Just how much help is enough help from riders aids on a motorcycle? Will rocket blasts help you save the front one day (as in the thumbnail Photo by Bosch)? Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer talk about the first rider aids, the electronic revolution, and where we may be headed.
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SportsTranscript
00:00:00This is the Cycle World Podcast. I'm Mark Hoyer, Editor-in-Chief, Kevin Cameron. Our
00:00:04technical editor is here today with us, as ever. The topic today is Motorcycle Rider
00:00:10Assistant Technologies, Rider Aids. What are Rider Aids? Before we get into that, I was
00:00:19thinking about this after Kevin sent his 4,000-word document for me to review for us to kick
00:00:24off the podcast and have a direction to run, is that I feel that we often think our base
00:00:31exposure technology is the right technology. And so that which we are imprinted with as
00:00:37we're learning about motorcycles or riding them is the correct technology. At the dawn
00:00:43of more Rider Aids, such as Trash Control, oh man, the people of my generation and older
00:00:50especially, how upset they were that there would be some electronic device that might
00:00:55control traction rather than just me and my throttle. And my body position and all the dynamic
00:01:03things that we love about motorcycling, that we have an influence on the equipment. That's
00:01:08one of the things that's so charming about it. So I think our base exposure, we tend to
00:01:13think that is the right level of technology. For me personally, I've always been a Luddite
00:01:18of convenience. That is, I reject technologies a lot of times to maintain what I would consider
00:01:27a pure experience up until it's inconvenient and then I would accept that technology. So
00:01:32I could have a manual Spark Advance on my Velocet, take a drink. But I have an automatic timing
00:01:39device with little springs and weights that wing around and it takes care of it for me. It's
00:01:43not very complicated. I think it comes all in with timing a little too soon, but also,
00:01:49eh, I barely have to think about it.
00:01:51And it never forgets.
00:01:52Never forgets. And here, you know, it's such a, I like that, Kevin, always that we start,
00:01:58you know, we start with the Big Bang. Basically, I say, let's do Rider Technology and we start
00:02:04with the Big Bang. And so let's start with that kernel of flame that started the life of Rider
00:02:10Rider-Aid Technologies. Where do you begin? Tell us.
00:02:16Well, the thing is that the early motorcycle was a very difficult thing to manage because
00:02:24it had a flame ignition. As the piston moved along, it exposed the port. While the piston
00:02:34was on suction, it drew flame in, ignited the charge, and then the port closed. And then weak,
00:02:44weak action resulted from this that would actually propel you down the road. And the British commentator,
00:02:54Ixion, who was a pillar of the established church in Britain, and a motorcyclist, began riding in
00:03:051898. And he said that his experience with flame ignition was that anytime you crashed, your bike
00:03:15would burn up. Now, I think that it would be of great assistance to the rider, if a means could be
00:03:23found to prevent the bike from burning up just because it tipped over. And that turns out to be
00:03:30the Magneto, which took a while in coming. And when it did come, it was a tremendous assistance
00:03:40to running and safety. The other thing is that carburetors were unknown, and that to mix fuel with
00:03:49the air, the intake air on its way into the cylinder passed over a large wick wet with fuel. And in order
00:04:00to even start the engine, you had to understand how to get the mixture just right.
00:04:09So that it would get something that could be ignited. And Wilhelm Maybach invented the spray carburetor
00:04:21in the 19th century. And it was soon incorporated into automobiles and motorbikes. But it took away from
00:04:32the rider that special knowledge of how to get the wick wet enough, but not too wet. So a person of that,
00:04:43yes, outrage, a person of that period could announce they didn't have email at that time, but
00:04:50they could march about in public carrying a sign saying that magnetos and carburetors,
00:04:58spray carburetors, take responsibilities from the rider that are essential to the motorcycling
00:05:08experience. Now, let's get a little more down to earth here, and a little closer to the modern age.
00:05:16Because imagine that you're a dirt track rider in the 1950s, and you've availed yourself of Triumph's
00:05:24wonderful program that they had at that time, by which you could buy all these soup up parts,
00:05:31camshafts, bigger carburetors, higher compression pistons. It was wonderful. You could,
00:05:37it was practically like a laptop. You could just write out the things you wanted, mail it in to
00:05:44Tricor or out west, and you'd get back these wonderful things. Well, the temptation always was
00:05:54to look in the Webco book, and in the Webco book, it would have all these camshafts that you could get
00:06:01for your Triumph Twin. And they started out mild, slight increase over stock. And it went on and
00:06:10on. And finally, at the bottom, a double throwdown, super stomp, Bonneville, top end only. So if you are
00:06:19young and inexperienced and hoping to make your mark in a mechanical sport, you might be tempted to
00:06:27take something beyond mild, slight increase over stock. And when you did so, you would find that as
00:06:36your engine revved up, it got to a certain point where the long delay in intake closing after bottom
00:06:45center would start to work for you instead of against you. And the torque would rise so steeply
00:06:51that it made the motorcycle very tough to ride. Just like modern riders have virtual power band,
00:07:00which is an electronic compensating device by which you send your message to the system with your
00:07:08throttle angle. The ECU ponders this and says, I know how to give that torque. And it then makes the
00:07:20proper arrangements. So that instead of having added throttle, and as you're adding throttle, instead,
00:07:28the torque curve is climbing up this spike caused by you having bought too optimistic a campshaft,
00:07:35the next thing that's happening is you're sliding on your back off the track.
00:07:40So what dirt trackers soon found was that they needed something like stock timing, and a bunch more lift.
00:07:52Because you've got to get more air into your engine to get more power. And if adding timing gives you a
00:08:00power band you can't ride, then you have to add lift. So this is an example of how engine character
00:08:10which is difficult to ride and which in the hands of certain riders might be an advantage.
00:08:18The engine can be rendered docile and easy to use for persons of lesser skills by the unfair
00:08:28choice of a high lift stock duration campshaft. That when you roll it on, out there on the dirt that has
00:08:39not necessarily the same traction at every moment, or at every place, you'll be able to manage it
00:08:46and get down the track at a fairly good clip. So what this taught people was one of Muzzy's, Rob Muzzy,
00:08:58Mr. Superbike, one of Muzzy's great rules, which says,
00:09:02the harder you work to tune a four-stroke to higher power levels, the more it begins to act like a two-stroke.
00:09:12What does a two-stroke act like? It acts like an engine that has a power band one millimeter wide.
00:09:19And that's why during the 500GP era, where two-strokes ruled Europe, 1975 to 2001,
00:09:31they began to have things like eyelids in the exhaust port that could rise with RPM,
00:09:39and which eased the transition from not very much torque to far too much.
00:09:45And these rider assist devices assisted people with names like Mick Doohan, Wayne Rainey,
00:09:57Freddie Spencer. Did they need help? Yes, they did. Because if the engine department is going to give
00:10:07them the power they want, if they don't do something to civilize that power and make it rideable,
00:10:14it's not going to make the motorcycle faster. It will be more powerful, but also much harder to ride.
00:10:22So this introduces us to the electronic rider aids that began to appear in 1990. Nobody knew it at the
00:10:33time, except some people paying attention, myself among them. And then when the MotoGP era began in 2002,
00:10:46and it began to be publicized, then the pundits were filled with moral outrage, because such things as
00:11:00anti-spin, virtual power band, and anti-wheelie systems, to their mind, meant these people just don't know how
00:11:11to ride the motorcycle. Therefore, they've given them these electronic assist systems, which are actually
00:11:20for panty wastes. And real men would say, no way. But the fact is, that in 1989, the FIM said to the
00:11:36manufacturers, there have been so many high side accidents resulting in injury, that we are going to
00:11:46insist that you do something to prevent these high side accidents. And I think that they were
00:11:53inwardly worried that the European Commission meeting in Brussels would say, this blood sport
00:12:00must be government regulated. And that means that people who know nothing at all about your sport
00:12:10are going to be making the decisions. That's not so different from reality. But at least
00:12:16the upper people in management in motorsports are supposed to know something about motorsports. So
00:12:25at this point, this is just after the turn of the century.
00:12:32There was not a lot of money around in 2003. And the product development people were saying,
00:12:44we called for new models. But the finance people came in and said, we can't afford to tool new models
00:12:51right now. Don't you have some? Don't you? What about what? Don't you have any bold new graphics
00:12:57that you can hot up last year's model with? No, but wait a minute, those people in MotoGP may be on to
00:13:06something. And so suddenly, all this stuff comes over to production bikes. Not in its original form,
00:13:15in a form that is adaptable to existing products. And well, it has to pass through the legal department,
00:13:24too. It hasn't been a feature before. So they have to decide what we call it.
00:13:30Well, this was an important point at the time, because the Japanese were worried about
00:13:35the legal department and its level of happiness.
00:13:39Well, ZX10 had a ZX10 circa, oh, 2010-ish, somewhere around there. I actually sat in a meeting
00:13:53where they said, it's not traction control. It's all about maintaining traction.
00:14:02Because they couldn't really, they hadn't been signed off to call what they had at that time
00:14:07traction control. Yeah. Well, it was the Europeans at this point. Ducati,
00:14:13BMW were particularly active. They embraced the new systems. And they evidently thought their
00:14:22legal teams were up to the work. And a lot of people were exposed to these systems.
00:14:30And I remember hearing from BMW guys, when people in the design team were given bikes to ride for
00:14:39comments, they loved rain mode. Because you didn't have to be fanatically centered to ride the
00:14:52motorcycle quite well. Because it would excuse your mistakes and civilize them.
00:14:59I think, you know, as a rider, you enjoy the vigilance of riding. There's a necessary vigilance
00:15:05and demands attention. And I think that's part of the charm.
00:15:09Also, it drives other things out of your mind, which is one reason to go riding.
00:15:14Absolutely. But hypervigilance maybe is a step too far. And so having that ability to say,
00:15:22I'll take rain mode or I'll have TC. Early years, you know, first year Yamaha R1, red and white,
00:15:30test bike, wonderful. Very, it's got a, it had a two humped torque curve. And a lot happened. And there
00:15:39was no rider aids. This was a, you know, this was a bear beast of a motorcycle. And in a light mist,
00:15:45you know, really just a marine layer morning in Southern California, riding to work, crossing
00:15:51railroad tracks, metal, polished metal bars in the road with a light coating of lubricant on them.
00:16:00And everything that happens coming off of cars, that bike went sideways at very moderate throttle.
00:16:08Unexpected. And I'm riding every day. I'm riding fast and I'm riding hard. And this is just riding
00:16:13to work, but you know, vigilant person, I pay attention. That's why I like it. But there I was,
00:16:19I did not crash. Luck made me a hero once again, but, uh, that hypervigilance and having a,
00:16:26having a net there and rider aids as they've evolved in motorcycles, you know, the electronic
00:16:30stuff, the way that you can, you can dial up the percentage of slide. I mean, when we first had TC
00:16:37discussions of traction control and I was, you know, covering racing, uh, and we, in our non-technical
00:16:47backgrounds, not non-technical, but we weren't, we weren't at the edge of discovery where people
00:16:55were messing around with traction control, like Amara Bazaz with Yoshimura and figuring out how to
00:17:03do these things. We just thought, well, you know, traction control work in a car because a car is
00:17:07flat, you know, it just has two tires on the ground and it doesn't lean angles, really not playing into
00:17:13it very much. And how could you ever have traction control work on a motorcycle that has so much weight
00:17:19transfer leans over to the side? Like it just, you know, it's too complicated. You can't, it's never,
00:17:25it's never going to work. And look at us now. But, um, I think what you say, you know, you,
00:17:31we talked about magnetos, you know, magneto, it's a, a sparking device that, that changed everything.
00:17:38And then in the early days you had to change the timing with a lever. And so at idle, you want your
00:17:43spark timing, you know, 10 degrees before top dead center. But when you're going down the road,
00:17:48you might need 30 to get maximum power, 30 degrees. You have to light the flame sooner
00:17:52because the engine's spinning faster. And for kickstarting, you might want top dead center.
00:17:58Yeah. Because if you try to start one of those 500 singles from the 1950s, uh, and you forget
00:18:08to retard the spark, it will throw you. It will hurt you. Oh, break an ankle, put your knee in your
00:18:14armpit, crack your foot open. So this is what the spring loaded spark advance, the, the, uh,
00:18:23centrifugal advance device did for people. It never forgot to retard the spark. It never forgot
00:18:31to advance it. Once the engine was running, it was wonderful, but you could say, well, it's for
00:18:38stupid people. We're not stupid. Why should we associate with products that have nasty rider assist
00:18:47devices on them for panty wastes? So another one, another one, uh, years ago, uh, Kirker and other
00:18:57companies were making four into ones for motorcycles. Exhaust systems. And they were, yes, four into one
00:19:06exhaust systems, uh, four headers of a characteristic length joining into a collector and Muzzy's, uh,
00:19:15great days in, in a super bike with Kawasaki's were with such systems, but everyone knew that there was a
00:19:24flat spot. And when, um, Mark Dobeck came up with his dyno system, which brought a dynamometer to
00:19:36dealers who had a spare $10,000 worth of credit, everyone could see the flat spot. The torque curve
00:19:45had two peaks. It was on its way up to the normal peak, but on its way, it hesitated and went down and
00:19:52then it went up again. Well, if it goes down and then tries to catch up to where it was going to go,
00:19:59it's going to have to rise very steeply. Riders didn't like that steep rise worth a damn. So
00:20:08people began to think, well, I can, I can lean this thing down. It's rich in the flat spot and they
00:20:17leaned it down in the flat spot and it did get better, but it got worse everywhere else in the
00:20:22torque curve. All the top speed was gone. The acceleration was gone. Oh, so what did they do?
00:20:31They came up with a way to make an exhaust system that would send back a beneficial wave to fill in
00:20:40the flat spot. And that is a four into two into one pipe. And I remember walking around the garages
00:20:50at Daytona the year that those things showed up. And I did not see a single four into one pipe in
00:20:58any garage, not one. Everyone had switched to four to one. Now you could argue that a real man or a real
00:21:07woman would learn to ride that flat spot and the steep torque rise after that, as it climbs out of that
00:21:16hole. Well, you could learn to ride it after a fashion, but you would be losing time. While you were
00:21:24stuck in the flat spot, people with four to ones would be past you on either side. There'd be nothing
00:21:33you could do about it. All we've ever wanted is to ride faster, safer, and with more control.
00:21:39Yes. And so the four to one did that job. And, uh, Yamaha's X-Up device was an early effort to
00:21:49achieve that electronically. And X-Up was an exhaust valve, like a, a guillotine that wouldn't, uh,
00:21:58would, uh, would, would, uh, block some of the wave action. It was, uh, it came and went,
00:22:05but we have to realize that motorcycling is not just for a complaining few who have named themselves
00:22:17as keepers of the flame, possibly of flame ignition and other obsolete crudities.
00:22:26Well, how about throttles with no return spring?
00:22:29Yes. Or ones that were on the, on the steering column and you adjusted them by hand.
00:22:36A lever. Yeah.
00:22:37It was in 1903 that Christian Lautenschlager, who was a Daimler-Benz, uh, factory rider said to his
00:22:46mechanics, I can't keep this thing sliding because I need both hands on the wheel. Maybe you fellas
00:22:53could come up with a way to work the throttle with my foot.
00:22:58Yeah. I wrote a rudge from the twenties, uh, from the twenties that had a lever throttle.
00:23:04Yeah.
00:23:04So you said, you know, it's a big, big, long, you know, the levers were different lengths,
00:23:08so you could figure out what the hell you're going to touch. Right. Cause you had, you had a mixture
00:23:12lever, you had a spark lever, and then you had a throttle lever.
00:23:16Yeah. All on the same pivot.
00:23:18And they're all like right there. So you've got a, you know, you're, and then you have
00:23:21highly ineffective brakes and, you know, a rigid chassis and a girder fork and all kinds of
00:23:27strange dynamics going on. And you had to set the throttle and then pull, pull the lever,
00:23:34make your gear change, put the lever back. And then I need more. No, I need less. And man,
00:23:39it was, I mean, it's always interesting, but imagine, you know, as they say, the one arm paper
00:23:45hanger, you're, uh, it's, it's too much. Yep. If we had more extremities, another brain, a second
00:23:53or third brain, maybe, maybe it'd be better. I don't know. So when Honda, uh, began to prepare for
00:24:02the new class coming MotoGP. Um, Mr. Ikenoya, a former president of HRC and therefore a very big
00:24:13cheese in the company, uh, held a press conference or otherwise, um, released a statement that said,
00:24:22our MotoGP bike will not use any exotic materials or technologies. It will be more like a world
00:24:30super bike. And so have no fear. Well, 2002 came Honda one, 2003 came Ducati entered the class
00:24:44and they brought a ton of horsepower. Now this is something that Ducati's always been very good at.
00:24:52They're good at setting a target and getting to it, not having to take a year off or to back up
00:25:00on a change in bore stroke ratio, as some of the Japanese companies had to do.
00:25:08They were able to keep moving forward because they had people in the factory who really understood
00:25:15engines.
00:25:17Aprilia Cube was another example, is an example of a massive amount of power, but you know,
00:25:24I, I, I went to Motegi in 2003, I was a guest of, of Yamaha and I'm wandering around in the paddock,
00:25:36which has not filled up with parked vehicles yet because it's not really race. Uh, you know,
00:25:42it's, it's Thursday afternoon or something. And I, I'm thinking to myself, well,
00:25:49I'm finished. I, I don't know what's going on here. How am I going to talk about it? If I don't know
00:25:56anything, here comes Colin Edwards, Jr. And he says, come with me, let's go find a nice quiet place
00:26:05where nobody's going to overhears. I got some stuff to tell you. He was always great with that.
00:26:10Um, he, he told me about trying to get the, um, slipper clutch adjusted for more than one corner.
00:26:24He said, we, I go out, I do a lap, go through that corner. I would observe what happened. I would
00:26:30come in and tell them and they would add a five thousandths shim. And then I would go out. It
00:26:38would be better in that corner, but worse elsewhere. Well, a, a slipper clutch is, is a great thing
00:26:47as far as it goes, but it's torque is, it's torque has a different effect depending on which
00:26:56torque capacity has a different effect depending on what gear you're in. So was he going to go out
00:27:04with a large set of shims on his wrist, like bracelets? What happened was that, uh, people
00:27:13came up with, uh, systems, electronic systems to handle this nonsense. And, uh, that took the form
00:27:22and this was Kenny Roberts came by, saw me and he said, come with me. I've got some really neat
00:27:29stuff to tell you about. And so he takes me into his garage. He said, this thing's got a throttle
00:27:35kicker on it. So when the rider is going into the turn, instead of the rear wheel dragging and hopping
00:27:43and sliding out, like somebody is using the, the rear thumbbrake, he said, the computer just says,
00:27:53oh, we'll open the throttle this many, you know, three and a quarter degrees. And the power that
00:28:01the engine generates will cancel as much or as little of the engine braking as the rider finds
00:28:10comfortable. That is, we're going to use the laptop to tune this unpleasantness out.
00:28:18Well, quick aside, I was testing with Roland Sands way back in the day on some car, I think we were
00:28:23on carbureted 600s and I was complaining about corner entry and engine braking as I was just
00:28:31tipping into the corner. And he's like, dude, turn up the idle. Yeah. And you know what? That's what
00:28:37people did. It worked. It did work. It was like 2000 RPM idle or whatever, 1800. And no one's going
00:28:44to say that Roland Sands is a panty waist. No. He was a strong 250 rider. Yeah. Um, and
00:28:53riders don't want to take risks that are unnecessary. And if you're going into a corner
00:29:03with a bunch of engine braking because you're riding a big displacement motorcycle, it can throw
00:29:09you on the ground. And then it can jump on you if you're unfortunate. So it's our moral duty
00:29:19to erase such unpleasantness. So that was the throttle kicker came from Formula One and it was
00:29:26quite successful. And at Motegi, I could hear all this stuff going on. The Yamahas would approach the
00:29:35corner and I would hear a sound like a lawnmower. Their system was opening the throttle on only one of
00:29:41the four cylinders. So it was just going. I recently wrote an alpha racing BMW. So the,
00:29:48a super sport or a stock 1000 spec alpha racing BMW and the control schemes on it were the,
00:29:55the last, it was Jason Uribe's control schemes uploaded to this bike, which was a Nate Kern
00:30:01motorcycle. So everything that they had learned from last season was on this bike. And I wrote it at
00:30:07Barber after I'd raced with Arma. And, uh, on the Monday we did a track day and it, it was
00:30:13magnificent. You'd, you would take that bike on the last corner. It's a left, a downhill left,
00:30:18and you kind of come in, you have to stay tight, right on the immediate corner before that. So that
00:30:23you have a nice left and a drive onto the straightaway and you'd be lean. It's a lot of
00:30:28lean angle and you're rolling into the throttle and it would, it would add cylinders for power.
00:30:34But as you were leaned over, it would just be running the two, let's say, I don't remember
00:30:37what it was exactly, but you'd get this sound. And then as you're, as you're picking the bike up and
00:30:43as, as, as it's asking, or as, as it's giving you more, as you turn the throttle, it was perfect.
00:30:50There was no upset to the chassis. It was just changes in tone. And the, I mean, the chassis was
00:30:56amazing. Anyway, the turn in was unbelievable. So it would just drive down the corner and then
00:31:01you're picking the bike up and it's adding cylinders and it doesn't upset the motorcycle
00:31:05at all. It just dries on the front straight. It was insane. And I'm not, you know, I'm not going
00:31:11anywhere near what a Jason Uribe or Nate Kern would be on that bike, but it is transformative
00:31:18how wonderful it is. It's so good. Yeah. Just incredible.
00:31:24So, uh, this kind of thing, uh, was proliferating through the first decade of the new century.
00:31:34And, uh, one of the things that was, uh, important was the anti-wheely system. And, uh, we had an
00:31:45interview with, um, Valentino Rossi and later with his crew chief, Jeremy Burgess and Rossi
00:31:56said, the wheelie is the enemy. Because if you're riding a powerful motorcycle, which has
00:32:04been highly tuned so that it's in the zone that Rob Muzzy was talking about, where the harder
00:32:12you tune it, the more it acts like a two-stroke, the more abrupt the torque and so forth.
00:32:20Then the more likely it is that the onset of torque will snatch the front up off the pavement.
00:32:28And when it does, you head for the outside. And when it, when the front end comes down,
00:32:34the motorcycle goes, and these are not conducive to good lap times. So you want to keep the front
00:32:43end on the pavement. Now today that's done with downforce aerodynamics, which is a very smooth and
00:32:54civilized way as an invisible hand. That's just holding the front end down there, there boy
00:33:00down, easy, steady, big fella. Well, you don't have to cut power that way.
00:33:04That's, you don't have to cut power. And what good
00:33:08rider wants to cut power? The anti-wheely system works by cutting power.
00:33:14Well, that was what was so disappointing about early traction control systems. You know, you have,
00:33:18you appreciate the presence of them and some of them worked okay, but there were many systems where
00:33:22you'd have three levels or four levels. And all it, all it was doing, you just would,
00:33:29you turn the throttle and just go. And then if you picked the bike up a little bit,
00:33:33it just give you some more, it was disappointing. And in, in the, you know, in earlier years,
00:33:39I would be interested to talk to Josh Hayes about it again, because at years back,
00:33:43asked him about traction control and worn tires. And he says, well, you know, if the, if the tires
00:33:49are, are really good, it's a, it's useful, but when the tires go off, I can go faster without it.
00:33:56And I'd like, I'd be interested to see what his opinion is now as, as these have become more
00:34:00complex because they were pretty dumb, just like early ABS, you know, the K1, the BMW K1 had ABS.
00:34:06This is 80, 90, I think it's 1990. Maybe it's earlier than that. Um, but the K, you know,
00:34:15ABS, it went like break off break. That was the cycling and, uh, suicide on, on a dirt road. You
00:34:25know, there was ABS, it was motor, a street motorcycle could say traversing a dirt road in
00:34:31the mountain. Like, Oh, I need to get across this, uh, this connecting, you know, two asphalt roads.
00:34:37I did it on a, an older BMW touring bike and I hit the brakes and I thought I was going off the
00:34:41edge because they just didn't know what to do with it. Yeah. And now you have lean sensitive ABS
00:34:49on adventure bikes. That's insanely good that you don't even notice. You just think you're a good
00:34:55rider. Yeah. Which is, uh, one year at Indianapolis MotoGP, I'm watching these bikes accelerate,
00:35:05um, off of a turn. Um, off of a turn and some of them, the front end would jerk up off the ground
00:35:14and then stop for a moment and then go back down. Some of them, uh, didn't rise at all. Some of them
00:35:22were look uncontrollable. They were all at different stages of development with their particular,
00:35:30um, algorithms and an algorithm sounds complicated, but an example of an algorithm is
00:35:41a young dirt track rider finds out that the super stomp double throw down camshaft is not a good way
00:35:48to get off a corner. So that individual takes the motor apart and puts in a moderate camshaft. That's
00:35:56an algorithm. It's, it's, you're perceiving the problem. You are then considering possible solutions
00:36:03and then selecting one, and then you are carrying out the solution. And if somebody's doing it in the
00:36:11dirt or in the back of a, of a van, that's heroic. It is, uh, part of a golden era. And if it's happening
00:36:23because of a row of software writing Japanese engineers in the middle room behind the box,
00:36:30is that improper? They're doing something that is functionally the same. They're confronted with
00:36:38the problem. They're looking for various solutions, evaluating them as to which one is best,
00:36:44carrying out the solution, typeity, type, type, type, and then testing it. So
00:36:54there's a little story here that goes back to Apollo, even farther back than Apollo. In the 1950s,
00:37:02these jet aircraft were replacing piston driven 400 mile an hour warp, World War II planes.
00:37:10And the faster an airplane's top speed is, the stranger it behave, more strangely it behaves
00:37:19at landing speed. So there were a lot of these aircraft that were marginally unstable at landing speed.
00:37:27So they added analog patches to correct the behavior just under certain circumstances.
00:37:36It's not a computer program. It's just a gadget added on there. And these gadgets over time tended to
00:37:46proliferate. Do we want to, uh, suck the boundary layer away on the upper surface? Do we want to blow it
00:37:55away? Do we want to build flaps into the aircraft? The wing is only one inch thick, F-104. And these,
00:38:05these questions would, would back people up against a solid surface. So here's this proliferation of
00:38:15analog patches for flight control. When, uh, Apollo was in planning stage,
00:38:25there was a small group of people who said, wait a minute, these patches, these analog fixes are
00:38:35starting to interfere with each other. It's like being a very elderly person with 60 pill bottles on
00:38:42the night table. Do you suppose some of those pills are interfering with others?
00:38:47It's just possible, isn't it? So this little group of people was saying,
00:38:54we want to handle all these flight control problems in a central unit, in a central computer.
00:39:03And we want to control flight digitally. And of course they had what motorcycles today also have,
00:39:13which is an inertial platform or IMU, inertial measuring unit. It knows what angle it's at. It,
00:39:21it can sum accelerations to say how far it has gone in a certain direction. It is a wonderful device.
00:39:30They used to cost millions. Now you can have one for a hundred bucks or less. And it's all solid state.
00:39:37There are no whining gyros inside. I talked to a fellow who, who worked at an ICBM base. And he said,
00:39:46our, the bearings on our gyros had to be reliable for a lifetime of 24,000 hours because those gyros
00:39:58never stopped turning. So solid state stuff is wonderful. No 24,000 hour bearings. So
00:40:09when they developed this digital flight control, basically what it did was at all times and in all
00:40:20regimes of flight, it was trying to figure out the best way to continue the mission as planned.
00:40:29And the Air Force heard about it. And they thought, wow, freedom from analog patches.
00:40:40I love it. I wish to embrace it with both arms, possibly with legs as well.
00:40:46And so the Air Force adopted a digital flight control and commercial aviation came next. And after that,
00:40:56Formula One, because it solved so many things in Formula One. For example, the driver is trying to
00:41:03come off a corner in a smooth slide to come off a corner in a smooth slide, but his highly tuned engine
00:41:07making 800 and zippity-zip horsepower has a bunch of torque spikes in unpleasant places in the torque curve.
00:41:19So by adding a digital control, what happens is the driver's throttle angle is a call for a specific
00:41:30torque. It is a torque request. The system then says, oh, well, we've got three or four ways to do
00:41:38that. Let's see. Oh, we're going to use method number three and we're going to, here's the torque
00:41:45or here's the control surface angle or whatever. That's why Formula One wanted it so much initially,
00:41:52because you could tune engines further so that their torque curve was getting really alpine
00:41:59and unpleasant. You wouldn't want to sit on it. And you could tell the throttle plates to whip back and
00:42:11forth as the engine revved up to keep the torque at the torque demand sent by the driver. And of course,
00:42:22if you if you look at video of
00:42:27carrier planes landing, you will see that as they approach the heaving deck
00:42:33with the pilot hoping to pick up the third wire,
00:42:36that the control surfaces in the tail are moving at tremendous speed. And you're thinking, I knew those
00:42:43men were bold, but now I know that they're superhuman. Yeah. Well, did you ever hear of the aliens?
00:42:52That was the name given to Valentino Rossi, Danny Pedrosa and Jorge Lorenzo back in the day,
00:43:04because they appeared to be able to do things that no other riders could.
00:43:09And they could. The actual aliens were those rows of software riders that I described to you. Two of those
00:43:21six or eight foot folding tables end to end with guys all the way along on both sides. Laptop, laptop,
00:43:28laptop, laptop, laptop. He's having a problem in turn eight, and it looks like this. Here's the thumb drive.
00:43:38Get on it. And when in around 2012,
00:43:44Dorna decided to adopt a step down from perfection ECU,
00:43:51and a common software spec software, suddenly there were no aliens. And we have this situation today
00:44:02where there are 10 people on the grid who have won GPs.
00:44:06That is because instead of all the fruits of this process going to two or three people,
00:44:18which by the way, it used to in the days of two strokes,
00:44:21there weren't any eight or 10 people winning those races. There were one. Did Mick Doohan win five world championships in a row?
00:44:35What? In those days, there were one, two, or possibly three riders who could win. And today,
00:44:43we're looking to see if Ducati's made a hole in that statement. But the democratization of rider assist technologies
00:44:57by using the use of a spec ECU and spec software has been tremendous. It's been very successful.
00:45:06And that's why Ducati were able to put eight fresh Moto2 graduates on eight late model, not necessarily this year's,
00:45:18Ducati MotoGP bikes, and watch them to see who was adapting better to the bike. It was a wonderful scattergun game.
00:45:28So my feeling is, uh, all these assist devices are well proven and they're now, uh, well accepted.
00:45:40Because as Loris Caporossi put it, and this was some years ago when he was riding Suzuki's, he said,
00:45:49this bike, if you switch off the electronics, is unrideable. Worse than a 500, he said.
00:46:00The reason is that to reach the horsepower level, they're saying it's 300 horsepower in a good example,
00:46:07i.e. a Ducati or, uh, Aprilia, KTM. Uh, those things have been tuned very highly and they require electronic,
00:46:24um, what shall I, an electronic interlocutor between the rider's commands and, uh, some of the outcomes,
00:46:34such as, uh, virtual power band. I think virtual power band is just a wonderful thing because it
00:46:43actually gives the rider what the rider hopes to have, which is the torque corresponding to this
00:46:50throttle angle. Yeah. It's also happened, uh, in the opposite in a way in production bikes. One of the
00:46:56early ride-by-wire bikes was the Aprilia Shiver 750, 750 CCV twin. And we got that and it was one of the
00:47:05first that had, you know, you could throw a switch and have sport mode and, you know, have different
00:47:09kinds of throttle response. And, um, you know, it was a 750, moderately tuned 750. And I went to ride
00:47:16that bike. Uh, so did our road test editor, John Cannae. And, uh, we rode the bike and I said, wow,
00:47:23the torque is really something, you know, when you just, when you ease off the line and you're just
00:47:27rolling in a little, man, it really, they've really, this thing runs great, but further investigation
00:47:34yields that you were turning the throttle, let's say a quarter throttle, they were turning the plates
00:47:4096%. Yeah. So to give you this feeling of mid-range torque of more than it had, because you would then
00:47:49turn another quarter throttle, you'd go to half and virtually nothing else would happen. It was,
00:47:55it was on the limit. So we've been lied to all along. Yeah. But it's giving us what we wanted.
00:48:00You know, you want to have that feeling of mid-range. It's one of the things we love on
00:48:04a street bike. Oh yeah. That surge of torque, you just roll in and watch it go. So torque demands,
00:48:12I'm asking for more. You're going to get it. Yeah. When the system is, uh, properly developed,
00:48:19so I feel that, uh, aside from regulations in racing, for example, in MotoGP, they don't use ABS.
00:48:30Uh, these systems have done a great deal for rider control and rider safety and rider confidence.
00:48:40And those are good things to have. Well, and we're not, they are different in technology,
00:48:50but not different in kind from Renault in 1903 decided that cars bouncing wildly over bumps
00:49:01on the dirt roads of rural France in terrible races like the Paris Madrid,
00:49:09you could bounce your way right off the road and into a woods and be dead promptly.
00:49:18So was Renault turning drivers into a panty waist by inventing suspension dampers
00:49:29to make it so that you didn't have to time the bounces so that the car was in a relatively
00:49:34good state with all four wheels on the ground when you initiated a turn.
00:49:43Now, these are mechanical technologies. A suspension damper, uh, takes energy out of
00:49:49the suspension so that it doesn't keep bouncing. You can do the same thing with a playground ball
00:49:56by letting half the air out. It just goes down to the ground, plop, doesn't bounce at all.
00:50:02It's a mechanical, it's a, it's a, an obvious mechanical interference with the system.
00:50:07We can't single out electronics and say thus far and no farther. Electronics is the way things are
00:50:16done now. Are you going to put down your beloved phone and strike it with a hammer? I don't think so.
00:50:27These technologies are wonderfully enabling. Now we can also see that the phones have changed society
00:50:36in ways that we may not be entirely satisfied with, but they do so much that we want and need to do.
00:50:46I was in, in the, uh, subway station at Narita airport with a, an Australian gentleman and his phone rang
00:50:56and it was his wife in Belgium saying, they won't give me any cash. And he said, I'll call you back in
00:51:04just a minute. I'll take care of it. So he phoned made a funds transfer or told them that they, uh,
00:51:14got something connected wrong. He called his wife back. She said, fine, I've got the cash. Thank you. And
00:51:21this whole thing took less than 10 minutes. Can you imagine trying to do that by mail
00:51:28from the Narita subway station?
00:51:35So the same thing happened at Valencia one year. They wouldn't accept, uh, the credit card,
00:51:42phone the number on the back of the card, tell them what the circumstances are. Presto done.
00:51:48Your credit is good, sir. Thank you very much. See you again next year.
00:51:52Yeah.
00:51:56So I feel that, uh, electronics are the way of the moment.
00:52:02Um, changing camshaft timing and lift was the way of the 1950s.
00:52:09Uh, this is how things go. Uh, and I, uh, I embrace it and I recommend it.
00:52:20And talent continues to shine.
00:52:22You are not to be persuaded and there's nothing wrong with being an old curmudgeon.
00:52:30And talent continues to shine through.
00:52:32Sure it does. Absolutely true.
00:52:34The rider talent utilizing the systems. It's everything's still there. It's all balance and
00:52:40feel and all the other, uh, elements of controlling the motorcycle that the rider is using and also
00:52:46understanding how the systems work and the advantages that they can yield from getting it and being able
00:52:53to take advantage, changing their riding style, changing what they've built as their safety net of
00:52:59how I get around a racetrack as fast as possible. It's the talent is there. Well, that was always the
00:53:07supposed
00:53:09horrible outcome was that, oh, now anyone can win, you know, because the bike was just riding itself.
00:53:16Oh, wasn't it wonderful at Indianapolis
00:53:20that first year, Casey Stoner was complaining about the bumps in the corners and that there were four kinds
00:53:27of pavements of pavement. And a reporter from the Annapolis Star
00:53:34was really annoyed with this young whippersnapper being critical of the greatest speedway on earth.
00:53:45He said, you tell me where those bumps are. And Casey Stoner proceeded to tell him where every bump was.
00:53:53Yes. So that shut him up.
00:54:01So Casey Stoner was famous for liking to turn down some of the electronic systems. And there were people
00:54:08at the time saying, oh, you see, if you're really a great rider, you don't need any of that nonsense.
00:54:14But I don't think that he was
00:54:20doing away with virtual power band if he even knew that it existed.
00:54:25Because when it works right, you can't tell.
00:54:31The engine simply responds to your throttle demand
00:54:35as you wish it would rather than in some other way. For example, when Kevin Schwantz,
00:54:44riding the two-stroke 500 Suzuki, trying to get off a corner at such an RPM that the engine torque was
00:54:51rising steeply, found himself trying to turn the throttle backwards fast enough to prevent
00:54:59loss of traction at the rear from excessive torque.
00:55:04So if Kevin Schwantz is discovering his limits with a system like that,
00:55:13is it legitimate to try to civilize the engine and make it a more usable power source?
00:55:19I think so.
00:55:22Well, who uses a clutch after the start in MotoGP? No one.
00:55:26Yeah.
00:55:28You're just shifting up and down.
00:55:30And we want to throw that away. How about automatic transmissions in cars?
00:55:35Yes, who's going to throw that away?
00:55:3698% of new automobiles.
00:55:39Paddle shifters in Formula One. Are Formula One drivers panty waists?
00:55:44I remember hearing for the first time the seamless transmissions
00:55:52by coming by me on the short straightaway in Annapolis.
00:55:59Those were three downshifts coming through.
00:56:01And just slick as can be, because what riders didn't like was not that there was time wasted
00:56:13in gear changing, but that there was a clunk at each gear change.
00:56:22And that if that clunk could be managed in a better way, they would be able to use more throttle
00:56:31accelerating out of a curve.
00:56:35So this is back to the old idea of the algorithm.
00:56:41I'm not getting off this dirt track turn very well back here in the 1950s with my Triumph
00:56:46that has too much cam in it. And you go in steps from that to a solution.
00:56:54And those steps weren't called an algorithm then, they were called common sense.
00:57:00But today, many of those
00:57:06efforts to make the motorcycle
00:57:09controllable at a very high level of tune,
00:57:12to make the braking controllable, to make the motorcycle stable, you've seen perhaps...
00:57:19Yeah, blipping on downshifts versus having seamless automatic throttle blip.
00:57:24Yeah, it just handles it.
00:57:26Yeah, you know, years of
00:57:30having a sense for how much you blip the throttle and dip the lever and
00:57:35release the clutch in a way that's controlling the amount of negative torque so that it always
00:57:42remains smooth, so that you don't have a spike and get lag and weave and all the things you don't
00:57:47want entering a corner. So we have all that on street bikes, we have anti-lack brakes, we have lean
00:57:55sensitive traction control, lean sensitive braking, and all we've gotten out of it is better lap times,
00:58:02safer street bikes. We can turn them off, we can turn them on, we can turn them up.
00:58:08The EBR had 17 levels, 18 levels of trash control. 18.
00:58:15Yes.
00:58:16I think I'm a sensitive person on a motorcycle and 18 levels seems like too many, but they wanted to
00:58:23make sure that that guy riding home, the last ride of the season, you know, around Thanksgiving,
00:58:29it starts to sleet in Wisconsin and he's trying to get back to Buell headquarters or his house in
00:58:35Manitowoc. And they wanted to have traction control that would be there and safe for him.
00:58:41So I want to shift gears. We don't have a ton of time left, but we've talked about electronics and
00:58:48rider aids. And then this kind of extension, Bosch showed a system of slide recovery that relied on
00:58:55rocket blasts or explosions on the low parts of these bikes that would, if you lost traction,
00:59:01you lost front end traction, this thing would blast off at the bottom of the bike toward the front and
00:59:06it would help maintain or regain traction. We have the thought that vehicles will communicate with one
00:59:15another and assist with proximity detection. We are not seeing a lot of these camera systems
00:59:26on cars that are able to detect motorcycles reliably. And so we've seen radar reflectors and
00:59:34you know, we, they want this mesh of communication between vehicles so that the vehicles can know coming
00:59:41up to an intersection before the human perceives it, that there's a car coming in at 90 degrees
00:59:45at 90 miles an hour. And these two, we can calculate that these will meet in the intersection if something
00:59:53doesn't change. Automobiles have radar, lidar, and cameras in these systems that are being proposed as
01:00:07as a basis for a future world of robot automobiles and trucks.
01:00:12Well, inside and out, there's, there's, there's AI camera detection, uh, the screen in the back seat
01:00:21for, uh, for someone to watch a little program while you're traveling does not have a remote control. It has hand
01:00:26gestures. So you sweep your hand from back here and you're, you're going through the selections on the screen.
01:00:33You point toward the window and you say, roll that down and the window will roll down.
01:00:40Now these things that's a feature on a car you can buy. Yes. These things were not even a joke. Nobody
01:00:48would think of such a thing, uh, 50 years ago. But as technologies have made so many things possible
01:00:58that were previously impossible, people think more widely about applying them. And the notion that you
01:01:08would have three forms of vision on a moving vehicle, which would then their signals would pass through
01:01:17sensor fusion to create an image of everything around the vehicle. And if the motorcycles have radar
01:01:25reflectors on them and the cars are able to see them reliably, uh, that would be a plus,
01:01:32but so much computation has to go on to create this image of reality that people talk about sending it
01:01:40up to the cloud. And, uh, uh, we were hearing a lot about autonomous vehicles, uh, five to 10 years ago.
01:01:50We're not hearing as much now because there have been outfits that have decided that's way in the
01:01:56future. We were not ready for the future. We were not ready for that now, but we do want to do the first
01:02:01three levels of advanced driver assistance systems, ADAS. And those three levels are also applicable to
01:02:12motorcycles so that a motorcycle may have, uh, one or more forms of these kinds of vision to provide
01:02:25basic levels of security from approaching a vehicle ahead too rapidly, a vehicle approaching us from
01:02:34behind too rapidly and threats from the sides. And these are not invasions of our
01:02:44self-preservation reflexes. They are just sensible and relatively inexpensive applications of technology
01:02:53that already exists for a lot of other purposes. So why not? Uh, that's, I don't, I did see BMW
01:03:06self-riding motorcycle. They were very careful to say to me, we do not plan or anticipate that there will
01:03:13be autonomous motorcycles. We've built this so we can better understand what the rider's tasks are.
01:03:21That's great to hear because, you know, when they, they showed that kind of far out prototype that
01:03:27was self-balancing, you know, you, I think you witnessed a, like a GS that was riding.
01:03:32Yeah. And it was uncanny and there's nobody on it.
01:03:35And this is going around the parking lot. Yeah. Doing fine. Doing fine.
01:03:38They had another concept, um, that, that was self-balancing. And I thought, well,
01:03:45is this, is this my get off my lawn moment? This is my, my lawn, you punk, but
01:03:51taking balance out of motorcycling, that would be a step too far.
01:03:58And it's actually not necessary because once you get over that first, uh, as you move away from rest,
01:04:07you're set. Once I learned, I, I learned to ride a bicycle by coasting down a hill, coast down, fall over,
01:04:15repeat. And I repeated it a number of times, but I tried some stuff and some of it worked.
01:04:23Then I could ride a bicycle. I've never forgotten how, um, I think a motorcycle,
01:04:30can we argue that the, uh, a manual advance is no different than balancing your motorcycle?
01:04:35I mean, well, it's, I don't think we have to argue these things.
01:04:42I think balance is, I just think that balance is essential to the pleasure of motorcycling.
01:04:48So it is. Yeah. And why would I get on something that balanced for me?
01:04:53But of course, what's happening is as we move toward, uh, a possible automated vehicle future,
01:05:01is there a place for motorcycling within it? And the manufacturers are going to address this
01:05:08question. They're also going to, they've pushed very hard with automatic transmission because,
01:05:15of course, 98% of the people who learn to drive a car drive an automatic. So if there is any
01:05:23technological barrier to becoming a motorcyclist, they want to lower it. I can't blame them for
01:05:31that. That's marketing. And again, many of these systems are strictly voluntary. If you don't like it,
01:05:43turn it off or turn it down. The level of system intervention is adjustable.
01:05:50So, uh, you can buy a motorcycle. It has all this stuff on it. You can turn it down as much as you
01:05:58like and return to the days of 1950. One man, one cylinder, an able carburetor, and a Lucas Magneto. What else do you need?
01:06:13Well, that's it, folks. We don't need anything else. No, it's, uh,
01:06:22another great discussion, Kevin. Thank you. Um,
01:06:27Rider Aids obviously here to stay and of great benefit to us in so many ways.
01:06:32And they're voluntary and almost completely voluntary. I will say, I will end the program
01:06:39with testing a Mercedes Benz car for road and track when we were sharing the same building
01:06:44and owned by the same company. And I, I was driving these mid price sedans and giving notes,
01:06:50mid price, uh, import, you know, BMW. And, and it was like a C,
01:06:54C two 30 AMG or whatever it was at the time, pretty peppy car. And I was like, Hey, I'm a motorcycle
01:07:01guy and you know, I like balance and stuff. So I turned everything off and I pitched that car
01:07:06hard into a corner to break it loose and it intervened. It was still, it was still going like,
01:07:14no, you don't really want to do that at the most extreme case. I don't know that that's the case on
01:07:19motorcycles, but, uh, certainly 15 years ago in a car. It was, if something becomes possible,
01:07:27it becomes likely. Well, thanks for listening folks. We'll catch you next time on the cycle world podcast.