- 2 days ago
Honda made a big impression with its close-firing-order "big bang" NSR500 and became dominant in two-stroke 500cc Grand Prix racing through the 1990s, replacing the "screamer" engine. Other factories followed suit. But firing order on four-strokes also plays a huge role in how an engine works and how it relates to the rider and to traction. How? Join Cycle World Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor Mark Hoyer as they talk about Big Bang, Yamaha Crossplane, "Twingles," and the all-important "MORE"!
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NSR500 Engine Photo: Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Honda_NSR500_engine_front_Honda_Collection_Hall.jpg#file
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SportsTranscript
00:00:00It's the Cycle World Podcast. I'm Mark Hoyer, Editor-in-Chief. I'm with Kevin Cameron, our
00:00:05Technical Editor. This week, we're talking about, well, Big Bang Theory, or the bringing
00:00:14of Big Bang to two strokes at first, grouping the firing order together. That's kind of
00:00:20the topic here. Honda found that success with one Mick Doohan on the NSR 500. We'll talk
00:00:28about the grouping of the firing orders and all of that. There's also, in Dirt Track,
00:00:32there's a long history of the Twingle, which is taking a twin and grouping the
00:00:37firings close together. So there's a long period of not firings.
00:00:4445 degrees of between the two firing impulses instead of every other revolution.
00:00:52Yeah. And we'll even throw a little cross-plane four-cylinder, Yamaha
00:00:58action versus V4 in here. But since it's two-stroke Grand Prix racing, it won't be
00:01:041865. Go ahead, Kevin. Set us off. Light that fire.
00:01:15I like to emphasize that engineers do not just sit around tapping rhythmically with
00:01:22their pencil tips on the table, which is not stacked with books and notes and reports
00:01:28and broken parts. But it's, yes, instead...
00:01:33I have my pencil.
00:01:34Instead, they are driven to desperation by problems that constantly arise. And it is these problems
00:01:45which force people to try different things in an effort to solve problems. Now, originally,
00:01:57when Honda got back into Grand Prix racing, Freddie Spencer on the three-cylinder, the triple,
00:02:06in 1982, managed to win two races in his first season. Because the mic was small and light, and it
00:02:16did not
00:02:17abuse its tires. This was right at the very end of the bias ply tire era. So...
00:02:29But it was decided that they couldn't get much more than the 128 horsepower they had already got from
00:02:36the triple, and they needed to use all the cylinders the rules would get them for. So...
00:02:43They built NSR 500, which was a V4. As in the case of the triple, they wanted to minimize the
00:02:54number
00:02:55of main bearings. All that friction from rolling element bearings just building up. And so they made
00:03:04a single crankshaft V4. And what the engineering books say is that you should seek the greatest
00:03:18smoothness, the smoother the pulsing of torque from the engine, the less clutch mass you need, the
00:03:28narrower your gears can be, including the primary gears. And it's just a
00:03:34it's good practice. Unfortunately, there were other circumstances which intruded.
00:03:46We're lowering the shock load, right? That's what you're talking about.
00:03:49You're lowering the shock load.
00:03:51Each time the engine fires, the crankshaft accelerates. And then between firings, it slows down. And a lot of
00:03:59this is taken up by the clutch spring drive or shock absorber, which could be rubber elements or
00:04:05actual helical springs. Usually there's six of them. So...
00:04:11This was later to be called the screamer crankshaft because it fired every 90 degrees.
00:04:19And of course, four times 90 is 360, full revolution. And...
00:04:27The first year, 1984, they were trying out the idea, we'll put the gas underneath the engine and
00:04:34that'll make our bike really change direction very quickly. How do you know? Well, Elf is trying it in France,
00:04:42and they're our partners and actually made it worse because of things that we've discussed on this site
00:04:51previous, previously. But that wasted part of a year. Then Freddie was able to do the incredible and win
00:05:03the 250 and the 500. But Honda were having some trouble with acceleration. And if they tried to boost
00:05:16the torque, it didn't seem to boost the acceleration. And in 87, they reversed the engine rotation,
00:05:24which means that the gyro reaction when you roll the motorcycle right or left was partly canceled
00:05:35because the engine spinning backwards and the tires, the wheels spinning forward tended to produce opposite
00:05:43effects with some cancellation. Which is the practice now, right? All the MotoGP bikes have a
00:05:50reverse rotating engine. So it was a good idea.
00:05:54So, um, either that or we humans are just sheep. Sometimes it's hard to tell.
00:06:00Bah.
00:06:04So, another thing they changed was, um, Yamaha came up with their power valve system, which was
00:06:14eyelids at the top of each exhaust port, which could go up and down to soften the hit as the
00:06:22engine
00:06:23came on the pipe. When pipe resonance begins, um, you can have the torque can double in just a couple
00:06:31hundred revs. And if you're accelerating off a corner and this happens, you say, no, no, please,
00:06:38we don't want that. And Honda at first had their ATAC system. I won't decode that because I don't remember
00:06:46it, but it was a resonator connected to the header pipe by means of a small motorized valve,
00:06:54which could alter the resonant frequency of the pipes. It's a clever idea. It just didn't work as well
00:07:00as eyelids or gates. So in 87 Honda adopted gates. And then, uh, along comes, uh, 89 and Eddie Lawson
00:07:16is
00:07:17riding the Honda and Irv Kanemoto is his, uh, crew chief. And Eddie wanted heavier flywheels.
00:07:29The engineer said, Oh, maybe you would like to have, uh, the same as heavier flywheels, but electronic.
00:07:37No, I would like heavier flywheels. And, uh, the chassis seemed a bit flexible. So they doubled
00:07:47the side beams and he would like the engine move forward because the farther forward the engine is,
00:07:55the harder you can accelerate before the front end comes off the ground. Well, the engineers had been
00:08:03trained that it was best practice to keep steer effort to a minimum. And this is street bike stuff.
00:08:13So, uh, and he was pretty insistent eventually at mid season, which is when a lot of changes come
00:08:22about, they gave him the more forward engine. So it was really a year of theory versus practice. The
00:08:30engineers espousing, uh, theory and Eddie and Irv Kanemoto being, uh, experienced racers. So,
00:08:43uh, he managed to, uh, win the championship that year in 89, but in 88, the balance of power was
00:08:54about
00:08:54to be altered by the arrival of, um, Wayne Rainey and Wayne Rainey and the YZR 500 were, uh, uh,
00:09:08a good
00:09:09combination because as one Yamaha engineer put it, he could ride anything. And in a way, this was a
00:09:19disadvantage because if they gave him something that was terrible, he could go quite fast on it. And
00:09:26if they gave him something that was better, he could go quite fast on it. And, uh, Freddie had this
00:09:33problem as well, because these were riders who somehow just naturally melded with the, with the motorbike
00:09:44to get the best out of it. So here comes 1990 and it's going to be a clear contest between
00:09:52Rainey
00:09:53and McDoohan. Rainey on the Yamaha, Doohan on the Honda. And Doohan said they were missing something
00:10:03on the exit. They were pretty good on breaking and it was a year of seconds and a few thirds
00:10:13for the Honda. And this is not a situation that Honda management like. In fact, they dislike it. And so
00:10:24they're struggling away and the next year comes and, uh, performance was better, but they didn't change
00:10:37cylinders or pipes. They didn't come with new, new equipment all that often. And in the meantime,
00:10:45in the background, something promising came up. Now there have been quite a few, uh,
00:10:55250 two cylinder GP bikes that fire at 180 degrees, but occasionally as for example, in the case of
00:11:03Kawasaki's tandem, they timed them to fire simultaneously. And maybe it was a test rider. Maybe it was a test
00:11:15was a, somebody looking over the track data, but there seemed to be a connection between the firing
00:11:22order and the lap time. You can't ignore something like that. So a big program was instituted and I was
00:11:35told this was not like you're putting a crankshaft together on the press and you say, well, why don't
00:11:42we just turn this one piece to a different angle and then press it together? This was a
00:11:52fine increments of change looking for the peak effect. Now what had happened of course was that
00:12:01Yamaha had always fired their four cylinder engines, two cylinders together, then 180 degrees, then the other
00:12:08the other two and TZ 750 and the inline, uh, five hundreds. And so if there is a firing order
00:12:19effect,
00:12:20they benefited from a lower, uh, level of it. Honda found Honda engineers and test riders found
00:12:31a, a, a sweet spot at 67 or 68 degrees. So two cylinders fire, then 67 degrees later,
00:12:42the other two cylinders fire. And then there's 293 degrees of silence.
00:12:53And with this arrangement, they found a big improvement in corner exit grip and acceleration.
00:13:01Now I said to myself at the time, it's the same cylinders producing the same output. What's different?
00:13:10But of course I wasn't thinking about tires.
00:13:17And of course here, tires are a flexible material that is not 100% elastic.
00:13:27I used to marvel at the rubber backing on a pad of note paper. It was rubbery, but when I'd
00:13:34strip off
00:13:35a piece and stretch it and let go of it, it went,
00:13:39it recovered its shape slowly. All rubber does this to some extent.
00:13:47There's rubber that's more snappy like rubber bands. Ping. What was that? And there's this,
00:13:56this gummy sluggish rubber. Well, uh, when a tire rolls forward,
00:14:05it presses its tread against the pavement texture.
00:14:12As the pressure increases, as the tire rolls on, as the weight comes onto this particular element of
00:14:19footprint, the, at first the, uh, rubber is supported by the, by the peaks.
00:14:27Or sort of droops. Or asperides. Asperides.
00:14:31We could call them asperides. And, uh, it, it sort of droops in between. And as more pressure
00:14:39is applied, as the tire rolls forward and greater load comes on our little bit,
00:14:44the rubber is pressed down into the texture more and more so that the area of true contact increases
00:14:56steadily. And, um, this takes time because the rubber has internal friction that makes it sluggish in,
00:15:12uh, expressing its elasticity. Like the backing from that notepad. That was sixth grade. And I sat there
00:15:21doing that. And we had spelling. Spelling. Spelling. Anyway, um,
00:15:33what went on with this big bang firing order is that with the 90 degree crankshaft,
00:15:40the interval between loadings on a given piece of, uh, rubber from the yanking of the chain
00:15:52was, uh, small. So if you're coming off the corner and you've got the tire spinning the regulation
00:16:0210% or whatever the, the engineering textbooks suggest, um, you're not getting full contact and
00:16:12you're not getting the full effect of the rubber grip. Here's the bottom line. Static friction.
00:16:20The, the crate has just been forklifted off the truck and there it sits. We want to set up the
00:16:27new
00:16:27bike. Let's get it in the shop. You push on the crate and it's like,
00:16:32pushing on the rock of Gibraltar. So you get a couple of guys and you throw your backs into it
00:16:39and it moves. Come on guys. And you get it moving. And once it's moving,
00:16:47it may only take one or two guys to keep it moving.
00:16:50No, I did it with my mill in the garage, Kevin, 2000 pounds of 54 inch index machine mill made
00:16:56in
00:16:56Michigan, I think. And, uh, got it off the truck and it's on the fairly smooth concrete in my garage.
00:17:02And I'm, I'm trying to push the rock of Gibraltar, not moving. Uh, I got the big
00:17:08heavy duty football looking dude from next door came over and, uh, once he got it going, it was like
00:17:14a walk in the park. I mean, that guy got it off the line and I, I, we pushed it
00:17:19and it was like,
00:17:20do, do, do, do. But yeah, get it, get it going. Once it was going and we, luckily we just
00:17:24got it
00:17:25right where it needed to be. Yep. So if, if a rubber tire is pressed into the pavement and has
00:17:36a bit of time, it deforms into much more intimate and larger area of contact with that pavement.
00:17:45But if it's just, uh, passing through, uh, rolling and especially if it's sliding a little bit,
00:17:53it's much harder for it to press down into the texture and establish that larger surface area
00:18:01and the molecular attraction, which does exist between rubber chemistry and the chemistry of
00:18:08the track surface. So what was accomplished by providing that long dead period between
00:18:19this cluster of cylinder firings was that the rubber could kind of go, Oh, that feels better.
00:18:26I'm, I'm, I'm going to suck a settle in here a little bit. And, uh, it was able to get
00:18:33back to
00:18:34something more like static friction and for the sliding frictions to die away.
00:18:44And well, that's a very good story. I have no proof other than the lap times because in 92
00:18:54doing one, the first four GPs and he won five out of the first seven, then he had his accident
00:19:03and he was
00:19:04out. Now, the first word of this invention to get out seems to be a mysterious person who phoned
00:19:17someone, maybe this was Malaysia. Maybe there's an office somewhere in the windows open. It's warm in
00:19:24Malaysia. And the connection is established and immediately the caller hears this strange sound.
00:19:32Is this road racing or is this 500 motocross? Because what he heard was a deep grunty sound
00:19:43instead of the shriek he expected. And that was, that was the first, uh, outside news of this
00:19:54phenomenon. And of course, as soon as the GPs began, it was clear that Honda had this tremendous
00:20:00advantage and, uh, he was injured, uh, mid mid season. And the next, and, uh, when the next season
00:20:12began, uh, rainy was badly hurt and, uh, which was a career ending thing. And, uh, Kevin Schwartz on the
00:20:28Suzuki, which had pretty strong acceleration and line holding capability by that time, he became champion.
00:20:38But then came the next year, McDoon restored on the big bang Honda. And it was a reign of five
00:20:49uninterrupted sequential world championships for him.
00:20:54Um, and of course, which you could argue that is very good racing. Yeah, sure.
00:21:04Um, from whose perspective? Yeah.
00:21:07By the ninth race, um, Yamaha were ready with a quickie. They clustered their two fire simultaneous
00:21:16firings, 90 degrees apart. Um, but the effect was there help, helpful effect and doing one,
00:21:27five championships in a row.
00:21:30Well, when Yamaha brought their, um, quickie to the first race, I think two of four bikes broke
00:21:40their primary gears. Hmm. And, uh, there was probably clutch slip.
00:21:48And it could be that, uh, gears in the gearbox were showing signs of nibbling little teeth,
00:21:58tooth, uh, pitch line pitting. So there were a lot of changes that had to go on with,
00:22:07to support this invention. And on the bikes that, um, adopted this firing order production bikes,
00:22:16uh, these changes had to be made. The R1 also needed a balance shaft, of course.
00:22:22And it became part of our, uh, our culture to say big bang when talking about close firing order.
00:22:33But there are other effects on traction or on the rider's perception that are equally interesting.
00:22:43There came a time, um, when, um, Yamaha's, which in the four stroke era, beginning in 2002,
00:22:54were running inline fours, transverse mounted inline fours, like the classic Jalera.
00:23:01And Honda were running V4s. And the V4s seem to be able to accelerate a bit harder
00:23:13than the inlines. And for a time they simply were, well, it's a new series. We're racing four
00:23:22strokes instead of two strokes. It'll take us a while to learn the ropes. But then it sort of became
00:23:27clear. Hmm. We have a, we have a problem, Houston. So whom do they put on this problem? But their
00:23:40master of noise, vibration and harshness, Masao Furusawa. He had previously, um, smoothed out
00:23:54the RD 400. And he had also caused the snowmobile division to sell more sleds by putting a rational
00:24:06front end on the Yamaha sleds. So he was put in charge of the team.
00:24:16If you have ever turned a four cylinder inline with a flat crankshaft, that is one that has two
00:24:23pistons up and two pistons down, um, you will notice that it's very easy to turn it near top
00:24:31and bottom center, but harder to turn in between because twice per revolution, all the pistons stop
00:24:41completely. And must be reaccelerated on a racing engine. That means that a mass of
00:24:49a pound or two is having to be brought to a stop and then reaccelerated to a hundred miles an
00:24:57hour,
00:24:58more or less. What does that do down the line? It's transmitted through the gearbox and the chain,
00:25:07um, fairly undiminished to the rear tire. And Mr. Furusawa said, I don't know which it is.
00:25:18Does that, uh, variation in torque as the pistons must be started and stopped interfere with tire
00:25:27traction? Or does it interfere with the rider's ability to detect the maximum with the throttle?
00:25:36He was being, um, formally correct in not claiming to know what he didn't know, which was it,
00:25:47but it brought them parity with the V4s. Uh, Valentino Rossi was able with a lot of modifications and
00:25:58desperate changes to, uh, win the 2004, uh, world championship in MotoGP.
00:26:08So, um, a few years later, they switched the production R1 to this firing order. And that's why they have
00:26:17that
00:26:18fascinating rhythm, that V8 sound that they make. And I think that is good, is reason enough for a
00:26:29manufacturer to adopt, uh, cross plane. That's what a Yamaha called it, cross plane crankshaft,
00:26:36because it takes away the monotonous, even firing drone of the inline four with a flat crank and replaces
00:26:46it with a much more interesting syncopated sound. Now it can be argued that, and, and Phil Irving,
00:26:58who was always on the scene at Vincent, Phil Irving speculated about a 270 degree phasing for twins
00:27:11that this might produce a useful effect. The effect is useful, but what it turned out to be for our
00:27:20industry, our industry, industry for motorcycling, what turned out was it gave it a fascinating
00:27:29Ducati-like sound instead of a droning 1965 Triumph sound.
00:27:35Yeah, euphony, euphonious, euphonious.
00:27:38Yes, it was euphonious.
00:27:42So, uh.
00:27:43Yeah, people seem to like it. They're all 270s now.
00:27:45Yes.
00:27:47Can't find it. Triumph, Triumph introduced, reintroduced the Triumph Bonneville in 01.
00:27:53And what did they do? They put a 360 crank on it, because they just had to.
00:27:57Yeah.
00:27:58And then they threw a 270 at it, and everybody liked the 270, and they don't do a 360 anymore.
00:28:03No.
00:28:04And you name it, all the other parallel twins out there, everybody's running the 270. And
00:28:08even the old XS650 guys, it's harder to do a 270. I think you can easily re-phase the crank.
00:28:16I mean,
00:28:17relatively easily re-phase an XS650 crank to 277, and a lot of folks do that. Of course,
00:28:22you've got to change your camshafts and all that.
00:28:26But we humans do a lot to be different. Not necessarily with any benefit other than
00:28:35sort of an inward pleasure. And there's much to recommend that. So this is another case of
00:28:46does the production R1 have a cross-plane crankshaft because it sounds good? I think it sounds good.
00:28:54Or because there are so many riders who are saying, all those guys on V4s are getting away
00:29:00from me off the corners. You could answer this yourself. So this kind of thing
00:29:13is marvelous because it shows that there is an overlap between sort of abstract human preferences. I just
00:29:24like it. I just like it. That's all. I don't know. I don't have to know why. And some solid
00:29:31engineering reason. Click went to stopwatch. Much better, said the engineer. So
00:29:41we could have studied all this with putting playing cards in the spokes of our bicycles,
00:29:46I suppose. But what it took was that tedious narrative that I gave you before we got to
00:29:53the heart of the matter, static versus sliding friction. They had to build up a tremendous need
00:30:01to improve their off-corner acceleration so that they would actually throw resources behind it
00:30:09and come up with something. And they came up with what was a surprise to the road race people.
00:30:16But on dirt track, everybody knew about it all along because of this twingle effect.
00:30:22And twingles, aren't they banned currently?
00:30:27That I don't know. The rule book just came out for AFT this year.
00:30:30Yeah. I haven't read it yet.
00:30:34So, of course, the people making rules are always giving the wrong reasons for making them.
00:30:40They're going to save teams all this money, but they haven't done anything about
00:30:47the major costs, which are transportation and personnel, hotel, and all the rest of it.
00:30:57Well, we are cost centers when you get down to it, Kevin. People are just cost centers. That's it.
00:31:06It's just one of those things that... Oh, and at one point, I asked Robin Tolui,
00:31:13who built the... What was that snowmobile engine-powered thing?
00:31:19Oh, the Tularis.
00:31:20Yes, I almost said Tularemia, but that's wrong. Rabbits catch that.
00:31:26It was a remarkable, very lightweight, very fast accelerator and two-stroke motorcycle.
00:31:34And I asked Robin, who went... He spent years and years in Formula One and finally
00:31:43set up on his own somewhere, saying that he'd lost interest.
00:31:50But if anyone could, it would be him, because he can light up any discussion with
00:31:59his mathematical understanding of physical phenomena. And I said, why hasn't this effect
00:32:08occurred in Formula One? Because, he said, they're shaft drive. Those shafts have a lot of torsional
00:32:14give in them. They couldn't transmit those sharp torque pulses. Thank you.
00:32:22That was a conversation that took place in front of the flat nose of some great big transport truck
00:32:30in the Valencia paddock. Oh, there's Rob Tolui. I'll go waste his time. Anyway,
00:32:40this kind of thing shows that the more closely you look, or the closer the competition,
00:32:48the more abstruse may be the differences that you discover and the potentialities of benefit.
00:33:01So, motorcycles have gotten pretty good, but people have been saying that they have gone beyond
00:33:09human capability since the 1920s. I don't remember what the lap record at the Isle of Man was in, say,
00:33:211925,
00:33:22but now it's over 130 miles an hour. And I think in the early days, it was like 47 miles
00:33:28an hour.
00:33:31Yes. Well, it's a big shift. I'd say new Ducatis, new M1000RR, BMWs are definitely a new era for
00:33:42street legal performance. Just mind-blowingly capable, fast, traction control, you name it. And the tires,
00:33:53of course, have come along with it. So when you get a slick tire, especially, but man, it is
00:33:59you have to respect all of those guys, your McDoins, uh, Mark Marquez's, Valentino Rossi's,
00:34:07the guys who especially make it look so effortless, but you know, your Max Biagi, uh,
00:34:13he was instrumented with a heart rate monitor and Max was over 200
00:34:18beats per minute from his heart rate during a race. Now he was like a cute little rabbit.
00:34:23He was, he was a more keyed up kind of, if you've ever met Max Biagi during his racing years,
00:34:30he was a more tense person than say your Valentino Rossi and Rossi was more like 180. As I recall,
00:34:36there was a, a German, I think he would. And Eddie Lawson also was, was it was 180 was attributed
00:34:43to
00:34:44him. Yeah. And so you have maybe there's, you know, the psychology at work there where you're not,
00:34:51I don't know the, it's not a Max Biagi has to be intellectual. I was going to say, well, it's
00:34:57the intellect at work and the intellect being able to understand and process all that information.
00:35:01But obviously Max had that capability as well. He just had a different angle coming at it, but, uh,
00:35:07that's, um, high speed can be really terrifying. And then this, this is not a Max question, but it's
00:35:14putting someone who's not experienced on a motorcycle versus someone who is and barreling
00:35:20toward a corner knowing, oh yeah, the bike's going to stop. I, this is my brake marker. I know I
00:35:26can
00:35:27stop the bike here and have reserve versus not knowing that. And most people, like if you get
00:35:31into a high performance car and you go hauling ass toward a stop sign and you say, you tell me
00:35:38the
00:35:38latest that you think I can stop the vehicle before we get to that stop sign and they will tell
00:35:45you and
00:35:45you will stop many, many, many feet before the stop sign. Cause if they're not, if they've never
00:35:52trained on that anyway, heart rates, interesting staying intellectual, being able to pilot the
00:35:58motorcycle at high speed. We hear a lot about, um, even today about wanting to
00:36:06tear out the electronics and that it is unfair and contrary to the spirit of motorcycling for the
00:36:16rider to be assisted by electronic rider aids. And I, I would suggest that those skeptics should
00:36:29buy or otherwise acquire one of these rider aids loaded ultra fast motorcycles and see if they can get
00:36:41around loud and on it faster than the local madman on his 800 twin.
00:36:51Because the guy on the 800 twin knows his bike. Well, he knows how to ride it.
00:37:00He's good at it. And, uh, let's buy it and try it guy. The pay as you go,
00:37:06thrill seeker is going to be horribly disappointed because
00:37:13the local madman is just going to pass you in every corner and then you can
00:37:19go blaring past him down the next straightaway only to confront
00:37:26panic at the next corner. And here he comes passing again.
00:37:34So I, I don't buy it. I think that, uh, carrier pilots need that beam so that they,
00:37:43and they need auto throttle and all the other things that they've been given to increase their chance
00:37:50of a being above the deck when they hit it and task saturation.
00:37:58Yes. Picking up the third wire and that's all they want. They want it to be, uh,
00:38:07safer for the pilot and turn something that is at its worth hideously dangerous into something that
00:38:17most gifted pilots, um, who've graduated from Navy, uh, pilot training can do successfully.
00:38:27And of course the chances are that the assist that these people
00:38:35receive in aviation is essential to the basic performance.
00:38:40For example, uh, stability control. It's been described to me as modern fighters are like an arrow
00:38:51that's flying backwards. If you cause a yaw or a pitch motion, they will immediately start to flip
00:39:01in whatever direction at a fantastic speed. That's what you want for the best maneuverability,
00:39:10but a human isn't fast enough to manage it. So there's auto stability built into those aircraft
00:39:18to keep them, to keep the tail feathers of the arrow pointed first.
00:39:24I was talking to a friend of mine who's a warbird pilot and a studier of aircraft. He works in,
00:39:31in the aircraft, restoring aircraft and OV-10 Broncos and B-25s and, uh, his brother's an engineer
00:39:41at Boeing. And we were talking about those systems and the capabilities that we don't see of modern
00:39:48aircraft that the fighters, they don't demonstrate at air shows. They give you a little taste of the
00:39:54full capabilities, but they don't tell you what the full capabilities are. And it's,
00:39:59you know, the rumors are how mind bending the planes, you know, the agility and the things that
00:40:04they can push the plane around and do in the sky as they were damaged. Like, you know, in, in
00:40:10the
00:40:10latest, uh, Top Gun Maverick movie, there was that period where, you know, Mav steals the old fighter
00:40:17from the base from the country of no name and manages to get it off the ground. And, and then
00:40:24he's having a dog fight with this, you know, latest generation foreign fighter. And it does something
00:40:32crazy on the screen where it does this big rotation and it starts going the other direction. You watch
00:40:37the planes, even at the air show, you watch them fly backward. And we were like, well, you know,
00:40:42what's, what's keeping us from just autonomous flight, like just programming something and going
00:40:46it off. And it was nice to have this engineer and the brothers say like, because the human element
00:40:51is the creative element in all of those systems. And that's true on a motor GP bike, that the rider
00:40:58is the creative element and they're using that tool and they're getting a feeling from the tool. And
00:41:02those, you know, the human psychology and the talent and the muscle memory is evolving
00:41:08with the complementary equipment and those things together are moving forward. And we're getting
00:41:15what we get now, which is incredible lap times and G loading that mere mortals can't stand and couldn't.
00:41:24I mean, yeah. Wayne, Wayne Rainey described, uh, one of his rides against doing in that formative
00:41:32period before the, the big bang saying that, uh, at first I thought he was getting away from me.
00:41:43And then I saw that I wasn't falling back anymore. And I studied to see what was causing it. He
00:41:52was,
00:41:53pushing the front. So I decided to show him my front wheel, uh, regularly.
00:42:02Because a I could, and because B it might increase his push as well. And that's how it turned out.
00:42:15Um, you have to factor in your understanding of the other person against whom you're competing.
00:42:22What is this person? What does this person usually do under these circumstances?
00:42:27Does he, is he known for bad surprises or is he sort of dull as flat and devising where on
00:42:39the racetrack
00:42:39to make a pass attempt, considering a great number of variables and this, this kind of thing,
00:42:48uh, simply doesn't appear in, um, what would I call it?
00:42:57Popular video and the, the, the voiceovers of the announcers who might think of as professional blokes
00:43:09because they have to sound like they're in a pub. They're all having a good time and they're saying
00:43:17the expected thing. I bought a year, you know, one of those GP season or MotoGP season summaries. And
00:43:27I just, I just put it away because the commentary was just, I like to see the bikes though.
00:43:36Yeah. Well, you know, there's that NASCAR joke about he loves, loves to win and hates to lose.
00:43:43So it's all our motivation. We just love winning and hate losing. So we're going to go out there and
00:43:48just be more brave or more clever. Yeah. I think, well, of course it's more clever. The,
00:43:56the supernatural observation powers of, and the memory of world-class racers is, is profound. You
00:44:04know, like I go out and I race vintage bikes and I feel proud of sort of attacking the track,
00:44:09learning
00:44:09the track and racing the track so that I can operate the bike at a margin, feel safe and get
00:44:17a lap time.
00:44:18And I can see that I'm competitive without racing against anyone in qualifying or practice that you
00:44:23just go out and ride the track until you have a time that you say, okay, now I'm, that's a
00:44:29race winning
00:44:29lap. That's a race winning lap time where it's a mo it's, you know, okay, I have this, but then
00:44:36when you race, everybody's rushing to the same point, like we're all rushing to the same point.
00:44:41We're clumped together. It's not practice. And then you have to start figuring out what the other
00:44:46bikes on the track are like, and what are they doing? And, you know, we're both seven fifties,
00:44:51but obviously that bike makes more power. But I think I can go faster through corners than that bike.
00:44:59And then you have one corner in particular, which might be a place to make your pass.
00:45:04Yeah. So it's, I was thinking of the BMW versus the XR, uh, TT, the seven 50, the team obsolete
00:45:12seven 50 written by a great rider, but a big heavy bike. And I was on a light bike. And
00:45:19if I went
00:45:21in, so then barber, there's two left, right combos, you know, that are blind over a crest kind of a
00:45:26thing. And the BMW was great because the rotation of the crank helped it roll right for the exit. So
00:45:32it
00:45:33was very easy. And I made a, I made a mistake for four, maybe four consecutive laps of going into
00:45:41the
00:45:41chicane at the same speed as the XR and getting out accelerated. And I couldn't pass them by the
00:45:50next braking zone or even on the brakes. So I had to fall back and use the timing to get,
00:45:58get past. And that's a, you know, that's my level. And I think about what, what Wayne Wayne
00:46:04Rainey is observing. Oh, he's pushing the front. And then he's just like, poke, poke, he's just
00:46:09sticking it in, poking in just here and there. Like, oh yeah, I'll just put it there. So he knows
00:46:16and, and you're going against world-class, you know, intellects and physical beings. It's great.
00:46:24That's why we love racing. Yeah. And of course you're using, uh, the same process that they use.
00:46:31You haven't developed it, uh, to the level that they have, but it's just like racing an RD back in
00:46:40the day.
00:46:40You could have that experience of, of sliding the front tire on occasion that you've seen in those
00:46:49videos or at the races and, um, all for, uh, 500 bucks, no team transporter, no mechanics to pay,
00:47:00uh, no PR people tugging at your sleeve, 500 bucks and you're sliding.
00:47:08Yeah. Whenever I talk about racing or racing advice, my caveat is always, you know, my,
00:47:14like my most recent experience, I can give someone racing advice and I will say, well,
00:47:21you know, keeping in mind that my level of talent and experience could win a bears race in ARMA.
00:47:28So that's what you're, that's what, that's what you're getting is I have this much. And you know,
00:47:37actually Nick, I Natch used to say that because Nick, Nick finished second in the 250 Grand Prix
00:47:42championship. And so that's what he would say. He would say like, he would, he's running the school,
00:47:48right? He's giving people advice and he's talking to racers and he would, he would just caveat that and
00:47:53say like my advice at, at the most can get you the second place in 250 Grand Prix championship,
00:48:02national championship. That's where the message is coming from. And that's what you, you know,
00:48:05I mean, we're all, we're all variable, but I think observation, watching other riders,
00:48:11knowing the feelings of the bike, knowing I was thinking about traction, spinning versus moderate hookup and
00:48:19drive and those experiences on slick dirt roads, on dirt bikes, flat, flat corners, but also on street
00:48:28bikes where a moderate amount of slip and you have drive, but when it actually lets go, it's almost
00:48:37like going backwards. The, the, the, the decline in acceleration is huge when it starts to really
00:48:47spin and you're not getting drive. It's a very interesting feeling. And I think that feeling
00:48:52is what you were talking about, about the tire being able to deform. And once it's really spinning,
00:48:58it's just, it's on the, it's on the asperity. It's like a bunch of pencil points, right? All lined up
00:49:04and it's just going. So one riders contribute different things. Um, one of the things that, uh,
00:49:15Valentino Rossi was famous for was springing surprises on people. He made impossible looking
00:49:22passes that just caused people to gasp and then shout with delight. Um, but on the motorcycle,
00:49:31he didn't look all that different from Mike Hale would, but along comes, uh, Mark Marquez.
00:49:39And once he got the feel of those, um, um, Bridgestone slicks, he had was moving his whole torso,
00:49:51not just swinging his butt to the inside of the turn, moving his whole torso inward so that his outside
00:50:00arm was stretched tight across the tank. And his inside arm needed an elbow protector,
00:50:08because the track was right there. And he had fabulous tire management understanding.
00:50:23And not only that, he could do things that most people would never even attempt. And I don't know
00:50:32whether I should call it uncrashing, but that's what it looks like in the videos that he's down.
00:50:39And then he seems to give a mighty yank and it digs the front tire in and the bike
00:50:45flops back up onto its wheels, gives a mighty shake.
00:50:50And off he goes, of course, you lose time doing that. So preferably if you're going to do it in
00:50:59practice,
00:51:00but he had found that occasionally he could uncrash. So, um,
00:51:09I don't think that any rider has mystic ability, but it may take time to discover what it is that
00:51:16they're doing.
00:51:17And in many circumstances, like for instance, Kenny Roberts,
00:51:22discovering that on pavement, you could do the same things that he had learned to do on dirt.
00:51:29And understanding that a motorcycle is worth at cornering and best at accelerating because it's just two wheels
00:51:41and an engine and a place to sit. So, um, instead of trying to, huh? Oh, oh, I'm teetering.
00:51:49I'm teetering on the very edge of grow. I lost it. He was charging into a turning point.
00:51:58Getting the bike going slow enough that he could pretty much get it mostly turned there and then
00:52:03just accelerating, which the motorcycle does well to a higher exit speed than he would have had if
00:52:11he'd done the great circle route, which remember travels farther. And the British press was full of
00:52:21talk about how, oh, we all have to go dirt track racing now so we can be like Kenny.
00:52:27And riders have different things to contribute. Freddie Spencer learned to recover the front when it was gone.
00:52:43And wonderful stuff. He described, he said, there's two dirt tracks down there in Kentucky. He said, I used to
00:52:51kind of play with it
00:52:52because they were more shaped like a football than they were like a, like the Indianapolis 500.
00:52:59And he said, if, if the front started to go when I would normally have said, well, that's it. Um,
00:53:10hope I don't get hurt. He said, a whiff of throttle would reduce the load on the front often just
00:53:19enough that it gripped. And he went around the corner.
00:53:25And Irv Kanemoto told about seeing Randy Momoa watching this. And he said, I don't think he ever understood it.
00:53:33At least not then, but these are things that riders create by having a close, uh, symbiosis with the motorcycle
00:53:47and
00:53:50finding new ways to, uh, uh, often brought about by something new. Like for example, the, um,
00:54:02Bridgestone front tire. I asked two different riders. One was Mark Marquez when he would just come into MotoGP. And
00:54:11the other was, uh, super veteran, uh, Colin Edwards Jr.
00:54:16They both described that front tire in the same, practically in the same words, you can just keep loading it
00:54:23and loading it and it doesn't give up.
00:54:27Normally the curve relating, uh, the load on a tire to the grip it has goes up linearly at a
00:54:36slope and then it softens as the grip starts to fall behind the load and then it heads on over
00:54:44and decreases.
00:54:46What they were describing was, and the softening occurs after the rubber has been pushed into every pore of the
00:54:55pavement.
00:54:55And now it's like a Mooli grader. It is the tear resistance of the rubber that is providing the grip.
00:55:06But when the tear resistance is fairly low, it just shaves rubber off the tire and you lose front, you
00:55:15lose the front and you're down inspecting the pebbles.
00:55:21And so, uh, this, uh, the, the, the Bridgestones were part of the silica revolution.
00:55:33And I suspect that if we could see that curve for a Bridgestone, that it just kept on, up on
00:55:39the upward slope to a higher level.
00:55:44Uh, Michelin for whatever reason, we don't have access to their thinking on this point.
00:55:50But more often than not, Michelins have excellent rear tires and so-so fronts.
00:55:59And with Bridgestone, it was the other way around.
00:56:01They had mysteriously wonderful front tires and, uh, you know, rear tires.
00:56:08It's, it's back there.
00:56:11Yeah, I was once at, I was once at dinner with, uh, Cal Carruthers.
00:56:14It was at Paul's house, Paul Carruthers, his son, who was my boss at Cycle News.
00:56:20Uh, we had a barbecue and Jim Allen was over.
00:56:24Jim Allen was the, uh, the American racing Dunlop guy.
00:56:27So he was the guy who went to all the MA nationals and the famous story.
00:56:32I was, I just happened to be there, but Nicky Hayden got his first qualifying tires.
00:56:37It was at Laguna Seca.
00:56:39And I happened to be walking through the pit.
00:56:41They gave Nicky qualifiers.
00:56:44He went out, said a pretty good lap time, came back in and he was walking toward Jim Allen.
00:56:52And that you could see his face was like, you know, Nicky's face.
00:56:57And Jim's like, let me guess.
00:56:59By the time you figured out, so it was how good it was.
00:57:02It was gone.
00:57:03Yep.
00:57:04And he said, yeah.
00:57:06And those tires, those cues, man, you could just turn it open.
00:57:09You could just completely let it go.
00:57:12And the bike would drive.
00:57:14And he was, he was doing the right thing.
00:57:16He was feeding more and more.
00:57:18And then he was like, oh my.
00:57:19And then the tire, because they don't last long, they're qualifiers.
00:57:23They give all very quickly.
00:57:26It was just fascinating.
00:57:27And I've sent the riders as little as one lap.
00:57:30And they've replied, if that.
00:57:33Wow.
00:57:37All of this discussion reminds me of, you know, rider aids.
00:57:41We talked about rider aids.
00:57:43I've talked to a few riders who say, this is years old now, but they would work on the mechanical
00:57:51grip.
00:57:51They would ride the bike without a lot of TC or any TC.
00:57:56And they would work on making the bike work without that stuff and then adding in electronics, getting the mechanical
00:58:04grip.
00:58:05And it makes me think back to McDoin riding a screamer and then switching to Big Bang and getting better
00:58:13drive.
00:58:14You're allowing McDoin to have a better management of tire slip with his natural abilities.
00:58:27So then I think, well, what would McDoin have wanted?
00:58:31Probably to have TC on that 500.
00:58:36And then you might be getting into the virtual power band, as we've discussed, where now they're cranking up outputs
00:58:44to get this astronomical amount of power.
00:58:47And they're managing the fluttering of the butterflies to smooth the torque curve out somehow to make, you know, to
00:58:54make drive happen and to make the torque re-estab workable for the rider.
00:58:58So the natural, one type, one very common type of natural power curve has a dip in it.
00:59:05And the dip is caused by the interaction between waves in the exhaust pipe and the valve overlap.
00:59:14But there is also a point in RPM where that effect works against you.
00:59:19Instead of putting fresh charge into the cylinder, starting the intake stroke early with that before the piston has moved,
00:59:28it's pumping exhaust gas into the combustion chamber.
00:59:32That's the dip.
00:59:34And below that is where the curve would have been normal.
00:59:37So you get this shape.
00:59:39So what a virtual power band does is when you're accelerating out of a turn and you don't want to
00:59:46get caught in the dip or be surprised by the sudden moonshot from the bottom of the dip up to
00:59:54the peak torque,
00:59:56the butterflies are opening to fill in the dip and then they're closing to restore the torque to what you've
01:00:06asked for with your throttle angle so that it's as though the engine doesn't have that dip.
01:00:11It's as though it's been filled in, not with body filler, but with a butterfly movement.
01:00:18And obviously this can't work if you're on full throttle, but these bikes are on full throttle a very small
01:00:27percentage of the time.
01:00:29How are you going to imagine 300 horsepower in your street bike?
01:00:38Or because your street bike is heavier than a MotoGP bike, 500 horsepower.
01:00:44Are you going to manage it?
01:00:46Would you like to rip out the electronics?
01:00:48The classic example is the 1998 Yamaha YZF R1.
01:00:53It was lighter.
01:00:55It made 135 horse at the rear wheel, which was astronomical.
01:00:59Like the competing motorcycles were 129 was, I think, where the ZX9 was, 120, somewhere like that, 127, something like
01:01:10that.
01:01:10So it was like basically 10 more horsepower from the R1.
01:01:14It was significant, like way lighter than the ZX9.
01:01:18The equivalent Honda CBR 900 RR was making 118 at the rear wheel.
01:01:24So you have 135 horsepower, but the torque curve was like what you described, the two peaks.
01:01:31And let me tell you, wheelies everywhere because it just came in, wheel spin.
01:01:38I almost high-sided that motorcycle leaving my neighborhood riding to work because two things.
01:01:45A rapid torque spike and these tires I was using were DOT race tires.
01:01:52They were a Michelin.
01:01:53And man, when they were cold, they were like bowling balls.
01:01:57And I didn't do anything crazy.
01:02:00It was a dry morning.
01:02:01I just turned.
01:02:02I came out of the neighborhood.
01:02:03I dipped it left to get onto the four-lane, you know, big road with people going 65, 70 on
01:02:11it.
01:02:11And I just dipped it and I just rolled in to accelerate into traffic.
01:02:15Nothing crazy.
01:02:16And that thing went, slid to the lock.
01:02:18It had fixed foot pegs.
01:02:20And I'm wearing jeans because I'm riding to work.
01:02:22And the thing goes, click, click.
01:02:24And it whips me.
01:02:25And I did not crash.
01:02:26But that foot peg went into my leg.
01:02:29It went through my pants, ripped my pants, and then cut me because it was fixed and it had machined
01:02:35edges.
01:02:36They weren't full round with plugs in it.
01:02:38They were machined to look good.
01:02:40And that's why you put plugs in your handlebar ends or your clip-ons is you don't want to take
01:02:46a core sample out of your body with the clip-on in the worst-case scenario.
01:02:50A core sample.
01:02:51Wonderful.
01:02:51Yeah.
01:02:52But anyway, the 98R1 had that torque curve that you're talking about and it had no electronics.
01:02:57And it was certainly thrilling.
01:03:00But we've worked to smooth that out.
01:03:02You've remembered the experience.
01:03:04Yes.
01:03:05We want better.
01:03:06Yes, we do.
01:03:07We want better.
01:03:08And, boy, we could talk about crank.
01:03:10Crank mass, wheel mass, you know.
01:03:15And we will yet, but maybe not today.
01:03:17Not today.
01:03:18But dirt track, you know, looking at dirt track, dirt's just dirt.
01:03:22Doesn't change that much.
01:03:23It's just dirt.
01:03:24That's all we've got to race on.
01:03:25Lap time isn't all that much better than it was in 1911.
01:03:30So it's fascinating the way that we try to manage that traction and learning to do that, as you have
01:03:38said, with your Kenny Robertses.
01:03:39And Freddie Spencer's and Valentino Rossi's ranch, man.
01:03:44There's flat tracking all over.
01:03:46They have road courses and dirt.
01:03:47And those guys go there and they practice all the time.
01:03:51There goes the front.
01:03:52And it's, you know.
01:03:53Well, I remember the words of Cook Nelson when he had his first interview with Kenny, which was years ago,
01:04:01the 70s.
01:04:02He said, well, I went to this thing and I'm thinking, I'm going to go see some quick-risk kid
01:04:11who just gets out there and skids her around.
01:04:14But he said, what I found was an intellectual of motorcycle racing.
01:04:19He talked about what he does on the motorcycle and he explained why it worked.
01:04:28Now, this brings up a fundamental point about motorcycling, and that is that at its best, it is a high
01:04:38-speed intelligence test.
01:04:40How fast can you recover data?
01:04:43How can you establish a parallel between this situation and something that you've handled?
01:04:49How are you going to combine the agility of your mind with the capability of the machine?
01:05:01Pretty attractive.
01:05:03It is.
01:05:03It's terribly attractive.
01:05:04And it's not just a quick-risk kid getting out there and skidding her around, although there are plenty of
01:05:10those.
01:05:16Yes, I've heard the stories.
01:05:18These, unnamed riders, this, you know, a rider X will never win because he doesn't know how to preserve the
01:05:28front tire.
01:05:29I looked at wear marks of an AMA Superbike rider, and they looked wrong.
01:05:36Front tire wear marks.
01:05:37And I asked Jim Allen about that, and he said, it's because, because my tires didn't look like that.
01:05:43And he says, it's because the way he's braking, and he's braking so hard and combining turning with that, that
01:05:49his wear pattern is going to be completely different than yours because you're just riding around, you know.
01:05:56Yeah, I've seen those front tires that were being used as brakes, scrubbing off speed with the front.
01:06:06And there's times to do that, but like McDoen said on another occasion, you can't do it all day.
01:06:17Excellent.
01:06:18Well, thanks for listening, folks.
01:06:19That's it for Big Bang.
01:06:21As ever, we wandered into other nooks and crannies related to Big Bang.
01:06:26Green pastures.
01:06:27Green pastures.
01:06:28There's traction, human psychology, high-speed intelligence test, Cook Nelson, Kenny Roberts, you name it.
01:06:35We appreciate you listening.
01:06:36Share this with your friends if you like it.
01:06:40We'd love to talk to them.
01:06:42Yeah.
01:06:42And we appreciate you being here.
01:06:45See in the comments.
01:06:45We'll catch you next time.
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