- 1 week ago
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00:00Welcome to the Cygo World Podcast. I'm Mark Hoyer. I'm with Kevin Cameron, our technical editor.
00:00:06This week we're going to talk about the Honda Super Cub story.
00:00:11The little motorcycle that changed the world.
00:00:15Well, it put the world on two wheels. It put the world in transportation.
00:00:19That's what it did.
00:00:20In 2005, they'd sold 50 million by then, over its life.
00:00:27What did you think of the Cub when it came out, Kevin?
00:00:30I didn't really think much about it, except that it was a curiosity from Japan, and naturally everyone wondered what would be next.
00:00:43And it wasn't long before Honda was a well-established brand name, because they saw to it.
00:00:51They did it intentionally.
00:00:52Mr. Honda and his partner, Takeo Fujisawa, realized that unless they could produce world-standard motorbikes,
00:01:08they could not resist a foreign invasion of motorcycles into Japan from well-established producers who presumably knew a great deal more than Honda did about the business.
00:01:24Well, that wasn't really the case, but what happened was that by 1948, Mr. Honda had established an R&D center,
00:01:42a technical center, the following year, 1949, Mr. Fujisawa joined, who was an experienced businessman, but above all, he was
00:01:53a plain-speaking man of common sense.
00:02:02And it proved to be a valuable combination for many years, because Mr. Honda was all for, let's do it today.
00:02:10I have an idea, I have an idea, let's build it.
00:02:13And Mr. Fujisawa said, that may have been good in 1924 when you were working on your racing car, but we're talking about big money here,
00:02:25and we might want to take some thought before we plunge in.
00:02:29And that combination of urgent innovation and business management and caution turned out to make Honda preeminent among the 200 manufacturers of motorcycles
00:02:49that at one time existed in post-war Japan.
00:02:53So, that was one aspect of the affair.
00:03:05Mr. Honda had, as a child, according to legend, run after the first automobile that came through their part of Japan.
00:03:18And he said afterward that the smell of the exhaust was so unlike anything he had ever experienced.
00:03:28It was so exotic and seemed to be beckoning to him to follow that he ran after the thing until he couldn't continue.
00:03:40He went to Tokyo and determined to grasp this new technology and become a participant.
00:03:57And in 1922, he went to work at a garage, Ark Shokai.
00:04:07And fortunately for him, in 1923, there was the great earthquake.
00:04:13The building fell down.
00:04:15All of the employees except the owner and Mr. Honda went home to their families.
00:04:23And the two of them received from auto manufacturing wonderful training that made them more than garage men.
00:04:38And in 1924, Mr. Honda began to build his racing car, which had a Curtis OX5 V8 aircraft engine,
00:04:48making most of 100 horsepower at 1400 RPM.
00:04:53And we've talked about Curtis before.
00:04:56He was another one of those thunderous, get-it-done-today people.
00:05:03And Mr. Honda went forward to become something of a wheel in the activity.
00:05:14And during the war, he decided he would manufacture piston rings.
00:05:22And 12 miles northwest of Tokyo is the giant Nakajima aircraft plant, aircraft engine plant.
00:05:31Mr. Honda's piston rings were rejected.
00:05:36They didn't meet standards.
00:05:37So he thought to himself, could it be that enthusiasm is not the answer to every problem?
00:05:50He went to consult a metallurgist at a university.
00:05:55And the metallurgist said, here are the qualities required for a successful piston ring.
00:06:01So he got right into it and soon was making piston rings that were accepted.
00:06:12The war came to a thunderous end.
00:06:16Everything was knocked flat.
00:06:18And Mr. Honda found that he could buy military surplus communications generators powered by little two-stroke engines.
00:06:33He contrived to attach the two-stroke engines as clip-on motors on bicycles.
00:06:38And soon he was selling all he could get because there was no street car.
00:06:48There were no bus services.
00:06:49There was very little of anything.
00:06:52And there is one of these clip-on bicycle engines on display in the Motegi Museum.
00:07:03And it looks just like you would expect.
00:07:06It's a little something or other attached down near the left end of the rear axle.
00:07:12Well, it soon came to mind that the supply of engines would come to an end.
00:07:20They were 50 cc's.
00:07:22They made one half a horsepower.
00:07:26You can imagine a Japanese communications unit during the war in the rainy jungle somewhere trying to start their two-stroke engine so they could broadcast and receive.
00:07:41However, he continued as he had begun with two-stroke engines.
00:07:48Now, the official line that you will get from people who came to Honda without reading the books is that Mr. Honda hated two-strokes.
00:07:59He always hated them.
00:08:00And he was a four-stroke man born and bred.
00:08:06In fact, when Mr. Fujisawa said to him,
00:08:09You know, my wife said something to me the other night that I think might be important for us.
00:08:15Oh, oh, what's that?
00:08:17Well, she said our new model, Dream D, which was much more than a 50.
00:08:27It was a robust two-stroke motorcycle with all the mod cons.
00:08:33She said they smell bad.
00:08:37And they sound like they're not working properly.
00:08:40I don't know, Kevin.
00:08:41They smell bad.
00:08:42Well, we don't know what kind of two-stroke oil they were using.
00:08:47That's a fair point.
00:08:48But what smells better in certain settings?
00:08:52Well, yes, there's another hole around here.
00:08:56They were really smoky.
00:08:58They were very smoky, particularly at the time.
00:09:01So, Mr. Honda replied, I can engineer around those things.
00:09:07There are special oils we can get that don't smoke.
00:09:10We can do this, that, and the other thing, Mr. Fujisawa said.
00:09:14Much simpler to build four-stroke motor.
00:09:19Oh.
00:09:19Now, this turned out to be an important turning point, the first of a number in which Mr. Honda
00:09:29was going in one direction and Mr. Fujisawa was going in another direction.
00:09:35And Mr. Fujisawa said, get on track, man.
00:09:42We're going this way.
00:09:43Well, let's talk about the landscape for this type of transportation in 1958.
00:09:50It was largely two-stroke.
00:09:51It was the simple, smoky, inefficient.
00:09:55I mean, it was efficient by virtue of being tiny.
00:09:58That was it.
00:10:00And it ran.
00:10:01Starts, runs.
00:10:03Big advantage.
00:10:04Yeah, just goes.
00:10:05Yeah, goes.
00:10:05Very simple.
00:10:06But this was a new way, and it addressed some really specific problems that people were facing.
00:10:14Which was, the first one of which was that Japan's 66 largest cities had been burnt out
00:10:21by the incendiary raids flown by the B-29.
00:10:25And this was widespread all over Japan.
00:10:31Wherever B-29s could reach, they burned down the cities.
00:10:36So that this took place in the last five months of the war.
00:10:40One additional city, on average, burnt out every 2.3 nights.
00:10:46So if there was a place where you could find work and it was too far to bicycle, you were up the creek.
00:10:55But if you had a motorized form of transportation,
00:11:00aha, your radius of action was greatly increased.
00:11:04And so were your opportunities.
00:11:06So, at the same time, Honda had decided in the middle 50s that the company was going to compete at the Isle of Man.
00:11:23Mr. Honda made repeated trips by air to the United States and Europe to buy machine tools.
00:11:30In 1951, he took $165,000 and went to the U.S. to buy high-grade machine production equipment.
00:11:45And people said to him, well, you know, what the great calligrapher said, the poor, the poor draftsman blames his brush.
00:11:57And Mr. Honda said, that's okay for calligraphers.
00:12:01I'm not one.
00:12:02I know that we have to have machine tools that can produce our product at a low cost that more people can afford.
00:12:12So the calligrapher went back to graceful figures.
00:12:18And Mr. Honda signed up for $1.3 million worth of tooling off the cuff.
00:12:29He was willing to take – this man was willing to take risks.
00:12:33What a huge bet.
00:12:35And they sort of skated right on the edge of the water.
00:12:42Talk about thin ice.
00:12:44They were famous for making their payment at the last possible instant.
00:12:50And nothing ventured, nothing gained.
00:12:55So they were planning already, by 1956, what they would do in the Isle of Man and how they would do it.
00:13:09Honda's Research Institute was studying the high-speed internal combustion engine.
00:13:16The remarkable thing about Super Cub 1958 was that it made nine times the horsepower of the 50cc clip-on engine, two-stroke, nine times the power.
00:13:34Why?
00:13:35Because it peaked at 9,500 RPM.
00:13:40None of this 4,500 RPM Cushman scooter scene.
00:13:44These were practically little racing engines.
00:13:48And by virtue of constant testing, they made them reliable.
00:13:56They began talking about this product because they understood they could never get anywhere selling motorcycles to daring young men in black leather coats.
00:14:09That was the image of the motorcycle.
00:14:11They didn't want that image.
00:14:14They knew that market was quite limited.
00:14:18They needed to make transportation that anyone could use, including women who had spent much of their lives in kitchens and without getting much of a feel for gadgetry.
00:14:34So Fujisawa and Honda went to Europe and they looked at the market there.
00:14:42They saw the Mobi Solex with its front drive, with the engine in front of the steering head, driving the front wheel through a roller.
00:14:52Hmm.
00:14:53Pass on that.
00:14:54They went to Italy and they went to Italy and they saw the scooters that were coming from Lambretta and Vespa.
00:15:05Wheels are too small for our world.
00:15:08They will fall into a pothole and...
00:15:10An endo will result.
00:15:15And they understood that a certain level of power was necessary.
00:15:19They wanted bigger wheels.
00:15:22But it had to be an automatic machine.
00:15:25No teaching people coordination of clutch and throttle.
00:15:29It has to be, as Mr. Honda put it, the noodle boy has to balance the noodle tray in one hand and operate the machine with the other.
00:15:42Well, that's what we see in the paddock all the time.
00:15:44None of this clutch business.
00:15:45You got to tow your tires behind on your whatever.
00:15:48It makes it a lot easier if you don't have to mess with slipping a clutch.
00:15:52So, they set these standards for what they wanted.
00:16:00But the motorcycle, the Super Cub, the clip-on motor was called the Cub.
00:16:07Super Cub was not designed.
00:16:11There were no rows of drafting boards with powerful illumination and the draftsman of each one.
00:16:17Instead, there was a room in which Mr. Honda, Mr. Fujisawa, and several other engineers milled about talking about this, what they intended to build.
00:16:34This project was called Operation Special M.
00:16:40I like it.
00:16:41And they looked at 18- and 19-inch wheels, which were respectively the sort of the Italian and the British standards.
00:16:55But they ended up making a motorcycle that was too tall for many Japanese.
00:17:01So, they hit upon 17-inches, 2-1⁄4-inch tire section.
00:17:07And Mr. Honda was shown various mock-ups.
00:17:14And one of the European manufacturers that was doing well had the fuel tank just behind the steering head.
00:17:22And Mr. Honda didn't like that.
00:17:25He said, stepping into this bike has to be completely easy with nothing to snag your clothing on.
00:17:35Or to impede your heedless natural movement.
00:17:42So, the fuel went under the seat.
00:17:45And the engine was the responsibility of a young fellow called Daiji Hoshino.
00:17:54And in overall charge of the project was Toshiro Harada, whose name comes up again and again in later times, having been manager on the CB450 twin and then the CB750 four-cylinder.
00:18:19CB450, that was the one with the torsion valve springs, was it?
00:18:24Yes, sir.
00:18:25They also built a racing engine for automobile with torsion springs.
00:18:31It was sort of an interesting sidelight.
00:18:35It wasn't continued.
00:18:37We could do lots of- we should do a podcast that's Honda's interesting sidelights.
00:18:42I guess we could really-
00:18:44Yeah.
00:18:44There's plenty to talk about there.
00:18:47There certainly is.
00:18:48Well, I mean, so the 50, one of the principal qualities that you're talking about is that ease of stepping over, just like your Vespa, which had, you know, set the pace in Europe.
00:18:59But it had leg protection, and it took the engine and laid it down.
00:19:04So, all that nasty business is kind of below the belt line, and you just step on, and away you go.
00:19:10Yep.
00:19:11Yeah.
00:19:12And one engineer was given the job of creating a clutch that would be unseen and unknown.
00:19:23And what he came up with was a device which, when you move the shift pedal, the first part of the stroke lifted the clutch, disconnecting the engine from the drive system.
00:19:37And the second part of the stroke rotated the shift drum, moving the gears to engage the next ratio.
00:19:48And then when you took your foot off, the shift drum stayed where it was on its detent, and the clutch re-engaged, and you continued on your way.
00:19:59Weird sidelight for me here.
00:20:02Sorry, but I've got to put this in there.
00:20:04Oh, yeah.
00:20:051958 Triumph Trophy.
00:20:08I owned one of those, 650, first year for the alloy head, single carburetor.
00:20:14It was the first fork that had damping in it from Triumph, as I understand it.
00:20:18It had a little bit of rebound damping, apparently.
00:20:20It had slick shift, and my slick shift was still intact, so there was a rocker inside the gearbox with a little roller.
00:20:31And when you shifted it up or down, it would disengage the clutch.
00:20:37And mine actually worked.
00:20:39Usually people took that out, but mine worked.
00:20:42And you could, with some difficulty, you could start from a dead stop and slip the clutch.
00:20:49It's just that the band of engagement was a little too abrupt.
00:20:53But shifting up and down, it was really no problem.
00:20:56And also, it was a boon to the races that you had to start with your left, your clutch hand on your head.
00:21:04The desert races, you had to be like this.
00:21:06Your bike could be running, but you had to be in neutral.
00:21:10And so for those guys, they could stick their foot on the gear lever and use the dirt as your clutch in that case.
00:21:16That's your friction zone.
00:21:17So you just hit it, and away you go.
00:21:20So anyway, slick shift.
00:21:22Opening up the Triumph motorcycle experience to extra hundred of people.
00:21:28Yes.
00:21:29I don't want to rush into the rest of this story without recounting my amazement at how Japan,
00:21:41Japan, basically a feudal nation in 1853, was able to make a nationwide decision to industrialize.
00:21:55This was not something accidental.
00:21:59Japan had already learned about firearms through Portuguese traders and had developed her own excellent firearms manufacturing capability.
00:22:11But the firearms were so disapproved of.
00:22:15A fry cook from the seaside must not shoot a titled person on horseback.
00:22:25This is completely improper.
00:22:27Despite that, Japan decided not to let itself fall into what had happened to China.
00:22:36The Western powers had looked upon China as a disorganized place that needed their guiding hands.
00:22:44And China was chopped up into zones of influence, British, German, U.S., etc.
00:22:51And Japanese leadership was terrified that Japan would be next.
00:22:57Here came Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853 with his four black ships saying,
00:23:05Knock, knock.
00:23:06I know you're in there.
00:23:07We're coming to trade with you, like it or not.
00:23:10So they went about it in an extremely methodical way.
00:23:17They brought in foreign engineers and designers and they mastered the Industrial Revolution to such an extent and so quickly that when the Russian fleet was sent to punish them for some imagined real or imagined misdeeds,
00:23:39the Russians, the Russians met the Japanese fleet at the Straits of Tsushima and they were destroyed by the Japanese fleet.
00:23:52They had learned to make enormous guns to bore them, to liner them, to aim and serve them.
00:24:02And this was imposed upon a very traditional culture.
00:24:10And I think that's really remarkable.
00:24:14I mean, Germany did a similar thing in terms of education, right?
00:24:17They made a shift in the 1800s where they were really leaning on technical education.
00:24:22The Iron Chancellor established a system of higher technical universities where such things, such arcana as manufacturing, engineering.
00:24:35Let's design this product not only to work, but to be easy and low cost to manufacture.
00:24:43Yes, and that was the work of the Iron Chancellor, who is so hated by many on the left to this day.
00:24:58But he basically told the leadership in Germany, who were just men of the soil, grown important.
00:25:10He said, you want to be a nation?
00:25:14You want to be maybe number one nation?
00:25:17You're going to need a workforce that can read.
00:25:21Oh, what if they read the wrong thing?
00:25:24Well, that's a chance you're going to have to take.
00:25:27I can't read the wrong thing.
00:25:30But it'll cost a lot of money.
00:25:34So will getting defeated by Napoleon, which nearly happened.
00:25:39I mean, it was, want to become part of France?
00:25:44Oh, well, I suppose not.
00:25:46So, yes, the Industrial Revolution had a momentum of its own.
00:25:52You might like the idea of continuing to sip a tall, cool one on your porch, watching the sun go down.
00:25:59But here comes the Industrial Revolution.
00:26:02That smoke sack wasn't there yesterday.
00:26:05So Japan was really a big surprise this way.
00:26:10Because they realized that to be an independent nation in the times that they could see were coming,
00:26:17you've got to have your own industry.
00:26:19Yeah, SKB shotguns, that was like late, I think, late 1850s.
00:26:25Sakaba, I think, is the guy's name.
00:26:27We have an SKB over under 20-gauge, Japanese-made.
00:26:31They've since moved to production.
00:26:33They got acquired, and I think they stopped making guns in Japan in 2010 and went to Turkey, as many gun makers have.
00:26:39Well, during the war, SKB, yeah, SKB, yeah, it's a beautifully made, beautifully made, beautiful shooting gate gun.
00:26:46Marvelous.
00:26:47During the war, Yamaha made propellers instead of musical instruments.
00:26:53But this whole thing, this industrial changeover has made people like Mr. Honda.
00:27:04And he actively rejected the past.
00:27:08When he was asked to one of these stuffy meetings where you must wear the, you must obey the dress code,
00:27:19he came dressed for work, he said, I work, I'm a worker, this is my working outfit.
00:27:27If you don't like it, get used to it.
00:27:31And so they carefully planned Super Cub to be the vehicle that it became.
00:27:44But it was an enormous gamble because we all know how many times people make plans.
00:27:52The plans are extremely plausible.
00:27:54You look at every point.
00:27:55Yes, this one makes sense.
00:27:56This makes sense.
00:27:57And then it's a flop.
00:27:58So ultimately, you're saying, we've tooled this thing and we hope people will buy it, but maybe they won't.
00:28:08That's business.
00:28:10So when the machine Super Cub was revealed, the main dealer in downtown Tokyo sold 600 the first day.
00:28:22And it's been a hit ever since.
00:28:28And we've all seen those marvelous videos of an entire family in Burma or Thailand or anywhere around the world.
00:28:38Some of the people sitting among the others are holding crates of chickens and somehow.
00:28:46No, it's remarkable that the centeredness of people who have grown up doing remarkable things with small transportation, it's just wonderful.
00:28:56It is.
00:28:56It's just rebar and furniture and we saw a family of five.
00:29:03We were in India, Jeff Allen and I, when the unit construction 500 Royal Enfield was produced, released.
00:29:12And we were riding around doing photos and we were doing a photo shoot.
00:29:16And this family of five came by on a, like the one of the 100s, like a hero or something, came motoring by.
00:29:24Family of five.
00:29:26This little girl sitting on the gas tank, holding the handlebars at the very front.
00:29:32The man operating it.
00:29:34And then a woman, a kid, and then the woman sitting side saddle with the sorry guard, holding a bag of rice and holding a baby.
00:29:42And what a way to move the family.
00:29:46You couldn't help but be close.
00:29:49It's just, it's, it's amazing how adaptable people are and what a great job you can do with what you have if you focus on it.
00:29:57Well, when, when Mr. Oshino, the engine guy on the Super Cub project was asked, how can this engine make nine times the power of the first engine Honda produced?
00:30:14He said, this engine is the outcome of our preparations for the Isle of Man.
00:30:25Because what other engine, what other production engine in the world in 1958 was peaking at 9,500 RPM?
00:30:39Nothing.
00:30:40And they made it stone reliable.
00:30:47And in fact, that may have been the origin of, of Honda's, uh, 2600 hour durability test, which was, uh, I learned about that from, um,
00:31:00the, uh, Honda, American Honda's racing manager.
00:31:06Um, and he said, he didn't know whether that test was, was still being, uh, used or whether design had moved far enough forward that basically it was incorporated in the design process.
00:31:21But Mr. Fujisawa looked at the new machine and he said, oh, we should, we will sell 30,000 of these.
00:31:35And the other engineers looked at him and they said, 30, 30,000.
00:31:40Oh, per month.
00:31:45And by October of 2017, 100 million had been sold.
00:31:52That's eight years ago.
00:31:54They're still making them.
00:31:57It is the most produced vehicle in the history of the world.
00:32:01Well, that means from 2005 to 2017, they added 50 million because in 05, that's when they hit the 50 million milestone.
00:32:10So that's pretty remarkable.
00:32:11Yeah.
00:32:13It's like, uh, 4 million a year.
00:32:16So, uh, all this, all the preparation that they made and the study, uh, Mr. Fujisawa and Mr. Honda going to Europe,
00:32:28uh, the discussion of those people in that room, this motorcycle was not designed.
00:32:36They created it from their ongoing discussion day after day until they had what they thought the market required.
00:32:49They weren't thinking about motorcycles or motorcycle people.
00:32:54They were thinking about transportation and everyone who needed it.
00:33:01Good way to think.
00:33:05So, it's a little two valve engine, um, air cooled.
00:33:11Originally, the cylinder and the head were, uh, iron because it eliminated valve guides, valve seat inserts, um, an aluminum, a cast aluminum cylinder and an iron liner.
00:33:31These features later were added in 1966.
00:33:34Six, but what this motorcycle did was it bankrolled Honda ambition.
00:33:44Already in 1954, they were constructing a plant in which they hope to build trucks.
00:33:54This steady source of income enabled them to go to any machine tool manufacturer in the U.S. or Europe and say,
00:34:04uh, here's my order.
00:34:08And when, uh, Edward Turner, the Englishman who designed the Triumph Speed Twin, which was first produced in what?
00:34:1936, 37.
00:34:20A prominent person in the British motorcycling scene went to Japan in 1960 and had the tour.
00:34:31And he came back to Britain and he wrote a report.
00:34:35I know we've talked about this in another, in a previous, um, podcast, but it bears repeating because he gave warning.
00:34:43He said, these people are using the latest manufacturing techniques to provide features that we can't provide at a lower price than we're charging for the rather antiquated models we offer.
00:35:02Oh, there's something from, uh, no, that's a, what nonsense, because the terrible thing about being first in the industrial revolution, because bear in mind that in, in the late 18th century, there was Newcomen using atmospheric, uh, using the vacuum created by condensing steam.
00:35:28To make a suction engine that could pump out mines.
00:35:33You know, you, you dig a hole anywhere in England and it fills up with water.
00:35:39That's a well.
00:35:41And, uh, you dig a mine and it's going to be uninhabitable by virtue of being full of water.
00:35:49So they needed pumps and what had gone before was of course, mine ponies going around and around in a circle underground, spending their whole lives underground operating mechanism to pump out the mine.
00:36:07And Newcomen, um, is regarded as one of the leading characters in Britain's industrial revolution.
00:36:15When you're first with the industrial revolution, you know, that you're the teacher.
00:36:22You're helping these lesser nations whose industrial revolutions are pitiful, wilted little seedlings.
00:36:31And if you don't watch what they're doing, they, they will grow as Honda did and the other Japanese manufacturers to be able to do things you never dreamed of.
00:36:47And so, uh, Edward Turner's report was ignored and they had to ignore it because they didn't have the credit with which to go to machine tool companies and say, I'll have that one and that one and that one, which Mr. Bloor was able to do with money that he had made in real estate.
00:37:10I visited the engine machining line at Bloor's place, uh, early in this century.
00:37:21And there were all these machine tools with automatic transfer line, moving the parts from one machine to the next, to the next.
00:37:30And each shift was operated by two people.
00:37:39It was not a situation where there were 800 machine tools on the production floor and people rushing this way and rushing that, pushing castings on little carts.
00:37:50With a trained machinist at each mill at each lathe, at each grinder.
00:37:59No, that was all built into the system.
00:38:02No, you watched it.
00:38:03I watched it happen at Royal Enfield.
00:38:06I went to visit in 08 and they were, they were two companies that it appeared at the time.
00:38:10There was the traditional line still making the bullet 500 largely as it had been since 55 or so.
00:38:17and it was a big dark messy place and guys were bolting things to a plate and then grabbing a
00:38:25big you know lever to pull the quill down and cutting fluid was hosing off on it and
00:38:31and then you went to the 500s to the new 500 the uce side and it was brightly lighted clean as
00:38:39could be guys are wearing white shirts and the engines are on a line and they go to get the
00:38:46cases put together cnc sealant a machine just lays a perfect bead on the engine case the other it's
00:38:53like a pen it's like a wonderful pen that never runs out of ink just uh crazy awesome the vision
00:39:02that it takes to um put something together like that you know it's and having that reference having
00:39:11a reference of saying like let's see how guys do this you know mr honda goes to england and america
00:39:17and you know if you went to harley you would have seen the guy like beating frames with a hammer and
00:39:23as as they did it when they were doing their sip bronze welding um yeah to put the tubes into the
00:39:30into the machine having a yeah cast cast lug with with you know holes in it for the tubes and you put
00:39:37the tube in and then they would stick it into a forge basically a pit of um probably coal
00:39:42and pump the air get it real hot and then you know melt that stuff in there and that was your frame
00:39:50and then it would be heat distorted and they'd have to try and hit it with hammers and then big
00:39:54bars to tweak them into into true and you can go and look at that and say okay that's how they're
00:40:00doing it what what do we how do we get all those steps out and it's wonderful to have a reference as
00:40:04you're saying you know you're going in you're starting fresh and you can say what's what's
00:40:10good or bad about what's happening and make your own decisions and which which yamaha model is it that
00:40:16frame is two pieces and there's no welding at all yeah the uh um it was the fz09 uh later mt09
00:40:25and it's they're not the only ones who've done that no not the only ones right but um yeah that that
00:40:32was uh so that's the yamaha frame and it's it's two halves that are um right right and left that
00:40:39are very accurately cast controlled fill basically net size you know there's no there's not a lot of
00:40:47messing around where a lot of casting stuff you make it too big and then you machine off the stuff
00:40:52that's left over you can get the shrinkage pretty close this is super accurate steering head two
00:40:58pieces uh break off bolts that bolt that together and you essentially had a finished frame out of
00:41:05the mold out of the mold kiss the machine here kiss the machine here and maybe it's some engine pickup
00:41:09points as i recall and they bolted together and there's no welding no other done just done so you
00:41:16had a you know modern japanese motorcycle with that wonderful engine in it and a great looking
00:41:24beautifully finished chassis a motorcycle made in japan that was extremely cost effective
00:41:31that came in steps in 1980 uh yamaha sent square tube aluminum frame test articles to the amsterdam
00:41:43uh racing center and kenny said every day we ran those bikes in tests they cracked
00:41:51and constant communication with japan resulted in improvements the joints became more organic
00:42:01rather than just being two pieces of square tubing stuck together uh the material was improved the
00:42:10welding techniques were improved the design was improved the racers eventually were uh steering head
00:42:19and rear swing arm uprights were machined from solid and then the rest was either sheet metal or
00:42:27extrusion it all had to be painstakingly welded together and gradually they reduced the number of welds
00:42:35systematically now one way to look at this is to say they sent home the people who formerly did those
00:42:44jobs and said you're retired now here's your pension this is a dilemma for my for for modern life no question about it but
00:42:54that's what happens because if company a is doing this company b cannot thrust its chin up
00:43:05dramatically and say not for us we're going to maintain hand craftsmanship that means we're going to go
00:43:15out of business yeah it's interesting to me being on the consumer side in the 80s you know you had your
00:43:25sprinkler tube sprinkler pipe frames as you know sort of feather bed we got rid of lugs and all that but you
00:43:32still had a lot of steel frames running around but the look of trickness was eventually a twin beam
00:43:37aluminum frame and it was welds were the trick part like you were you love that because some of them
00:43:46were so beautiful yeah they were beautifully done and all the steering head was all welded up and then
00:43:52if you got really an exotic looking swing arm that had been built up out of parts you just thought
00:43:58man this is this is amazing this is the future rs 250 aprilia racer yeah very organic beautifully shaped
00:44:10mainframe and swing arm and they i my heart melted when i saw those things i just thought
00:44:18this is art but it's a laborious way yes to make
00:44:24something something to be sold at a price well sold at a price but also just to just to make it you
00:44:32know we're uh we're we've progressed to 3d printing and you can just make the design and it's laid
00:44:42one little molecule at a time essentially and you can just get a very complicated part with a relative
00:44:49ease i went to to uh my then editor uh david edwards and said uh one of the norton upstarts
00:44:59you know norton reborn mark 2 mark 3 mark 4 55 uh yeah um is having a big intro um
00:45:09and i'd like to go to it because they're going to show this engine that's supposedly designed by
00:45:16x formula one people why are they x were they fired were they incompetent um so i've installed on an
00:45:26airliner i go over and i see it and the part that i didn't realize was important was this motorcycle
00:45:32had a cast frame now no one would dare to cast an aluminum frame prior to
00:45:42the new casting methods that came into use around the year 2000 they found that the
00:45:53defects regarded as inherent to aluminum castings were not inherent at all they consisted of the layers
00:46:04of aluminum oxide that form on hot aluminum exposed to the air
00:46:08being incorporated in the casting break on dotted line failure guaranteed so what did they do for
00:46:20all those years let's call it the frosting in a cake right that's what it is it's the frosting in a
00:46:25cake the cake is homogeneous and what you'd like to do is cast a piece of cake that's you know for your
00:46:31wedding and it's 18 inches tall but you can't do that you can't bake it they figured out how to bake
00:46:37you know theoretically here but um bake the metal without putting accidentally putting in
00:46:44entrainments as kevin's talking the entrainment of these oxide films and uh in many cases the new
00:46:52molding method was to fill from the bottom and to fill gradually so that it would push the films that
00:47:00were not desired on top of the metal and then push them out the sprues at the top heated molds
00:47:08yes all these things all these details this is what our society is based upon all these details
00:47:17so uh in this way they were able they were this new method of casting made a cast frame possible
00:47:27and i first saw it yeah kevin was talking about the norton nemesis i'm virtually certain yes that's
00:47:34correct and i went over to see i went over to see that crazy guy that was pushing the project yes
00:47:42melling and i asked him a couple of questions about a v10 formula one engine and when uh let's say the
00:47:52answers were unsatisfying i concluded that um he wasn't the source that i might have imagined him to be
00:48:04but he was he was quite a jolly character anyway 1500 cc v8 purportedly 260 horsepower and then um
00:48:15there is a that prototype still exists and there's also a four there's a four also
00:48:22with two with three spark plugs per cylinder oh well which sounds like bad combustion to me
00:48:31it does yeah but uh there was because this these new casting methods originated in england
00:48:40at one of the universities and it's not bad to have a few universities about you
00:48:46we may need this clever ideas that come from such places anyway um the cast frame is now uh a standard
00:48:58in the industry it saves weight it saves labor it saves money it enables just as uh the super cub
00:49:07of 1958 enabled more people to have transportation so uh price control on modern motorcycles
00:49:18makes them available to more people who want them
00:49:21so i think it's marvelous that a model a concept which worked in 1958 continues to work
00:49:33and it has not become a 400 pound complexity it's still simple to use and uh this i'm i'm pleased with
00:49:46this because something that works continue to work what sold it was the fact that it did the job
00:49:55not that it had the latest gadgets on it but that it provided reliable transportation that almost
00:50:02anyone could use anyone could use and of course it made honda into a worldwide uh corporation because
00:50:12the um super cub has been produced in many nations
00:50:16wonderful and it was a blueprint for well let's say it it set fire to the american motorcycle market
00:50:27because it exposed so many people to the pure fundamental joy of moving on two wheels it's
00:50:32affordable it was cute it's approachable easy to ride and once a 50 wasn't enough there were many
00:50:39other options and honda was there were honda was there to uh build that stepping stone you know peter
00:50:45egan talks about like well he had there was the 50 but then he had a cb 160 a 400 a 450 500 or 550
00:50:53and he just goes up the chain of all the hondas that he owned over the years starting with you know a 50
00:50:59and it was the big leap yeah it was a it was a blueprint as they expanded to the trail 90
00:51:05s90 was you know a similar type of lay down engine trail and a love a lovely little motorcycle s90 was
00:51:14yeah trail 90 was remarkable i bought one i bought a 69 it still had the leading link uh front end
00:51:21friend of mine bill i don't remember what year his was i think it was overhead cam
00:51:27but we rode uh we rode those probably 10 years ago now 15 we did about 110 mile off-road loop
00:51:37on our trail 90s yeah this and barely barely used any fuel doing it you know peter egan peter egan
00:51:47bought a used he bought it in 1977 a honda cub super cub and pitched a story to cycle world
00:51:57where he was going to ride the honda 50 and his friend john okey was going to ride his
00:52:03you know fancy italian racing motorcycle or racing bicycle just literal 10 speed
00:52:08and they were going to ride to pike's peak in niowa or wherever the heck it was but um
00:52:14and they were going to see which is more economical and peter egan on that 50 went 303 miles and used
00:52:23the math worked out to 168 miles per gallon
00:52:27i think john okey's comment was like you can't you can't make a motorcycle gas tank leak that slowly
00:52:36yes it is it's incredible and it's the blueprint continues you know we have the 125s now the trail 125
00:52:46and and uh honda groms navvies you know thinking about fun transportation approachability size economy
00:52:56they just run and run they're just quiet as can be and you still shift the trail 125 the same
00:53:02same way you did a honda super cub and they're great yeah i think my i think my uh son who's now 12
00:53:11over the years has probably put a few hundred miles on trail 125s just going up and down the street
00:53:18well uh of course a number of the people who were engineers on the uh super cub went on to other
00:53:33uh things just just as mr harada went on to cb 450 and cb uh 750 i'm particularly interested in the leap
00:53:44from 450 to 750 because that was another uh gamble
00:53:49would uh the american market accept a large displacement motorcycle sales of the 450 were
00:54:01not forest fire proportions people weren't sure quite what it was i saw a few of them
00:54:11but not many but cb 750 was a barnstormer it uh it was highly successful and all of these designs were
00:54:24pretty workaday so mr harada um and ably assisted by mr hoshino the engine guy were applying
00:54:36what was being learned all the while at honda's research institute and it like the production system
00:54:45was equipped with the latest goodies
00:54:50uh they established a an emissions research group early on with 10 people in it
00:55:01and they looked at all aspects of combustion just as they had done in trying to develop
00:55:09uh the super cub well cbcc certainly came out of that it sure did and they were able to go along
00:55:18without using cats a lot longer than other manufacturers
00:55:21well uh the thing that was so remarkable about it was that when it went on the market it met
00:55:29the standards and it was not coming from the wellspring of automotive innovation detroit
00:55:39it was not coming from germany or italy came from japan and that is because
00:55:47they studied the matter early and they realized that there were ways that they could complete combustion
00:55:57uh they could make combustion far more complete in the combustion chamber by using certain techniques
00:56:07um rather than burning it yes in the tailpipe rather yes having to carry out the trash and burn it separately
00:56:17so and of course um when they put catalytic mufflers on the final two strokes in the mid 80s
00:56:29one of the complaints was that oh yeah the rz was notorious the heat
00:56:35from the combustion that was taking place because it's 30 percent of the fuel being burned was being burned
00:56:42in the muffler so uh they just stole a march on the others because of this and by the others i don't mean
00:56:54japanese competition i mean detroit and a cvcc v8 was supposedly constructed for evaluation and
00:57:04the american side that said we better do this ourselves our own way here because
00:57:11you know we we this is a solution but we don't know how how to get to it so uh
00:57:22mr honda failing to make acceptable piston rings realized he had to get real physical insight
00:57:33actual information he went to a metallurgist the metallurgist showed him how to correct his mistakes
00:57:41that never left him well that's an interesting i mean when you said that initially i mean i heard it
00:57:48before but when you said initially you know mr honda was originally getting into piston rings
00:57:54you think well that's actually a pretty good place to start because so many details matter so much
00:58:01sure do it's not you know this is not like rough casting a frame or stamps you know sheet metal stamp
00:58:08frames or something this is big action in a little zone so it's yep it's good i'm like look what he got
00:58:17out of it what he made out of it let's say progressive attitude he got out of it progressive attitude and
00:58:25um the cub you know it continues to pay the bills and it pays dividends to people bringing that ability
00:58:34that ability for transportation and joy affordability ease of use and we see it in all the all the many uh the
00:58:45many lineup from honda to this day um mr honda um actually came to this understanding that he would
00:58:55need to spend money on research uh a long time before um a presidential advisor that uh used to appear
00:59:10from time to time at the place where i was working in in newton massachusetts um gerald zacharias
00:59:18zacharias said at one point because we were in the education um business he said education is an industry
00:59:28like any other and it should be spending three to five percent on r&d
00:59:36and mr honda realized that you can't just design something and then mindlessly crank it out
00:59:45you have to have a research arm who's figuring out what to do next and how to do it and also
00:59:55is filled with people who know about the latest technologies and they can
00:59:59tug at your sleeve and say oh please mr leader will you read this report you may find it interesting
01:00:08and once again mr fujisawa and the engineers were able to prevail against mr honda's boneheaded insistence
01:00:21that he could engineer around the problem of making an air-cooled automobile the 1300 cc air-cooled
01:00:29was running into so much trouble that a busload of engineers went to see the old man and they said
01:00:37we don't want to lose our jobs we don't want to lose our jobs but you're destroying the company with
01:00:43this madness you must not produce this air-cooled idea and mr honda must have had his arm twisted
01:00:53to a satisfactory degree because what was put in the place of the 1300 air-cooled
01:01:00the cvc engine cvcc engine in in the uh in the new model and it showed the way
01:01:14and then came a chord in 1975 or 76 which was a small economical automobile
01:01:26with many options as standard so that it was an economical but luxurious automobile
01:01:34who had that idea nice because really really was because a volkswagen was not luxurious
01:01:44i've done a few miles in those things in the winter
01:01:47the one i was riding in the heater worked like gangbusters for the passenger but it blew cold air
01:01:55on me who was driving so succession of new concepts like this causes me to remember bell labs which
01:02:07employed something like 25 000 people at one time and the instructions to them were
01:02:12if you see some concept or technology or some possibility explore it we'll back you
01:02:22and a lot of the innovation that led to the transistor revolution came from bell labs
01:02:30but eventually it was decided by wiser men that
01:02:35it should be de-emphasized and it was so this is a valuable idea that in parallel with the production
01:02:48side with the design side that there should be a research side that is looking into the future and
01:02:57imagining what the possibilities may be and honda has always pursued that uh line of um operation
01:03:09well they laid the foundation with this technology from their racing operation
01:03:16and they got their 9 500 rpm and they looked at it from the perspective of
01:03:21how do we make a product to satisfy mass demand for getting around
01:03:27and it succeeded so successfully
01:03:32but they had to uh they no doubt learned so much about manufacturing by selling 600 of those
01:03:42in the first day at the tokyo dealership yep and selling so many around the world where you have
01:03:48to kick it up and you just have to figure out how to build more you know harley's problem in the 90s
01:03:54really the only problem well not the only problem the main problem that harley was trying to solve
01:03:59in you know 1995 and and over the next several years was volume how do we make more how do we build
01:04:07enough yeah how do we build enough they were they were always in short supply
01:04:12they had put their shoulders to the to the r&d wheel more in in marketing concept because by selling
01:04:22uh motorcycles that were factory customs they hit it exactly right with their clientele
01:04:31and that was the replacement for sportster in a sense was uh to understand that in addition to the
01:04:41touring side there has to be a place for uh younger and even many older men in self-expression
01:04:54through a motorcycle and it was tremendously successful
01:05:00so uh today we know that uh ducati are famous for their success in moto gp in and in the marvelous
01:05:11high performance motorcycles that they produce but their bread and butter is something
01:05:19uh closer to a normal vehicle less extreme more affordable
01:05:30and super cub has been that very thing for honda for so many years it has been
01:05:38their heritage income that never stops
01:05:43and has enabled in a way uh that the research arm which is now hrc can do the things that it does
01:05:55at the present moment japanese motorcycles in moto gp are at a low level honda filled the bottom
01:06:04for yamaha filled the bottom four places in austria just now last next to last etc
01:06:12like that was their home this is unacceptable but the fact is that moto gp has become a european
01:06:25series now and uh japan is of course looking at southeast asia as their next uh gold mine
01:06:36and it's hard to know what uh what's next what direction is correct but for sure super cub
01:06:48was the correct direction it was what a great bet what a remarkable bet and um world-changing process
01:06:56world-changing motorcycle for for honda certainly which expanded its influence and then it put
01:07:02well 100 100 million people on the road with a smile on their face
01:07:07or more more yes yeah well thanks for listening everybody that's uh that's it for this week
01:07:15we appreciate you listening you can uh we'll say it like comment and subscribe we love seeing the
01:07:23comments we will put something together i will uh comb the recent comments and we will maybe do a
01:07:29little either q a or we'll just we'll do a section of the next podcast on uh a discussion of what's
01:07:36happening in the audience and things they things they want to know we've had questions emailed in and
01:07:40also um you know all over youtube and stuff so we appreciate you listening and we'll catch you next time
Recommended
1:13:27
|
Up next
26:27
15:00
21:46
1:36
1:09:14
50:30
1:59:54
35:00
1:55:22
1:32:09
Be the first to comment