark closet far from, uh, the sources of eternal truth
00:12:30and internal combustion engines.
00:12:32These people were doing their studying, but, uh, the difficulty with, uh, putting the oil,
00:12:44into the main bearings and then having it flow radially inward into the crankshaft from the
00:12:53main bearings that is fighting centrifugal force and then flow through drillings out to the
00:12:58crank pin has problems.
00:13:01Uh, Honda's RC 30 always had black streaks on the rod bearings.
00:13:06They never tightened one, but the black streaks were always there saying,
00:13:10I could hurt you bad if I wanted to.
00:13:14And when they built the RC 45, which was RC 30 updated, uh, the black streaks didn't go away.
00:13:23They didn't go away until they fed the oil into the ends of the crankshaft.
00:13:29They did a lot of hocus pocus with the RC 45.
00:13:33Yes, they did.
00:13:34They sure did.
00:13:35They turned off the oil pump at high RPM because it was self pumping and they gained horsepower,
00:13:39like toward the end of development when they were really trying to wring the daylights out of it.
00:13:43Well, when they went to, when they went to end feed, they had to tag the engine says,
00:13:49when you run this engine, you will find it has 12 PSI oil pressure.
00:13:54That is correct.
00:13:55That's good.
00:13:56Don't try to fix it.
00:13:59And it's common for, uh, high level race engines like formula one to have two speed oil pumps,
00:14:06a high speed, uh, for low crankshaft RPM to make sure that the bearings are up on the step floating on oil.
00:14:15Um, and then because of the same V squared problem that we face in damper design,
00:14:22when the engine revved up, it was having to put tremendous force into pumping that much oil.
00:14:30So they slowed, they slowed the oil pump down and with a lower ratio.
00:14:36And there's bunches of, of automobiles now production cars that have variable speed oil pumps or two speeds.
00:14:42Well, I mean, I mean, think of the viscosity that just think about, um, filling your mouth with water
00:14:48and trying to blow it through, uh, uh, a cocktail straw that has a, you know, 16th of an inch hole in it
00:14:55and pushing as hard as you can.
00:14:56And you're going to get this little trickle out and the pressure is going to be phenomenal.
00:15:00It's just middling out.
00:15:01Yeah.
00:15:02You take a garden hose and you can go and it's gone.
00:15:05So that's V squared.
00:15:06Like the friction of trying to get through that little 16th hole where you're like,
00:15:09it just ain't going to, you get to a certain point and you can't push any harder.
00:15:14That's what we're talking about with the oil pump.
00:15:17Now, uh, that takes care of, of the bottom end.
00:15:23Um, the cylinder heads were designed by the Jack Roush organization.
00:15:28Roush, um, made it big in Detroit by saying, oh, you,
00:15:33you have 4,000 air conditioners that won't fit in your Cadillac because you made the wrong brackets.
00:15:41We'll make the brackets for you three shifts a day, no union trouble.
00:15:46And, uh, Jack got to be pretty popular and he had things that he'd like to do, uh, like P51 Mustangs and Merlin V12s.
00:15:58So anyway, specialist, uh, engineering organization, the head they built was four valves per cylinder valves with a 32 degree included angle,
00:16:09meaning a flat chamber that is normally fast burning, very slightly domed pistons.
00:16:17Uh, the valves were intake valves were 39 millimeters.
00:16:22The lift was, uh, 450.
00:16:25So that's about, uh, 30%.
00:16:29Valve lift is 30% of the head diameter, which is in the game.
00:16:33That's Ducati wasn't, uh, wasn't even there yet.
00:16:36So this is good current practice at the time.
00:16:42And, uh, the valve timing was not excessive.
00:16:48One of the temptations when you do your first four valve engine is to give it two valve timing and you end up with an engine that has no power, no power.
00:16:57Suddenly there's a bill spike, uh, in the torque curve.
00:17:02And that's all she wrote.
00:17:05So you, you have to keep the air moving at all RPM, uh, so that the cylinders will get properly filled.
00:17:13And with the four valve, it produces area so much quicker as the valves lift that you don't need as much timing.
00:17:21So it is inherently power band broadening.
00:17:25This is why the Milwaukee eight, eight valves, two cylinders, the latest gold wing, uh, these are touring engines, but they're giving them four valves per cylinder because of this torque broadening effect that you can get with them.
00:17:42So the VR had the same, uh, torque broadening effect, but in racing terms and a single central spark plug, uh, double overhead cam, uh, driven by chain.
00:17:57Now, for some reason, somebody in design said, Oh, well, V twins have broad power.
00:18:05So we only need five speeds.
00:18:07Well, it turned out later they needed six speeds.
00:18:11And, uh, the project engineer who had been hired from Roush, uh, Steve Scheibe, um, thin the gears, lowered the engaging dogs, crowded everything together and got six speeds in there.
00:18:26And it worked well.
00:18:27Yeah.
00:18:28That's how they did it with the Quaif.
00:18:29When you put your Quaif into your old Triumph, they just kind of skinnied everything up and stuff the six gear in there.
00:18:35Yeah.
00:18:36Because, uh, back when those gearboxes were originally made, they didn't have 93, 10 L or, or Astraloy or whatever they make gears out of, um, in modern times.
00:18:49So they got all these surface treatments now and they're cryo and they're micro polishing.
00:18:54And yeah, let's shine it up and we can charge more for it.
00:18:59Sure.
00:19:00Well, I think that you discovered that in, in redoing your RD cranks.
00:19:03And at one time you had to start polishing them because other people were doing that.
00:19:08I polished a rod once.
00:19:10That was it.
00:19:11Okay.
00:19:11You didn't polish the cranks or anything?
00:19:13No, sir.
00:19:14Yeah.
00:19:14Um, you mentioned, I, I laugh in the notes, uh, in our previous discussion about the VR saying, uh, they adopted nail head valves and that, and that Ford discovered that for their 427.
00:19:31Yep.
00:19:32And then you go down this long list of people who had used nail.
00:19:35That was in the sixties.
00:19:37The thing is this, when you look at a, at an intake port in cross section and the valve is there.
00:19:44Yeah.
00:19:44Close in the closed position.
00:19:47Then you lift the valve and it just seems inherently instinctively right that the valve should have a curvy tulip form.
00:20:00And the trouble is it doesn't flow as much air as a disc on a stick.
00:20:06And Douglas discovered this in the 1920s.
00:20:11They didn't say anything about it.
00:20:12It's just that if you look at the parts, you can look at so many parts on the internet, the last groups of parts they made, the last engines had nail head intakes.
00:20:24Amazing.
00:20:24And Roland Pike, who did all that, uh, late term development on the BSA gold star 500.
00:20:33He was a nail head guy.
00:20:36And in 1936, the NACA, um, they wrote a paper about it.
00:20:43So, uh, the VR got nail head valves.
00:20:47Another proof that they were on the money.
00:20:51They were not designing something vintage.
00:20:54Now, uh, what happened?
00:21:01The chassis, uh, was a reasonable length, 55 and something inches.
00:21:09So right in there where it should be, the steering head angle, um, was in the 24, 25 degree area with, uh, under four inches of trail.
00:21:24Again, numbers that everyone was using at the time.
00:21:28No, it's, they were, they were really, uh, right there in the ballpark, 55 and a half inches, 24.5 degrees and 3.8 inches of trail.
00:21:37Yeah.
00:21:37And, um, it, works great.
00:21:41Yeah.
00:21:42Yeah.
00:21:42I mean, it's, it's really, you know.
00:21:44And they, they, of course, had a policy being Harley Davidson of using as many American made things as they could.
00:21:50They had, um, an American made fork.
00:21:55They had Wilwood calipers, six piston calipers.
00:21:59They, uh, used American wherever they, wherever they could.
00:22:05And I went to the Grattan Raceway, uh, outing when they first put their bike on the track.
00:22:14And it was like when I was a little boy and I was taken to see ballet practice by my aunt.
00:22:24And ballet practice is a bunch of people standing around talking and somebody puts their toe up pointing to the ceiling and, and tugs on the underside of their thigh and, and they keep on talking.
00:22:42And, and then they say, well, that's it.
00:22:44Let's, uh, let's, uh, let's have lunch.
00:22:46And you're going to upset the ballet contingent in the audience, buddy.
00:22:51Well, this was, you know, this was discussion leading up to, uh, they're trying to solve problems that they'd had and where, where, where are your marks, you know?
00:23:00So, uh, what goes on at the racetrack is the technicians are deeply absorbed in the fuel pump blowing fuses and out in the, in light rain and cold weather is not the place to diagnose electrics.
00:23:19But here we are at the racetrack, we've got to run the spike.
00:23:25How many hours, how many, how many dollars an hour is this whole thing?
00:23:28And have all these people there.
00:23:30Sure.
00:23:30And we're not riding around.
00:23:32Yep.
00:23:33Well, uh, I suspect that when the VR, uh, first went racing, which was in 94, that it was close on horsepower.
00:23:47Um, um, it may not have had the best power band, but a lot of things were right about it.
00:23:57And what I think happened then is that as they spent quite a lot of money, because each dyno test, each change of cam timing, each adjustment of compression ratio,
00:24:15a lot of these things are penciled in, you know, they wanted 12 to one, but they started somewhat lower.
00:24:23And the more valve lift you have that affects compression because when you lift the valve higher, you have to cut clearance grooves in the piston crown.
00:24:35And so all these things have to be worked out experimentally.
00:24:43Yes.
00:24:44Kind of like this one here.
00:24:45You got these cutouts.
00:24:46I'm in focus, the piston not so much, but these are the cutouts for the valves.
00:24:51Good one.
00:24:51This is not a VR 1000 piston.
00:24:53This is a Kawasaki 650 piston.
00:24:55So, uh, all these things require experimentation.
00:25:05It is not possible to go to Google and say, what is the correct design for a 1994, uh, AMA super bike with two cylinders and have it just.
00:25:17But you know what, Kevin, AI will tell you, and there'll be a disclaimer at the bottom that says, AI answers may contain mistakes.
00:25:27May.
00:25:27It's right there.
00:25:28It says that they, they give you all this stuff that could be construed as truth.
00:25:33And then they have a disclaimer.
00:25:35Maybe I should just have my, uh, my own shirt.
00:25:37I'll put an asterisk on it and then down here and say, may contain errors.
00:25:41Yes, that's it.
00:25:44I might not cook your steak perfectly.
00:25:46I'm sorry.
00:25:47This stuff is costing big money.
00:25:49And, uh, there is always a product cheapening officer in every organization.
00:25:57Uh, at Kawasaki, they saw somebody, some sharp eyed person saw that they were paying more for connecting rod roller bearings, uh, needle bearings, really.
00:26:09Then for the production bike, what's going on here?
00:26:14This thing, these things that cost 10 times more.
00:26:16Um, so we're plating, buddy.
00:26:19Yeah.
00:26:20And, and little details like rounded ends on the rollers so that the ends of the slots can be rounded rather than right angles because sudden changes of section and right angles are where cracks like.
00:26:34They like to nibble.
00:26:36Well, and then the cage comes apart and I've got boxes of cages with bars broken out of them.
00:26:43This is serious stuff.
00:26:45Well, uh, plane bearing cranks.
00:26:46Um, you know, if you go to, uh, this guy in Idaho that I use for, uh, crankshafts on real British cars mostly.
00:26:54But, um, what he will do is you'll say, he'll say like, well, how are you using this motor?
00:26:59And I'm like, well, it's, uh, you know, it's run flat out basically.
00:27:04Cause it's in a Thames van.
00:27:05So it's going to be, it's, he's like, Oh, life on a dyno.
00:27:08Okay.
00:27:09Yeah.
00:27:09We're going to turn it 40 under.
00:27:11I'm like, no, no, no.
00:27:12I'm like, I'm a street guy.
00:27:13I'm like, no, no, we're going to, no, no.
00:27:15We got to save the crank.
00:27:16I can't go 40 under right now.
00:27:18I can go 20.
00:27:19He's like, no, no, no.
00:27:20We got to go 40 and we'll make a bigger radii.
00:27:23We'll narrow it and we'll make a bigger radii that way.
00:27:27Then this is for each and that it, it, you know, it contours it.
00:27:31So, cause you make that hard turn, just what Kevin said.
00:27:34There are guidelines for this.
00:27:36There are guidelines for the radius at the edges of the crank pin in a one piece crankshaft.
00:27:43And so you design your part and on the drawing, you enter the numbers that have been successful
00:27:51in the past, except in your case, you get cracking.
00:27:56So then this is exactly the advice that you were given.
00:28:00They go back, they grind under and they increase the radius.
00:28:06So that is a more gradual turn from the face of the, uh, crank sheet to the crank pin itself.
00:28:15Nice rounded corners, organic shapes succeed where sharp looking stuff fails.
00:28:24There's, there's a note in, in, uh, some of the development stuff on the VR that said that there was a power gain when they broke the sharp corners on the piston crown,
00:28:36where the fly cutter, where the fly cutter made the valve clearance cutouts.
00:28:41And, um, um, Nobby Clark, who worked on Halewood's six cylinder 250 Honda, uh, in 66 and 67 said that they were under orders to break all sharp edges on the tops of the pistons.
00:28:58And if you look at, there's a wonderful picture on the internet of a person holding a 50 CC twin crank in one hand, the crank shaft is just a little tiny thing.
00:29:08Tiny, yep.
00:29:08And the pistons are on the rods and they've been worked over.
00:29:13The edges of those valve clearance cutouts are radiused.
00:29:18Well, I've read, I've read about those situations where a sharp edge, you know, regardless of what it might be doing to tumble or flow is a place where heat could concentrate also because it's so fine.
00:29:30And so breaking the edge round, just, which just means rounding it, like taking the edge of a two by four and sanding a plane over it to, to take the squareness off of it.
00:29:41Um, yeah, but there was, there was good knowledge behind the design of this engine, but here is a, here is a principle.
00:29:51It is the designer whose name is remembered and design, which involves conceptualizing something new gets respect from other engineers, but it is development that makes an engine or a vehicle or whatever you're building functionally successful development and development is terribly expensive.
00:30:20It is so discouraging and it discouraged the, uh, persons whose responsibility was cost control.
00:30:31And another thing that I learned was that the race department under shy B was down to five people at a point.
00:30:40And that means, um, not enough to do significant development.
00:30:46Well, imagine Harley at that time in 95, Harley was printing money that they were making every possible motorcycle they could make in the V twin cruiser market.
00:30:58Such a success.
00:31:00And they're really the only problem.
00:31:04The, the principal problem that everyone was focused on was how do we make more?
00:31:09It was a hundred percent.
00:31:10How do we increase our manufacturing capacity?
00:31:13That was it.
00:31:14That's what they were thinking about.
00:31:16And so this is a really neat project, but if you're sitting around and you're running a business, but, and you're going like, yeah, but these aren't super bikes and look at like, we look what we're doing.
00:31:27Like, what is this?
00:31:28Like, and it's hard.
00:31:31I've, but I think this is, this is where Honda succeeded.
00:31:34This is where Mr.
00:31:35Honda took a racing services or whatever they used to call it and made Honda racing corporation.
00:31:42It's a separate business that doesn't have to report to the, let's make one fifties for Thailand and get rich.
00:31:50It gets to do what it, it's a racing corporation.
00:31:53It's like, no, no, we, our success is world championship, world championship, world championship.
00:31:58That's our success.
00:32:00And it costs a certain amount.
00:32:01Thank you very much.
00:32:02Yeah.
00:32:02And it was separate.
00:32:03And so if you, yeah, I mean.
00:32:04And there are guidelines in business for all of this stuff and you learn them in B school, walking from class to class.
00:32:13You can contemplate the guideline that says three to 5% of any activity should be devoted to R and D, but the product cheapening department is vigorously working to oppose this.
00:32:29Because that's their responsibility.
00:32:32Money leaking out is like seawater leaking into the hull of the ship.
00:32:38Yeah.
00:32:39It can sink the operation.
00:32:41Well, you know, it's, it's, it is, it's fascinating on running, just running a business like this where, you know, you're dealing with a passion product, but you have all these unpassionate realities where you just have to do certain things.
00:32:53And then you have, and then you have, you know, um, engineering has, has goals, product planning, the people conceiving of the product are like thinking of like, well, wouldn't the customer just love this?
00:33:08And they might just love it, but damn, it's expensive.
00:33:10And so that's where you start arguing.
00:33:12Engineering comes back and says, we can't do that.
00:33:15Do you know how much that will cost?
00:33:17You know, I sat down with one of the, the audio guy at, at Harley Davidson years ago.
00:33:24And he, I, I was like, dude, you know what, with your next big boot, they called it the boom audio system at the time.
00:33:30And I'm like, dude, next, next round, you've got to put the subwoofer under the seat.
00:33:34Cause then the guy's going to feel it, right?
00:33:37And he's like, Oh, but there's no room.
00:33:39You know, it's like, but you could ask, I would ask for that.
00:33:42I would say, you got to put the subwoofer under the seat.
00:33:44And they'd be like, screw you, buddy, you know how much that'll cost.
00:33:47Where are we going to put the, whatever, where's the shot go?
00:33:50You know, can't do that on a soft tail shocks there.
00:33:53Yeah.
00:33:53Anyways, sorry.
00:33:55So 94, there they are at Daytona and cell phones were a new thing at the time.
00:34:03I had never seen so many cell phones in one place.
00:34:06And that includes the airport as there were in the Harley garage, because a couple of people are on the phone to Fuji heavy industries because the clutch baskets are breaking.
00:34:20Fuji told them, Oh, racing application, spring drive, not necessary.
00:34:25You know, in the, in the clutch basket, there's six springs.
00:34:29Yeah.
00:34:30I just witnessed those in the back end of that, uh, XS 650.
00:34:34Yep.
00:34:35Replace the clutch basket.
00:34:36And what do you find springs back there?
00:34:37And they actually, you can, you can read, renew those springs.
00:34:40And then there are these other damper things you could stick in there as well.
00:34:42Yep.
00:34:43Some, in some engines, it's rubber elements, but usually you see springs.
00:34:47And what that does is when the engine fires, it compresses those springs.
00:34:52And as the firing pressure dies away, the springs push back and it smooths the delivery of, uh, torque through the gearbox to the rear wheel.
00:35:02Hey, everybody, pour yourself a shot.
00:35:03Velocet 500 MSS torque compensator on the, on the, uh, crank drive end.
00:35:09On the crank shaft, yes.
00:35:11It's splined and it has three big lobes on this cam and there's a huge spring.
00:35:16Cam and settle.
00:35:16Cam and settle and it goes, zick, zick, zick, zick.
00:35:19And, you know, that makes it.
00:35:21The spring is, the spring is so frightening.
00:35:23I looked at the one on my 500 AJS and I thought, what if you caught any part of your body in there?
00:35:32Yeah, it's, it's big stuff.
00:35:34Terrible.
00:35:35So, uh, they're breaking, they're breaking clutch baskets.
00:35:39They're having various other problems.
00:35:41They're all on the phone trying to get, uh, all this stuff to Kintetsu air service so that it can, can arrive later that, that evening.
00:35:51And, uh, by this time they've put a single balancer on the engine.
00:35:59Well, it was unbalanced.
00:36:01It was, the initial ones had no balancer.
00:36:04Right.
00:36:04Right.
00:36:04Yeah.
00:36:05And, of course, you have two pistons.
00:36:07They're not moving exactly together, but they're moving nearly together.
00:36:13So, the imbalance, the shaking force is, like, tremendous.
00:36:19And the reason that Harleys in the beginning were not too bad shakers was that the engine was massive and the pistons were not so massive.
00:36:30And, as, as, um, 61 inches became 74, 74 became 80, and on and on, bigger and bigger pistons shook everything more and more.
00:36:43Get yourself a 135.
00:36:45Yep.
00:36:46We had a 135 through here, and I let one of my, um, you know, cute road racer guys who rides a lot of multis, and he's like, yeah, I gotta try that 135.
00:36:55And he tried the 135, and he's like, I don't know what it is.
00:36:57I think the front wheel's out of balance.
00:36:58The front end's loose, something like that, and he was really wound up about it.
00:37:03And I was like, huh.
00:37:04To the point that we actually sent it back and had it look at, had it looked at.
00:37:08And, like, the dude's like, no, everything's fine.
00:37:11And I rode it, and I'm like, oh, he's so cute.
00:37:13Because the thing was just, I mean, it was, you know, they're a pretty long stroke, and they're just hurtling stuff back and forth.
00:37:19So, you just feel it, folks.
00:37:21So, uh, in the race, the balancer defazed.
00:37:30And the balance weight tried to occupy the same space at the same time with the connecting rod begins.
00:37:40Can't have an interference fit there, I don't think.
00:37:42Just a terrible crunch past start finish.
00:37:45Um, it's, it's a final crunch, and it's not loud.
00:37:49It just goes crunch.
00:37:51And the engine is junk.
00:37:53Everything is junk.
00:37:54Crunch.
00:37:55I used to hear them accelerating from, uh, towards what used to be turned to the International Horseshoe crunch.
00:38:03And then the rider would break, pull off onto the grass, lean the bike against the fence, and walk back for another bike.
00:38:12Because that one was finished.
00:38:14At least the engine.
00:38:16So, these are realities in racing.
00:38:18You're going to break stuff.
00:38:19It's going to be expensive stuff.
00:38:21You need to have plenty of ones just as good as it is.
00:38:25Not some second quality junk.
00:38:27You need to have rows of identical engines, all up-to-date spec.
00:38:35Not, well, that's a dyno engine.
00:38:37Theirs got three hours on it.
00:38:38We could use that.
00:38:41Uh, and this is what professional racing teams have.
00:38:45But you, unless you have an experienced product cheapening department agent,
00:38:50they're going to set traps for you everywhere, and you won't be able to avoid stepping in them.
00:38:57So, what this became was a, a race between the inexperience of the motor company with modern race engine development,
00:39:09which is perfectly understandable.
00:39:12I wouldn't have expected my school principal to do any better.
00:39:16T. Walsh McQuillen.
00:39:18And, uh, what happened then was that they took stock.
00:39:29And all this time, Steve Scheibe is, is in anguish at, at, he can see the fruit, the low-hanging fruit, and he can almost reach it.
00:39:41And if only certain things were accomplished, he could reach it.
00:39:47But the awful truth is, Ducati is pulling away at the rate of five horsepower per year.
00:39:53And, uh, I just went through the figures today.
00:39:57It just, and they didn't seem to have any trouble with it.
00:40:02851?
00:40:03It reminds me of a quote of, um, Cal Carruthers.
00:40:09That each season, it was, you just need, it was last year plus 5% or 3%, whatever, you know.
00:40:15Yeah.
00:40:15That's, that's, that's, that's where you start.
00:40:17Well, better get 3%.
00:40:18Let's get going.
00:40:19Yep.
00:40:20So, uh, this is, this is normal.
00:40:26And Ducati is changing or in stroke, or at least bore often.
00:40:33851, 888, uh, 916, 926, 955.
00:40:40And I, I asked, uh, Claudio Domenicali how they managed to retain good, fast combustion in
00:40:53all of these engines.
00:40:55Because I said, uh, the Japanese had to stop and fall back a couple of times, Suzuki and
00:41:02Kawasaki at least, when they were following the road, uh, to Damascus, which is littered
00:41:09with short strokes.
00:41:11And he said, I can't speak for the Japanese, obviously, but in our own case, we use two
00:41:21things, the intake downdraft angle and intake velocity to boost combustion efficiency.
00:41:28Because the energy that stirs the fuel air mixture is the energy of the intake process.
00:41:39If you have a great big intake, which the VR had, it's like trying to blow out a candle
00:41:46with your mouth wide open.
00:41:49That's the, the puff of air doesn't even reach the candle or maybe it goes.
00:41:53The O'Brien quote, uh, was that about how rats could run into the, yeah, into the chamber
00:42:00because it was so big.
00:42:01He had a look at the early VR and they wished they hadn't asked him to look, you know, because
00:42:07he said, flywheel mass looks on the light side.
00:42:11Uh, I never had an engine with light, with the light crankshaft top end right at Daytona and
00:42:20Muzzy who worked all the time with inline fours revving to 14 said the same.
00:42:27And the likely reason for that is that the lighter the crankshaft, the greater the speed variation
00:42:35when the cylinders fire, the crankshaft goes, uh, whereas if you have a heavier crankshaft,
00:42:41it goes, uh, and Honda found that when they developed a valve train to be stable at, uh, say
00:42:5314,000 RPM and on a rig turning the camshafts with an electric motor, but no crankshaft.
00:43:06Then on the firing engine, they found that valve flow began 1500 RPM sooner because of the
00:43:13variation in crankshaft speed.
00:43:16Yeah.
00:43:16I think it, again, we've said this on many podcasts, but it is not an electric motor.
00:43:21There's a, there's booms happening and every time a combustion event happens, it accelerates
00:43:26the crank.
00:43:27And if you have four of those, it can smooth that out.
00:43:29If you have a V12, you have a lot of smaller events, but if you have a V twin, man, you're
00:43:34getting, or a single, every time that thing pops, the cranks going like, yeah, and then
00:43:39slows down, you know, and it's, there's a lot of variation and then everything has a
00:43:44frequency and a vibration.
00:43:45And so if you have a long, a long camshaft or a cam, like you talked about the cam drive
00:43:50on this thing being outboard of something and that it was, it was vibrating.
00:43:55They started out, they had the alternator up against the bearing on the main bearing and
00:44:00the cam drive outboard.
00:44:02And they ended up with some 500 pound shaking force and they had to, they had to move the
00:44:11cam drive.
00:44:11Now that was cheap.
00:44:13You know, it wasn't a matter of just, uh, saw this extra metal off and stick something
00:44:19else on here to make a new crankshaft, make a new cam drive.
00:44:24He showed me, Shiby showed me a box that had the sheet metal, uh, cam guide shoes, which
00:44:32have molded plastic on it that bears against the chain to keep it from bow stringing.
00:44:38If you allow the chain to bow string, it builds up in the amplitude until the strain in terms
00:44:45of tension force is going to crack the side plates.
00:44:50Yes, they're made of steel, but steel is mostly empty space.
00:44:56As we know, tiny little protons and neutrons in the center of the atom and a kind of like
00:45:02a smell of electrons circulating around the outside of it, empty space.
00:45:08So, uh, R and D development of the engine was not smooth.
00:45:16Most racing engines have some trouble with their cam drives because not only is the crankshaft
00:45:23moving along in a jerky fashion because of the firing impulses, but the camshaft itself
00:45:30is resisting as each lobe comes and tries to heave the valve open and valve accelerations
00:45:39are thousands of Gs.
00:45:44Um, it was a long time ago that I visited those guys in California, um, who, who were your one
00:45:53stop shop for pneumatic valves.
00:45:55They said, yeah, 3000 Gs is, it's in the ballpark.
00:46:02And so you've got this thing that is resisting in a series.
00:46:06Uh, and the forces are reversing because as the cam lobe passes and begins to, the spring
00:46:16begins to push down on the lobe, it's putting power back into the camshaft.
00:46:22So all these gears are going click, click, click, click.
00:46:25You can hear that when they're warming up a gear drive motor as that, that whine.
00:46:31Um, it's, I wish I had a recording of it soothing anyway, uh, that those are violent activities
00:46:42that have to somehow be married to one another.
00:46:45And the cam drive is called upon to do it.
00:46:48Sometimes you'll see like RC 30 late motors had flywheels on the cam.
00:46:54Um, a lot of engines have torsional dampers built into the drive somewhere.
00:47:01The Cosworth DFV had an array of little torsion bars, each with a little tiny lever sticking
00:47:08off of it that would provide the resistance in the space that was available because they
00:47:14didn't design it that way to begin with.
00:47:16It had to fit into an existing space.
00:47:19So Keith Duckworth had to sit there looking at this thing until he had an idea and it
00:47:28costs money to make it.
00:47:30So, um, getting a race engine off the drawing and onto the track costs a lot of money.
00:47:38And then keeping up with Ducati, five horsepower more, five more, five more, that costs a lot
00:47:45of money.
00:47:45And in the end, there's poor old Pascal Picotte.
00:47:50He's, he's like an adult.
00:47:52He begins his report with the positive stuff.
00:47:56He says, the chassis is better.
00:47:59The turning is better, but we need, we need more power.
00:48:06Actually, we need about 20 horsepower.
00:48:08This thing is so slow.
00:48:12Well, this was like 99 or somewhere.
00:48:15So, you know, four or five years, uh, at five horsepower a year, 20 horsepower is easy.
00:48:26So, the final Daytona, and I'm, of course, the, the announcer at Daytona is always trying
00:48:38to make a sob story out of everyone that's having trouble.
00:48:41There used to be a Miami policeman who had more miles on the Daytona track than any living
00:48:47human being.
00:48:49Oh, yeah.
00:48:49Was he going to make the program or was that dirty guy, Matt Mladen, going to qualify so
00:48:55fast that Mr. Policeman couldn't do the, what was it?
00:48:59There was so much debate about that because Daytona, I mean, used to have like 40, 50 bikes
00:49:05or something and, you know, all those back marker guys, everybody's, everybody's angry.
00:49:11And they're riding the turn.
00:49:13Some of those people, like they're looking for a contact lens they dropped the year before.
00:49:18And it's, you know, we want them to have a good time.
00:49:23But in the Daytona 200, because as, as Miguel de Hamel put it, uh, he came into the press room
00:49:32and he was just so angry.
00:49:34You could see that he wanted to draw and fire and kill somebody because he said, those back
00:49:44men nearly killed me just now.
00:49:47And he said, I mean, really close and because when you're racing and you're on the lap record
00:49:59in the middle of a corner, you don't have much extra to allow you to maneuver.
00:50:07It's a, it's, it's, yeah, it's a huge deal.
00:50:09Like track days, whatever, the slower you go, you could just turn in a corner.
00:50:15You could be at 45 degrees of lean on a modern bike and you can just like turn it down, tighten
00:50:20your line, like whatever.
00:50:22And, but if you're, if you're really booking, you're right there.
00:50:26That's it.
00:50:27You're, you don't, you can't just suddenly do something different without crashing.
00:50:31But of course the official line is that everyone has qualified.
00:50:35Everyone has a right to race.
00:50:36And so it's, uh, the officials are acting like, oh, well, he'll, he'll cool off in a little
00:50:44while.
00:50:45And then we'll whisper in his ear that he has to say it differently.
00:50:49But, uh, this, this, this is the thing.
00:50:54So practice is going on.
00:50:58Then qualifying.
00:51:00The VR is out on the track.
00:51:02It turns in a stunning lap and we're all looking at each other like, where did that come from?
00:51:12So as soon as, as soon as that practice is over, the qualifying is over, I go over to
00:51:19see Shyby and I say, where did that lap come from?
00:51:23That was sensational.
00:51:24And he was in his corporate mode at the moment, usually not, but that, at that time he said
00:51:31it was, uh, the result of a synergy among the several, uh, R and D programs that we ran
00:51:39during the past, uh, winter season.
00:51:41And I thought, well, thank you.
00:51:44I'll, I'll just jot that down.
00:51:46Let me write that down.
00:51:47And then I went to see Dale Rathwell.
00:51:51Dale, who had been their, um, chassis consultant for some time.
00:51:58And Dale said, well, he said, it surprised me too.
00:52:02But the fact is that we're in the same position as a college student near the end of term, uh,
00:52:10who hasn't kept up with the washing and he's goes to the pile of underwear and he's not
00:52:17those, well, maybe so he said, we've got, um, a, a, uh, an AP carbon clutch in there right
00:52:25now.
00:52:26We haven't used those for years and we've got, um, heads off of some dyno motor that still
00:52:32look pretty good.
00:52:33They passed, leaked down and, you know, we're, we're using up stuff that we still have.
00:52:40And somehow, uh, we hit it or the rider, uh, had a, a moment of supreme inspiration.
00:52:51In any case, the background here is that through this whole thing, the engineering department,
00:52:58which designed the motorcycle, except for the heads, which were Roush, the engineering department
00:53:05has been lobbying to let them take over the program because they know how to run a big
00:53:13program.
00:53:13And we know that Harley have, have produced four different new big twins in living memory.
00:53:23Uh, and those are big programs that were managed well enough that they didn't break the company.
00:53:31And Shaibi is, is maneuvering like mad to, to avoid this takeover and it's not getting
00:53:42anywhere.
00:53:44And of course, engineering gets in there and they want to break up the activity into engine,
00:53:52uh, driveline, chassis, brakes, et cetera.
00:53:58And there will be a committee for each one.
00:54:00They'll have meetings, they will set goals, and then they will set metrics.
00:54:07What are metrics?
00:54:08They are ways of measuring how rapidly or slowly you're approaching your goal.
00:54:21Takes a bigger organization than Steve Shaibi and five people to run something like that.
00:54:28And then when you get to the end of it and each department, the engine is now highly superior.
00:54:35The driveline has been greatly improved.
00:54:39The chassis has the right stiffness.
00:54:43How are you going to get all those elements to work together as a motorcycle?
00:54:49This happened to Rolls-Royce when they were developing the RB211 fan engine for the, uh, Lockheed 1011.
00:55:01Each department had produced an outstanding, the fan guys produced a wonderful fan that was a step into the future.
00:55:10The low pressure compressor, the low pressure compressor set records, the burner section, the high pressure turbine.
00:55:17All these areas in the engine were highly optimized.
00:55:24But they worked together badly.
00:55:27And there was nobody in the organization who was such a generalist as to be able to say, okay, twist those airfoils this way.
00:55:42You guys pinch this orifice this much.
00:55:46And so the high leadership of the company had to ask a previous employee, Stanley Hooker, to come back out of retirement.
00:55:56And Hooker made his review.
00:55:58He recommended the changes which he thought would allow the various stages to work together.
00:56:05And when a prototype in that style was built at its first test, it was up 6,000 pounds in thrust.
00:56:14So that gives an idea of how important systems integration.
00:56:21It's a wonderful phrase, but it's not so easy to accomplish.
00:56:25How important systems integration is.
00:56:29Because if the motorcycle doesn't work, the rider's going to come in and say, I can't feel the front.
00:56:36I nearly, I nearly lost it four times to the slap.
00:56:39And people are saying, poor old guy, he's past it.
00:56:45Let's get a younger rider.
00:56:48And getting a younger rider has not often worked.
00:56:55Ducati right now, they've got an older rider.
00:56:59Mark Marquez, he's older.
00:57:00So having a motorcycle that is a well-integrated system is the goal.
00:57:09Not to have wonderful power, wonderful gear changing, wonderful chassis flexibility.
00:57:16It's to have an integrated system that functions.
00:57:22And Harley tried desperately, Shiby and his people and then engineering, they tried desperately to achieve that.
00:57:30And they didn't achieve it because, of course, they didn't have the history of 851, 888, 916, 926, 955.
00:57:45To hone all those skills.
00:57:48And the original VR design was a good one at the time.
00:58:00But by the time they had it working well, Ducati was 10 horsepower out of reach.
00:58:06And it just got worse.
00:58:08So what was missing was the experience to tolerate heavy R&D cost.
00:58:22During World War II, Chrysler designed a V-16 aircraft engine, liquid-cooled, which developed tremendous power.
00:58:39A P-47 was tested with this engine.
00:58:42It went 500 miles an hour.
00:58:44It was tremendous.
00:58:45But they couldn't stop the crankcase from cracking.
00:58:48And there were various other problems that they did not jump on with full force and solve before the war ended.
00:59:02And when Materiel Command saw the problem that they were having, they canceled it.
00:59:08They sent the machine tools to other projects that needed them.
00:59:11And what happened to the great V-16?
00:59:15It became the Chrysler Hemi.
00:59:18It was a two-valve engine.
00:59:21The experience they got with the Hemi chamber became the Chrysler Hemi.
00:59:27So there are a lot of stories like that.
00:59:32Of outfits that don't have the R&D punch to get the job done in time to be competitive.
00:59:42It's just like war.
00:59:46Time is much more valuable than money.
00:59:49And I talked to a man at Pratt & Whitney who said,
00:59:51this company learned this lesson a long time ago.
00:59:56That when you have a problem, you don't appoint a committee and study it and this and that.
01:00:03You have one meeting in which you identify what might be causing the problem.
01:00:10And you work on all of those possible solutions simultaneously.
01:00:17It's very expensive.
01:00:18But it has a chance of getting the job done before material command cancels your contract.
01:00:29So this is something that exists throughout industry.
01:00:33It's not just a racing problem.
01:00:35If you're in the consumer electronics business, you're very familiar with this.
01:00:40Because in consumer electronics, everything changes every six months.
01:00:46And if you're not there, you're nowhere.
01:00:50So that was the story of the VR.
01:00:54I felt tremendous sympathy for Shibi and his men.
01:01:00I know that they all worked very hard.
01:01:04I know that there weren't enough of them.
01:01:06So that's just how it comes down sometimes.
01:01:14So I was pleased when the motor company produced the Pan America because it is up to date.
01:01:27And they were the first to offer variable ride height as an option.
01:01:36Yeah, I agree.
01:01:37Because what happens when you take your on-off-road bike back to the dealer saying,
01:01:45I fell over twice at stoplights.
01:01:46You've got to help me.
01:01:47And they lower the bike three inches all the way around.
01:01:52It takes away a bunch of your wheel travel.
01:01:54But now you don't fall over at the stoplight anymore.
01:01:58Or you can buy this option.
01:02:00And as the bike rolls to a stop at the stoplight, it lowers itself.
01:02:06Just like a MotoGP bike.
01:02:08Yeah, it's real neat.
01:02:09What a great innovation to bring to the market.
01:02:12Look at all the buses that do it.
01:02:15Yeah, I mean, you're looking for answers.
01:02:17You're looking, what are you, engineering?
01:02:19You want to answer all the questions.
01:02:21You want to do this without compromise.
01:02:24And so variable ride height gave you that travel and ground clearance that you need when you need it.
01:02:30And also takes it away when you don't.
01:02:33I've been riding the R1300 GS Adventure.
01:02:36And it has adaptive ride height.
01:02:39And it's imperceptible.
01:02:42It's beautiful.
01:02:43You just pull up.
01:02:44And there's a little indicator on the dash.
01:02:47And it says, you know, down arrow with an A in it.
01:02:49And it shows the bike.
01:02:50And that means you're in the low position.
01:02:51And then it should, you know, when you start riding.
01:02:54And you barely feel the change.
01:02:57You feel the change in the way the suspension is working.
01:03:00And then the cool riff that BMW did with it was when you come and you want to put it on the center stand,
01:03:06you've come to a stop and you're parking.
01:03:08And you want to put it on the center stand.
01:03:10And it's in the low mode because you came to a stop.
01:03:12You lower the center stand.
01:03:16It has a sensor.
01:03:17And it says, oh, you want to put it on the stand.
01:03:19So you pause.
01:03:20You push the center stand down until it touches the ground.
01:03:22And then the bike will go.
01:03:24And it raises the rear.
01:03:25And then the front goes.
01:03:27And it's in the highest possible position.
01:03:28And then you just step relatively lightly on the center stand tang.
01:03:33And it goes click.
01:03:35So rather than clean and jerk of, you know, three or four inches.
01:03:37There you are.
01:03:38It just raises it right up.
01:03:40And you just tip over center.
01:03:41And you're on the center stand.
01:03:42It's a beautiful thing.
01:03:44It's not as cool as their electrohydraulic center stand that used to raise itself on the LT.
01:03:50The 1200 LT had this.
01:03:51And I thought, you know, I read about it.
01:03:53I'm like, well, that's a dumb way to spend 50 pounds on your touring bike.
01:03:57Because, you know, I mean, touring bikes don't have to be light, right?
01:04:02They should be as light as you can make them.
01:04:03And then, you know, what's this meaningless feature?
01:04:07What is this?
01:04:08And then I tried it.
01:04:09You know, you pull in two up loaded bags.
01:04:12You push that button.
01:04:13And the thing goes up on the center stand.
01:04:14And you're like, okay, all right.
01:04:16Yeah, this is pretty cool.
01:04:19I accept.
01:04:20Yes, indeed.
01:04:21It was pretty awesome.
01:04:23So this is, it was unfortunate that Harley didn't build an elevator that would take them to the floor they hoped for and allow them to step into AMA superbike competition on a competitive basis.
01:04:45Because there's a chance they would have done it for a long time if they'd been able to fight off the inline fours and the Ducatis in particular.
01:04:57So, but what this does is it compels your engineers to study the state of the art and to understand what is required.
01:05:11Now, I interviewed for a job at Harley Racing in the spring of 1966.
01:05:21And the gentleman who toured me around had worked his career at a tractor manufacturer.
01:05:29And in retirement, he had this part-time deal going with Harley.
01:05:36And he said to me, now, you have to understand that they're suspicious of college graduates here.
01:05:43So that's going to count against you.
01:05:46I said, what we like to do here is, remind you, this is 60 years ago.
01:05:53Now, what we like to do is take sharp young guys out of high school drafting classes and set them to work.
01:06:04After about 10 years, they will understand how we like to do things.
01:06:10And then we'll begin giving them design jobs.
01:06:15That's all gone because you couldn't design Pan America that way.
01:06:20Pan America could only be designed by buying the opposition units, studying them, riding them, taking them apart, measuring, expensive stuff.
01:06:34Benchmarking.
01:06:36Yes.
01:06:37And then identifying places where you think, well, why didn't they do this?
01:06:43Yeah, you're also, you're critiquing the philosophy behind the motorcycle as well, right?
01:06:48You're making decisions based on what's your brand value.
01:06:51What do you think the motorcycle should accomplish?
01:06:56You know, Ducati comes at an adventure bike in a different way from BMW.
01:07:02They just do.
01:07:04And they're making decisions based on their brand values, how they think it should happen.
01:07:10And you make, you make this chart of qualities and you, your circles over here.
01:07:17And then Harley might maybe is over here and, uh, you're making a combination of decisions that you hope is the, brings out the best quality.
01:07:27And I'm, I'm, I'm an adventure bike and what should I accomplish?
01:07:31How should I ride?
01:07:32What are, what should I feel like?
01:07:34How should the brakes be?
01:07:35What's the trash control like?
01:07:38What's how much anti-wheeling?
01:07:40Does it need an automatic?
01:07:42Does it, you know?
01:07:43When we talked about Softail and Dinah, uh, we, we took note of the fact that, um, Easy Rider, the movie came out in 69 and that by 71, uh, Harley had product based on the fact that Harleys are cool.
01:08:07In the past, the young and hot headed bought Sportster and, uh, mom and dad, dads retired from the air force, bought the heavy touring bike.
01:08:21And that was stable adaptation.
01:08:25That was the market.
01:08:27And this 69 through 71 thing was a, a huge step because it said, um,
01:08:37if cool is important, let's go for it.
01:08:43Whereas trying to build Nova, trying to compete with the Japanese on their terms, meant ignoring the value of Harley Davidson to its riders.
01:08:55And as soon as Sportster was out of the midnight drag race scene, Harley riders were saying, yeah, them crotch rockets sure are fast, but if you want something cool, you've got to ride what I've got.
01:09:14Uh, I think wide glide, uh, the lore around wide glide was, um, guys taking apart police bikes, you know, getting used police bikes and stripping them down.
01:09:24And it had the wide front end on it.
01:09:26And that was where the, the wide glide came from.
01:09:30Yeah.
01:09:30It's, uh,
01:09:31just as street fighters came from hot headed young Europeans, crashing all the plastic off their bikes and not being able to afford to replace.
01:09:40Well, yep.
01:09:41It's really pricey.
01:09:42Just crack the egg in the parking lot, man.
01:09:45Let her tip over.
01:09:46Oof.
01:09:47But of course now I'll make, you know, all the naked bikes, some of them even have wings, you know, so it's not as naked.
01:09:55It's sort of, you know, it's, is it spiritually naked?
01:09:57I guess so, but they're, they're covered up, but, uh, yeah, I think I was pretty delighted to see Harley Davidson get into super bike racing.
01:10:09It was sort of head scratching, you know, I was pretty new in the business and I was kind of like, well, yeah, but, but you thought it was cool because it obviously was an internet international effort.
01:10:22Anyway, back in the, even in 95, 94, 93, it was an international effort, but it was cool to have an American company say, we're going to take this route.
01:10:33And that's, what's neat.
01:10:33As you pointed out about the Pan America is that you have, I almost think the Pan America came from engineering, having a chip on its shoulder about people always trashing big twins for being, you know, like the, the detractors are like, it doesn't make any power.
01:10:47Is that all you can get out of a one Oh five is, you know, just, you know, nevermind that it makes three X the torque at, at 2000 that some leader bike makes at 9,600 or whatever.
01:10:59Yeah.
01:10:59Let's do roll on.
01:11:00Let's do roll on.
01:11:01But you know, it's just like, because Harley isn't made up like engineering is not made up of a bunch of mom and pops who want to ride their touring bikes to Sturgis or to not even Sturgis.
01:11:16It's just a little bike night or whatever.
01:11:19It's not that it's, it's guys like we talked about, um, Wes Orloff, who's, you know, he's a calibration engineer, but he's also the crew chief for, uh, James Raspoli for the bagger racing team.
01:11:31And by the way, he's a land speed guy.
01:11:34And by the way, he road races in Arma.
01:11:37Um, and they're, they're just all over the place in that company.
01:11:41All those people, uh, are, they're just broadly based, you know, they're, I would call them cycle world people in a lot of cases where you like everything.
01:11:52I mean, I, I love dirt bikes.
01:11:54I love my dual sport bike.
01:11:55I got that dumb crusty XS six 50 go check out the motorcyclist series ran when park on the YouTube channel of me getting that thing running and then making it a daily rider.
01:12:05Um, passionate about that stuff, but also testing new bikes and understanding all this stuff.
01:12:12Like that's what Harley's made of.
01:12:13And I feel like they got tired of being kind of slagged for like building, Oh, that's just a big lawnmower riding lawnmower.
01:12:21At least my lawnmower cuts grass, you know, like all that kind of just like chatter and nevermind the fact that there was buckets of engineering, like Milwaukee eight.
01:12:32I mean, all the things that they did with Milwaukee eight, you know, tuning the vibration for valves, cooling tremendously broad power, like tons of engineering to make the experience.
01:12:44What it is you're engineering for the experience, but they wanted something, you know, nevermind putting everybody else out of business in, in cruisers.
01:12:52We're going to go, we're going to take a step into the technological arms race and we're going to, we're going to build a bike that is technically high performance and we're going to do it the adventure class, which is a good class, but, um, anyway, they did it.
01:13:07And, uh, it is a great running engine and it's a good chassis and they, they brought the ride hype features and all.
01:13:13I mean, it was a hundred percent competitive.
01:13:16In fact, you know, the team over here picked it as the best adventure bike when it came out.
01:13:20So it's there, man, it's truly there.
01:13:26I wish it had been otherwise for VR.
01:13:29Well, I mean, it's, it's a, it's a, what is it?
01:13:31A half commitment, you know, that was the thing.
01:13:34Yeah, that's what it was.
01:13:35That's what it was.
01:13:36They didn't go all in.
01:13:37Um, I mean, I think.
01:13:38Started well, good design, good, good point, jumping off points.
01:13:44And then, um, really R and D didn't stay with the, uh, with the job.
01:13:49How many dinos are in HRC anyway?
01:13:54Oh, poor Shabby.
01:13:55I came back from visiting, uh, Aprilia and he said, how many dinos they got?
01:14:01I said, in all, or you mean the racing department?
01:14:04He said, well, the racing department.
01:14:06Well, I think they have 18, but there's stuff stored in about six of them.
01:14:12Oh, 12.
01:14:15So just, you know, he felt like the nail getting hammered down by everything that happened, uh, made it tougher.
01:14:22Well, he's still out there.
01:14:23He's running a team in, uh, motor America.
01:14:25Uh, I think, yeah, he's a, he's a good engineer.
01:14:29He's, he's, uh, widely read and knows the subject.
01:14:36So, um, but you know, Ducati jumped into world supers.
01:14:44Honda won the first two, then Ducati won the next three.
01:14:47So Ducati was going places, it appeared and it turned out to be the case.
01:14:55Well, it does align with their, um, business goals more than it did with Harley.
01:15:00I mean, as much as, oh, you know, I mean, you, um, Harley and racing have been associated since the beginning.
01:15:07Right.
01:15:07And you look, I look back at an XRTT and I think, well, that's like one of the coolest motorcycles I've ever seen.
01:15:12It just, it has a vibe and they're actually, well, I mean, compared to the seven 50, I was racing in Arma.
01:15:19Um, I think it's steered slower, you know, it was a little heavier.
01:15:22Um, I was, I had a little bit more agility.
01:15:25I did not have motor on it though.
01:15:27It was a seven, it's a seven 50 and I was riding a pretty well-developed BMW seven 50.
01:15:32Uh, this is a team obsolete bike.
01:15:33Walt Fulton, uh, junior was riding it and, uh, it had, that thing ran good, man.
01:15:39That was, it was pulling strong.
01:15:41Anyway, XRTT, XR seven 50, you had all the, you know, they were working with the air Mach-E stuff and they were actually doing well with it in the seventies.
01:15:53And then, but it was, again, it was, it was kind of tapering at that point and they didn't carry on their commitment with it and it went away.
01:16:01And then, uh, 1970 came along, they built the iron XR.
01:16:07They took it to Daytona.
01:16:08They lowered the compression ratio down almost below six to one.
01:16:14And, uh, O'Brien said in the dino room, if you turn the lights off, you could see the cylinder heads.
01:16:23Glowing as he means.
01:16:24Yeah.
01:16:25Yeah.
01:16:25Yeah.
01:16:25It's cooling.
01:16:27And, and the, the, the fuel molecules get in there and into that heat and, and they're, they're shaking with the heat, not with the cold.
01:16:37And, uh, hydrogen atoms are flying off their fingertips and they collide with oxygen atoms.
01:16:46Oh, what are we?
01:16:47We, we are OH minus radicals.
01:16:50How many of us are there?
01:16:52Well, in a, in a few microseconds, there'll be enough of us to detonate.
01:16:57I can't wait.
01:16:59Well, you don't have to.
01:17:00Bluey.
01:17:02And in order to stop those things from detonating, they just lowered the compression ratio down, down, down.
01:17:07And for the next year, they made radical changes in that engine and they were the right changes, but it was still iron.
01:17:15And they, they moved mountains.
01:17:21And what happens?
01:17:23Calvin Rayburn goes to the match races and blows them away on that 71 iron, modified iron XR.
01:17:32And then, uh, by 1972, the, uh, XR TT, the, the Harley road racer couldn't keep up with a three 50 Yamaha.
01:17:43That was the end.
01:17:44And, uh,
01:17:45for road race and Harley had all kinds of plans to build a big seven 50, two stroke.
01:17:53Um, O'Brien showed me unroll these drawings.
01:17:58He showed me drawings for a two stroke 400.
01:18:04Uh, so what might've been, you know, um, wonderful stuff history, because.
01:18:12You can see things that nearly happened or that could have happened if only a couple of things had been different.
01:18:22Doesn't take much.
01:18:23Supposedly the, the Russian composer Shostakovich survived Stalin's wrath because the policeman who was supposed to arrest him and send him to the Lubyanka was sick that day.
01:18:40And when he got better, uh, the wrath had settled and the order was rescinded or something like that.
01:18:48And Shostakovich lived on.
01:18:50Oh, gosh.
01:18:52The butterfly effect.
01:18:53Well, I think we can end this one on Shostakovich.
01:18:58We had some, we, we, we started with molecules.
01:19:00Usually we got back to molecules and detonation and glowing iron heads of XRTTs.
01:19:05Uh, the VR 1000, it was a beautiful thing to witness and it was neat to watch, uh, all those guys ride it.
01:19:12Love the paint scheme.
01:19:14We aspired to, uh, even to this day, it'd be kind of cool to try the street version of that with a, with its kind of bubble, ferred in headlight and all that.
01:19:22It was pretty cool.
01:19:24Um, a neat effort.
01:19:25You can see them in the Harley Davidson museum.
01:19:27They've got them in the, um,
01:19:30they've got fairings hanging on the wall at the back of the, what I'd call the filing cabin of, of motorcycles, where they have all these racks and machines that they can move the bikes in and out.
01:19:40You can see the Nova that's up there and kind of want, they, they were very good about keeping kind of one of everything, um, over the years, at least one of everything.
01:19:51So they have a great, uh, back catalog.
01:19:53Anyway, you can go see the VR 1000 at the, uh, at the museum there in Milwaukee.
01:19:57Thanks for listening, folks.
01:20:00We appreciate it.
01:20:01We'll see you down in the comments.
01:20:02Uh, there is a link to prequal flex for our sponsor Octane.
01:20:07Go ahead and click that link and check it out.
01:20:09If you're, especially if you're shopping, click it anyway, but if you're shopping, definitely click it.
01:20:13Cause you can, uh, see what you prequalify for and, and potentially go out and buy a motorcycle of your dreams.
01:20:19And, uh, we will catch you next time.
01:20:22Thanks for listening.
Recommended
1:12:12
|
Up next
1:09:45
49:19