- 6/11/2025
BMW got serious about making motorcycle engines in 1923, when aircraft engine designer Max Friz delivered the first flat-twin to BMW. More than 100 years later, the Boxer engine remains the soul of BMW despite the company's success with many other engine layouts including the inline fours and sixes, plus singles and parallel twins. Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer discuss the evolution from that first flat twin to the remarkable R 1300 that powers the new R 1300 GS, R 1300 RT, and more.
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Read more from Cycle World: https://www.cycleworld.com/
Buy Cycle World Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/cycleworld
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SportsTranscript
00:00:00Hey, welcome to the Cycle World Podcast.
00:00:02I'm Mark Hoyer, the Editor-in-Chief.
00:00:04I'm with Kevin Cameron, our Technical Editor.
00:00:05Our topic today is the BMW Flat Twin.
00:00:10One of several, what do we call that?
00:00:12One of several durable engines that's been around since the dawn of motorcycling.
00:00:16Well, this is the thing we learn about motorcyclists,
00:00:18is that they are not just yearning for hot technology.
00:00:23They have other things to yearn for, and one of them is a long tradition.
00:00:30And the BMW Flat Twins go back ages, over 100 years at this point.
00:00:39So the purists tell us what we ought to like,
00:00:44like the people who've written in to complain about my story,
00:00:49about a possible lash-up with MotoGP, Dorna, and Harley-Davidson
00:00:56to provide a spec baggers class at world level.
00:01:01And they hate it.
00:01:03They write it, and they say, I'm not having anything to do with this.
00:01:06I'm not going to watch it.
00:01:07I hate, hate, hate.
00:01:10And it's just prescriptive enthusiasm.
00:01:14Why can't we be enthusiastic about more things?
00:01:17Shouldn't we enjoy more in life, or should we enjoy less?
00:01:21And get everything down to a little pinpoint.
00:01:24See, this is the only good part.
00:01:26Everything else stinks.
00:01:28Well, that's a great point.
00:01:29I have to say, that's a great point.
00:01:31But also, what if we have all those traditionalists
00:01:34who just want to watch that thing, which they can.
00:01:36They can watch their pinpoint and really enjoy that.
00:01:39But what if other people who weren't watching
00:01:41suddenly were interested in road racing?
00:01:45Sure.
00:01:46As has happened with Motor America.
00:01:47Yeah, it sure has.
00:01:49I'm walking into the paddock at Laguna a couple years ago.
00:01:54I was sent out there to look.
00:01:55What are baggers?
00:01:57And I see this guy on a twin come chugging in.
00:02:03And the gleam of Olin's accumulators is visible
00:02:09on either side of the rear fender.
00:02:11And I'm thinking, this is one of the guys.
00:02:13Poking out between the bags.
00:02:15Never thought I'd see that.
00:02:16Now, this is one of the guys.
00:02:18He loves it.
00:02:20Yep.
00:02:20And he wants it.
00:02:22And we swear this is a podcast about the BMW flat twin.
00:02:26Well, we sometimes take a little walk.
00:02:30Yes.
00:02:32OK.
00:02:34Now, what you said was they want to love tradition.
00:02:38Isn't it?
00:02:38Something along those lines.
00:02:39Like, we feel happier with the tradition.
00:02:42What if you could have technology and tradition?
00:02:46Of course.
00:02:47And that's been the story here.
00:02:48And I think that's our arrival.
00:02:50So I recently rode the BMW R1300 GS Adventure.
00:02:557.9-gallon gas tank.
00:02:571,300 flat twin, latest iteration.
00:03:01And I was just delighted.
00:03:05And, you know, it has all the, it has the Telelever Evo 2.
00:03:11You know, that's a chassis.
00:03:12That's a chassis thing.
00:03:13But bigger fork tube diameter.
00:03:16Telelever has the A-arm in the front attached to the lower triple clamp.
00:03:20It has to travel through an arc when it compresses.
00:03:24So the upper triple clamp has to tilt so that, because the fork is linear, otherwise it will jam up.
00:03:31And they did.
00:03:31They put a stainless steel plate element that's kind of like a leaf spring.
00:03:35It used to be rubber between your handlebars and the triple clamp allowing it to rock.
00:03:39And now it's, now it's a, it's like a hundred thousand stainless plate.
00:03:45They call it.
00:03:45Because this is what we learn.
00:03:46We learn this from riders.
00:03:49Yeah.
00:03:49They call it the flex element.
00:03:50And it gives you better front end feel than trying to steer through rubber donuts.
00:03:55You're directly connected.
00:03:57Yeah.
00:03:58And we were all ready to sing the praises when the TASY came out with gears, cams, and linkages connecting the front wheel to the chassis.
00:04:08And riders said, feels vague.
00:04:11You know, I, I feel like I'm putting a lot into it, but I'm, I'm not getting anything better out of it.
00:04:18Well, you're not steering the thing directly.
00:04:22You're steering through a bunch of friction loaded ball joints and hinges and Lord knows what all.
00:04:28So the essential simplicity of motorcycle is persuasive.
00:04:33And when designers have deviated from it, riders correct them.
00:04:39We have feelings and emotions.
00:04:41We like to have a relationship with the front contact patch, especially keep that in mind.
00:04:47So anyway, so the chassis is superb on the R 1300 GSA.
00:04:52And I was riding on a motorcycle that was equipped with optional forged wheels.
00:04:57So you had an extra element of stiffness and it also had the kind of street oriented adventure tires.
00:05:02So there was lots of grip and I just wrote it on the road.
00:05:06But the thing that struck me was here's this flat twin, Max Frizz, way back in the, what, 23-ish?
00:05:13Yeah, 1923, yeah.
00:05:161923.
00:05:18I'll let you tell that story.
00:05:19But I think back to all of that.
00:05:21I think back to the R1150GS, which was one of the first full road tests I rode at CycleWorld in 2000.
00:05:27So 25 years, 25 model years.
00:05:31And just the progress from that time to this time has been absolutely remarkable.
00:05:38The thing that struck me the most is the way this engine makes power is remarkable.
00:05:45The torque is sort of 80 pound, on our dynamometer, 80 pound feet at around 2000.
00:05:52It essentially never dips below.
00:05:552000.
00:05:55It essentially never dips below 80 pound feet from 2000 to around 7500-ish.
00:06:03Just a huge plateau.
00:06:05So this was an automatic shift assistant bike.
00:06:08So the clutch is automated.
00:06:10You can use a shift lever that feels very shifter-y to manually shift.
00:06:16Or you can hit the mode button and kick it into full drive and it'll shift for you.
00:06:21It's pretty darn good.
00:06:23It's not quite as seamless as the dual clutch that Honda has because it doesn't have dual clutch.
00:06:29But it's, as in automation and the clutch control and all that stuff, is pretty darn awesome.
00:06:34It's pretty remarkable.
00:06:35But the thing about it was, short shift it into six gear at 2000 RPM and roll it on and things happen.
00:06:43And then, once you get into 4500, it is fiercely fast.
00:06:52It has shift cam, a very elegant and beautiful system that's going to change the cam lobe, basically.
00:07:00Yeah, it just slides over.
00:07:02Now, this has existed throughout time.
00:07:04In order to reverse early submarine engines, they slid the cam over.
00:07:10And they had some way of hooking it up differently.
00:07:15And so the concept has been out there for all this time.
00:07:18But imagine that your engine is running at some considerable RPM and this system, which is little helices cut into the cams themselves, and a little pin jumps out into this swirling slot just in time to hit the cam that pulls the camshaft lengthwise.
00:07:41Because no valves on that cam are lifted at this moment, which is how they get away with this.
00:07:47Zip, it's slipped over.
00:07:49Now, when the cam lobe comes around to lift those valves, it's a different lobe.
00:07:55And below the algorithm point in performance, you've got this bottom-end cam timing.
00:08:04And above that point, you have a racier set of timing.
00:08:13So what has gone on here is like what has gone on with so many engines over so many years.
00:08:20Namely, they're trying to build that flat torque curve.
00:08:25I want to have a photograph of this torque curve and put it on the wall because it is so instructive.
00:08:32No more shed roof, torque high at low RPM and then slowly declining until when the engine's getting close to 4,000, you can almost hear it saying, did you want something?
00:08:51And that's okay if you ride mostly in the bottom of the torque curve and it's going to work fine for you.
00:08:57Then there's the haystack, which has got strong torque in the middle, fading at the top, fading at the bottom.
00:09:04And now we have this MESA or tabletop torque, which is what every rider wants.
00:09:12Well, it defies our previous physical limitations of the engine.
00:09:16It defies.
00:09:17It does.
00:09:17It's fantastic.
00:09:18So I want to get into some numbers because we got numbers.
00:09:20I've been dynoing bikes at CycleWorld for 26 years, and we have a 2000 R1150GS on the CycleWorld dyno, same brand, different dyno, DynoJet rear wheel dynamometer.
00:09:35It made 74.4 horsepower and 68.2 pound-feet of torque.
00:09:40The 2025 R1300GS made 129 horsepower and 95.5 pound-feet of torque.
00:09:49Okay.
00:09:50So the motorcycle, the 1300GS with heated seats, whirring electric things, electric stuff happening in the transmission, we weighed that on our scale, that is 575 pounds.
00:10:09The 2000 R1150GS was 549 pounds.
00:10:13So a 25-pound penalty for exceptionally cleaner emissions, nearly double the horsepower.
00:10:23Yes.
00:10:23I mean, and a response and tractability that you wouldn't have believed possible 25 years ago.
00:10:31So even over last year, the 11, what was that, the 1250GS, no, no, the 1150 got 39 miles per gallon in the testing.
00:10:42I wrote it.
00:10:43I did the data.
00:10:44And on the 1300 I've been riding, it does 43 miles per gallon in similar.
00:10:50And a very important point to make there is that the miles per gallon is influenced by the shift cam, but mostly by the compression ratio.
00:11:01Because on the 1300, it could just as well be 13 to 1 rather than 1300, because it's got serious compression.
00:11:12When you raise the compression, you improve fuel consumption because you're taking more of the energy out of the combustion gas in the form of pushing on the piston.
00:11:23And you're letting less of it sneeze out the exhaust port as waste energy.
00:11:29So fuel consumption falls, even though the engine is bigger, twice as powerful.
00:11:37In the real world of rolling up the road, it's more economical.
00:11:44And it all makes sense.
00:11:46It's not magic at all.
00:11:48It's just devices.
00:11:49Right.
00:11:50And I wasn't riding, you know, for, for mad economy, like shout out to Alan Girdler, the former editor of Cycle World and a lover of motorcycles and one of the most frugal people you would ever meet.
00:12:01He loved doing his fuel economy runs when he was the editor and he had a, he had a loop and he was, he was lightweight and he would go out and I'm going to get the mileage on this thing.
00:12:10And he would try to get the highest mileage possible.
00:12:12And I have, I like to do that.
00:12:14I I'm obsessive about my mileage.
00:12:16I get, I do mileage on everything I have, anything with a trip meter.
00:12:20And if it doesn't have a trip meter, I use the overall mileage and I just keep a running tab.
00:12:24I'm obsessed with it.
00:12:26And, uh, I'm going to get this 1300.
00:12:28I'm going to see what I can get out of it.
00:12:30Just fill it up on an off freeway on ramp essentially, and then click it up and just do 65 for 150 miles.
00:12:36See what happens.
00:12:37So the last set of numbers, modern numbers, we, uh, we dyno tested a 2021 R 1250 GS.
00:12:43It made 117.6 horsepower and 91 and a half foot pounds of torque.
00:12:49That is roughly a little 12 horsepower less than the, uh, R 13 and three, three foot, four foot pounds less.
00:13:01The torque curve is very similar, but not quite as nice as this.
00:13:05So we have big progress and, uh, 12 horsepower from 50 CCs.
00:13:11That's going good.
00:13:12Not, not bad.
00:13:14Yeah.
00:13:15Um, so what occurred to me as Kevin and I were talking about this and I got off of this 1300 GS is that it had everything that I wanted out of a BMW flat twin.
00:13:29And it had enough vibration.
00:13:32They've got counterbalances working to keep the, the rocking couple.
00:13:35Kevin can explain that shortly, but there was a certain personality that we have grown accustomed to.
00:13:41If you've been around, um, for a while and you know what flat twins are all about.
00:13:46Um, I've ridden a ton of them, airheads all the way through every version of GS and you have an expectation, uh, for how that engine sounds behaves even looks and you get it out of this motorcycle.
00:13:58But you also get every bit of modern technology and what I would describe as fierce performance.
00:14:05And I wish, I wish that Harley with the, with the sports or had done exactly what BMW has done.
00:14:14I mean, leave more fins, strategic, cool it, use less liquid cooling to use a smaller radiator, whatever, but do this, make it a 1250 this year.
00:14:25And then 1300 later, when you got a jacket up and get a little more power out of it and the emissions are tightening, but make a 45 in this spirit, let's say, let's give them what they want and give them what they didn't know they wanted.
00:14:42Yes, of course.
00:14:43And give it enough shake, but solid mount it and give it the, you know, oh man, I just, that's what I envisioned.
00:14:51Push rods and everything, but do it.
00:14:53The front wheel doesn't rattle back and forth.
00:14:55It's not authentic.
00:14:56Right.
00:14:57Just give it, just give it enough.
00:14:58And then do all of the, do, do everything that you can do with modern combustion chambers and 13 to one, that thing.
00:15:05And, uh, oh, for sure.
00:15:07Yeah.
00:15:07Oh, just, uh, anyway.
00:15:08So that's, uh, that's me on my soapbox again.
00:15:11I'm passionate about the sports drive.
00:15:13Yeah.
00:15:13We're sorry to see it go.
00:15:15There's so many 45, man.
00:15:17It just was everything.
00:15:18So back to flatness, flatness, the 180 degree V twin.
00:15:23Let's get back on there.
00:15:24Um, I rode one, uh, that was before the balancer and it had a buzz.
00:15:32And I thought, is this a frame resonance?
00:15:34Let's gas it up and see if it increases with RPM.
00:15:37It did.
00:15:39So then I reflected that the left cylinder and the right cylinder are not on the same axis because the connecting rods then would have to go like this in order to both fit on the same crank pin.
00:15:53So in fact, the rods are side by side on the single, on the, pardon me, there's a divider in the middle of the crankshaft.
00:16:03There are two crank pins, but the rods are not in the same plane.
00:16:07So the left cylinder's rod is ahead and the right cylinder's rod is behind.
00:16:14And what that does is if, uh, just with the engine turning, it doesn't have to be firing.
00:16:23The shaking forces are not directly opposed to one another.
00:16:29So they cause the engine to rotate in yaw around, uh, its center of mass.
00:16:36So it's doing this kind of washing machine.
00:16:40Yes, that's right.
00:16:41Like a washing machine, agitator in very small scale.
00:16:45And if that was what BMW buzz was, and as they made the pistons bigger, it became obtrusive.
00:16:53And then they put balancers on and they could adjust it down to where it didn't bother anybody.
00:17:02It was really something.
00:17:03And the first time I threw my leg over an air-cooled BMW way back in the day, I, I saddled up and you have this vision of it.
00:17:10It's a horizontally opposed twin.
00:17:11And that if you, uh, if you just ran a pipe through one cylinder, it would naturally go through the engine and come out the other cylinder.
00:17:18But in fact, what Kevin says is true.
00:17:20You look down and they're, they're like this because the rods like this meaning for, Hey, Spotify, they're doing this.
00:17:27Yeah.
00:17:27My left hand is higher than my right hand in the visual, uh, representation.
00:17:31And, uh, I just thought, huh, yeah, that makes sense.
00:17:35Cause the rods are side by side.
00:17:36They never did a knife and fork the way Harley did on the 45.
00:17:39Well, they couldn't because it's, it's got separate crank pins, but that's why this, but, uh, there was a flat twin built by, um, Oh, what was his name?
00:17:51Um, it was built as a trainer, an engine for a ground trainer, non-flying trainer, um, long ago.
00:18:00And the pistons went this way.
00:18:03Can you imagine the shaking, rattling and rolling?
00:18:08Oh, so they were on a single pin.
00:18:10And so as the, yes, they were trying to both pistons.
00:18:13Oh, boy.
00:18:15Oh, terrible.
00:18:17Yeah.
00:18:17And, uh, so basically it was like a single with half of the piston pointed in one direction and half in the other.
00:18:25And that's the way it shook and, and, uh, shook things to pieces.
00:18:30Vibration is serious.
00:18:31People want to make out.
00:18:33Some people want vibration because it's part of the price of admission.
00:18:41And if you're doing things that are risky and daring, you, there ought to be a way to demonstrate it.
00:18:50And vibration is one of them.
00:18:52It says this thing is alive.
00:18:54There's stuff happening in there.
00:18:55There are parts that are contained that want to come out.
00:19:00No, there's a lot of music that comes not just through in through your ears.
00:19:04Yeah, true.
00:19:05Yeah.
00:19:05At frequencies that we don't call sound.
00:19:07So, uh, when they, when Harley balanced the big twin, um, there were people that wanted the, the shaking back or they wanted to go back to the rubber mount or.
00:19:24Well, they, they did go pretty far with the balancing.
00:19:28And I think they took some of that back with Milwaukee eight.
00:19:31They put a little bit more back in, you know, I think they're, they're searching for that sweet spot to hit, to hit our emotions.
00:19:40Remember the, uh, motel beds with a box on the side for 25 cents.
00:19:45You could feel magic fingers.
00:19:47Yeah.
00:19:47Vaguely.
00:19:48Well, that's, that's what, uh, not quite balancing it does.
00:19:54It gives you those magic fingers that can make your, uh, various extremities go to sleep.
00:20:01Let's see that.
00:20:02The, that, that equipment has an imbalance shaft.
00:20:06Yes.
00:20:07That's it.
00:20:08That's how they do it.
00:20:09It's just, it's like a haptic engine in your phone.
00:20:12You know, that's how your phone vibrates is it has an offset weight on a little motor that goes and just whips.
00:20:18And that gives you your, that gives you your buzz.
00:20:19And if it keeps going, eventually it slides off the table and falls on the floor.
00:20:24I don't need any help with that.
00:20:27No, but, uh, BMW in World War I was one of several companies making big inline sixes for aircraft.
00:20:37And aircraft engines have special requirements.
00:20:42They don't just tootle along it at 10% power.
00:20:47They take off at 100% power and they cruise at somewhere between 40 and 70% power, depending on how much stuff they're toting along.
00:20:59So the requirements are different.
00:21:00They have to have stronger cooling ability.
00:21:03They have to be more accurately made.
00:21:06And this was BMW's heritage from that production.
00:21:11So, um, if people want to talk and they do about BMWs are so precisely made German engineering and so forth, this can be traced straight back to aircraft engines.
00:21:25In World War II, BMW produced 61,801 radials with 14 cylinders.
00:21:33And it was a, it was quite a good engine.
00:21:37Um, they don't talk about it now, but, uh, 61,000 14 cylinder engines is an accomplishment.
00:21:45Well, I want to go back to seeing a hundred, a hundred percent aircraft take off at a hundred percent power.
00:21:52And what we always like to say is like, there is no 110%, but in fact there was, because there was like emergency power where you could go past a hundred percent power on some aircraft engines and really dip it in.
00:22:05If you got to go, you got to go.
00:22:06Well, they have it in Formula One, that silly business where, I think NASCAR has it too, pass on impulse or something they call it.
00:22:16And, um, it was just used, uh, in the war to either catch up or escape from a situation that wasn't promising.
00:22:27Uh, nitrous oxide came from World War II aircraft engines.
00:22:32Oh, well, there was a, you know, there's a weird thing I was just reading, uh, there was a special, uh, like anti-terrorist, uh, French police force.
00:22:42It was all their elite people.
00:22:44And at first they were just rattling around and like Peugeot probably like, I don't know, 504s or something like really like, and they're like, no, we need something more high performance.
00:22:52So they had Citroën CXs, which are like kind of a very mod looking slope back with, uh, the French flat yellow headlights and all this, but they were special built CXs where they stripped out all the extra stuff.
00:23:05No AC, no electric windows.
00:23:08And, uh, they left, I think it's, it was a two and a half liter four, big four.
00:23:13Uh, they left everything, they left that engine, but they put nitrous on it.
00:23:17And so they had like five or five or 10 minutes of like super boost power.
00:23:23I thought, how cool is that?
00:23:25Cops with nitrous, man.
00:23:28Anyways.
00:23:31So, uh, BMW after World War I were manufacturing on contract some engines designed by other people.
00:23:40And they weren't necessarily all that good.
00:23:46So Franz Josef Popp, uh, takes the aircraft engine designer, Max Fries, aside and says, look here, you can do better than this, can't you?
00:23:59Oh, yes, sir.
00:24:01I can certainly do better.
00:24:03And well, why don't you design the proper engine for the motorcycle and we'll, we'll build it.
00:24:10And so he applied, uh, common sense from aviation, which is cylinders stick out into the airstream for better cooling rather than huddling behind the front tire.
00:24:24Uh, or behind each other or.
00:24:26Yes.
00:24:27All those unfortunate configurations.
00:24:30AJS is V4.
00:24:31They had to run five to one on the rear cylinders, compression, because otherwise they just got hot and made funny noises.
00:24:41So.
00:24:41Oh, the sunbeam.
00:24:43The, the, the AJS V4, they finally water cooled it.
00:24:48Oh, yeah.
00:24:48Yeah.
00:24:48They had that, that, uh, sunbeam with the inline twin or an aerial square four.
00:24:54Same thing.
00:24:54Oh, yeah.
00:24:55You know, parallel twin with another parallel twin behind it.
00:24:58Are you mad?
00:25:01So, um, that, with the crankshaft going for and aft, um, shaft drive was a natural.
00:25:10Otherwise they would have had to put right angle gearing in it with a bunch of bearings and precision and everything.
00:25:16And, uh, so it ended up being like that.
00:25:21It was a side valve engine.
00:25:23The cylinder and the head were cast in one piece and there were these big bronze plugs you could unscrew.
00:25:29Then you could pop the keepers off the valve springs and the valves would come out through these, through these holes in the casting.
00:25:37That's how it was assembled.
00:25:38That's how it was serviced.
00:25:39And then, uh, Rudolf Schleicher got hired straight out of school.
00:25:47He was an active racer at the time.
00:25:49And for R37, of which something like 152 were built, a sports model, he built with a hemi head overhead valve.
00:26:02None of this, at this same time, the English were making OHV engines for racing that threw oil everywhere.
00:26:10Uh, they had leather bags sewn over the rocker arms, all kinds of really not very grown up.
00:26:17Oh, it's this, it's so British.
00:26:19The leather bag, I mean, the Bentleys and Rolls Royce cars had leather, uh, stitch over their leaf springs.
00:26:27Yeah.
00:26:28So that you could just lube, lube the crap out of it and try and keep it in this sort of leather bag, as you say.
00:26:35Wonderful.
00:26:36That's the 1920s.
00:26:38Yeah.
00:26:39They were just figuring it out, man.
00:26:40You got to solve with what you got.
00:26:42Schleicher was doing something really advanced.
00:26:44Namely, he made an OHV engine in which the overhead valve gear was lubricated from the pumped, uh, recirculating oil system that Moxfries had given it in 1923 and which automobiles had at this time.
00:27:04Um, motorcycles, for the most part, went on until Harley's, um, 61E finally got recirculating oil in 1936.
00:27:15Um, but here's BMW with it, uh, back when they were making the R37 sports model and it doubled, nearly doubled the power of the original R32 of 1923.
00:27:27So Schleicher was sort of trying to drag BMW in the direction of higher performance.
00:27:34Uh, they had established a reputation for making a well-made product and it really wasn't clear what their future would be.
00:27:45Well, you said he also designed the first telescopic fork for BMW.
00:27:49That's a big deal.
00:27:50There was a, there was a telescopic fork group and I, and I'm, I can't summon the names of all those mouth-filling Germanic, uh, but, uh, it appears to me, having looked at all of this, that Schleicher and company looked at patents for artillery recoil buffers.
00:28:14Because if you look at artillery recoil buffers, they are hydraulic and they show the same three styles of design, cartridge, damper rod, and bushing to bushing, damper styles.
00:28:30And they're patents up to, you know, your hair roots.
00:28:35And, uh, I'm sure that Schleicher had all this stuff on his desk and he decided, oh, here, how about this one?
00:28:44And, uh, hydraulic damped fork was a big step forward because so many girder forks just went jouncing and, and clashing.
00:28:54When they bought them, they called it clashing.
00:28:57And you had to be a big enthusiast in the 1920s to ride a motorcycle because a lot of them weren't very nice or very comfortable.
00:29:09And so here's Schleicher, uh, raising performance, improving the front end, leaping over the whole, uh, girder fork era with his hydraulically damp tellies.
00:29:23And, uh, around 1927, they followed the trend, which was going on in Grand Prix racing and in U.S. championship car racing and in aviation supercharging.
00:29:38Um, if you put the airflow of a great big engine into the intake ports of a little small engine, you will get big engine performance because you're flowing all of this gas, which rises to a tremendous pressure.
00:29:55And then it pushes pistons.
00:29:59So supercharging wasn't free power because it could push you into detonation, but it was more power.
00:30:09And they wanted German.
00:30:11You could make, you could make it without RPM because RPM hadn't sort of been figured out yet.
00:30:17We were rising, but it wasn't like we could just say, oh, let's turn this thing to 15 and make a, you know, we'll make triple the horsepower.
00:30:23We were making it five.
00:30:24The early flat twin, um, it might've been that M M B two, two, one, five, something or other had plane bearing rods split and bolted, but, uh, the production stuff quickly switched to, uh, one piece rods with, uh, roller bearings, caged roller bearings, um, and hardened surfaces for it all to run on.
00:30:49And went on like that until 68, 69, when they had their first great leap forward, but, uh, they played with supercharging to such extent that they decided to put it on a Grand Prix bike.
00:31:07And in 1938, uh, Jock West finished, finished, finishing the Isle of Man TT was an accomplishment.
00:31:17Still is, uh, finished the senior TT in fifth place with four factory Nortons ahead of him.
00:31:26The following year, they came back and, uh, Jorg Meyer won the race by over two minutes and left them all in the dirt.
00:31:39The, the, some of the, uh, British critics of, uh, German foreign policy at that time referred to it as the Nazi TT.
00:31:50Well, we know that people's feelings come out sometimes in not very civilized commentary.
00:32:01So, uh, that was, looked like it was, it was just tremendous because, uh, there was also the supercharged, um, Jalera, which won the European championship, I think in that year.
00:32:2039, um, and the British were, were just sort of left standing.
00:32:25Oh, this guy's got supercharging.
00:32:29How can you supercharge a single?
00:32:31You'd need a, um, what do they call it?
00:32:35A, a, uh, plenum chamber large enough to contain several cylinder volumes so that you wouldn't have all this pulsation.
00:32:45And the supercharger is packing air into the intake pipe and suddenly the intake valve opens and it all goes into the cylinder.
00:32:53Well, you just hope that you don't get, uh, any back, you know, spitting back through the intake.
00:32:59Because during the war, uh, Germany's equivalent to the U S army Jeep was the, uh, R 75 sidecar outfit.
00:33:10And what did it have on the front?
00:33:12A Schleicher telescopic fork with hydraulic damping.
00:33:16And when the war was over, there were people who could connect you with a undamaged R 75.
00:33:25If your company needed access to telescopic fork secrets, a lot of companies got those R 75s.
00:33:35And that was really the seed of the telescopic fork revolution, which was pretty much accomplished by 1955.
00:33:45So, uh.
00:33:46Uh, yeah, that was the area for swinging arm suspension as well.
00:33:49I mean, by pretty much that time, everybody was putting swing arms on everything.
00:33:55Yes.
00:33:56Yes.
00:33:56I think BMW, uh, did it in the fifties.
00:34:00So when the war ended, of course, BMW were, um, not allowed to produce, uh, aircraft engines anymore.
00:34:10They made pots and pans.
00:34:12They made whatever somebody would contract with them to build.
00:34:18And then after a few years, they said, well, you can build a two 50 motorcycle.
00:34:23So they built our 24 and anyone who's ridden a BMW single cylinder, um, our 24, 25, 26, you know, that on the specs card says horsepower undetectable.
00:34:42They were, they were, they were wonderfully gradual motorcycles, but they went, they went, and so they carried on with roller engines, uh, camshaft on top and all this business for a number of years.
00:35:04And then there was a change of leadership, uh, a fellow named, uh, Wander Marvitz came from a car background, but greatly interested in motorcycle racing.
00:35:19And he set himself the task of combining the handling of a manx Norton single cylinder racer that had been developed for, uh, so many years with the comfort of a touring bike.
00:35:36And so it had a 54 and a half inch wheel base and eight inches of, of suspension travel.
00:35:47So from full gas to full brakes, you're, you're tilting quite substantially.
00:35:55And people, uh, oh, also they found that if the tubing from the, the lower frame loops coming up to the steering head and the, uh, ones joining the bottom of the steering head weren't connected to each other except by the steering head.
00:36:14And that was to reduce handlebar vibration, but it also made the front end give in to every little breeze.
00:36:24A little too flexible.
00:36:26German riders called it the rubber cow.
00:36:31Gumi coo.
00:36:33And I love that.
00:36:36Bless them.
00:36:37Yep.
00:36:37The rubber cow.
00:36:38I once had a ride on an R69 S with the pendulum front end that had the long leading links.
00:36:45Oh, the leading link.
00:36:45Yeah.
00:36:46And the elegant, elegant black paint and pin striping.
00:36:50So perfect.
00:36:51And when you went through this long sweeper on, uh, mem drive in Boston and the front end is just.
00:36:59So agreeable.
00:37:01Yeah.
00:37:01Just wallowing along.
00:37:03And I asked the owner and he said, oh, it's just, uh, part of its character.
00:37:08You don't just don't rush anything.
00:37:10Yeah.
00:37:11When you ride that one, you just enjoy that.
00:37:13You do your.
00:37:15And 42 horsepower, which at the time, and was there a Bonneville making 42 horsepower?
00:37:21I don't know.
00:37:22So in 69 came the slash five, which was a big revolution.
00:37:27The engine was completely modernized with all plane bearings, split and bolted connecting rods.
00:37:35Uh, and it was sort of an updated version of what BMW had been doing before.
00:37:47Very gentlemanly, uh, not in a hurry motorbikes.
00:37:53And what was beginning in 1969 is what I scribbled in the notes for this as abandoning their shrinking role as anachronism builders.
00:38:08That is, it's all very well to say that those fifties BMWs were beautifully made, that they lasted a long time, that, uh, when they accelerated through the gears, they went clack, clack.
00:38:28And it punctured that gentlemanly image.
00:38:32What are, what are those noises?
00:38:34But anyway, part of the character and those riders were very serious about BMW characters.
00:38:41So around 78, a big decision was made at BMW.
00:38:48They had this Bob Lutz there who was, he had an extremely varied career and he was used, he was, he was chief executive of one car company after another.
00:39:03And he just went from place to place, as people say, kicking ass.
00:39:09And he said, we've got to boost displacement.
00:39:16We've got to compete with other brands.
00:39:19It's not enough to, we are BMW.
00:39:23You have to show people a reason to buy the motorcycle other than the past.
00:39:31Yeah.
00:39:31Bob was put on the board, I think in 72 and he was 39 at the time.
00:39:38And as you say, a varied career, but, uh, he, he, he, he sizzled it all up.
00:39:45Uh, we got the R90s out of his leadership, which was really hotting it up.
00:39:51You know, um, they, they worked hard on that.
00:39:54I got to say, you know, with Peter Egan around 2015, we, he happened to own a 74 Norton Commando.
00:40:00And I think his R90s that he owned at the same time was a 75.
00:40:05And we did a tour around Wisconsin and did a story for cycle world on those.
00:40:09And my impression, you know, I'm a Norton owner or was a Norton owner, a lot of miles on commandos and, uh, very spry motorcycle.
00:40:20Very, I want to change direction, pretty explosive torque, really good running, um, AMC gearbox is a delight to shift.
00:40:27It wasn't necessarily made for all that horsepower, but they hold up.
00:40:30Okay.
00:40:30As long as you're kind to them, but really, uh, just a lot of shaking and willingness to change direction and pretty explosive acceleration.
00:40:38And then you get on the R90s and it feels like it has a keel into the earth, like six feet is very steady.
00:40:46And it, you end up going very, very rapidly on it, but it is in no way nearly as sort of explosive as, uh, as the Commando.
00:40:55And yet it was a big change for BMW.
00:40:58It really, they put that smoke, that orange smoke and all the silver smoke paint jobs.
00:41:03Like, yeah, that was cool.
00:41:04It was cool.
00:41:05There were refrigerators like that.
00:41:07That brown, that brown, that brownie gold looking thing.
00:41:11Well, uh, they decided in, within BMW, uh, to go for increased displacement.
00:41:19There were people who, oh, we've never built more than this displacement and we're, and we never shall.
00:41:24Will you just sit over there?
00:41:27And, uh, they went ahead with the displacement thing and history tells us that it, it hopped along in a fairly lively fashion.
00:41:36980, 1100, 1150, 1200, 1250, 1300.
00:41:42It only took 45 years.
00:41:48But it, it was a consistent policy.
00:41:51They had said, we're going to go for it.
00:41:54We're going to sell more motorcycles.
00:41:58Well, they've had, they've had, uh, uh, the pattern has been, we are traditionalists.
00:42:05Things don't look good at some point where, hmm, we need, we need new customers.
00:42:10We need different, we got to get with it.
00:42:12And they're like, we need to hot up our, we need our image to be refreshed.
00:42:16And so then R75 got, got the handling, got the more powerful engine.
00:42:22It allowed BMW for a short, beautiful time to have a chassis that was competitive, that could be made competitive in super bike racing.
00:42:30Yes.
00:42:31And, is that slash seven?
00:42:34I think so.
00:42:35Anyway.
00:42:36Uh, uh, well, I mean, uh, you know, yeah, there are the early versions that had the 54 inch wheelbase.
00:42:44When they started experimenting, people started racing them.
00:42:47And it was before the Japanese figured out how to harness all their power and put it in the chassis.
00:42:52It certainly was.
00:42:53Yes.
00:42:53We've done a podcast on this.
00:42:55Yes, we have.
00:42:57Look back in the episodes.
00:42:59Um, so you had that thing for the R75.
00:43:04We got to do something.
00:43:06Let's do this.
00:43:07Uh, oil head came.
00:43:08They, you know, we're like, we need to make more power.
00:43:11We got to keep it cool.
00:43:12We're not doing radiators, traditional radiators.
00:43:14No, no, no.
00:43:15But all along here, um, they tried the dirt bike, um, M1000RR, you know, S1000RR.
00:43:24We were just sort of happily bopping along and they were making twins and they had, you
00:43:29know, some really interesting 650 singles.
00:43:31And I got to give BMW credit for experimenting.
00:43:34They had this thing, taking flyers, man.
00:43:37They did this thing called the Scarver and it was the sort of techno 650.
00:43:41And they had this really, it's like very art school, insane marketing thing that you came
00:43:47into the CD ROM and it's like Hans going to a nightclub.
00:43:51And I mean, it was just, it was out there, but they were always experimenting with that
00:43:57kind of thing.
00:43:57They were looking at new, new places to go.
00:43:59And then we were sort of soldiering along and suddenly the S1000RR came out.
00:44:04And here was a no, I mean, a no holds barred super bike, telescopic fork.
00:44:10Like they were always like, no, we're good.
00:44:12This is a superior design.
00:44:13We're doing telelever.
00:44:14No, this is a superior design.
00:44:16We're using a Hasek style front end, a dual link.
00:44:20And here was this, here was someone who shook them out and it, it had to be a huge deal.
00:44:26I've heard stories of what a huge deal it was because there were the traditionalists.
00:44:31I mean, just look at the turn signals, you know, used to, if you, if you're only riding
00:44:35modern BMWs, like back in the day, you pushed up with your left thumb to turn left and you
00:44:40could push a button to cancel and you push up with your right thumb to turn right.
00:44:44And like very logical.
00:44:45It was like Harley push, right, push left, which Harley's still doing, but the BMWs now
00:44:51you just got a little thumb switch.
00:44:52Like, no, we're getting rid of that.
00:44:54Like, let's do what modern motors, we don't have to be so BMW.
00:44:58Let's keep the part of BMW that really means something for those people, GS.
00:45:03And the GS is the biggest selling one.
00:45:05Second, I think is the, the four cylinder, the S1000 line.
00:45:12So yeah, they've, they've managed to keep that essence.
00:45:16They've managed to update their image.
00:45:17We are high performance.
00:45:18And then they've put that together in, in the flat twin because the flat twin does what
00:45:24you want flat twins to do as a 1300 now.
00:45:28And it, it power wheelies in third gear.
00:45:32Yeah.
00:45:33It's good.
00:45:34Let's not forget that around 1955.
00:45:37And again, in the 1970s, there were points when, uh, motorcycle sales were unexciting.
00:45:46And it seemed like there were audible voices saying, let's just focus on the cars.
00:45:52That's our core business.
00:45:54Let's just drop this motorcycle thing.
00:45:56And the story that I heard is that there were old timers living up in the, up in the mountains,
00:46:03old stockholders, and that cars were sent to fetch them down to vote against no.
00:46:10They voted yes.
00:46:11We want to continue with motorcycles because, uh, the fire still burned evidently.
00:46:19So, uh, in the period 78 to 80, there was a big change because at one point, uh, Hans
00:46:30Moot is, uh, with these other gentlemen with names that are not second nature for English
00:46:38speakers, um, in a conference.
00:46:40And they're saying, what are we going to build next?
00:46:43What are we going to, what will excite young people?
00:46:45What will they buy?
00:46:47And so Moot says, I'm looking out the window where my Land Rover that I've just bought or
00:46:56Range Rover, I don't know which is sitting.
00:46:59It's nicely finished.
00:47:01It's well-made.
00:47:02It can go on road or off road.
00:47:05Let's build a two wheel.
00:47:07One of those.
00:47:08He said, and it was done.
00:47:13And, uh, out, out came.
00:47:17Uh, G or R 80 GS Glenda Strasse, um, land and roadway dual purpose.
00:47:31And they went to town on the appearance of this thing, uh, all kinds of colors jacked
00:47:40up knobby tires, knobby tires, or at least tires that signaled something other than completely
00:47:48gentlemanly undertakings.
00:47:49And the thing sold twice as many units, more than twice as many units than forecast.
00:47:56And, uh, uh, an older gentleman that I, um, was traveling in Europe with, um, who represented
00:48:17continental tires, he said, BMW have given the German salary, man, uh, the keys to his own
00:48:26liberation.
00:48:28He buys the motorcycle.
00:48:31He may ride it to work or he may park it at home, but this motorcycle is of such a nature
00:48:38that it feeds the possibility.
00:48:42One day I could cut loose and go, I'll take my toothbrush.
00:48:48I'll ride to Africa and I will become my secret self.
00:48:52Now, to me, this is very similar to what Harley Davidson did beginning in 1971, when they realized this custom
00:49:03thing, this easy rider thing, that seems to have stirred up a lot of interest, a lot of enthusiasm.
00:49:11Very primal.
00:49:12Let's make it.
00:49:14It's a primal expression of self-image and BMW definitely tapped that with the GS.
00:49:20Yeah.
00:49:20And the, the image of, uh, the syndics of the draper's guild, all these older men pulling
00:49:28their beards in great wisdom is washed away.
00:49:32No, let's have fun.
00:49:33Let's build something that's great fun to ride.
00:49:37And that's what, uh, GS has been.
00:49:40Now the, the skeptics say, oh, people don't even ride it off road.
00:49:44Well, isn't that up to them?
00:49:46They own it.
00:49:47Enough of them do though.
00:49:48That's the thing.
00:49:48The legend continues because people have used these things to do extraordinary things.
00:49:55Wonderful journeys.
00:49:56Yep.
00:49:56No question.
00:49:57Yeah.
00:49:57And that's the potential for the wonderful journey is what feeds that, uh, feeling that
00:50:05I could be free.
00:50:07It's not that we will, it's that we can.
00:50:09We can.
00:50:10Yes.
00:50:10We can.
00:50:11Um, so I think that's, that's a very instructive and very human tale because BMW found that
00:50:23high precision, uh, decades of durability, gentlemanly behavior and so forth were all very well.
00:50:32But where's the fun when they added the fun and they started in building those brick bikes
00:50:39with the cylinders all in a row, uh, uh, the original plan was, well, we, we have to modernize.
00:50:47We have to build, uh, you know, get on the, the RPM bandwagon and build higher performance at lower weight.
00:50:55And so, uh, no, people weren't going along on that train a hundred percent.
00:51:00They wanted their flat twins.
00:51:03So the technology that would have gone into the brick bikes, had they been further developed, uh, as enthusiastically as the flatties have been, uh, that technology and that R and D went into the flat twin.
00:51:19And it's been very successful and so have the considerable number of other models.
00:51:28When I went to, um, a sort of BMW open house at their test center in the South of France, uh, the honcho there said, why are we doing these instrumented motorcycles?
00:51:47They're carrying vast amounts of data storage.
00:51:50It's very simple.
00:51:52Our increasing sales have depended on producing a wide range of appealing motorcycles that retain the essential BMW virtues.
00:52:07The problem is there isn't enough time in the world to develop all those bikes by the old method, which is okay.
00:52:17You six guys, here are the bikes, here are the routes.
00:52:23Here's your lunch money.
00:52:24Go test.
00:52:25Oh yeah.
00:52:26Back in, oh gosh, I think it was a K 1200 S RS.
00:52:33Uh, there was a guy, Bertie Hauser, who was in testing and they brought him as an expert on the model to help with the presentation.
00:52:40And, uh, I think I remember him.
00:52:42Yeah.
00:52:43Yeah.
00:52:43He called it.
00:52:43Well, he was later put into racing.
00:52:45He was running the Dakar stuff.
00:52:47Yep.
00:52:47And Bertie, uh, Bertie was awesome.
00:52:49And he said, he called those six guys you were talking about.
00:52:53He called them his hell drivers.
00:52:54Hell drivers.
00:52:55Yeah.
00:52:55We can thousands.
00:52:56You know, they just hammer the daylights and then you take it apart and measure everything and see how it did.
00:53:01Look for cracks and all that.
00:53:02These test bikes had things like completely instrumented wheels that measured forces in all directions so that they could, well, I read about the testing, flight testing of the B-29 bomber, which was used in the Pacific War.
00:53:22They had two racks of instruments, dial instruments, dial instruments, and they had cameras, film cameras pointed at each one with big magazines on them.
00:53:36They turned on the film.
00:53:38They turned on the drive when the flight testing, you know, they got to altitude and they're ready to go through whatever the day's routine was.
00:53:46They switched on those things and they started to film and they did the test routine.
00:53:52And then as soon as the aircraft landed, the film went to the lab.
00:53:56The data reduction, people worked on it all night long so that the instrument or the engineers could the next morning look at graphs of roll rate and pitch stability and all the whatever was on the test program and they could plan the next day's testing.
00:54:14Well, I do this.
00:54:15I do the same thing with my OBD1 scanner on my 89 Ford F-250.
00:54:20I make a video of it so that I keep the codes and I can think it over and watch it over and over again because it all disappears.
00:54:27Okay, now it makes sense.
00:54:29So whatever becomes possible becomes likely.
00:54:34Anyway, what BMW did was to use the modern data processing and sensor technology to accomplish in one hour what teams of test riders couldn't do in a week.
00:54:50And this has been a basis for their ability to produce fully tested new models in attractive variety regularly.
00:55:04And they've had good luck with holding their own in sales when the rest of the market is kind of yawning.
00:55:12Well, admittedly, they have a customer base that is probably more insulated from the vicissitudes of...
00:55:21Well, that was another thing.
00:55:23That was another thing.
00:55:24Don Brown had made his living for years as a motorcycle demographics predictor.
00:55:34And he told me, he said, I just watch what the group of young men age 16 to 25 are up to.
00:55:42How much money are they making?
00:55:44What are their tastes in television?
00:55:46What are they drinking?
00:55:49And he said, I've had very good success with that.
00:55:52But he said, in the 1980s, the industrial jobs that enabled those young men to buy fairly expensive motorcycles began to...
00:56:04And a new class of buyer came into being, the upper middle class and in many cases, born again motorcyclists.
00:56:14These were people who could afford shift cam, para-lever, and all those things.
00:56:22And they wanted elegant, presentable motorcycles.
00:56:31Motorcycles were becoming socially acceptable.
00:56:36And this went on through the 80s and to the present time.
00:56:42And when it was first going on, there were so many newspapers that had Sunday supplements about the big deal, corner office, CEO, who broke bad and went back to motorcycling.
00:57:03And it's like, gee whiz, isn't this wonderful?
00:57:08Because here's this staid person and we would expect him to just be working on his little ball return putting green?
00:57:18No, he's going to Sturgis.
00:57:21He's trying to decide, is this the day I'm going to ride without my helmet?
00:57:27Is this the day I'm going to ride without my shirt?
00:57:29And motorcycles, again, functioning as a liberty bringer for a new class of people.
00:57:42Sam Zell, the billionaire real estate developer, was famous for his motorcycle antics and doing, you know, he was well-funded.
00:57:50He probably did exactly what any of us would do.
00:57:53Like Jay Leno, I mean, the ultimate enthusiast.
00:57:55He's really down-to-earth, and if I had the funding that Jay Leno was operating, I would have an operation that's just like Jay Leno's.
00:58:03Yes.
00:58:04I would.
00:58:04I'd have four-valve, whatever, Duesenbergs, or such as they are, and all his Vincents and…
00:58:12Aircraft engines.
00:58:13Aircraft engines.
00:58:14Yeah.
00:58:14He's just an enthusiast, man.
00:58:15He loves it.
00:58:16So, he's expressing how we would express.
00:58:20Yes, indeed.
00:58:21So, motorcycles are very far from being pure technological devices.
00:58:31It's easy to get deep into that, and I did during the years that I spent involved in racing.
00:58:37Because in racing, it is very important to make the lap time.
00:58:43And if you can't do the lap time, what are you doing on the grid?
00:58:48There's a nice purity to that truth.
00:58:51There is.
00:58:51It's a very attractive purity.
00:58:53It's a sort of priesthood, and it's almost a celibate one.
00:59:00Two of my alignments with the fair sex were terminated on that basis because…
00:59:09Scratchy phone calls from a dial, rotary phone.
00:59:11Baboo, getting home late.
00:59:16The house is dark.
00:59:18Oh, sofa sleeping.
00:59:22So, it's good that motorcycling is connected to such vitality as is shown by the history of BMW since 1969.
00:59:34When it was realized, if we're going to keep this business going, we have to expand it.
00:59:41What do we have to do to expand it?
00:59:43We have to appeal to more people.
00:59:47And that's what they've done.
00:59:49And the people who ride these motorcycles are very enthusiastic about it.
00:59:55Now, there are purists of every kind.
00:59:58There are the off-road people.
00:59:59There are the racing and sport bike people.
01:00:04I wonder sometimes how they can have all these motorcycles in one showroom without having fights break out among the various sects.
01:00:15But purism isn't that much fun.
01:00:24Fun is fun.
01:00:25Fun is fun, indeed.
01:00:28So, that's what companies are like.
01:00:31Spitting hard truths, Kevin.
01:00:32Harley-Davidson starting in like 1971 and BMW starting in a very similar time period.
01:00:43Both companies realized that their potential customers were looking for a good time.
01:00:52They might also be looking for tradition, but they were looking for a good time.
01:00:56They were looking for a self-image.
01:00:58That was a complicated arrangement.
01:01:00And so, Harley got the message from their original PR firm.
01:01:10The firm said, forget this Nova thing.
01:01:13Forget competing with the Japanese.
01:01:15You have something the Japanese will never have.
01:01:20You're cool.
01:01:21And I think it's hard to explain that to executives who are used to looking at sales curves and sitting in meetings that would just put you to sleep.
01:01:36That's where a Lutz comes into play.
01:01:38That's where, at BMW, there was Von Kuhnheim on the auto side, I think right around 70.
01:01:48And he reorganized BMW's car side because they were concerned about its future.
01:01:54He reorganized the car side.
01:01:56I think he came up with the three-digit designations, you know, three, five, seven, and organized all that and then set BMW on this path that, you know, many would argue saved the company from.
01:02:08And it wasn't just, it wasn't just, we're not going to make motorcycles anymore.
01:02:13There was, I think, a potential for the car division to suffer.
01:02:17So, you need those people.
01:02:19You need a Sid Law at Royal Enfield.
01:02:22Yes.
01:02:22I mean, on the brink of destruction, that company, circa 2099, you know, it was just, the stock price, I think, was like three rupees or something.
01:02:32It was, you know, it was, it was incredibly low.
01:02:36It might have been, I think it was 30.
01:02:37I think around 2006 or seven.
01:02:41Almost imperceptible.
01:02:4330 rupees.
01:02:44And now it's, it's 5,400 rupees.
01:02:48They went from.
01:02:49Good one.
01:02:4947,000 or yeah, like 45,000 bikes in 2007 where they were kind of doing okay.
01:02:56They had made some changes to that original bike.
01:02:59But it was the visionary thinking of unit construction engine, modernizing the company, and setting.
01:03:08Holding on to certain traditional aspects.
01:03:11And setting a course and saying, we have these goals and we're going to do these things in this space.
01:03:17That's the leadership part that is, is so compelling.
01:03:21With BMW, we can see the steps that led to the tabletop torque curve.
01:03:33And one of those trends is raising compression.
01:03:38You raise compression and you have heat problems.
01:03:42So then you add oil cooling to the head.
01:03:45You raise the compression some more.
01:03:48Oh, now we have to use water.
01:03:49We're getting coking.
01:03:51Yeah.
01:03:52And they had, they had to cool better in order to be able to use the higher compression that would give strong acceleration.
01:04:01And increase horsepower and improve fuel mileage.
01:04:06So that's one trend.
01:04:08Another one is the adoption of four valves per cylinder, which because four valves can expose flow area.
01:04:16Forty percent more rapidly than single valves per millimeter of lift.
01:04:24They don't need as much timing.
01:04:27That is, they're not as dependent on having high intake velocity.
01:04:32High intake velocity is what makes an engine with long timing kind of go.
01:04:38The light switch torque curve.
01:04:45And not wanted, not useful.
01:04:49Might be a good joke, but it's not serious.
01:04:52Anyway, four valves were another step.
01:04:56And eventually, cam timing was a problem because they had compromised it as far as they could.
01:05:10Well, if we want more top end, we're going to have to give up some bottom end.
01:05:13If we want more mid range, we're going to have to, you know, it's eventually it's not a pleasant game.
01:05:19Now, RC30 Honda V4, when it first came out, the power started at 7,500 of the torque curve became good and useful at 7,500.
01:05:32As they souped it up, as they improved, as they tuned everything more narrowly in order to get a higher peak performance,
01:05:41eventually they got it to the point where the torque began at 10,500.
01:05:45Now, that's where you've, you, you've gone so far in one direction.
01:05:51You've just sacrificed two thirds of the torque curve.
01:05:54So they didn't want that.
01:05:55And that's why shift cam was developed, because it basically said,
01:05:59we're going to have this camshaft in under this set of circumstances,
01:06:03and we're going to switch to this other camshaft or this other profile under these other circumstances.
01:06:09How can we do that in such a way that it will work at all, that it will be reliable,
01:06:16that it's cheap enough to be sold to people who understand value?
01:06:20I'd never pay that, my old mother.
01:06:24I think, I mean, shift cam is simpler than the variable cam cookies, right?
01:06:30Like, that's going to take a little bit.
01:06:31This is a completely different thing.
01:06:33This isn't just changing the timing.
01:06:35Oh, and lift also, yeah, sure.
01:06:37It's got a different profile.
01:06:39So the object of the shift cam is to allow boosting of intake velocity in the mid-range and at bottom
01:06:48without killing the top end.
01:06:55So eventually you get to the point where you say, okay, let's have two cam profiles.
01:07:00And that's what they did.
01:07:01They did the steps.
01:07:03It works.
01:07:04It's reliable.
01:07:05It's affordable.
01:07:07They're doing it.
01:07:09And I think those, that sort of thing is wonderful because you've got the skull,
01:07:16which is highly rideable motorcycle.
01:07:19You're not having to tap down two gears.
01:07:22You're not being caught unawares.
01:07:25Oh, I went for the throttle, but there was nothing there and I just flopped over.
01:07:29We've all had such experiences.
01:07:33So shift cam was a sensible next step.
01:07:43So you end up with a motorcycle that has sport bike compression ratio, 13 to one in these great big cylinders.
01:07:50That means that they have to have a knock detection and amelioration system.
01:07:56But that's just sensors and software.
01:08:00Yeah, everything is, it's all there now.
01:08:02It's all there.
01:08:03And it's what makes tuning and race tuning so multidimensional and interesting now is that you take a M1000 and it's already instrumented.
01:08:13And then you can, you know, you get into your ECU and you can detect anything.
01:08:18And at this point it's interpreting the data that is, is because of the sheer volume.
01:08:24Like, like we used to make a movie of dials on a B29 so that people could overnight study this stuff and then figure out and make charts and do all that.
01:08:33I think.
01:08:35So they can find out what it meant.
01:08:37Yeah, that's the thing.
01:08:38What does it mean?
01:08:39You know, it's what we've witnessed in, you know, with Ducati and MotoGP, as we discussed in a previous podcast, Ducati and Lenovo and remarkable modeling of the race course down to every dip, bump, possibly texture, surface change, you know.
01:08:58Yes, which can be done.
01:09:00It can be done.
01:09:01So it will be done.
01:09:01And this is, it's just another example of, of technology and service to people.
01:09:11And when you are trying to reach a goal, such as a tabletop torque, flat as a table, you get to a point where the trends, the, the, the lines of development that you worked on have run out of room.
01:09:31You have to do something different.
01:09:33In this case, it was shift cam.
01:09:36Earlier, it was four valves in place of two valves.
01:09:40Two valves work very well in a purely air cooled engine.
01:09:45When you go to four valves, you've got two hot exhaust valves with hot gas flowing through the ducts.
01:09:53And there's metal between those.
01:09:55And there's, that metal is expanding and then cooling and expanding and, oh, I've cracked.
01:10:03Cracking the exhaust bridge.
01:10:05Oh, never heard of that.
01:10:07Oh, my exhaust valve seats have come loose.
01:10:10Yeah.
01:10:11Woe is me.
01:10:12So we'll just poke in there with a drill and we'll make sure to circulate some engine oil through there.
01:10:18And we won't leave the oil in there while the engine is, has just been shut off because heat soaked back will coke the oil and block the passage.
01:10:28So we have to make it free draining.
01:10:30But that's just engineering.
01:10:33We built it and we found these problems.
01:10:36Then we solved the problems.
01:10:40Now we have a workable system.
01:10:42We can do four valves in an air cooled cylinder head.
01:10:46Well, then eventually they had to do 35% water cooling.
01:10:50The passages in the cylinder head are really slender.
01:10:55There's, but this is good because water velocity means that the flow is turbulent.
01:11:01It means that the water in the middle of the passages is being pressed against the walls on either side by this turbulent whirling.
01:11:12What you don't want is for the cylinder to be in a tub of water because you can develop hot spots that way.
01:11:20You need the water to move.
01:11:21This science was studied by a friend she used to hang out with and she liked a can of beer and the beer was warm.
01:11:37And she set up a tub of water, a bowl of ice, a bowl of ice, water, and stuck the beer in it.
01:11:44She sat next to it and just turned it constantly, constantly rotating it.
01:11:50You can feel it in the bath.
01:11:52Oh, yeah.
01:11:53You get your temperature normalization.
01:11:55Your skin's, you've got this boundary layer around your skin that's cooled off.
01:11:59And you just go, whoosh.
01:12:01Yeah.
01:12:01You want to slosh.
01:12:03Sloshing.
01:12:04Yep.
01:12:04Tied in the slosh.
01:12:06Agitate it up.
01:12:06You'll get that back.
01:12:09So what strikes me about the R1300 GS, and I'm actually off to Germany next week to sample the RT, the R1300 RT.
01:12:19And the R1300R plus the G12 thing, the kind of retro styled GS.
01:12:29And I look forward, I've ridden many, many miles.
01:12:34My spectacular wife, our honeymoon was on an RT in the Alps.
01:12:38She's a really game great rider herself, but we took that bike.
01:12:43And you feel the Alps in that motorcycle.
01:12:46You feel the Alps pace.
01:12:47You understand what they were going for, where they test.
01:12:51It's just like riding.
01:12:52The first time I rode a Triumph in England, I said, aha, because we're on these little back road.
01:12:58You know, the green lanes and around every corner is cow manure and leaves and narrow hedges and all this, rock walls.
01:13:07And you understand why a 58 Triumph Trophy feels the way it does.
01:13:11It's where it was born, just like a Harley, you know, chuffing along in Wisconsin.
01:13:17You know, there are beautiful swinging bends in Wisconsin, but hard hammering mountain roads, not so much.
01:13:22So you've got this beautiful long wheelbase thing that has a big wave of torque, and it makes sense.
01:13:27Rode that RT in the Alps, and I was like, oh, yeah, I get it.
01:13:30I understand.
01:13:32The GS, you know, riding that GS as we did, it's been 45 years of GS.
01:13:38And so that's our anniversary this year.
01:13:40And I'm riding that motorcycle, and we're on an organized ride from Los Angeles to Carmel.
01:13:46And we're on every single lane bumpy ass back road just and hammering.
01:13:52You know, we're carrying a real pace at the front anyways, carrying a real pace.
01:13:58The roads are choppy and bumpy, and there's no lane lines and ups and downs and surprise corners, you know, stuff you don't expect.
01:14:07And when you're composing a motorcycle press launch, you usually avoid these roads.
01:14:14So if you're getting your sport tour out, you're trying to find the most – you just want it to be the prime experience.
01:14:21You want the best possible roads for the product to enjoy it.
01:14:25And on a GS, you can pick those roads.
01:14:28You can pick the big bumpy roads because you've got, you know, double the suspension travel of a normal street bike.
01:14:34Yes.
01:14:35And damping to work with it.
01:14:37You have electronically controlled damping.
01:14:39You turn the dial, and you can go into different modes, and you can – it's –
01:14:45And there is even variable spring rate.
01:14:49Yep.
01:14:50You can vary the ride height.
01:14:52It's – you can vary the ride height and preload.
01:14:55It on – not you.
01:14:56It can be altered.
01:14:58It is constantly – you know, there's a potentiometer measuring where the bike is.
01:15:03So if you throw the bags on, it just handles it for you.
01:15:06There's no more, oh, let's get this – let's get the hammer out and tang, tang, tang, get your threaded preload adjuster.
01:15:14Or real ride height.
01:15:16You know, there are many a sport bike had the single bolt coming through the frame, and you would jack the bike up, and you'd put shims to raise the ride height without changing the spring preload.
01:15:25And all that is just, like, whirling about in the ECU and handling it, and the expression is a massive increase in versatility.
01:15:35And that's happening with the engine, with shift cam.
01:15:37Torque from the very bottom.
01:15:39Ride it like a Harley.
01:15:40Ride it like a 1954 BMW.
01:15:42Buh, buh, buh.
01:15:43Short shift it.
01:15:44It's all there.
01:15:45It's smooth.
01:15:46It's perfect.
01:15:47Or hammer the daylights out of it.
01:15:48So we rip the back roads all day, and you're like, man, this thing is really versatile.
01:15:52Total heated seat, heated grips, electric windshield, all at a 25-pound price or pound weight premium over 25 years ago with half the horsepower.
01:16:04And you just ride it.
01:16:05Versatility is insane.
01:16:07And then the next day, like, I got to get back here.
01:16:10I got to go back to the other part of the job, which is, you know, partly it's this.
01:16:14It's partly it's over there looking at a spreadsheet.
01:16:17And I'm like, well, I'll ride out of Carmel.
01:16:20I go on Carmel Valley Road, and it's bumpy, and it's fun, and I'm having the ride of my life.
01:16:24The sun is shining.
01:16:25I'm making some video and enjoying everything.
01:16:28But then I know I got to get on the 101 because I got to get home by dinner.
01:16:32You know, got to see the family.
01:16:33I've been away.
01:16:34I want to get home.
01:16:37And you just, I know that I have four and a half hours on a freeway on a Sunday.
01:16:44And I'm like, no big deal.
01:16:47Not a big deal at all.
01:16:49It's like that with the Goldwing.
01:16:50We were on a long video shoot, and we had to go from Sonoma to L.A., and we looked at the weather forecast after dinner, and it was going to rain all day.
01:17:01But I had an arrow stitch, waterproof, and I had a BMW, or sorry, I had a Honda Goldwing with a heated seat, giant windshield.
01:17:11I'm like, no big deal.
01:17:13It'll be the best possible rain riding I could have.
01:17:16It's like that with a GS, a little bit less wind protection.
01:17:19But I just didn't care.
01:17:20Like, if it got cold, I got a heated seat.
01:17:22If it gets hot, lower the windscreen, unzip the top, you know, get some airflow.
01:17:26I mean, just didn't care.
01:17:28That kind of versatility, click it into six, hit top gear.
01:17:32You're at a steady state.
01:17:34You're probably doing 47 miles per gallon at 75, 80.
01:17:38And you could, it's where you wish we could have 100 mile an hour speed limits.
01:17:43Yeah.
01:17:44Yeah.
01:17:44Because that motorcycle would not have a problem with it.
01:17:47No, you'd just do it.
01:17:49And then I would have been three and a half hours instead of four and a half, you know.
01:17:52It would have used more gas.
01:17:54Yeah.
01:17:56But these are the days, you know, it's, it's always, uh, it's interesting having worked
01:18:01at magazines and, and read magazines for so long in 1979, the GS 1000 Suzuki came out
01:18:09and an editor of a motorcycle magazine bought one because they were never going to be more
01:18:15powerful than this.
01:18:18And we're going to keep it in a crate and we're going to keep it perfect.
01:18:20And what happened?
01:18:21And like, oh, 1982, oh wait, 83 VF 1000 or VF 750, like all that stuff.
01:18:29It's just, it's wonderful how it keeps progressing and to have the GS be what it is today.
01:18:34The flat twin in general, because all of this, as we use GS is kind of the avatar of the entire
01:18:39flat twin line.
01:18:40And in a way it's the avatar of the inline four line, because it's also expressing everything
01:18:46that BMW has done in terms of driving ahead.
01:18:50They were the first folks to put a cat on a motorcycle, you know, and, and there might
01:18:56be an audience out there that says, oh, you know, emissions and all that.
01:18:59Like I lived in LA when it was smoggy, I couldn't go outside.
01:19:04We didn't have recess because of air pollution.
01:19:08So it's a way the hell better.
01:19:10Like I got a cat on that GS and I also have 130 horsepower at the rear wheel.
01:19:15Like, thank you for that.
01:19:17Yep.
01:19:18So.
01:19:18Because the first element is fuel injection.
01:19:22Carburetors run rich in the warm weather and lean in the, in the cool weather.
01:19:29So the emissions are just constantly varying.
01:19:33The first step is, uh, fuel injection controlled by atmospheric conditions so that the mixture
01:19:41just remains constant.
01:19:43And a lot of that emission is just wiped off the board.
01:19:48And then you, uh, shorten up on the valve overlap so that you aren't, aren't taking in
01:19:56from the intake side and having it go straight out the exhaust valve, all these little steps
01:20:02add up to better fuel consumption, lower emissions.
01:20:06And yes, it's taken 45 years, but, um, these, these, these are a lot of changes.
01:20:19So all the technologies are interdependent, you know, the, the tragic seventies of still
01:20:25working with carburetors, but trying to make automotive emissions work motorcycles, the lean,
01:20:31the leanness of stock motorcycles hit razor's edge or not, uh, stutter install was stutter
01:20:40install and caught, you know, the cars with like 18,000 miles of vacuum lines trying to
01:20:46control black holes that gradually turned to jelly.
01:20:50I just did it with my 89 Ford, which is a relatively simple vacuum system, but it has a lot of, uh,
01:20:58these beautiful little plastic pipes and there's vacuum reservoirs and, and map sensor and, you
01:21:05know, just things running around the engine measuring vacuum.
01:21:08The emission system relies on vacuum, vacuum controls the EGR and you're, you're splicing
01:21:14places where it cracked or do I just run a hose, you know, replace the little pipe, you know?
01:21:19Yeah, it's, and that was an injected vehicle, you know, but the, the carburetors like bi-metallic
01:21:24springs, heat sensitive springs, trying, trying to vary the air bleed.
01:21:29Oh my God.
01:21:30And now you have Royal Enfield with injected motorcycles that are mapped.
01:21:34The Himalayan is mapped to whatever it is, 19,000 feet or it's, it's meant to operate at
01:21:4119,000 feet.
01:21:42Cause they go to the Himalayas.
01:21:43They did that with the first UCE 500.
01:21:46Yeah.
01:21:46And they put the injection on that and they're like, oh, well, we got to
01:21:49get, it's got to work up there.
01:21:50It's just like, uh, John Britton, not mapping his bike below 3000.
01:21:563000.
01:21:57Yeah.
01:21:57Because like, who, what are you talking about?
01:21:593000.
01:22:00When are we going to be at three?
01:22:01Yeah.
01:22:04Because I, I walked up and he, he just, they, they, they just started the thing up
01:22:09and it was, and I said, what's, what's all, what's with all this?
01:22:14And he said, oh, I, it never occurred to me to map it below 3000, just, you know, so you
01:22:21can start it.
01:22:22Well, yes, that was true.
01:22:24Then now we can do better than we do.
01:22:26Um, it's been an enormous effort.
01:22:31All these vehicle companies have cleaned up all these machines.
01:22:35Oh, well, but yes, we should switch to electric right away.
01:22:39Where does the electricity come from?
01:22:41Now you're starting another podcast.
01:22:43Well, no, we're not going to talk about that at all, but where does the electricity come
01:22:47from?
01:22:47The answer you get from a lot of people is out of the wall.
01:22:52So that's the basis for politics.
01:22:54Oh, okay.
01:22:55Well, I'll close the door on that, but enormous progress made, um, to result in this, uh, 1300
01:23:03BMW with all these good qualities and which is so enjoyable to ride.
01:23:10Uh, I'll take it.
01:23:12Yeah.
01:23:17Well, thanks for listening, folks.
01:23:18That's it for the second world podcast this week.
01:23:21We've got a ample back catalog.
01:23:23Go check it out.
01:23:24Um, there's a link in our description for octane prequal flex octane is our sponsor.
01:23:31We wouldn't be here without them.
01:23:32You can click that link and go shop for a motorcycle and, um, check out your ability to, uh, finance
01:23:38and get the bike of your dreams.
01:23:40Thanks for listening.
01:23:41We'll catch you next time.
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