Everybody loves the image of the artisan lovingly hand filing parts to fit and making sure every detail is correct but---we ain't got time for that! Mass production, advances in materials, automation, intelligent design, and rationalization have led us to a wonderful world of (mostly) affordable motorcycles that offer tremendous value, reliability, and fun! Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer discuss the making of the modern motorcycle and much more.
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00:00:00This is the CycleWorld podcast. I'm Mark Hoyer, the editor-in-chief, and I'm with Kevin Cameron, our technical editor.
00:00:07The topic today, Kevin calls it shaping the motorcycle. We talked about it. It is, how did modern motorcycles get so amazing and affordable?
00:00:19And the obvious answer is mass production. You know, we can't all have craftsmen standing around, miking everything and filing things to fit.
00:00:29I was watching a video recently from the Triumph factory. I've also seen a Harley video that's the same black and white.
00:00:361950s, 1940s, touting, you know, the manufacturing of modern motorcycles.
00:00:42And the guy is taking the frame with cast lugs and he's sticking tubes in it and putting it all together.
00:00:48And then he's standing in front of a table that's essentially looking like a forge, probably has some coal in it and it's, you know, air fired.
00:00:56And he's dipping the joints in there and then he's putting like Ziff bronze or, you know, some other, you know, gluing it together with metal, basically brazing it.
00:01:07And then he takes the thing out because he's heated it and put it all over. He's smashing it with a hammer.
00:01:12He puts it on the jig and it doesn't fit. And then he just beats the daylights out of it and puts it back in.
00:01:18And that's how we were getting motorcycle frames and Babbitt bearings, scraping, pouring bearings and scraping them till they fit the, you know, like that's an aerial square four.
00:01:27They were doing that on an assembly line, sort of. Yeah, that's, that's crazy.
00:01:32And so part of the inspiration of this was thinking about modern frame manufacturing.
00:01:37And that's kind of an anchor idea for us because the first motorcycle I know about that had a almost finished frame out of a casting mold that was bolted together at the steering head with permanent bolts that break off was the FZ07, the 2014 FZ07.
00:01:56A really affordable bike, particularly at the time, still affordable with a frame that was, you know, vacuum die cast, virtually perfect out of the mold, perfect size, almost no machining and no welding.
00:02:12They call it net shape.
00:02:14Net shape. And it just bolted together and you had really nice finishes and a perfect frame and the motor just slotted right in.
00:02:22And isn't that amazing?
00:02:24So let's, you know, you say mass production democratizes technology and that's, ain't that the truth?
00:02:31So let's hear Kevin talk because he's good.
00:02:34Well, in the La Belle Epoque, the wonderful years for very wealthy people between, say, 1875 and 1910, when wonderful handmade cars were available to wealthy people.
00:02:56So in this country, for example, a Piercero might have been $6,000 in those years, which would be in today's dollars, $160,000.
00:03:09Now there are people paying $160,000 for cars, but I'm not.
00:03:14Well, I was going to say, you said the good years when rich people could, like, that's kind of, you can apply that to any era.
00:03:22Yes, it's true.
00:03:24But you see some beautiful houses that were built that have all these rich wood paneling and it's all been hand fitted together.
00:03:33And it's from more than a hundred years ago and it's never going to happen again.
00:03:40But along came Henry Ford.
00:03:46He started out making sort of conventionally bespoke cars, but in 1913, he combined the two ideas, interchangeable parts and the moving production line.
00:04:00Which interchangeable parts mean no hand fitting, no filing, no tapping, no measuring, just slip it in and it fits.
00:04:11His car came off the line at about $850, which was an 85% discount on the Piercero.
00:04:22Now, over the next 10 years, he perfected the production line operation and he nailed his supply network.
00:04:35So they were able to get the price down to only 5% of what that Piercero has cost.
00:04:42That's an example of democratizing of goods by mass production.
00:04:49Henry Ford is supposed to have said that he wanted his factory workers to be able to aspire to own the cars they were making.
00:05:03So they were paid $5 a day, which made Ford unpopular with other employers in the area because their employees were saying, how about us?
00:05:15So mass production put a huge number of people to work and made a vast output of goods available.
00:05:27So in that sense, the U.S. middle class, which has always been the powerhouse of the nation, was just puffing up wonderfully as a result of the mass production revolution in this country.
00:05:48So methods that were highly advanced in 1913 are no longer that today.
00:05:58And as Mark was saying, motorcycle frames were made as bicycle frames used to be, tube and lug.
00:06:05On bicycles, sometimes the lugs are wonderfully filigreed and very attractive and the tubes are fitted in and the whole thing is furnace brazed.
00:06:17But the next step was to weld the frames together electrically, just as the Germans had welded U-boat sections together in World War II.
00:06:31When Rex McCandless went to Norton to build the chassis for the 1950 TT races, Norton said, well, we don't have any methods here other than the electric.
00:06:48So he had to drag all of his low temperature silver brazing apparatus down from Northern Ireland and built the factory's frames there.
00:07:00Well, everything moves forward as time and investment permits.
00:07:10And around 1980, race bike frames began to be made out of aluminum and they cracked constantly.
00:07:19It forced the people building them to refine their methods, to join the tubes gracefully like tree roots join the trunk rather than like two Tinker Toy sticks at right angles.
00:07:37And then we get into the later time when Antonio Cobas's twin beam, twin aluminum beam chassis were first being used in racing.
00:07:52The steering head and the swing arm uprights and other fittings were individually machined from solid and then they were welded to either fabricated sheet metal beams or extruded beams.
00:08:06That was obviously race team only.
00:08:12And then the next thing was to cast those elements, steering head, uprights, fittings.
00:08:21And finally, when the casting revolution took place around 1999 or 2000, which is described in that book by John Campbell entitled Castings.
00:08:35Oh, it's a great book.
00:08:36It's what's good about that is he's British.
00:08:39You read it and you get a headache, but he also has a really delightful turn of phrase and he quotes poets.
00:08:47It's a great book.
00:08:48It gave me a headache.
00:08:49I learned about it from you and I have my copy and it's got lots of scribblings in it.
00:08:57You should talk more about, you should talk about the casting revolution because it's fundamental to where we are today.
00:09:03Yes, it is.
00:09:05What he says in that book, in the outline, is that what had up until that time made castings notably weaker than say forged aluminum was that when the casting was poured, it was typically poured as rapidly as the structural integrity of the mold permitted.
00:09:33And from the top and as the liquid metal cascaded into the mold, it entrained air and it also, the surface of the stream formed aluminum oxide, which is a ceramic.
00:09:52It's also an abrasive.
00:09:56And so these films of aluminum oxide would be swirling around in the cast metal.
00:10:06And as it solidified, they would be trapped there.
00:10:10And aluminum does not stick well to the films, which would fold over on themselves to form.
00:10:19Think of fudge swirl ice cream, folks.
00:10:23Fudge is the oxide and it doesn't stick together.
00:10:28So it's basically crack on dotted line.
00:10:32And when they researched the matter, they discovered this film formation.
00:10:40And they, of course, first you try to do it with vacuum.
00:10:45We won't let any air in there.
00:10:47But it turns out that even a tiny amount of air, which is 20% oxygen, is enough to form the films.
00:10:54They just love to combine with aluminum.
00:10:58And so they came up with the idea of filling the mold from the bottom, where there's no air, and doing it gently enough that there is no turbulent surface.
00:11:17So as the mold fills, the aluminum oxide film on the surface of the liquid metal rises and goes out the sprues at the top.
00:11:27And the result, when this is done properly, has been described as having near-forged properties.
00:11:38So what's important about that is the way we compensated with hand-poured molds was to make things thicker to accommodate the potential weakness.
00:11:54So you had thicker, heavier castings.
00:11:57And now with the near-forged properties, you can make a really fine casting that uses less material and is equally as strong or stronger.
00:12:06Now, around the year 2000, during Daytona Speed Week in March, I spoke with rider Miguel de Hamel's crew chief, Al Ludington.
00:12:27And he said, we're having a lot of trouble in the 600 class because the Yamahas are 32 pounds lighter than the lightest that we can achieve.
00:12:36And he said, they're doing it with some fancy new casting method.
00:12:42Well, Yamaha has always been interested in casting technology, and they wasted no time applying it because machinery has a basic per pound cost.
00:12:57I audited an automotive engineering course at the University of Wisconsin in the spring of 1966.
00:13:08And I wasn't supposed to be there because I was an anthro student, but that's what I'm interested in.
00:13:15So the professor says, all right, you guys, answer this question.
00:13:23What does machinery cost?
00:13:27And one by one, all the good students raised their hands and began complex and very correct explanations, which the professor waved away.
00:13:38And then I realized he wanted something different.
00:13:42So I raised my hand and I said, a dollar a pound.
00:13:47Because at that time, a Cadillac was $4,500 and it weighed 4,500 pounds.
00:13:54A Bridgeport mill was 1,600 pounds for 1,600 bucks.
00:14:00And the professor said, you got it.
00:14:04Now, my little car, my little Korean job costs the same as generic bacon in the supermarket, $7 a pound.
00:14:17The average car sold in America, $48,000, 4,100 pounds, $11 a pound.
00:14:29But if we look at the most sharply cost controlled of all motorcycles, namely Royal Enfield, we find they're starting at $20 a pound.
00:14:42So motorcycles are expensive because there's more moving parts and less pressed metal.
00:14:52So that means that there's a real reason to try to do without things.
00:14:59So when the CB750 was introduced, instead of having the four valves that Honda went racing with, it had two valves.
00:15:08Instead of having a pressed together roller bearing crankshaft like Kawasaki's Z1 and the new Suzuki's would have,
00:15:19it had a forged one-piece crankshaft turning in traditional automotive three-layer bearing inserts.
00:15:27And because of the money saved by eliminating those labor-intensive technologies,
00:15:38they were able to make a motorcycle with electric start, overhead cam, and four cylinders.
00:15:46There hadn't been a production motorcycle with four cylinders before that.
00:15:51And lo and behold, CB750 outsold the 750 that Triumph and BSA had been struggling to produce,
00:16:02discussing it every different way and not doing anything about it until 1969,
00:16:08when they came out with the Triumph Trident and the BSA Triple.
00:16:14The CB750 outsold those bikes 10 to 1.
00:16:21Now, that's not a result of unfairness. That's a result of the free market at work.
00:16:30People wanted those advanced features, and they could have them at kickstart prices
00:16:36because Honda was using advanced production line methods of assembly and machining processes
00:16:49operating by means of an automatic transfer line.
00:16:52The part moves from machine to machine. Nobody touches it. It's already fixtured.
00:16:59The fixture goes click. The tool starts whirring, and nobody touches it until it's finished.
00:17:08So, compare that with Granddad in his octagonal wire-framed spectacles
00:17:15with the micrometer pocket hanging from his leather apron.
00:17:19It's a lovely picture, but it cannot produce enough motorcycles for the people who want them.
00:17:27Yeah, you can't have your accountant in the room if you're making things by hand.
00:17:32There are such things as cheap mass-produced junk, but mass production doesn't mean junk.
00:17:42It simply means what it says, mass production.
00:17:47Modern manufacturing methods have self-gaging, and it's all wonderfully constructed so as to put us out of work.
00:18:00Yeah.
00:18:01But it does a great job with the product.
00:18:03Yeah, it's nice to be a hobbyist and to have my old jack failed.
00:18:09I had a snap-on jack circa 1982, and I got it used from my friend who ran a shop.
00:18:15It worked fine forever. It had never been apart, and then it started sagging.
00:18:21It wouldn't even hold its own weight up.
00:18:25So, I had to fix that jack.
00:18:29It's so tempting. You can go down to any one of the mass chain stores.
00:18:33I can drive over here to the store that replaced Sears, we'll call it.
00:18:41I can buy a pretty nice hydraulic jack, ready to go, low-profile, long, rapid foot pump to get it up to wherever it needs to be,
00:18:49and then you hit it with the long lever. I get that for $300, and they're darn good.
00:18:55It lasts a long time.
00:18:56If you buy an equivalent jack that might be American-made, you might spend $750 to $1,000.
00:19:02I could fix this for $40, but I had to make a tool on my mill, which I got for less than a dollar a pound.
00:19:09Thank you very much, because it's used.
00:19:11But I had to make a socket to take the end of that tank off, and it took me multiple tries of measuring and getting it,
00:19:20because it's a gland nut, and it's torqued to 490 foot-pounds.
00:19:27Anyway, it's great to be a hobbyist, but if you just need your jack to work, a lot of times you don't fix the old snap-on jack.
00:19:37Just get a new jack, yeah.
00:19:39You just get the new one.
00:19:42So it's good to be a hobbyist, but I have great love and respect for the ability and the opportunity,
00:19:48should the need arise for me to go get that, or to buy a new motorcycle that doesn't take as much work as a Velocette to keep on the road.
00:19:59One of my favorite examples of how technology brings us advanced functions at prices that we can afford,
00:20:07I remember being wowed by being told that in the early 70s, MV's 350 Grand Prix bike was peaking at 17,000 RPM.
00:20:22Amazing.
00:20:24And I know that those bikes were entirely built by hand out of sand castings,
00:20:31and the crankshafts were pressed together out of multiple pieces so that they could have low-friction rolling element bearings at every point.
00:20:44But in 2006, you could stand at the end of Yamaha's R6 production line,
00:20:52and 17,000 RPM capable motorcycles would roll off one after another, and they had warranties.
00:21:06And you could buy them. They were what then? 10, 11,000?
00:21:13Yeah, about 10 grand, roughly. We had 600s running 10 to 12 for quite a while.
00:21:20Yeah, so that's my favorite example.
00:21:25And of course, people that I know in racing like to say that the production bike of today offers higher performance than the race bike of 10 years before.
00:21:40Oh, Kevin Schwantz, they did a press launch with one of the GSX-Rs, and it was faster than the bike he had raced in the 200.
00:21:51He's like, if I had this street bike, I could have won the 200.
00:21:56Yep.
00:21:57It is remarkable. We have to put an asterisk next to the RPM of the R6,
00:22:03because the first R6 that came out that had the astronomically high redline actually didn't rev that high.
00:22:10The rev limiter was cutting in early.
00:22:13So there was a little bit of marketing there, but they did ultimately settle on a very high RPM.
00:22:23One of the things that's notable in manufacturing is that manufacturing methods change according to the number of parts that are desired.
00:22:37So if you're making a prototype crankcase for a project that you hope to hornswoggle money out of potential investors,
00:22:49there is this gleaming CNC set of crankcases ready for them to be impressed by.
00:22:57It immediately makes me think of the Harley-Davidson bagger race bike swing arm.
00:23:03It's like 600 pounds of aluminum that's machined into this beautiful arch trellis.
00:23:11Hot Pie every year used to have a big disclosure when they talked about their MotoGP bikes,
00:23:18and they revealed that it took 70 hours of CNC time to produce the crankcase for their inline four racing engine.
00:23:29Now, if we reckon the machine at $200 an hour, that's $14,000 for the machining,
00:23:40and the huge block of aluminum is going to be another little chunk.
00:23:45So that right there says unobtainium.
00:23:50You can't afford this, but it can be a very good method for making six.
00:23:57So then you would have sand casting in which manual methods, partially manual methods,
00:24:09are used to assemble elements of a mold which has bonded sand in it,
00:24:18and it also has passages for the entry of the molten metal and exit for the gases produced.
00:24:28And this method might be used for 100 parts.
00:24:34But to justify producing a die for die casting in a die casting machine, which is not a cheap item,
00:24:43you can only justify that if you can amortize the cost of the production equipment over thousands of parts.
00:24:53Makes me think of the CB750, because the early bikes, when they were probably still placing the bet, were sand cast.
00:25:01The early 750s were sand cast.
00:25:03Like, oh, maybe that was how it worked. I'm sure it's in a book somewhere.
00:25:08But, oh, look, they're buying them. Great. Let's pull up that die casting. Let's go.
00:25:12Yes. Unleash it.
00:25:15So those different methods for different production quantities.
00:25:26And then you can add to that the possibility of flexible production.
00:25:33I believe Honda has spoken years ago of production lines that can quickly be switched to produce different models of parts for different models.
00:25:46And always bear in mind the difference between an assembly line, which is where all the parts are brought together and assembled.
00:25:56The engine comes in complete. The swing arm is ready. Everything just slips together with the screw gun.
00:26:06But actually manufacturing the parts, there has to be a die casting line.
00:26:10There has to be a machining line that produces the crankshaft, which begins as a one piece forging.
00:26:17And it passes from one machine to another until finally somebody puts it into the crankcase.
00:26:26Where the bearings, having a bit of assembly oil wiped onto each one, are waiting to receive it.
00:26:34I was delighted to visit the Triumph factory on the introduction of the Bonneville.
00:26:38It was 2001. And we're going through and right over in the corner of the shop was a plasma nitriding machine and they were nitriding all the cranks on site.
00:26:53And then there I was in the assembly line and the guys dropping the crank into the case. It was awesome. It's really neat.
00:27:01I remember the Kawasaki factory. I went to KHI, Kawasaki Heavy Industries. We did a tour and we got to see them making trains and high speed bogeys.
00:27:13Bogey is the cart that has the wheels on a train. High speed bogeys for bullet trains and it was magnificent. All the things that Kawasaki was doing.
00:27:22And then we went to the manufacturing line for the motorcycles and there was a woman putting piston rings on pistons by hand.
00:27:35And she was great at it. A lot of the finer stuff on assembly lines or that kind of work is done by women.
00:27:44A little bit, maybe finer motor skills, I think is the thinking. But she whipped rings onto a piston. I sit there and I'm like, don't break. Come on, get on there.
00:27:57And she's just like, she has them hanging on her fingers and she just goes whip, whip, whip, whip. And it's done. It was amazing.
00:28:03Well, one of the things that also is of interest in manufacturing is the possibility of tailored materials.
00:28:21When Honda wanted to use titanium in some low production machines, they didn't just go to the titanium store and get the usual titanium alloy.
00:28:37They had an alloy prepared for them at a more affordable price and which was not necessarily all specked out for military applications.
00:28:51In automobile manufacture, sheet metal has been getting thinner and stronger thanks to so-called HSLA or high strength low alloy materials.
00:29:07It's very difficult to repair this stuff when you crash your car. It all has to be annealed before you can move it around.
00:29:14Oh, forget it. No, it's that hardened stuff of new cars. The idea of picking up your hammer and dolly and taking the fender of your Pontiac back to flat.
00:29:25You can hear it. I've tried. So on an old car, I have an old Ford, English Ford Thames van.
00:29:32And I took a class from Ron Covell and got my hammers and dollies, these beautiful Martin hammers and an egg dolly, all these different shapes of dollies.
00:29:39And I started panel beating that Thames and I was like, Hey man, this is cool. Like I was able to smooth out these dents and I could take creases and really flatten the creases.
00:29:48And then a buddy's like, Hey, you're, you do that bodywork stuff, man. My, my car's dented. And it was like a Chevy, I don't know, some 2001 Chevy or something.
00:29:58And I'm like, yeah, sure. I'll give it a try. And you could hear it when it hit how hard it was. There was no thought, no thought. It was like a crack.
00:30:07I'm like, bang, bang, bang, nothing's happening. And I suppose if I hit it really, really hard, maybe something would happen. But yeah, this is where you unbolt it and you, you put a new one on or just don't move it and splatter on your, your potty filler.
00:30:24Why would they do that? The reason is one automobiles have to be made lighter so that they can meet the fuel consumption regulations. And two automobiles have to have crush resistance so that they can pass impact testing.
00:30:42And ultimately you're using less material.
00:30:45Yes, less material, but tremendous resistance to crushing and deformation.
00:30:51So less material is, I think, a very important point here because it cascades through the whole operation.
00:31:01It absolutely does. Yes.
00:31:03Because if you make a beautiful die cast part that has only the amount of aluminum that it needs, it uses less material, it weighs less, and it's likely to be stronger.
00:31:15And so you're using less material in the one.
00:31:18When you ship that, the shipping will be less.
00:31:22Like when you buy stuff from mass produce, like you, you go onto the website and you order your, you order your valise, you order your toolbox.
00:31:31It is manufactured in a way to fit into a box that costs less to ship.
00:31:38And so you get that with a part.
00:31:40You get that with a beautifully done cast part because then it's lower cost to ship to wherever it goes.
00:31:46It's easier to handle and it will likely last longer and perform better.
00:31:50Royal Enfield in India, who are aces at this cost control business.
00:31:57As you can see, if you look at their prices and compare them with comparable models, I am filled with admiration.
00:32:04They are using something rather like your plasma nitriding setup in that it's in their plant.
00:32:19So rather than sending to Thailand to get tubular chassis made by a tubular chassis specialist, the Thai company designs not only the chassis,
00:32:32but a production system for it and sells that to Royal Enfield.
00:32:37They have it at their plant so that the chassis are not shipped.
00:32:43Well, imagine making tires on site, right?
00:32:46No, no shipping.
00:32:48That was what Metzeler showed me.
00:32:50They showed me a machine that normally operated lights out.
00:32:55Nobody in the room, nobody touches anything, can make six kinds of tires almost simultaneously.
00:33:05And every aspect of the construction of the tire is highly accurate because it's being done by these mad industrial robots.
00:33:20Imagine that you're standing at a tire machine, four hours in the morning, four hours in the afternoon.
00:33:26You pull the ply off of the servicer, the machine that hands you the parts.
00:33:33And you go to the drum and you stick it on there and you hope you've got it exactly right.
00:33:39And as you press the foot pedal and the drum starts pulling the ply out of your hand,
00:33:46you're guiding it and trying to get it, keep it properly centered.
00:33:51All day you're doing this.
00:33:53You're going to pay good attention from nine until 12 or eight until 12.
00:34:00There might be some variation.
00:34:03And we want everyone to have a job.
00:34:05Do we want them to have that job?
00:34:07Yeah.
00:34:09Anyway, the Metzler people said it is our aim to be able to provide this machine to tire users so that the tires can be made as they're needed.
00:34:26So, hot stuff.
00:34:29Well, along came the Great Recession.
00:34:33We can't say depression, can we?
00:34:35The Great Recession of 2008, then motorcycle sales went...
00:34:42Dropped 60%.
00:34:45Manufacturers got busy trying to restart their business.
00:34:51And at first they tried novelties.
00:34:54They tried making all the stuff that the critics had been saying, why don't they make...
00:35:01Some of it sold, but it wasn't reconstituting the industry.
00:35:09What they found was that riders wanted the usual kind of motorcycles.
00:35:16The adventure style, the cruiser style, the super sports style.
00:35:23But they couldn't pay what they had come to cost.
00:35:28They talked about a 600 supersport bike being an entry-level machine.
00:35:36And they were going for $13,000.
00:35:40Notionally entry-level, yes.
00:35:43They were on offer for $13,000.
00:35:49Insurance was another issue.
00:35:52They cut their price by reducing parts counts.
00:35:56And that's where parallel twin engines have come from.
00:36:01Fewer cylinders, pistons, connecting rods, valves, and bearings.
00:36:09And amortized, it's the universal power plant.
00:36:13It makes a beautiful torque curve and they don't change the tune because...
00:36:18It's really wonderful.
00:36:20It's a great engine.
00:36:21It doesn't make 132 horsepower at 17,000 RPM.
00:36:27But it's a great engine for most of us.
00:36:29And then they can put it into many models.
00:36:32And you just leave that same production line running.
00:36:36Just put them over here in your adventure bike.
00:36:38Put them over here in your naked bike, etc.
00:36:40Put them in your fared sport bike.
00:36:44You don't have to homologate it for smog in the same way.
00:36:48All kinds of benefits there from the manufacturing side.
00:36:52Giving us a lot of affordable great motorcycles.
00:36:57When I was quite a young man and became interested in Japanese motorcycles...
00:37:05After having been messing about with British motorcycles for some time...
00:37:13There was a constant din in my ear.
00:37:15That cheap Japanese stuff, you just don't mess with it.
00:37:20But when I looked at it, it looked well mass-produced.
00:37:26It didn't have an irregular appearance, which would be the result of having it built by artists.
00:37:35And people who think that the more mistakes there are, the greater the humanity of the product.
00:37:42These were turnkey electric start motorcycles of an entirely new kind that the world hadn't seen before.
00:37:55The manual on some British bikes would say...
00:37:59If it's leaking out of the casting, take all the stuff out and peen the casting.
00:38:05Because it was so porous that oil would seep through the casting.
00:38:09And the fix was to take it all apart and peen it.
00:38:13Smash it together to close the pores so it doesn't leak.
00:38:17Die-casting, I'm going to say that probably didn't happen.
00:38:24It's insanity.
00:38:26It's what happened to the British industry for one.
00:38:30They were making progress.
00:38:32The great TSS Triumph.
00:38:35130 miles an hour, 4 valves per cylinder.
00:38:38One of the last Triumphs made.
00:38:41It was supposed to be their saving grace.
00:38:43Still parallel twin and recognizably Triumph, but it had modern features.
00:38:50Too late, too little.
00:38:52Yeah, you bet.
00:38:56I decided to look into what costs what in motor vehicle manufacturing.
00:39:04The first glance you get says...
00:39:10Parts basically account for at least half and usually more than half of the manufacturing cost.
00:39:19Labor is something around 20% or somewhat more.
00:39:26If Royal Enfield's prices were low because they were underpaying their staff...
00:39:34They wouldn't be able to get the kind of price reduction out of underpaying people that we see in their selling price.
00:39:45Plus, their plants are located where there's a Yamaha plant right up the street and a Hiro Honda plant on the left.
00:39:54So that if people were underpaid, they could just take a walk and get paid properly.
00:40:03So, just as when I was a young man and I saw those early Hondas...
00:40:09The reason the price is low is because they're designed for low manufacturing costs.
00:40:16Not for people who are, as you described, trying to put the tube and lug frame in the jig.
00:40:25Nope, won't go. Bam, bam. Try again. Hit it there.
00:40:30Finally, they get it to go in the jig. Pass.
00:40:34How long did that take? Several minutes anyway.
00:40:39And they had to have someone detailed just to make up for their manufacturing errors.
00:40:45That's not a good plan.
00:40:48Another of my favorites is the Plaza Accords of 1986.
00:40:53When it was decided by the sort of Western powers that Japan must revalue its currency in order to do something about the balance of payments.
00:41:10Okay, with much arm twisting, it was done. But what was the result?
00:41:15Japanese companies quickly resourced a lot of parts from China.
00:41:24And if the Chinese company was not experienced in making those parts, they could get help.
00:41:32They could get training. They could buy production machines.
00:41:36So, pay now or pay later.
00:41:41It's hard to make big cuts in the cost of things just by saying so.
00:41:52Another thing that interests me is that there are some new functions in late model motorcycles that people like.
00:42:04And I believe you were telling me last week that there's a 70% take rate on DCT on some Hondas offering that as an option.
00:42:18It is. It's remarkable.
00:42:22Honda has done a lot over history. Honda has worked very hard to bring motorcycling to mass numbers of people, starting with the Cub.
00:42:33And all through the years, CB750A of the late 70s. It wasn't a successful motorcycle, but they were trying even then.
00:42:46A for automatic.
00:42:49A, yes. It had a torque converter. It was pretty slow.
00:42:53An actual three-element torque converter, yes.
00:42:56Which offers, within itself, two to one or more reduction.
00:43:02But DCT was really, you know, there was the FJ1300A with an automatic, and that was a decent system.
00:43:10It was basically an automated manual, but DCT really worked.
00:43:15It was the first automatic, aside from the twin vane thing, the Aprilia Shimano 850.
00:43:25It had basically a snowmobile or side-by-side belt drive in it, variator elements, and a rubber belt.
00:43:33And that was actually pretty nice to ride. It was not bad at all.
00:43:36But DCT really, really works.
00:43:40And the Goldwing, you know, they came out with the Goldwing and they put DCT on it.
00:43:46It was on the NC700.
00:43:49And, you know, you're sort of like, oh, that's novel.
00:43:53But we all ride because we like shifting.
00:43:56And no, in fact, we don't all ride because we do like shifting and we are imprinted to enjoy it.
00:44:01But if I were buying a Goldwing, I would get DCT and 70%, roughly 70% take rate on Goldwing.
00:44:09But I was surprised to find out, I recently asked Honda, what was the take rate on the CB, excuse me, the Rebel 1100 with DCT.
00:44:20And that was surprising to me to say 70%. Wow.
00:44:26Now, of course, we know that 98% of automobiles are made with some form of automatic drive.
00:44:32So people don't necessarily know how to, younger drivers don't necessarily know how to operate a gear shift automobile.
00:44:42And that can be a barrier to motorcycle ownership.
00:44:47I've presided over people trying to learn it and you have to be very methodical and very patient.
00:44:56And resilient.
00:44:58People get it.
00:45:00But it is a hump to get over.
00:45:05I don't know if I want to do this.
00:45:08So the wonderful thing about DCT is, one, it is every bit as efficient as a normal gear transmission because it's transmission by gears.
00:45:20Two, you get the rise and fall in the exhaust note as the motorcycle accelerates, just as you do with manual shifting.
00:45:29The auditory excitement is not lost.
00:45:34Although I will say that when you put a Goldwing into automatic mode and you're like Econ, you know, when you're in your most mellowest mode, that it has a seven speed.
00:45:46They put seven gears in it to smooth out the lower end so that the gaps between the low gears aren't as wide as it is in a manual box.
00:45:53It's to smooth the shifting so that the dog, the speed, the relative speed is less between the gears, lower between the gears.
00:46:01So that the, and that way the dogs don't go, it's much smoother.
00:46:05And that's why it has seven gears, the top, the bottom ratio and the top ratio, the same spread.
00:46:10They just put an extra in there.
00:46:11That motorcycle leaving a stoplight.
00:46:13If you're very mellow on the throttle, I swear by the time you hit the crosswalk on the other side of the intersection, you're in sixth because also that engine has, you know, 108 foot pounds of torque and a hundred.
00:46:24And I think it makes 102 at 1000 RPM, 102 pound feet, very different tuning from say that the BMW K 1600, which was made to be a sizzling hot rod.
00:46:37I mean, beautifully refined and smooth.
00:46:40Goldwing was going for something different and it will shift.
00:46:44Anyway, this is, it will, you're in sixth gear by the time you're on the other side of the intersection, if you're riding mellow.
00:46:49But what you say is true.
00:46:50And the programming of that system is fantastic because if you're in sport mode, it's holding gears, you charge a corner and it goes good.
00:46:58And it, it down shifts early, gets you up in the yard.
00:47:02It's, Oh, he's riding aggressively.
00:47:04Here you go.
00:47:05It's very cool.
00:47:06It's cool stuff.
00:47:07And you get, you know, you get that beautiful flat six sound and then the gear changes, like you say.
00:47:12Conceptually, what a dual clutch transmission does is it breaks one of the two shafts in the transmission into two on the same center line.
00:47:25And each one has its own clutch.
00:47:29And the transmission is arranged so that you alternate from one shaft to the other as you upshift and the clutches allow you to engage the next gear before disengaging the gear that is currently driving.
00:47:51Because the clutches grip and release at exactly the right time so that there is no problem.
00:48:01This is quite wonderful.
00:48:05And I remember when I first saw DCT, I think it was on a Porsche and they had the thing all cut away and you could look in and shift the gears and see the, how the various parts performed their menuette.
00:48:22It was lovely.
00:48:26But of course there, if your parts cost less, more parts cost more.
00:48:30So there's something.
00:48:35But another one of the new functions that really has my interest is variable ride height.
00:48:43I've known for years that people who like the look of an adventure bike, buy one, they ride it for a week and they're back to the dealer.
00:48:52Can't you do something about this thing?
00:48:54I can't get my foot on the ground at a stoplight.
00:48:58So the dealer tells the setup kid, take care of this thing.
00:49:03And he cuts a bunch off of the spring spacer and each leg of the fork and gets around back and goes through that tedious process of winding the rear suspension down.
00:49:18To the credit of many manufacturers, there are lowering kits that you can get on many bikes now.
00:49:26When you lower an adventure bike, you are removing some of the suspension travel.
00:49:34And the wonderful thing about suspension travel on an off-road bike is that it's the energy absorbing ability of the suspension is proportional to the travel squared.
00:49:48So what that has meant in terms of riding is that with longer travel, you can hit all those horrible things much harder now without being knocked silly.
00:50:03Because the suspension can absorb that higher energy through having all that travel.
00:50:11So you lose some travel when you lower the bike.
00:50:15And it's not going to perform in its assigned task of off-road operation as well.
00:50:28But it's perfectly possible because we see it in MotoGP, if anyone's watching, to fix the ride height so that it is push button controlled.
00:50:44Or automatic.
00:50:45You can fix it so that when the motorcycle is obviously rolling to a stop, the system says, aha, he's stopping.
00:50:53And it comes down so that you stick out your foot and there is Mother Earth.
00:51:00Now, is this unmanly? Is it improper?
00:51:06No, it's just possible.
00:51:10Anything that's possible is likely.
00:51:14And it has at last come to be as on Harley's Pan America.
00:51:21And I believe there's one other manufacturer that's doing it too.
00:51:25So I like that because it means that you don't have to be 6'4 to ride those very tall adventure bikes.
00:51:36Or you don't have to look for a high curb that you can put your foot on when you stop.
00:51:45Yeah, I mean, I guess it also brings up the point that there are more expensive motorcycles, right?
00:51:53We've been talking about parallel twins.
00:51:55We've been talking mostly about that end of the market.
00:51:59I mean, we've included CB750, but you have plenty of expensive motorcycle stuff that's $15,000, $20,000, $30,000.
00:52:07But you're still able to get these features without it being $150,000.
00:52:14Yes.
00:52:15You can get a great all-around adventure bike that does so many different things.
00:52:19Ducati Multistrada B4s and variable valve timing and MotoGP-like sounds and power in a bike that you can bash around off-road.
00:52:33It has spectacular traction control and all these things that ease your passage.
00:52:39Ease your passage?
00:52:41Well, with an adventure bike, we discussed testing.
00:52:46Can we do a course for this comparison test?
00:52:53You don't time that course.
00:52:55You have to use that subjective, like, can I make it and how hard was it for me to make it?
00:53:01Not how fast we could do it because it isn't about speed necessarily in an adventure bike.
00:53:06It's about making it.
00:53:07I want to go see this.
00:53:09A friend of mine, Bill Getty, JRC Engineering, he's a Scoutmaster.
00:53:16They took a Scout on a hike and they were off in the California desert and going to a mine, a really remote mine.
00:53:23They were driving up off-road and then they were going to hike the last half mile to this mine in really, really rugged terrain.
00:53:30What did they find at the bottom of a hill but a BMW GS?
00:53:37Abandoned.
00:53:38Abandoned because the man had been airlifted out with a broken leg.
00:53:45They noted all the facts about the bike and went back and got it and found the guy in the hospital recovering with his broken leg.
00:53:52Yeah, that's my bike.
00:53:54They mined it out for him.
00:53:56It's about making it.
00:53:57That guy could have been a really great rider but maybe if it had been lower.
00:54:05Could the electronics be better?
00:54:06It's just making it.
00:54:07When you're out there by yourself, you got to get to the top of the hill.
00:54:11I don't know, to get lunch?
00:54:13How are we going to do it?
00:54:14It's very cool to have all the features that make it more possible.
00:54:20Yes, I quite agree.
00:54:21It's like the vibration thing.
00:54:27The first parallel twin that was produced in quantity was Edward Turner's Triumph Speed Twin in the late 30s.
00:54:38It was a 500.
00:54:41It had relatively small pistons and it weighed like a motorcycle.
00:54:46350 pounds or more.
00:54:50What you have to do is divide the mass of the pistons which are yanking up and down into the mass of the rest of it to get an idea about how much you're going to feel the vibration.
00:55:06When they turned the 500 into a 650, the 650 into a 700, into an 832 or whatever that last Norton was, the ratio is changing in favor of the piston, which is why the Norton was given that vibration attenuating system.
00:55:23Oh, isolastics.
00:55:24Yes, isolastics.
00:55:26At the dealership, if a person said, it vibrates a lot, they'd be told basically, man up, you want to ride a motorcycle or not?
00:55:42Motorcycles vibrate.
00:55:43Well, people aren't as ready to accept that now and neither are the aluminum frames.
00:55:51Because everyone thought it was a tremendous idea a few years ago.
00:55:56We'll get those out of work TZ250 Yamahas and toss the two-stroke engine out and we'll put a 450 four-stroke motocross engine in.
00:56:06Great lights, got all the brakes and all the racy stuff for road race, for a nice 500cc road race, sort of a spec racer.
00:56:20Oh, the frame's got a crack in it.
00:56:23Oh, well, it'll probably be all right.
00:56:26At noon, excuse me, cracks a lot bigger and there's two more.
00:56:31And basically what was happening was the 450 made too much vibration for that kind of frame.
00:56:40And that's why modern motorcycles have vibration attenuation systems, usually balance shafts.
00:56:50Even Harley's big twin had to have them eventually.
00:56:56And I think this is just fine.
00:56:58I think that idea of manning up and getting used to vibration is like manning up and getting used to chronic pain.
00:57:06Hey, let's all go to the pain studio and hurt for a while.
00:57:11No, we don't have to do that.
00:57:14We have the technology.
00:57:17Yeah, it's interesting.
00:57:18You know, Harley came out with the twin cam 88B circa 2000.
00:57:25So that was the twin cam 88 balance motor that they were putting into soft tails because they were solid mount.
00:57:32And then later on, even with the rubber mount motors in the touring bikes,
00:57:36they were putting a balancer in to tune it to keep the rubber mount and keep that relationship that we're accustomed to from a rubber mount Harley.
00:57:46Because they have a feel and they have a personality from that.
00:57:51But they were tuning it.
00:57:53You know, they made it too smooth experimenting.
00:57:56They said, well, let's really smooth it out and see what happens.
00:57:59And people were like, no, I don't want that.
00:58:01Because they want a little bit.
00:58:03You want that positivity.
00:58:04And it's just like eliminating the noise to keep the music,
00:58:10which was the Harley line about quieting transmissions and putting helical cut gears in their gearboxes.
00:58:20I think it was 08, the fifth gear was straight cut on the touring bikes.
00:58:24And by I think 2010, they had to change it to a helically cut gear because fifth was too noisy for the customers.
00:58:33They were noticing.
00:58:35And so you're constantly trying to, you know, control cost.
00:58:40But keep your customers happy.
00:58:42Well, this is, of course, it's very important that the character of the product don't mess with that.
00:58:49Oh, yeah.
00:58:50Because if your customer can't recognize the product, there's no relationship and no sale.
00:59:00Yeah, I think about the Turner 500 twin as being a pretty good example of making some progress for the end user.
00:59:12And making a twin, but using not too many extra parts.
00:59:16You know, there's no center support on the crankshaft.
00:59:21It's a twin, it's a twin cylinder, but as you would call it, a jump rope.
00:59:24You know, it's just held on the ends and the two pistons are, you know, orbiting around.
00:59:29And it works fine if you're not trying to make 132 horsepower out of your 750.
00:59:37But once you start, it gets a little tough.
00:59:39You get a lot of elephant's ears flapping, I think.
00:59:44That's a Bruno Di Prato line, I think.
00:59:47Yes, it is Bruno's, yes.
00:59:50In the heyday of Meriden R&D, they were able to qualify their 9500 RPM 500 twin with pushrods for GPs.
01:00:07And I would like to hear a Triumph 500 at 9500 RPM, and it has been done.
01:00:17You could probably hear that for a few minutes anyway.
01:00:25But, of course, at one point, I think it may have been Royal Enfield.
01:00:31They said, well, we want to make a parallel twin, but we'd like a center bearing.
01:00:36And they were told.
01:00:37Pretty sure it was the Interceptor 750.
01:00:40They were told, we don't make a machine that we can guarantee concentricity of three bearings.
01:00:48Now, I don't know if that can even be true, because automotive engines have five bearings in the four-cylinder.
01:00:56And you would want to have, ideally, three bearings on a two-cylinder.
01:01:02Well, there are plenty of inline fours.
01:01:05I play mostly with old British stuff.
01:01:07So, a Ford console, 1703, that was used in the Thames van and the console car, had three mains.
01:01:17The three banks?
01:01:18Three mains, yeah.
01:01:19And MG, like MGAs, earlier MGBs, had three mains, and then they went to a five main later on.
01:01:26I drove into a gas station in my hometown on a trip home, and I thought, oh, I could fill up.
01:01:35So, I pulled in to the gas station where I knew the proprietor, and he came out, started putting in the gas.
01:01:45And he said, conversationally, what is this thing, a V8 or a bearing thrasher?
01:01:51What is this thing, a V8 or a bearing thrasher?
01:01:56I love that expression, bearing thrasher.
01:02:01And if you look at the Cyclone, the overhead cam board track racer of 1915, had such a row.
01:02:12I think there were two bearings on the timing side and four rows on the drive side,
01:02:18all in an effort to prevent the flywheels from doing that elephant ears flapping deal,
01:02:24and also to prevent the bearings from wallowing out of the crankcase halves.
01:02:31Something that I think you've had experience with, with your Velocette.
01:02:35Yep.
01:02:37Yeah, we had a look at the Cyclone that sold at Mecham in Las Vegas for about $1.2 million,
01:02:44and it was a thing of beauty.
01:02:46Love that thing.
01:02:47It is gorgeous.
01:02:48It really, truly is.
01:02:49Redding Standard built one.
01:02:53The Excelsior guys built one.
01:02:56They weren't fast.
01:02:59And that made me think of AJS, who switched from OHV to overhead cam and didn't get a power gain.
01:03:08So, they went back to pushrods for a short time.
01:03:13And what has been decided about that was that when they put in the overhead cam setup,
01:03:21they used the same cam forms as before,
01:03:24but now the valves were actually following the cam lobes,
01:03:29instead of lofting over the top and providing a lot of extra intake area.
01:03:36So, I think there had been times when a company has built an overhead cam engine and not benefited from it.
01:03:47And of course, the company making Cyclone closed up later in 1915, I think.
01:03:56So, they just needed some R&D to help along.
01:04:02It had local success, but it faded out.
01:04:06And I think Redding Standard and Excelsior didn't get anywhere with theirs.
01:04:14Nothing wrong with the idea.
01:04:16You just have to develop its ability.
01:04:19You have to use its ability to control valves more abruptly,
01:04:25because there's less mass in the system.
01:04:30Well, we've come a long way from shaping the motorcycle.
01:04:35Indeed.
01:04:38Well, we can thank mass production and all the things that go with it.
01:04:43Progress in materials, progress in thinking unconventionally,
01:04:49making tires on-site, making frames on-site,
01:04:53doing what it takes to bring the cost down so we can all enjoy a freedom of movement that is unprecedented.
01:05:01And exciting.
01:05:02And exciting.
01:05:04Rewarding. Feels good. Riding is amazing.
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