If any bikes of the 1970s defined "scary fast" they were Kawasaki's H1 500cc and H2 750cc two-stroke Triples. They were notoriously fast but also not particularly, uh, confidence inspiring in terms of handling or brakes. But they were incredibly quick and easy to modify for even higher performance. Were they really that bad? Technical Editor Kevin Cameron has a deep familiarity with Kawasaki two-strokes of this era so there is plenty to learn as he and Mark Hoyer discuss these legendary motorcycles of the 1970s.
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SportsTranscript
00:00:00Hello and welcome to the cycle world podcast
00:00:03Kevin Cameron is our technical editor. He's been he's been talking about motorcycles for a little bit now
00:00:09You may have heard of him. Haha old joke now take a drink. Maybe I don't know. This is Mark Coyier. I'm the editor-in-chief
00:00:17We have been on a bit of a vintage
00:00:20Vintage meandering lately and we're gonna stick with it. We have the Kawasaki h2. We're gonna talk about a Kawasaki h2
00:00:28Variously, well very high performance and
00:00:33Variously called the Widowmaker
00:00:37The fastest way to get to the scene of the accident
00:00:45Indeed
00:00:46but a legendary
00:00:49Motorcycle for also all the positive reasons a very big thrill and maybe there are reasons for all this that we could explore
00:00:57it was if you didn't know it was a
00:01:00750 two-stroke triple
00:01:03coming from the h1, which was a 500 triple and
00:01:07Kevin knows a thing or two about these guys
00:01:11and so we wanted that we want to get into
00:01:14Get into the h2 and h1 are and and all all of that that's related these
00:01:20fire-breathing two-stroke trickle shrivels, however
00:01:23Before we get we're gonna do a little show-and-tell. Sorry spot of fires
00:01:26Well, we'll try to talk talk you through this. I have two things. I wanted to show that I was rummaging through some of my
00:01:33parts and party favors and I
00:01:36found two spark plugs in my drawer and
00:01:38One of them is is this cute little guy and this is this would be a typical other spark plug from the era
00:01:43They're both NGK's. This is a b7es and b7 b8 would be something I'd put into my
00:01:50wait for it velocette
00:01:52or
00:01:53Norton commando, I think is in the ballpark. I think it's an eight was what I was running
00:01:59Yeah, so that's pretty standard
00:02:01Big fat plug and then this little cute thing came out of a Honda
00:02:05256
00:02:06it's a
00:02:0925 millimeters long 10 millimeters in diameter has a beautiful like double electrode
00:02:1512 point to thread in deeply into those
00:02:19Thick cylinder heads to be the bank for long acceleration heat. Yes
00:02:27so anyway, I just I love having some of these exquisite parts and also the workaday parts that
00:02:34Save you on the side of the road in Shoshone, Nevada. We promised
00:02:40Kevin brought a keg
00:02:43This is a sleeve valve from a
00:02:46Bristol Huracan
00:02:49Bristol Hercules
00:02:50engine, which was manufactured in great numbers during World War two and for a while thereafter and
00:02:57there are five ports in the cylinder and
00:03:00Four ports in the sleeve and the sleeve
00:03:04Performs a motion like this
00:03:10And is driven
00:03:13By a ball that fits into this trunnion on the base with suitable clamps
00:03:20So that a little crankshaft can can whirl around here and make every point on this
00:03:28cylinder surface
00:03:30Describe a circle if this were unrolled
00:03:34and
00:03:37They produced
00:03:40Fifty seven thousand of those engines so and it's still a controversy
00:03:47Between the poppet valve people who say oh the sodium filled valve and
00:03:53tetraethyl lead and
00:03:55stellite
00:03:57valve facing solved all the problems the
00:04:02Sleeve valve was just showing off
00:04:06But the British were very serious about sleeve valves they produced a great many of them
00:04:11Yeah, I wouldn't want to guarantee the cold starting
00:04:16shearing that big oil film while that
00:04:19Tremendous cylinder. So in some cases they just left them running at night or they started them every half hour
00:04:26Wow, if they if they thought they might need ones
00:04:30Yes, bad guys coming. Oh
00:04:32Oh
00:04:34I've always been fascinated by the
00:04:38Math and mechanics the gear trains that make all of that happen because that was happening
00:04:43on many many cylinders
00:04:46Yeah, as many as 24, so you know Sabre. Yeah
00:04:51but
00:04:52and also we talked about Brough Superior last time and
00:04:57one of the engines that was
00:04:59Appeared in in Brough's not very many was a bar and Stroud
00:05:04sleeve valve which operated
00:05:06in a similar fashion, so
00:05:09On that basis. I think I can justify making you look at it
00:05:13Well collecting goals for me then because if I could have a sleeve valve motorcycle
00:05:17How happy and sad would I be probably at the same time and at various times down the road?
00:05:23Yep
00:05:25All right, so that was a that was showing mostly tell for spotifiers but show for you on the YouTube's we appreciate
00:05:32You visualizing that stuff?
00:05:35You will move into I want to ask about the shape of the ports on the sleeve valve because they're
00:05:41Geometrically interesting, but we should probably just move into a
00:05:45NH2 and yeah, right. That's what we promised. That's what we promised. Let's get the thrills
00:05:53So you were there Kevin?
00:05:55Yeah, how do you feel about it?
00:05:57well
00:05:59Kawasaki produced
00:06:01sort of
00:06:03Honda 450 level twins
00:06:07In this in the later 60s the a1 a7 250 and 350 and they were disc valve and
00:06:15because they had more parts there were
00:06:18sealing problems and sometimes mechanics
00:06:21Didn't get the o-ring in the groove or for some reason there was an air leak and
00:06:27Working in the dealership. You'd hear an engine go. It would there'd be the sound of the kick starting
00:06:33Then the engine would run and then it would go back
00:06:37And meanwhile a mechanic is tearing the
00:06:43Ignition wires off
00:06:45no change
00:06:47because this was
00:06:49homogeneous charge
00:06:51compression ignition
00:06:52HCCI so then he's thinking what else can I do? He tears the fuel lines off
00:06:58Well, it takes a while to suck out all the fuel in the bowls
00:07:02Meanwhile, you're thinking
00:07:04crankshaft
00:07:05crank cases
00:07:09Everything engine replacement type new
00:07:14It happened a number of times so
00:07:17They finally their market analysts realized what the British had
00:07:25Not entirely
00:07:27Not been entirely willing to provide namely a steady dose of increased horsepower
00:07:34Now after World War two ended Americans had all this cash
00:07:38They had nothing to spend it on because it was rationing. I still have my ration book and
00:07:43They
00:07:46Wanted to buy stuff they wanted to have fun
00:07:49They didn't want to work the graveyard shift and come home to find everybody
00:07:54Having a joyous breakfast while all they wanted was to go to sleep
00:07:58so
00:07:59Kawasaki got on that bandwagon and that's where they made the the h1 triple which was
00:08:0860 millimeter bore by 58.8 stroke and
00:08:14The British magazines were speculating that it might be with two cylinders upright and one cylinder pointed slightly down
00:08:21Like the DKW had been years before but nope
00:08:25When it arrived it was three cylinders in line
00:08:30now
00:08:31There's a vibration problem because this is effectively three
00:08:37single cylinder
00:08:40167 CC
00:08:41engines and
00:08:43They're shaking 120 degrees out of phase with one another. So the crankshaft is is doing this kayak paddle motion
00:08:53But in the 500 it wasn't too bad because the motorcycle weighs
00:08:58Around 400 pounds and it had smallish Pistons
00:09:03but when they built the 750 which was
00:09:0671 by 63
00:09:09The shaking forces were large larger and
00:09:14I think they had to put weights in the handlebar ends to slow down the
00:09:20vibration of the bars which otherwise would
00:09:25Well numbness of the extremities
00:09:29so
00:09:31These motors had a wonderful musical sound. There's nothing like a triple two-stroke or four-stroke and
00:09:38I've never understood why that is, but they have a
00:09:42melodious sound that is quite different from
00:09:45the flat drone of a parallel twin
00:09:49but
00:09:51What this did was it brought the full scale of the two-stroke
00:09:57Torx bike to the public
00:10:00and
00:10:01That's why
00:10:03One fellow who wrote about it years later said it was a great little bike speaking of the 750 great little bike up to
00:10:116,000 said it was
00:10:13Predictable the performance was strong, but he said at 6,000 it it became a mad thing
00:10:19Said the front wheel came up
00:10:22you lost direction it could start wiggling and weaving and
00:10:28If this happened today
00:10:31People would probably be shocked and new because they're
00:10:35Accustomed to well-behaved four-strokes now get this
00:10:41That first 1972 h2
00:10:44750 produced
00:10:4674 horsepower at
00:10:496,500 rpm
00:10:51shocking now
00:10:52today's MotoGP bike
00:10:55weighs 65 pounds less and
00:10:59Has four times
00:11:01the horsepower
00:11:03Somehow the humans through their persistence and their insane eagerness for hot
00:11:11Performance bigger bigger surprises. I just got more elevated heart rates
00:11:18Have figured out how to make four times the power pass through
00:11:24one tire
00:11:26Now that's got to be an accomplishment
00:11:29I when I when I worked that out for myself, I thought well our species might survive after all
00:11:38Clever monkeys. Yes, but
00:11:42Today's MotoGP bike manages to deliver its power in a in a much more civilized fashion. And that's the key
00:11:50To getting so much more power
00:11:53Through one tire, which is never to take the tire by surprise to to do things gradually and
00:12:01in so far as possible to
00:12:04Maintain a constant force on the footprint so that it isn't just being
00:12:10It isn't a rug that's being yanked out from under you by a horrible
00:12:15Torque spike. Yeah, when we say gradually we
00:12:18We mean relatively speaking. Yes, because
00:12:22Within the range of extreme human athletes. Yeah ability. Yeah
00:12:27I mean just taking a my recent ride on an m1000 double r BMW with you know
00:12:33200 horse I wrote an alpha racing version of that bike, which is a
00:12:37stock 1000 race bike and
00:12:41It is
00:12:43It is gradual, you know, it comes in
00:12:46it's just
00:12:47Mind warpingly fast in a different way, but that that was the thrill. That's what we kind of
00:12:54the thrill of the two-stroke was the abruptness it was
00:12:58waking up and having the
00:12:59Resonance work and these weren't you know, these these weren't chambered in the traditional sense. There's pipes on these things look like
00:13:07Well, I mean an RD the same way
00:13:08It's a relatively straight exhaust pipe and a stock RD 350 with stock porting and stock pipes and stock carbs
00:13:15Was actually a nice little street bike
00:13:17I mean it did come on but it what didn't come on the same way it does when you
00:13:21Port it and you put some nice chambers on that's that's a different game. Yeah
00:13:27Well, it took some getting used to for for the people who bought them
00:13:3275 horsepower was
00:13:35That was a bunch that was so much horsepower at that time
00:13:40In 74, they decided to cut the horsepower back to 71
00:13:4875 they cut it back to 70
00:13:51they extended the wheelbase a couple of inches and they pulled the front wheel in by reducing the
00:13:58The rake angle from 28 to 26 and a half
00:14:03They were going in the right direction
00:14:05there was
00:14:07All the legends about Widowmaker hinge in the middle and all the rest of it
00:14:13there's nothing about the h2 or h1 chassis that
00:14:17You would look at and say oh, there's no support for the swing arm. Oh this
00:14:22Steering head is is free to move in this and that and the other way it looks fine
00:14:29so I had
00:14:31Some
00:14:33Insight was brought to me by happenstance. I bought an h1r. That's the racing version of the 500 h1
00:14:42In
00:14:43Mostly in pieces and I decided to take the rear shocks off and pull the springs off and the first shock
00:14:50I took hold of the upper and the lower is clamped in the vice and I went
00:14:55That's
00:15:00Those are dampens nouns, that's
00:15:04Not a lot of damping on compression
00:15:08most of the damping on rebound because
00:15:12Any compression force tends to push the motorcycle up which reduces grip?
00:15:18so
00:15:20Then I put the other shock in the vice and I took hold of it. It just went thought thought thought
00:15:25There was no oil in it
00:15:26no oil and
00:15:30The person who had bought this bike
00:15:36Probably the that damper pumped its oil out in the first hundred bumps and
00:15:43He wrote it like that without taking it back to the dealer and saying my motorcycle is
00:15:49Trying to end my life and I'd like to
00:15:53Warranty my existence
00:15:56Because he'd been told that it was a widow maker and that it had a hinge in the middle so he just accepted that
00:16:04Well, lots of people put different rear shocks on and found a completely different bicycle and and
00:16:12in that era in the
00:16:151970s
00:16:17In the
00:16:19inner sanctum of
00:16:21motocross people were beginning to understand
00:16:24Basic principles and to to correct some of the problems of early dampers
00:16:30But it hadn't reached the street yet. And so my feeling is that
00:16:36If you own one of these vintage triples and you want to ride it
00:16:43Try some
00:16:45aftermarket rear units and if it's a
00:16:48treasured
00:16:50exactly as manufactured bike
00:16:53set those useless production shocks aside and
00:16:59When you ride it ride on modern rear shocks
00:17:02I think that'll that would do a great deal for it because it it sure did with our 500 we had Konies on that bike
00:17:10So
00:17:11There's another thing and that is that in this era
00:17:15It was still the the belief that the engine had to be toward the rear
00:17:22To make traction
00:17:25Now, of course the motorcycle makes the traction on a powerful bike by transferring weight
00:17:32from the front to the rear when it accelerates and
00:17:36With an engine this wide the widest of the 500s was 21 inches wide
00:17:44That motor had to be a fair height off the ground
00:17:47Which is very good for weight transfer if you imagine a motorcycle a hundred feet high
00:17:52You'd have to be very careful not to transfer 100% to the rear wheel by by just the most gentle application of power
00:18:02so
00:18:05People went right ahead and
00:18:07People went right ahead and rode these bikes. They raced them. They had a place in the history of our sport
00:18:17But the legends persist and
00:18:21People enjoy a story more than they enjoy facts
00:18:26so
00:18:27Please yourself I'd say
00:18:33Both engines the 500 and the 750 were made with the same
00:18:37bore
00:18:38Pitch distance from centerline to centerline because they didn't want to make the bigger engine 24 inches wide
00:18:46imagine and
00:18:48when when you
00:18:50Make the cylinders bigger
00:18:52You make the transfer ducts which are going up the sides of the cylinders
00:18:56you squeeze them and
00:18:59And
00:19:02So that the 750 in in a very real sense was operating on three-quarters throttle
00:19:09Suzuki in their 750 triple which was water-cooled and had already done three-quarter throttle because it can't breathe
00:19:17Yeah enough
00:19:19when you've twisted the grip wide open because the transfers are now basically
00:19:24You know 90 degree at the top
00:19:27Which sharper turn because they've you know, they've mooshed it all together to make room for the pistons
00:19:34I'll make your head gestures. And yeah, so it's just just limiting
00:19:41now
00:19:42Steve Whitelock who was
00:19:45Yvonne de Hamel's
00:19:47mechanic during his time at Kawasaki
00:19:51said
00:19:52That 500 was a nice little
00:19:55Motor he said 750 was was something else because
00:20:04In in the form of the racing engine
00:20:10We had some failures in which the connecting one of the connecting rods would break at the small end and
00:20:18The other end of the connecting rod moving around at random
00:20:22Driven by the power from the other two cylinders that are still running. Well
00:20:27Poked holes
00:20:29out of the crankcase
00:20:31Even poked holes into the gearbox on one occasion
00:20:35Yvonne was at
00:20:38Talladega and he was coming around
00:20:42One of the bank turns and
00:20:45His bike sprouted a 30-foot plume of flame
00:20:51And we're sort of looking stupefied at this
00:20:57And
00:21:00Yvonne of course, he said I'm going along pretty good there and I and I
00:21:05Feel like someone's making my leg off the hot, you know, and I look down. Oh
00:21:10There's flames. He said I got to get off this thing
00:21:14So he wrestles it down onto the apron and he's breaking the whole time
00:21:20Into the infield
00:21:21Finally, he said I think I'm I think I'm going slow now
00:21:25So I just stepped off but he said I was still moving pretty fast
00:21:31So he goes bowling across the infield grass and he finally gets up looks around
00:21:37There's a pickup truck with its engine running two men inside are sleeping
00:21:42Corner workers air conditioning on they can't hear anything then they can't see anything because their eyelids are down
00:21:51So he goes over and bangs on the window and points to his bike
00:21:56Which burned up?
00:21:58So it could get really dramatic
00:22:04So
00:22:06It in it got to the point where
00:22:13We're noticing this is 73 we're noticing
00:22:17cracks around the wrist pin bosses
00:22:20that are starting in as little as 50 miles and if you let the cracks go on
00:22:27with the sound logical basis derived from the
00:22:36Program that's that sent the space shuttle up in very cold temperatures
00:22:41It always worked before it's sure to work now
00:22:45The Pistons would break the cracks were not ornamental
00:22:50so we get hold of our technician and
00:22:55Mr. Yoshida, and he says oh, I think maybe six months
00:23:02And we're all new part new parts in six months, yeah new parts, oh, no, we got it
00:23:06We you know, we're gonna race next week. We gotta go. Can we go faster? Yes
00:23:11and
00:23:12we got to Atlanta at one point and
00:23:15Irv canimotos motor sawed itself in half and there were some other
00:23:20Dramatic things going on. Mr. Yoshida suggested maybe if the riders went more slowly
00:23:27No more trouble again. Oh
00:23:29That's happened so many times. That's that's like the the first move is like no slower down
00:23:35You won't if you slow down a little you won't get chatter
00:23:38If you used no go back to the previous tires that have less grip and you won't have chatter. Yes, that's right
00:23:43I'm like, well, maybe there's a famous one, which is all slow bikes handle great
00:23:51I've always loved that. Yeah, so
00:23:55Usually uttered by riders beyond the end of their careers because
00:24:00You wouldn't say such a thing
00:24:03anyway
00:24:06So they sent us Pistons that had not been machined above the wrist pin bosses
00:24:11this was a little complicated because then you have this big thickness of metal which
00:24:17Expands with heat so we're filing on the side of it and trying to get it all to fit, right?
00:24:22Plus the piston is heavier
00:24:24So now the rods are breaking more frequently
00:24:29And as I think I said on this on this show once before
00:24:33Qualifying for
00:24:36Daytona one of those years
00:24:40We put the fresh engine in and we're
00:24:43Congratulating ourselves. Oh, we had a spare engine. We have it in place. We're all set. I thought about the exhaust pipe. Oh
00:24:52That's where the junk is
00:24:54The exhaust pipe off it rattled
00:24:57Tipped it up tailpipe up. Oh
00:25:00Oh
00:25:01The wrist pin the small end of the rod
00:25:04piston gravel
00:25:06It all came rattling out piston gravel
00:25:10It's yeah, that's perfect
00:25:12Meanwhile, oh boy
00:25:14Meanwhile, we've got the dealership has a lot of guys who are riding
00:25:19500 triples 750 triples and they're going good mileages. We had one guy that went
00:25:2550,000 miles on his first crankshaft get out. Yeah, and I think one of the reasons for that was a
00:25:33Lot of the miles were on the main turnpike
00:25:36riding
00:25:38Leaving work summertime
00:25:41To ride up to the family
00:25:43vacation house
00:25:45So the best thing for a high-speed bike like that is to just cruise along at a hundred miles an hour
00:25:51It's easy easy service. Yeah, no way
00:25:56Change and yeah, yeah, and there's no cold starting where?
00:26:03Acid is formed and
00:26:06Trickles down into the crankcase and starts nibbling away at everything made out of steel. So
00:26:1450,000 miles on the first crankshaft that was good. So I
00:26:19Think they were for the price
00:26:22excellent engines
00:26:24Excellent engines they had
00:26:26Like everything else to stroke in those days. It had a variable stroke
00:26:31injection pump for the oil system
00:26:34oil was delivered into
00:26:37three of the six main bearings and the waste oil was picked up by a
00:26:44rubber lipped
00:26:46oil pickup ring on the nearby flywheel and
00:26:50conducted to a hole in the crank pin and
00:26:53A radial drilling that let the oil out into the big end bearing which of course is the hardest the heaviest loaded
00:27:01thing in the engine
00:27:04so
00:27:06New bikes would come and the oil pump was set on maximum and the riders would come back and say
00:27:14They thought I was mosquito control
00:27:17So we found over time the mechanics in the shop found that once the thing was broken in
00:27:23there was no reason not to turn the oil back to minimum because it did very well there and
00:27:28If you had one of the smokeless oils, it was pretty civilized
00:27:33And there was no question that you could take a passenger on these motorcycles. They had plenty of power
00:27:40Cape Cod here we come. Well, I was a
00:27:43My friend Ray was regaling me with the stories of his his h2
00:27:47and he took I don't know he took one of his friends for a ride on the back and you know, this is Ohio in the
00:27:53summer and
00:27:55he started to ring it out and he said we got up to you know, we got up to I don't know 90 or something and
00:28:01It just started to weave because he was riding two up. So you've got this rearward weight biased already
00:28:07And then you're throwing another and that you know, it is a terrible place
00:28:10One of the worst places you can put weight on a motorcycle is the top trunk
00:28:14So if you have a light bike and you put it way out back and you kind of send it off the end
00:28:20For sure, you can very frequently get a decel shimmy we would call it
00:28:25And you can get weave and wobble and all kinds of things. So yeah, um
00:28:31Two up sure. Why not? I want to talk about oh, go ahead. Yeah. No, go ahead. I think we've done that topic
00:28:38Vibration vibration. So we you know, um this high frequency buzz
00:28:43Uh, I think we or I let's say I I have always tended to think about
00:28:51The motorcycle engine and car engine and transmission and all of that to be
00:28:57very
00:28:58thoughtfully engineered
00:29:00and peaceful controlled processes
00:29:03But uh, but they're not
00:29:06But uh, but they're not
00:29:08They vibrate like crazy oil inside of gearboxes is being churned and whipped and slashed and oil storm
00:29:16windage inside the engine where
00:29:18Windage is just the oils like whipping around and the crank and everything's spinning and it's hitting the oil
00:29:25And every time it's doing that it's making heat
00:29:27And it's smashing. It's it's drag on the crank. You know, there's just a
00:29:32So many things happening
00:29:34high frequency vibration we think about carburation and we think oh
00:29:39Well, i'll lovingly set this float height to exactly 14 millimeters on each carburetor
00:29:45I'll make everything perfect and exactly the same
00:29:49And then dang, why is it going lean like they're the same displacement. The cylinders are the same displacement
00:29:56um
00:29:56Everything's the same same all the way across. Yeah carburetors as perfect as I can make it
00:30:00Why do the plugs not look like the same color? Do I is there an oil like on a four stroke?
00:30:04Is there an oil control problem?
00:30:06Um, I think back to I think it was gordon jennings on a 250
00:30:11It was a force. I don't remember which it was but the
00:30:14Taping the lead or is that was that phil shilling's bike? No, it was it was gordon. Um,
00:30:19He he attached lead to the carburetors to reduce their frequency
00:30:24So their natural frequency is it frothing like crazy mga twin cams
00:30:30Got a reputation as an unreliable engine. This was a twin cam four cylinder in the 1950s
00:30:36By all accounts a wonderful engine and absolutely what mg should have done
00:30:42But they got a terrible reputation
00:30:45they think
00:30:46Because the frequency of vibration frothed the fuel in the carburetor and made it lean
00:30:52And so here we are with the h1r manual and we turn
00:30:57Uh to the specification for carburetor jetting and it says
00:31:02center cylinder 310 jet
00:31:05left cylinder
00:31:07330 jet
00:31:09right cylinder 320 jet
00:31:12Okay. Now I described to you how the crankshaft is is doing this kayak paddle movement
00:31:18What's happening is that the outer cylinders are whipping around a tiny circle, but it is well enough
00:31:26To cause frothing in the float bowls and you get it doesn't take much froth going through the main jet
00:31:33to produce
00:31:34Leanness you wish, you know, let's just take the last five minutes over again
00:31:38so
00:31:40um
00:31:41They were jetted to make the plugs look the same. They were jetted three different sizes
00:31:48And uh
00:31:50The reason that bmw
00:31:53continued to produce inline sixes
00:31:56is that
00:31:57if you take
00:31:58mirror image three cylinder crankshafts
00:32:02Which are doing this?
00:32:04this motion
00:32:06Attach them together
00:32:09That rocking couple
00:32:11of the two cancels
00:32:14And it leaves the engine very smooth
00:32:17Provided that the crankcase is not also doing this
00:32:21And then you have one of the smoothest engines that's possible to build
00:32:27So one of my favorites, you know, all the primaries and secondaries are zero everything if you set it up and you balance your
00:32:35Connecting rods and your crank and your flywheel and your pressure plate and you do all that
00:32:41It's uh, it's magic. It's like stepping on a banana peel
00:32:45Yep
00:32:45so, um
00:32:49If you make a three cylinder with 120 degree crank pin spacing narrower
00:32:56uh, it vibrates
00:32:59Less the
00:33:02Eccentric motion of the heavy parts of the outer
00:33:07Uh crankshafts that's three single cylinder crankshaft together
00:33:11If they move through if they're wider they move through a bigger circle and produce
00:33:16a heftier vibration
00:33:19So ideally if we could compress the three cylinders
00:33:25Infinitely down to a single plane the engine would be perfectly smooth
00:33:31because
00:33:32with three objects out of balance
00:33:35At 120 degrees there's always as much going north as south
00:33:41or any other direction, so
00:33:44There's no net motion
00:33:47And there's no rocking
00:33:49so that's why when you build a triple you want to
00:33:54Push the cylinders together and that's why suzuki with its prominent
00:34:01Transfer port arches
00:34:03Rotated the cylinders so that the transfer arches went past one another
00:34:08They didn't push the cylinders apart as far
00:34:12So that was good. Those engines had a single
00:34:16Casting with all three bores in it
00:34:18stiffens the engine
00:34:21Kind of nice
00:34:23so
00:34:25That terrible vibration, uh caused kenny roberts's 500 triple
00:34:31to
00:34:32Be a carburetion mystery
00:34:35to break the seat frame
00:34:37and to throw parts
00:34:40And eventually
00:34:44Retired honda engineer oguma
00:34:48Basically said I fix
00:34:52No more trouble again, and he did he fixed it
00:34:56He built a balance shaft designed a balance system for it and it just killed the vibration dead
00:35:03now carburetion
00:35:05No longer a problem
00:35:07the
00:35:08counter
00:35:09Balancing system is lightweight. It's
00:35:13There's less weight involved in the balancer
00:35:16Than there is in making all the other parts of the motorcycle thicker to the point that they don't break
00:35:23In the vibration case, so this is why
00:35:26modern motorcycle engines
00:35:29Have balancers when they need them
00:35:32not because
00:35:33uh
00:35:35We modern men have low testosterone counts and therefore are unable to celebrate the beauties of
00:35:42numb extremities
00:35:47Uh
00:35:48It's just the fact that it's a better vehicle without the vibration
00:35:55Well, we can put in the vibration we want to that's the other thing you can uh
00:36:00There's a lot of that going on where we're we're putting in just enough vibration to know that you know
00:36:05It's more than just the suggestion of moving parts. It's got a personality to it
00:36:09It has a as you said a triple. Why does the triple sound good? Well, it just sounds good
00:36:13you know, we could probably get into the
00:36:15Frequencies and and the rhythms. I don't know what it is, but it's it's a lovely sound and I first noticed it
00:36:21at Loudon, New Hampshire, um in the spring of 1969 when they ran
00:36:27Kawasaki triples there
00:36:29Just a lovely
00:36:32Musical sound
00:36:34now there are people who who
00:36:36You know, they're so violently opposed to two strokes and I can understand why because they're
00:36:42outstandingly light and fast
00:36:45um
00:36:47that
00:36:48It doesn't sound good to them. No matter what. Oh thirds and fifths. Maybe i'm not sure but uh, I don't know what it is
00:36:55It's uh, they do sound multis, you know, the
00:36:58Rd sounds pretty neat. I like I like the way twins sound but you add that third or fourth cylinder and there's
00:37:05Now you got now you got there's just more to hear. I don't know but again, you know
00:37:09We're we're talking about folks who are imprinted by this. I mean this
00:37:12These were up with it if you grew up with it your attitude is different from uh
00:37:19Which your only protection is the warranty, uh document living intensely
00:37:26And and focused on things. You just got to do and then that sound is is with you forever
00:37:33I was thinking about you know, you're talking about making castings heavy to you know, resist the vibration
00:37:37Vibration
00:37:39Really? All they needed to do on the triple was you know
00:37:41Change the mass of each carburetor a little bit and change the frequency and everything would be fine
00:37:47it's like your joke
00:37:48it's like your joke about the
00:37:51Laverda 180 triple so you were we've been talking about 120 degree spacing which is even even spacing on a three-cylinder
00:37:58uh
00:37:59Laverda or laverda as they would like to say sometimes. Um laverda would
00:38:04They had a 180 triple a liter one 1000 I owned a 3cl and there's one it's a 180
00:38:10There's one piston going up two are going down
00:38:13So it's got a lot of vibration going on this that's interesting to a single
00:38:18Yeah
00:38:20And uh, and because it's a great big heavy engine
00:38:23the
00:38:24The shaking force of a single is not able to yank it around as much
00:38:30so
00:38:31It actually vibrates less than a single
00:38:35um
00:38:36The ideal thing would be to make the center piston weight twice as much as the outers
00:38:43That's the joke. I was going to remind people of that
00:38:46Cameron says just make just make the center piston the same weight as the two outers and problem solved. Yeah
00:38:53Oh my how we laughed engineering jokes folks. I always wanted to I always wanted to uh
00:39:00We should do this sometime let's get you and uh
00:39:03Irv kanemoto in here and just regale us with uh humorous jetting tales and all that
00:39:09Ah the maestro well, um
00:39:13I don't I've never seen him speak in public. I don't know if it's ever happened. I'm sure it must have done
00:39:20because
00:39:22uh
00:39:23People that know as much as he does
00:39:25Um have to have some self-confidence
00:39:29I mean if you're responsible for a zillion dollar race bike
00:39:35And you decide
00:39:37That there's power to be had
00:39:39by getting
00:39:41the compound reed stiffness is exactly right and you have to fit this into the
00:39:48grand prix
00:39:49weekend schedule
00:39:50And he comes up with four horsepower that weren't there before
00:39:56Something going on
00:40:00Yeah, he always told the story about how he he could know
00:40:04You know, uh, they'd start it up for morning warm-up and and uh, he'd say oh we're gonna have to we're gonna have to switch
00:40:10Those other needles whatever, you know some some needle code. Yep. He could just he could just hear it just the way they've changed
00:40:16They've changed the power valve
00:40:18control, uh
00:40:19curve
00:40:21That was the one that really I thought okay. I give up
00:40:25it's
00:40:26Yeah, it's like riding with ganay on a racetrack like he was there like I could see him
00:40:32But uh, he could do things where you're just like, hmm. All right. Well, I mean i'm not gonna quit but
00:40:39What just happened how i'm riding that bike with these same tires everything is the same except for uh, the nut behind the wheel
00:40:47Now the thing that was
00:40:50wonderful, of course about
00:40:52Production two-strokes is how easy it was to make more power
00:40:58All you needed was a gas welding outfit
00:41:03some rod
00:41:05a band saw with 32 teeth per inch
00:41:12And a few hand tools
00:41:14plus the inevitable die grinder, which you used to hear until
00:41:19Quitting time in all the paddocks around the world as people
00:41:23Prepared another set of cylinders for tomorrow because they wasted their last set today
00:41:29um
00:41:33Well, my favorite was uh kelker others
00:41:37had too much to do in
00:41:40the
00:41:41late 70s
00:41:43Because he was responsible for everything
00:41:46In in u.s. Racing and
00:41:51Uh, the kawasaki 250 out qualified kenny's bike and so
00:42:01Kel decided okay, I have to do something then
00:42:06Shorten the exhaust pipes raise the compression a little bit
00:42:11Um
00:42:13Widen exhaust ports
00:42:15Raise the top a millimeter. Now when you cut the chrome, these were chrome on aluminum cylinders. They're made that way
00:42:24not to keep you from reboring your engine at low cost but to
00:42:28Reduce piston temperature by increasing the heat flow from the piston
00:42:33out through the metal
00:42:36And because the cooler the piston runs
00:42:40The better protected you are from detonation
00:42:43So it gives you detonation margin. We'd all love to have that
00:42:49and
00:42:52So with with these few changes, uh, the yamaha became faster than the kawasaki
00:42:59that is
00:43:00God's in his heaven and all's right with the world
00:43:04But
00:43:05It didn't take weeks
00:43:08There were no checking for valve drops tick tick tick
00:43:14Just an afternoon's
00:43:16botheration
00:43:18because
00:43:19If you if you had a stock h2 and you wanted to increase
00:43:25the uh
00:43:27experience
00:43:29of hitting the torque curve
00:43:32Suddenly the pipes are on put pipes on your bike a little extra compression
00:43:37and
00:43:3932 down and 47 wide on the exhaust ports
00:43:43It doesn't take long
00:43:46Of course, nobody can do that today because there are no production two strokes you want a fresh set of h2 cylinders
00:43:55You should have them in the truck, you know, but not anymore
00:44:00But that was a wonderful thing about two strokes was how?
00:44:04For anyone who could use basic tools
00:44:09More power was easy
00:44:11And of course with so many uh people working at this it soon became
00:44:19Well, a few people knew what they were doing and the others were
00:44:23trying to learn
00:44:25And then the scene changed. Oh now it's all four stroke. Okay
00:44:29All that all those notes carted off to uh
00:44:33to the dump
00:44:34Well, that was a cool thing while it lasted sure top end. You could do a top end refresh things I can
00:44:41in mere minutes
00:44:42none of those pesky cam chains or stupid push rods and
00:44:46Blah blah blah you could just whip in there and and get her done and like an o-ring cylinder head
00:44:52man, you just pull the thing off and
00:44:56Put your piston and your new cylinder on and away you went that was the wonderful thing about the yamahas in particular because
00:45:02on the water-cooled tcs
00:45:05the
00:45:06seal for the
00:45:08Uh
00:45:09Combustion was a vitan o-ring
00:45:13like the ones in the space shuttle, uh srbs
00:45:18and
00:45:20That little o-ring just
00:45:23What was it three millimeters, I think
00:45:26um
00:45:27encircling the top of the bore
00:45:29And then there was a water ring that went around the outside of the head
00:45:33And they worked every time. Yeah, they were wonderful. Isn't that great?
00:45:38If the top of your bore was eroded a little bit you could get space shuttle type charring
00:45:44on
00:45:44the combustion seal
00:45:48Uh, we had we saw that a few times
00:45:51um
00:45:52But basically if you kept a good top end on your bike sealing was never a problem
00:45:58whereas
00:46:00When you start torquing up cylinder heads, you're thinking to yourself
00:46:04What if a similar pressure were applied to my head?
00:46:08Would it retain its natural form or would my jaw tighten up?
00:46:13What?
00:46:14Would my eyes pop out?
00:46:16um
00:46:18A different set of problems, but the idea is of course with four strokes. They're so much more reliable
00:46:24We won't have to take them apart. They'll run forever
00:46:29And they of course they have achieved a remarkable reliability with four strokes. It's crazy today I mean
00:46:36Take any any sport bike any modern sport bike. I mean high performance panigale
00:46:42bmw m1000rr yamaha r1
00:46:46You could take a yamaha r1
00:46:48I could have one parked. We don't have one here now, but say there's one parked back here
00:46:53I go put on some leathers. I could start the bike roll it outside and I could ride it to the racetrack
00:46:59And I could run gas through the thing until the tires were gone
00:47:03Lube the chain change the tires and then keep doing that and I could do that
00:47:09I could do that for the next year if I change the oil
00:47:14And the leak down would be the same as long as there's oil there everything's happy
00:47:19Well, wasn't there that wonderful day when they they took?
00:47:23some kind of
00:47:24v10 powered race car
00:47:27And was it an r1? I don't remember
00:47:30uh to
00:47:33Willow and ran them around and the car
00:47:37was
00:47:38Somewhat faster than the bike in its best lap times, but at the end of the day
00:47:43The car had no brakes and had to be put on a truck to go home
00:47:49and the motorcycle was ridden back to the
00:47:52Point of origin. Yeah, it was a dodge viper
00:47:54It's a rare production car that has enough brakes to lap racetrack for more than a few laps
00:48:02Horses have always been legendary in that way that they were engineered that you could just do lap after lap
00:48:07and I've I've personally tested cars we tested a
00:48:11porsche boxster s and a nismo 350z which was like a
00:48:16I did I did this for road and track magazines. Uh, we had a magazine called speed
00:48:22and uh, there were some fast cars we had a srt6 chrysler, which was essentially a
00:48:27Like a mercedes like e500 or something underneath with a honking supercharged v6. It was very fast
00:48:34But it was a two-lap car and the pedal went to the floor
00:48:38And the nismo was like four laps at most and then the porsche just kept going and going
00:48:42So yeah, that's I mean, there's no comparison. I love cars. I have I own vintage cars and I like playing with them and
00:48:49There's all kinds of utility and I can share, you know
00:48:51A vintage jaguar saloon with my family and my son and wife and dog fit in it and that's all that's all really cool
00:48:59but if you're looking for
00:49:01Really good times it's motorcycles the nourishment of balance, you know, like developing your balance skill
00:49:09Interacting with the bike operating the clutch
00:49:12Feeling the contact patches and having having that relationship
00:49:17It is an unseen nourishment that I don't personally get from cars
00:49:21And now I don't know radio remember that story about sterling moss at some production race in england tuned in
00:49:29The radio broadcast and listened to the announcer talk about his performance in the race. I thought
00:49:36It was very cool. Yeah
00:49:41Triples came with the uh, the 750 came with a single disc
00:49:46Break and there was a kit to put double discs on it, which meant that just the discs weighed 14 pounds
00:49:55And the calipers were the type that had one piston in each caliper and they slid on a pair of rails
00:50:03Those didn't last long in competition, but they were perfectly satisfactory
00:50:08production calipers
00:50:10single piston sliding pin
00:50:12yeah, and uh
00:50:16They were
00:50:19At at kawasaki usa
00:50:21um in san anna, they were worried about
00:50:24all this tremendous unsprung weight up front, so
00:50:27um steve whitelock
00:50:30Drove over to dan gurney's shop
00:50:33And said hey guys, I noticed that the indy cars all have all these holes in the brake discs
00:50:39um, I think we need something like that. Well, they crowded around because
00:50:44Uh gurney was a tremendous motorcycle enthusiast and built his own
00:50:50experimental feet first bikes the alligators
00:50:53and
00:50:54Soon, they had laid out a pattern of half inch holes to go into these seven pound discs with seven millimeters
00:51:02Seven millimeters. Yeah that drop one on your foot. You'll never walk again
00:51:06was it just was it just not knowing because of like my norton commando the
00:51:11I want to say the uh
00:51:13Was it five eights the bore?
00:51:16The master cylinder bore was huge
00:51:18And it was as wooden as could be there just was not everybody sleeves them now to 13 millimeter
00:51:24half inch
00:51:26And then it's it's not not a great break, but it's certainly a better break
00:51:30Well, and you don't change the disc either. So it's
00:51:34you know
00:51:35Were they just I mean they they were tall radially which was causing them to warp
00:51:42And so maybe we hadn't we hadn't figured that out yet
00:51:45It took it took rubbing our faces in all these problems to understand them
00:51:49Yeah, like myself at loudon with my rider rich slacker
00:51:54Came in with the disc coned
00:51:56I laid a straight edge across them
00:51:59And you could see this a lot more than a single business card would fit where it shouldn't
00:52:06in the middle
00:52:07and I I went home that night and
00:52:10made
00:52:10uh radial cuts
00:52:13Terminating in hole so that the cut wouldn't think it was a crack and go on propagating
00:52:18Cutting from the outer outside diameter, correct? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah to relieve that
00:52:24uh
00:52:25Making the edges smooth and
00:52:28Doing it all up
00:52:29proper machine shop fashion
00:52:31The disc became flat again
00:52:34I took them back to loudon and then the next practice
00:52:37No more trouble again, well, that's great. You were able to retrieve the disc by doing that, you know, not just throw it away
00:52:43So we talked about this before we had a I can't remember if we had a disc break or a break
00:52:48We we had a breaking uh a friction. We did talk about breaks at a point and uh, there's a
00:52:54Obviously you spent an hour, you know or something
00:52:57Talking about what kevin's talking about what we were talking about is the radial height
00:53:01So think about how tall the disc is looking at it from the side the friction area
00:53:05And if it's like the friction track, yes, yeah if it's two inches wide
00:53:10The speed of the outer diameter is much higher than the inner diameter passing through the pad
00:53:17Passing through the pad as it's making heat and so the outside's going like wow
00:53:22I'm, really hot and the inside's going. Yeah moderately hot and the yeah the different and then the mass of the disc
00:53:28You know, it wants to expand
00:53:31the outer part of the disc
00:53:33Expanded so vigorously that it stretched the rest of the disc
00:53:40It yielded
00:53:42So that when the whole disc cooled down the middle was too big for the od
00:53:48The only way that can happen is if it looks like a dinner plate
00:53:53And uh
00:53:55Making those radial cuts which don't try this at home. It made me nervous
00:54:00And it would make me even more nervous if I thought people were running out to do this
00:54:05um
00:54:07I saw the radial cuts on yamahas for
00:54:10Oh a month maybe before they came up with something else and because it made them nervous
00:54:17Cut cut in your brake disc. Oh
00:54:20Never do that, but we were desperate
00:54:24And the gamble paid off is that why they were making them so heavy
00:54:29Was to sort of be a giant heat repository like sure i'm sure that's the fact and uh
00:54:37It was
00:54:39When when uh white lock came back with those drilled discs and they showed up at the next race
00:54:45people fell in love with holy discs and it swept the nation
00:54:52Everybody had to have holes in their discs and all these explanations
00:54:55Oh lets the gas out of the caliper and it makes it the dust gas. Yeah, that's what they call them
00:55:01Right border gases
00:55:02I think what's forming between the pad and the uh
00:55:05The disc as the friction goes up and that the opening would relieve that gas
00:55:10and then the nice sharp little edge of that circle was
00:55:13but then constantly very
00:55:16Look at a world superbike disc look at a moto gp disc no holes
00:55:21No slots, no wavy
00:55:23so
00:55:24If you like waves, for example, you may be a mariner
00:55:28um
00:55:29That that might be pleasing but for whatever reason, uh, the two top competitive motorcycle racing series
00:55:38Just have discs
00:55:41And uh the permanent solution for disc warpage of course was floating
00:55:46um
00:55:48The discs so that they were free to expand and making
00:55:52the friction track narrower, so the id and the od
00:55:56were
00:55:57closer together
00:55:59The pads instead of being a two inch circle as they were on yamahas at one point
00:56:05They became elongated and narrower
00:56:11But the h2
00:56:14Uh was slowed down in 74 and 75 with less horsepower the cylinders were changed
00:56:22Um, I always suspected that it was done
00:56:28To increase
00:56:29The contrast between the z1 and the previous king of the hill the h2
00:56:35But uh, those who made those decisions are surely no longer with us. We cannot interview them
00:56:44so
00:56:44uh
00:56:46It came and went it was a lovely spring time in in the
00:56:51the garden of high powered motorbikes
00:56:55And a lot was learned
00:56:58At the same time those companies were just putting a toe in the water in
00:57:04Grand prix motorcycle racing and they were going to learn a huge amount there
00:57:11What they learned?
00:57:14In grand prix racing led to the improvement in chassis in the second generation of super bikes
00:57:22Which were no longer sit-ups
00:57:24They were no longer mostly no longer, uh air-cooled
00:57:28And they were progressing toward
00:57:31Uh the modern motorcycle as we know it
00:57:35And
00:57:37There's nothing wrong with uh having positive feelings for these
00:57:42Uh
00:57:44These moments in time
00:57:47when
00:57:48fresh ideas were
00:57:50Forced upon us by the failure of our previous ideas and this is this is what causes
00:57:57um
00:57:59R and d is desperation
00:58:01Oh, these horrible things are happening. Look at the warranty department. You can't open the door because there's so much stuff in there
00:58:07You gotta do something
00:58:09And they they did things
00:58:11And we have much better motorbikes now
00:58:15Yeah, we have all the keepers of the flame too. You know, uh, what have you said worship of the altar of our fathers?
00:58:21yes, but uh
00:58:24Yeah, you know we i've got a i've got an rd 350 and you know
00:58:28I like vintage bikes and messing with them and and all that's great and they're people I know who go
00:58:33uh deer hunting with muzzle loaders
00:58:37Yes, because
00:58:39Sure, why not? You know, uh
00:58:41compound bow people
00:58:43longbow people
00:58:45You know dad met um traction engine people hit and miss engine people
00:58:51You name it
00:58:52My dad met a young man
00:58:55Well an older young man
00:58:58um
00:59:00in alaska
00:59:01who
00:59:02talked about
00:59:05Meat
00:59:08He said
00:59:09You hear one shot
00:59:12Meat
00:59:14You hear two shots
00:59:16Maybe meat you hear three shots
00:59:20no meat
00:59:22hilarious
00:59:24It's true. Yeah, it's funny because it's true
00:59:27But of course what you were saying before about first tries, um, make the discs extra thick
00:59:35Uh make certain parts extra robust. This is what the aviation industry attributes
00:59:42uh the success of the dc3 to the dc3
00:59:47Has lasted decade after decade and some are still flying
00:59:51um
00:59:55That was the first time an airliner that big had ever been built and they thought well
01:00:00Must not take any chances here. We'll
01:00:03We'll make it beefy when we when we don't know what to do
01:00:07and uh
01:00:08those three-cylinder
01:00:11500 and 750 kawasakis were
01:00:15A thrust into the unknown on the racetrack in 1972
01:00:20the three-cylinder kawasaki 750 and suzuki 750
01:00:26Were defeated by yamaha 350 twins because
01:00:32They hadn't yet learned how to take that 100 horsepower that the 750s were then making
01:00:40and get it into
01:00:42to the track through one tire
01:00:46And what had to happen was the old um
01:00:50Twisty racetrack tire the dunlop triangular
01:00:54Had to evolve into dunlop speedway special which was much wider had a smoothly rounded
01:01:01Tread surface and it was belted so that it didn't swell up
01:01:06when it spun rapidly
01:01:08and
01:01:09So much was learned in 1972 and in 1974
01:01:14Uh dunlop's tire won the daytona 200 and goodyear began making
01:01:23Slick tires no
01:01:25vestigial
01:01:27Rain grooves just slick tires. I just saw yesterday. I was in the archive the digital archive and uh
01:01:35I was going through some 1975
01:01:37magazines looking at
01:01:39some some stuff kawasaki ads because they were kawasaki was doing these uh rich interesting sort of
01:01:46Americana like the the bike was placed in this sort of very
01:01:50Americana background in front of the travel agency and the travel agents looking out the window longingly at the kawasaki
01:01:56Kz 400 or whatever and or z 900
01:02:00And uh, but thumbing through that I found a beautiful double
01:02:04double page
01:02:06spread ad
01:02:07with
01:02:08the goodyear slick tires
01:02:11And kenny roberts is standing behind the rear
01:02:14That's the rears in the foreground and kenny's there and then there's kel and standing behind the front and then there's the race
01:02:19bike and they're out
01:02:21superimposed on weirdly on just like the desert or something, but
01:02:26It was magnificent slick tires. No treads. Yep
01:02:31That's what made um
01:02:34Those hundred horsepower motorcycles possible was a big improvement in tires
01:02:39and uh in 500 gp racing they found that a
01:02:44Go for it. Peaky
01:02:46uh
01:02:47torque curve
01:02:48was not as fast around racetracks as a
01:02:52um
01:02:53slightly duller bill spike
01:02:56for the rear tire to sit on
01:02:58um
01:02:59as they made the engines more tractable with things like
01:03:03eyelid style variable timing exhaust ports
01:03:07um
01:03:09those sudden
01:03:11Uh slide provoking increases in torque were moderated so that the rider
01:03:17Could almost control it
01:03:20And then in 1990 I saw the electronics hit
01:03:25And it was all different. I was watching from turn 11 at laguna seca
01:03:31And I was so impressed
01:03:34such smooth
01:03:35strong drives off of that
01:03:37uh hairpin
01:03:39And I went to see irv kanemoto later and I said what is happening?
01:03:44And he said pretty impressive, isn't it?
01:03:47Yeah
01:03:48amazing
01:03:49And that was the beginning of the electronics revolution
01:03:53Uh, which again I would emphasize
01:03:56The electronics are there
01:03:58to allow greater performance that can still be managed by a human being and they are an essential part
01:04:05of why today's moto gp bikes with four times the power of the h2
01:04:13The widow maker hinge in the middle, etc
01:04:16And they're controllable
01:04:19These young men do wonderful things on them
01:04:22through this patch
01:04:24yes, the the
01:04:26the sacred ellipse of contact
01:04:30between the tire and the pavement, but
01:04:33All that management
01:04:35um
01:04:37Is a necessity because if we just went ahead yanking and jerking and developing as much power. Well, it's been tried
01:04:45Uh two european outfits built
01:04:48500 four-cylinder gp bikes
01:04:51That made over 200 horsepower now, no
01:04:55Japanese gp bike ever made 200 horsepower
01:04:59Around the racetrack they were useless because they their grip just went up in smoke
01:05:08They needed
01:05:09The eyelids they needed the mapped ignition they needed all of those. Um
01:05:17New technologies that make it easier for the rider
01:05:22To get the right amount of torque to the tire
01:05:26That is not going to yank it loose and send him
01:05:30Sliding on his face through the gravel
01:05:34I suppose but all that being said i'm not going to make my rd 350 tame
01:05:40I'm here for the hit
01:05:42Well, this is this is this is part of the deal. Yeah, i'm not racing. We live the lives we've lived. Yep
01:05:50um and
01:05:53That was that was then and
01:05:57If you can afford an rd now or find one
01:06:01um
01:06:02Go for it
01:06:04Good fun. Oh, yeah, they're still smoking around. It's good. I wrote a tz750 once back from the podium at loudon and
01:06:13I I gave it a little
01:06:16uh whiff
01:06:18and
01:06:19it trundled forward in such a way that it persuaded me not to uh,
01:06:26Get too interested in it
01:06:28because
01:06:30Engine was barely turning
01:06:33What would it be like at 9300 when the torque comes through
01:06:42And that's why rz rz 350 had the exhaust eyelets
01:06:49And
01:06:50Some of those engines also had ignition retard above
01:06:55peak power
01:06:57What that does is it dumps heat into the exhaust pipe and makes it resonate more strongly at a higher rpm
01:07:05all these little things
01:07:07um, and then
01:07:08Just as quickly poof
01:07:11regulations change
01:07:13Uh, the clean air act of 1970 arrives whatever it is. Everything changes and we're presented with a new problem
01:07:21And we get going on it right away
01:07:24Fortunately, we have this lovely past
01:07:27filled with
01:07:29usable solutions
01:07:31off the shelf
01:07:32Yeah, and that's what education is for education tells you what we have been able to do
01:07:39and uh intelligence and imagination are the key to what we will do next
01:07:47Also trying stuff
01:07:48Yeah, you've hit me with a constellation of inspirations that relate to dan gurney
01:07:55and tires
01:07:57And trying things and they were trying things, you know, dan gurney was in the era of trying things a lot of different things
01:08:04And I was reading years ago. I was reading the mark donahue book the unfair advantage, which is a
01:08:09quite a fun book to read because there was a lot going on everybody was looking for
01:08:13Racing solutions and i'm almost certain it was they were at a race
01:08:17They were having a terrible time with tires the rears were okay
01:08:21They were making these huge rears to put all this power that they were making to the ground
01:08:24But the fronts weren't they couldn't get them to steer
01:08:27And i'm pretty sure it was gurney just said well screw it. We're putting rears on the front
01:08:31So he put these huge
01:08:33Huge tires on the front. It was ridiculous, but it worked
01:08:36And uh, and so it and so it goes frank camillari did that with his td1c
01:08:43He said, um, I tried braking
01:08:46With these dunlop triangulars are good to go through corners, but he said they were
01:08:52Uh, not that good on braking. So he said i'm going to put a rear tire on the front
01:08:58So that I can brake
01:09:00hard
01:09:01He he put improved brakes on his bike and it worked. So
01:09:07This is the thing
01:09:11Education formal education can fall into what I call
01:09:16flash card
01:09:18uh teaching which is
01:09:20There's a right answer for every question and do not deviate from that correct answer or we will mark you down
01:09:28And you'll have to take a summer course
01:09:30but
01:09:31Being willing to say we need more grip on the front put some rear tires up there and let's check it out
01:09:38Good try it
01:09:42If it's an embarrassing failure, um
01:09:45the photographers have already left anyway, because
01:09:48Uh, it's a private practice
01:09:50So you've reminded me of yet another story kevin somehow and that was I was in kindergarten
01:09:57And we were meant to color some fish
01:10:00And I was pushing the front
01:10:02And I colored a fish
01:10:04orange
01:10:05And the teacher came over and said
01:10:08There aren't orange fish fish are green
01:10:10And I didn't know any better, but you know what I discovered in short order there were fish of every color
01:10:16I could pick any color I want
01:10:18Yes, there's no official fish
01:10:21detention
01:10:23Yeah
01:10:26Detention so many letdowns
01:10:29And here we are. Well, thanks for listening folks. That'll that'll do it for the uh h2 and plus
01:10:35Um, we hope you enjoyed the podcast. We appreciate you listening
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