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00:00:00Hey, welcome back to the Cycle World Podcast. I'm Mark Hoyer, Editor-in-Chief. I'm with Kevin Cameron, our Technical
00:00:04Editor.
00:00:06We have a special edition today. We're just going to drop this on a Monday because Ducati's revealed the 2027
00:00:13Ducati Superleggera V4 Centenario 100th anniversary.
00:00:20Kind of an unlimited, ultra-exotic superbike. Like, who else is living in this space in motorcycling?
00:00:27I guess maybe Harley did with the 110-inch bagger, you know, with the bagger race bike parts on it,
00:00:36but it's not quite as a step this far, I guess.
00:00:41We have a carbon fiber fork from Olin's, lightened suspension from Olin's, both ends.
00:00:47I think the fork is something on the order of 34% lighter than your conventional, you know, aluminum upper.
00:00:56Those metal tubes are such a bludgeoning. Imagine that in a bar fight.
00:01:03Yes, indeed. You know, it's, well, when you pick up carbon fiber bodywork, it feels like a potato chip.
00:01:09It's remarkable how much lighter it is than fiberglass.
00:01:12Yes. The engine is 225 horse and street trim, and then when you put the fancy Akrabovich pipe on, which
00:01:21is absolutely sneaky and beautiful.
00:01:24It is so snaky.
00:01:26Yeah.
00:01:27Who could resist?
00:01:27And you get a map.
00:01:28Right. You get the map with it.
00:01:30You know, the abbreviated under-engine exhaust is replaced by serpents going out the rear.
00:01:36It's just titanium serpents. It's gorgeous.
00:01:39The map comes with that, and then Ducati wants you to run the racing super special oil, and that gets
00:01:44you to 247, 250.
00:01:46Three and a half horsepower from the oil, and the oil is not 98 cents a quart.
00:01:55What is?
00:01:56Water.
00:01:57What is 98 cents a quart?
00:01:59Water with flavor in it.
00:02:01I suppose so.
00:02:02So it's a beautiful, exotic thing, 500 units for the world.
00:02:08We don't know the price yet.
00:02:10It's a 27.
00:02:11I think we're going to live on hype for a while and just enjoy the technicality of it, and then
00:02:17those who can afford it probably aren't thinking that much about the price anyway.
00:02:25What struck you, Kevin, about this kind of when you first looked at it?
00:02:30Well, for years, of course, we've all seen the reveal of new models quoting that the water pump is two
00:02:44ounces lighter and what have you.
00:02:45Long list of this.
00:02:47And so light weighting, as the car people call it, is a constant pastime in the motorcycle business.
00:02:54But I think Ducati have taken it to a new low, at least numerically, because I remember being at the
00:03:08intro of the V4, and they had one on the stand, and the material with it said 142 pounds with
00:03:20the intake system.
00:03:23Now, this engine is supposed to be, what, seven pounds lighter.
00:03:29So to get seven pounds off of something as tightly calculated to purpose as a high-performance engine means that
00:03:40a lot of parts are going to have to be rethought, going to have to say,
00:03:46well, you know, we have this new process that we're putting in for production that can do this more complicated
00:03:55heat treat on castings.
00:03:58So maybe we could go back through, do the dynamic FVA, and see where we could save a bit everywhere.
00:04:09And steel, it sort of hurts to have to use steel in a world in which steel has given way
00:04:19to titanium and titanium to carbon fiber.
00:04:24But, so far, no gear box shafts made out of CFRP.
00:04:30So what they have to do then is go through and do the things that are done in racing departments,
00:04:39and that is to just turn the shift drum into filigree.
00:04:44So that the metal that's there conducts the stress of pushing the shift fork, click, click, click, to the rolling
00:04:54element bearings on either end of the shift drum.
00:04:56No more plane bearing shift drums these days.
00:05:01Through a minimum of metal.
00:05:03For example, the crankshaft.
00:05:06Ducati crankshafts are not, you wouldn't want to drop it on your foot, but it wouldn't permanently cripple you.
00:05:15The thing is light.
00:05:17And you pick one up and compare it with having done curls with a Triumph Trident crankshaft.
00:05:27No, it's a thing of beauty.
00:05:28I mean, it's just reduced to a little blade, tiny pork chop blades, and very, very much just here's the,
00:05:35here's the main, or here's the rod, and then thin little blades and little candy bars.
00:05:42Straight to the main shafts, yes.
00:05:43Yeah.
00:05:43And they have, instead of steel counterweights shaped, you know, the pork chop look, I wish I had some now.
00:05:56What they've done is to put enough steel there to position and keep in place tungsten slugs at a maximum
00:06:08radius so that they get the eye, the moment of inertia that the crankshaft needs, at the minimum investment of
00:06:17weight.
00:06:18So, in that respect, it reminded me of Irimadri's long six-cylinder 250 crank, and the so-called cheeks or
00:06:32webs or flywheels were reduced to narrow candy bars.
00:06:36Two tungsten slugs at one end, a crank pin or a hole for one at the other end.
00:06:42Now, of course, this...
00:06:43Yeah, go ahead.
00:06:45Well, I want you to dive into the idea of lightening the crank so much and then concentrating the weight,
00:06:55talking about the way that the inertia works rather than just the mass of the crank statically.
00:07:00Sure.
00:07:01Yes.
00:07:02Well, when you measure the eye, the moment of inertia around its axis of a crankshaft, it is a kind
00:07:14of summing of each element of mass times its distance from center.
00:07:24So, ideally, the counterweights would be this thin layer of tungsten, which is much denser than steel, with just enough
00:07:37steel there to keep the tungsten from flying through the crank case.
00:07:44And that's essentially what they've done here.
00:07:46They've said, how can we focus, concentrate this mass as far from the center as possible and take away the
00:07:55mass that has just been there to get from here, from the center line, out to where a big blob
00:08:03of steel is located?
00:08:05So, we're going to densify that steel into the tungsten slugs, and we're going to leave just enough steel to
00:08:13retain them at a maximum distance from center line.
00:08:17So that if you were to hang the crankshaft from a steel wire and wind it up and let go
00:08:26of it, it would ponderously swing back and forth at the same rate as if you had the all-steel
00:08:39crankshaft with the same rotational inertia
00:08:51So, this is a way to achieve what a crankshaft must do, which is to carry the engine through compression
00:09:01during idle.
00:09:02If it's not big enough to do that, it's not a practical engine, is it?
00:09:07So, there has to be enough mass there to carry through compression when the engine is on idle or when
00:09:15the rider grabs a handful when the light is showing a – the green is fading and a pinkish tinge
00:09:23is showing around the edges.
00:09:27So, this is a way to attenuate the crankshaft, to reduce the mass of the whole motorcycle, by the way,
00:09:37by taking away mass that was underutilized previously.
00:09:42What they're doing now is they have enough mass to hold those tungsten slugs out at a maximum radius where
00:09:49they will do the most good, provide the most flywheel effect, without having masses of steel flowing all over the
00:09:57map to act as the counterweight themselves.
00:10:03Now, tungsten counterweights are not new.
00:10:09Cozworth – no, it wasn't Coventry Climax.
00:10:17In the very early days, they didn't want to enlarge their crankcase, but they needed more flywheel mass, so they
00:10:23used depleted uranium, which has a density of around 23, I think, whereas steel is 7.8.
00:10:35So, you can see how, if you're trying to put more flywheel effect into a crankcase of fixed size, that
00:10:45you would put tungsten out as far from the center line as you could, with enough steel to hold it
00:10:51there so that it doesn't patooey fly out.
00:10:53Well, sir, our mass expectations in daily life, Kevin, don't include depleted uranium, and they usually don't include carbon fiber
00:11:03bodywork or titanium expansion chambers, things that were thrown at me across the shop at Yamaha way back in the
00:11:11day when they were building factory, these one-off Supercross,
00:11:16motocross bikes, and a guy in the racing department throwing an expansion chamber, tossing it to me, like, think fast,
00:11:24and all I can think of is, ow, this is going to hurt because I'm a steel guy, and then
00:11:28here's this thing that seems impossibly light.
00:11:31Makes a soft landing in your hand.
00:11:33Just like the bodywork, the fairing on the –
00:11:36I had a similar experience at Daytona.
00:11:39He didn't throw it at me, but he said, how about this?
00:11:43He handed me a complete inline-four exhaust system muffler, header pipes, all that stuff.
00:11:51Seven pounds.
00:11:55And so many street bikes, the exhaust system weighs 40 pounds.
00:12:00It does, man.
00:12:01Do you want to know how to lose 33 pounds of ugly fat?
00:12:07Well, there's plenty of steel, and then they go and put these really high-dense materials, high-density materials, such
00:12:13as platinum, in the cats, so it's not light.
00:12:18Well, there's not much platinum there.
00:12:20It's highly effective, though.
00:12:25So, this motorcycle has been gone over in great detail.
00:12:29And to lighten the engine by several pounds from a weight that is already less than that of the TZ750
00:12:42two-strokes four-cylinder bikes that I used to mess with,
00:12:47their engines weighed 140 pounds, and they seem pretty ponderous.
00:12:56But what's happening, of course, is that continuing analysis of how best to manage the stresses that the engine produces
00:13:09within itself using the smallest possible amount of metal has advanced and continues to advance.
00:13:16And it's the same in aviation.
00:13:20You're trying to work with the good old equation, F force equals mass times acceleration.
00:13:29F equals MA.
00:13:33Or the rocket people like to say acceleration equals the thrust divided by the mass.
00:13:41So, as the mass gets smaller, it divides in more, and A becomes larger to the point that you,
00:13:51oh, I feel a little oozy here as your vehicle accelerates.
00:13:56So, the motorcycle, the parts, the individual parts of the vehicle acquire a beauty that is given by nature and
00:14:09is uncovered by humanity.
00:14:12Because, essentially, the parts are coming to resemble the stresses they have to carry.
00:14:20And the engine is just a lovely thing to look at.
00:14:23Well, that's just art in a nutshell, isn't it?
00:14:28That's great.
00:14:29Very nice.
00:14:30Yeah.
00:14:32The, you know, the usual things, the valves are the same size as before, 34 intakes.
00:14:38What is it, 27.5 exhaust?
00:14:40Correct.
00:14:40And I think a bunch of other things have been carried forward.
00:14:46So, this leaves us with the question, so, 225 horsepower, where is it coming from?
00:14:54We hope in the fullness of time that they will be more forthcoming about this.
00:14:59Are there longer cam timings?
00:15:01Hmm, maybe not, because how are you going to get that motorcycle past the gray men of Brussels, the European
00:15:09Commission?
00:15:10Because it has to meet all those standards to be a roadable motorcycle.
00:15:15So, probably not.
00:15:16They haven't increased the overlap timing, which allows intake to just, oh, I'm going out here.
00:15:24Freedom.
00:15:25Out the short-circuiting intake to exhaust.
00:15:31So, more compression?
00:15:33Hmm.
00:15:35Faster combustion?
00:15:36Well, what they did say, the Desmosidici Stradale R1100 engine features hand-tuned desmodrovic valve timing.
00:15:44So, what does that mean?
00:15:46I mean, is it just set?
00:15:48It means that they didn't line up the marks when they built the engine.
00:15:51That's what it means to me, anyway.
00:15:52Because usually, I had a cam grinder tell me that once.
00:15:57I'm telling him, I'm not getting the numbers that are on your cam ticket.
00:16:05And he said, just to line him up with the marks.
00:16:09Yeah, well, it's, yeah.
00:16:11Anytime I did that, I was sort of always, you know, I went through the process.
00:16:16I got my dial indicator and did the whole deal and rotated it to where you need to rotate it
00:16:20at whatever lift.
00:16:22And then you're supposed to get that measurement.
00:16:25Big degree wheel for that precise feeling.
00:16:27And that crank is supposed to be in the position.
00:16:30And then you're like, hmm, well, that's not quite there.
00:16:33And then you go to the exhaust.
00:16:34And it's like, well, that's not quite there either.
00:16:37And so, then you're left with the question of, well, why is this not right?
00:16:40But they kind of seem to ballpark it a lot, as you point out.
00:16:44Just put it on the marks, man.
00:16:46And, well, okay.
00:16:49I once stood by while somebody built an Aprilia 250 in my shop.
00:16:53And he said, look, look at this.
00:16:55Come over here.
00:16:56He said, two pistons don't come to TVC at the same time.
00:17:02Now, Aprilia, I'm sure, knew that.
00:17:05And they also knew that if you were serious, you would arrange for them to hit TVC together.
00:17:11Well, that's the best crankshaft, people, is when you get your crank back.
00:17:15And you can set your mic by the diameter of the journals, that they're all the same.
00:17:20And then if you measure stroke, that all the strokes are exactly the same.
00:17:24And when you get a proper crank person, that's what you get.
00:17:28Yep.
00:17:29So, that's probably the meaning as to the timing.
00:17:35The photograph that shows the combustion chamber does not show a machined shape.
00:17:42It shows a finely cast shape.
00:17:45And there are the valves.
00:17:47And just by looking at them, you can tell this is a water-cooled engine.
00:17:51Because with Ducati's, the last of Ducati's air-cooled brigade, the exhaust valves are as small as they can be
00:17:59and as far from each other as possible.
00:18:01So that it's possible to cool the metal between them.
00:18:05But when you have a water-cooled engine, no problem.
00:18:09Just run the water where the cooling is wanted.
00:18:14Well, this engine has a dry clutch.
00:18:19That means that it is not bathed in the oil, engine oil, that is shared with the gearbox.
00:18:26Most modern motorcycles are built this way.
00:18:31Two-stroke bikes of a previous era, the race bikes, you could put actual gear oil in there if the
00:18:39gears were a little weak.
00:18:43But here, you have to put engine oil to lubricate the gears.
00:18:48The clutch itself is outside of the primary cover.
00:18:54And Ducati have done a wonderful thing by putting neutral at the bottom with a lockout once you get moving.
00:19:05Which means it is not possible to accidentally stop in neutral when you were going for first or in first
00:19:13going for second.
00:19:15Because it isn't there.
00:19:17You can't engage it because it isn't there.
00:19:20And we don't need the extra space.
00:19:22We don't need the travel.
00:19:24It's just another gear selection in exactly the same shift movement as the other gears.
00:19:30Yeah, the spacing of the little dents and the detent that holds it in the different ratio.
00:19:35It was click, click, click.
00:19:37And then they told us, or then they teased a little by saying, and why do we have a dry
00:19:45clutch?
00:19:46Not only because it's very cool and it makes that inimitable jingling noise when you hold the clutch in.
00:19:54Oh, dry clutch.
00:19:57Like the old days when the superbike constructors were putting gear drives into their production engines.
00:20:04And you could hear it.
00:20:06Anyway, the reason for the dry clutch is that they have Ducati Corsa, that's Ducati Racing,
00:20:15have a special high-performance oil with friction modifiers, which could mean finely divided graphite,
00:20:27molybdenum disulfide, Teflon, various esters, which are surface active, little molecules that stick onto things
00:20:41and are not easily dislodged, three and a half horsepower.
00:20:46Drain out your old oil, pour in the new, possibly more expensive oil, and enjoy three extra horsepower.
00:20:54And if your riding is such that you can tell the difference, then I want to see it.
00:21:02But then I ask myself, why are they doing this?
00:21:05Well, one reason could be that the 500 lucky people who will probably all will,
00:21:12or the thing will be sold out in 20 minutes on the internet, and the prices will be high.
00:21:18Okay, this money will go a long way to tooling some of this advanced methodology for addition to other products
00:21:30in the future line.
00:21:33Well, it's been a Ducati, you know, it's been their tradition to bring out the next engine.
00:21:40And, you know, whatever the next engine is going to be, it's always like the last, most exotic version of
00:21:46the previous version.
00:21:47Yes.
00:21:47And then the new era begins.
00:21:49And so we get a whiff of it.
00:21:50999-R is a great example.
00:21:53That's the Turblanche bodywork, but it has the next engine in it, the great next engine.
00:22:01And, well, you could buy one of those for relatively little money, and you're getting quite a motorcycle.
00:22:08It may not visually speak to you in the way that others did before or after, but you're getting a
00:22:14high-quality product there, folks.
00:22:16And so this is a situation where we feel like Ducati is launching its next year and its next engine
00:22:22with this stuff.
00:22:25If you look at one of the side views in the excellent photographs, you will see the engine sump is
00:22:32what I call a dagger sump.
00:22:33It's like a blade that goes down to the lowest part, the lowest point that can be tolerated, and it's
00:22:42not going to hit the ground because what they want is to surround the oil pump pickup with oil,
00:22:52even when the motorcycle is on its back tire and the rider is doing crowd interface socializing?
00:23:04Well, any high-G.
00:23:05I mean, hard-breaking anything.
00:23:06You don't want to – you know, when you have these long automotive oil pans, they –
00:23:10Oh, it just sloshes away.
00:23:12Well, they put one-way flappers in them.
00:23:14In addition to having, like, boxed oil pickups, you know, where they make it harder for it to slosh, they'll
00:23:20actually make trap doors that only work when it –
00:23:24say when it – they work in the direction for hard-breaking and hard acceleration to keep the oil around
00:23:29the pickup.
00:23:30So that's what we're seeing here in that stab that goes down.
00:23:33Briefly, I would like –
00:23:34All superbike madness.
00:23:34Yeah, I would like to go back to the dry clutch.
00:23:39I was recently looking at the Bagger World Cup bikes at Circuit of the Americas during the preseason tests,
00:23:46and those bikes have STM dry clutches on the outside of a very finely machined, very tightly packed primary cover.
00:23:57So they've been trying to make the Harley-Davidson Bagger race engine more and more narrow.
00:24:02The exhaust pipe is this beautiful titanium thing with castings, titanium castings for the collector,
00:24:08so they can make a very precise, thin shape to tuck it in so tight.
00:24:14And they're going for 60 degrees on baggers, and part of that is tightening up the primary.
00:24:20Now, the hottest part of that engine, the Harley engine, aside from, say, the piston crown,
00:24:25the hottest part of the engine is the primary.
00:24:26You're making – you're churning oil with that big chain in this very tight package, and it made a lot
00:24:32of heat.
00:24:34And the oil changes with heat.
00:24:38When that stuff gets drained out, it's not honey-colored gorgeous.
00:24:42It's black and highly used.
00:24:44It's really living a life in probably something that's 300 degrees plus.
00:24:49They wanted to move the clutch out of that extremely hot, variable viscosity environment because the oil was changing.
00:24:57And they put a dry clutch on it, and it's out there to cool in the air, and it's away
00:25:02from that harsh environment.
00:25:03And that's what Ducati is doing here.
00:25:05In addition to what Kevin said about friction modifiers, you put a synthetic, a full synthetic, in something like your
00:25:11– here's my real-world example, 72 Yamaha XS650, the clutch will magically start slipping.
00:25:21There was nothing wrong with the clutch.
00:25:23If you drain that oil out and you put some dino oil back in, clutch is fine.
00:25:27So, there's a lot at play here.
00:25:30But dry clutch, I mean, isn't that just the historical signature for performance?
00:25:36We're special.
00:25:37That's right, because dry clutch was essential when push starting was the way FIM road races began.
00:25:45Or at the Isle of Man, when they pushed off one at a time down Bray Hill.
00:25:49And these not-very-large men getting – psyching themselves up to push that 500cc piston through compression at least
00:26:01once.
00:26:02Bang, I'm going.
00:26:04And they ride off with both legs on one side, slipping the clutch like crazy.
00:26:09It was quite dramatic in its old-time manner.
00:26:14I think it's a detail lost on people who haven't tried to manually start a one- or two-cylinder
00:26:22engine, you know, with the force of your body or the force of your inertia.
00:26:30You only have one chance on a single for the revolution.
00:26:34That's it.
00:26:35There's one chamber.
00:26:36I watched a man hand-crank start an inline eight-cylinder, a Buick 8 short-track car.
00:26:45An older guy, as he would be.
00:26:49This is not – eight-cylinder short-track cars, straight eight-cylinder short-track cars are not the sport of
00:26:56the young too much.
00:26:58It doesn't resonate with us, right?
00:27:02But, you know, I was impressed, but it was like a seven-to-one motor, and it had eight cylinders,
00:27:06and he was hand-cranking it, you know, from the front of the engine.
00:27:10And I said that to him.
00:27:11I said, that's pretty good, but you got eight chances, and he just laughed because he knew it was true.
00:27:15He's got eight chances for the mixture to be just so – just like air – you know, the big
00:27:20radials.
00:27:20A lot of times they start on a few cylinders just enough to start kicking it and kick, kick, kick,
00:27:27and the crank's going, and it says, all right, next cylinder, add yourself in, and it finally coughs, coughs, and
00:27:35it smooths out.
00:27:36Anyway.
00:27:37And it blows away all the smoke.
00:27:38Blows away the smoke, yeah.
00:27:40Yeah.
00:27:40Well, back to the crankshaft for a moment, you will notice that the V4 crankshafts, the two crank pins of
00:27:48a V4 are normally set at either 180 or 360, but these are pulled apart by – the last I
00:27:57knew it was 70 degrees, and that's part of the Big Bang traction enhancing equivalent of the Big Bang two
00:28:09-strokes.
00:28:11That's part of the early 1990s.
00:28:13Yeah, so grouping the firing orders closer together to give drivetrain tire some time to relax and reform the tire
00:28:21to the tarmac.
00:28:21Now, here's another thing that struck me about the engine, and that is, with the crankshaftist light, when the not
00:28:32inconsiderable cylinders fire, the crankshaft accelerates.
00:28:36That is, the firing of all that mixture has put energy into the crankshaft, so it accelerates, and then as
00:28:46the firing pressure dies away and the exhaust valves begin to open, that disappears, and the crankshaft slows down.
00:28:57Now, I'm really impressed if all they have to do to make the valves follow the profiles with Desmo, that
00:29:06they can make the crankshaft as light as they want, and it never – the valve system just says, sir,
00:29:13yes, sir.
00:29:15Because there are plenty of cases in which people have lightened crankshafts in valve spring motors and lost top end
00:29:23because crankshaft speed variation is transmitted to the camshafts.
00:29:30And if the camshafts' speed is varying like this, what if a valve is opening just as this is peaking,
00:29:40patui, valve flow.
00:29:43But the only thing holding the valve is the spring, and in the Desmo, the closing ramp is keeping it
00:29:49from being thrown to the piston.
00:29:50That is Ducati's valve spring, the closing lever, which is L-shaped.
00:29:56But they are beautiful parts.
00:29:58They aren't just – they don't look like a child made them out of modeling clay like the early ones.
00:30:04These have definite shape intended for purpose.
00:30:09Very nice.
00:30:11Lovely stuff.
00:30:13Then you look at the frame, and the frame is carbon fiber, but it is clearly unrelated to the 2009
00:30:24rigid pyramid.
00:30:26That was built for Casey Stoner to cope with.
00:30:32The rigid bike was prone to – being horizontal – it was prone to having no front-end feel and
00:30:46to unpredictable loss of the front-end.
00:30:50Because with no flexibility whatever in the chassis when the motorcycle is at lean angle, it's difficult for the tires
00:31:01to stay in contact after being launched upward by a bump.
00:31:07Because the whole motorcycle is launched upward, not just parts between the tire and the engine.
00:31:17So, this chassis is a beautiful thing.
00:31:20In one picture, you can see that there's a strut or a pair of struts that reach out to the
00:31:26front to grasp the upper steering head bearing,
00:31:30and another set that grasp the lower steering head bearing.
00:31:35That area around the steering head is prime real estate because they're trying to get the intake airflow to come
00:31:42through there,
00:31:44trying to get it slowed down into the air box, because that's not a gas tank up there.
00:31:52That's an intake air box.
00:31:55They talked about the double-sided carbon fiber swing arm being 21% lighter than an aluminum equivalent.
00:32:09This part is made on a mandrel that is destroyed in the process of manufacture.
00:32:21It is as though they used a very hard wax made into the shape of the space they want inside
00:32:28the swing arm,
00:32:29and then they applied the resin and carbon fiber and their wrappings and all being stuck into the autoclave eventually
00:32:42to make sure that the inside is as free of flaws and does not have pieces that are delammed and
00:32:52hanging out in space.
00:32:54Because this consumable mandrel is a wonderful thing, and it's very much like a version of lost wax casting.
00:33:06So now they've made this carbon fiber part.
00:33:13It's black.
00:33:14You can't see into it.
00:33:16How do you know if it's good?
00:33:17Or is it riddled with porosity from gas released by the curing process?
00:33:27Are there D-LAMs where parts were almost held together strongly enough by the bagging process,
00:33:35but they created a void?
00:33:41Well, these methods are just frantic.
00:33:45In one method, they heat the surface with infrared lights,
00:33:51and then they switch them off and quickly do a temperature scan of all the surfaces.
00:33:57And if the heat conductivity of one area is less than that of the others,
00:34:04its temperature won't fall as rapidly because there's no place for the heat to go inward.
00:34:11So, and then a phased array acoustic system.
00:34:16Now, a phased array radar has ranks and rows of radar emitters that are controlled in such a way
00:34:27that they can produce and instantly steer a tightly focused beam with the electronics
00:34:35that are controlling all of this in two dimensions.
00:34:40And with this, they can make a map of the inside of the part.
00:34:45And then finally, CAT scan.
00:34:52So, these parts, I remember Cook Nelson telling me,
00:34:57Ducati have a machine that makes their connecting rods,
00:35:00and the machine takes half an hour to make one rod.
00:35:05And I thought, won't sell many of those.
00:35:10But, of course, Nelson and Schilling so skillfully promoted the motorcycle they were building
00:35:16that Ducati, no doubt, benefited considerably from this.
00:35:24But, in order to understand the value of carbon fiber parts, you have to make some.
00:35:32You have to track test them.
00:35:35And in order to do your due diligence for the rider, you have to inspect them before you.
00:35:41So, this is cool stuff.
00:35:44Well, there's, yeah, you were talking about, you know, radar and all this,
00:35:48and we got to make sure it's free of flaws.
00:35:50I recalled a person I knew who was beginning to braise bicycle frame tubes together
00:35:58as a thing he wanted to do.
00:36:01And he was doing this, and he had these beautiful little casting lugs that you see on bicycles,
00:36:06you know, chromoly stuff, steel.
00:36:09And he would sweat those things together, and they were sacrificial.
00:36:14He would cut them in half, and he would, you know, rate his temperature and keep a track on that.
00:36:20And that's how he taught himself, was sacrificing the parts over and over again
00:36:24so that he didn't have to cut it apart to know it was good.
00:36:27Oh, yeah.
00:36:28Yeah.
00:36:29Sure.
00:36:31So, the frame on this motorcycle is, first of all, four legs, like an animal, standing on the engine.
00:36:41And on these legs, it is presumably able to move from side to side, but not to twist and not
00:36:48to bend.
00:36:51And then there is the seat frame, and there are all kinds of other little carbon fiber pieces that are
00:36:59attached.
00:36:59Now, I don't know how they attach them.
00:37:03I know what John Britton did.
00:37:05He made aluminum spools, and he wrapped the carbon fiber around the spools
00:37:12and ran it off in the directions to carry the stress wherever it was going.
00:37:17And then he wetted that stuff out and sheathed it all in
00:37:24and then cured it in the equivalent of an autoclave.
00:37:33So I'm going to have to inform myself more about how concentrated loads,
00:37:39how do you attach the landing gear to a carbon fiber aircraft fuselage?
00:37:46Do you drill holes in the plastic and try to thread them?
00:37:51I don't think so.
00:37:52I don't think so.
00:37:54Early carbon.
00:37:56You have to plan how that stress is going to flow to the landing.
00:38:02Trek bicycles made a mountain bike in the late 90s called the Y-Bike.
00:38:09And it was Y-shaped.
00:38:11So the seat tube was not a tube.
00:38:13It was a Y.
00:38:14Like if you stood the frame up like this, the seat's here, the steering head's up here,
00:38:18and then your bottom bracket business is down here.
00:38:21They call it the Y-Bike because if you held it this way, it looked like a Y.
00:38:24Yep.
00:38:25Y-Bike.
00:38:25And the first ones they made, the shock lug, was bonded, externally bonded to this part of the Y.
00:38:33That was the upper lug for the rear shock.
00:38:36Library paste.
00:38:37And let me tell you, it failed, and it failed a lot.
00:38:42And it failed on my bike.
00:38:43I got a warranty frame out of that.
00:38:45And the next version that they gave to me as a warranty, that upper shock lug was incorporated
00:38:51into a stump that stuck out, a plug, and it was metallic, and it penetrated, and it was built in
00:38:58to the frame.
00:38:59It had mechanical connection, not just chemical bonding connection.
00:39:04Yeah.
00:39:04It was definitely the next step.
00:39:06So it is landing gear, Kevin.
00:39:09It is landing gear on a mountain bike.
00:39:13I always, when I see large aircraft, of course, I always mentally count the main wheels and multiply
00:39:21by 50,000 to get some idea of this machine's takeoff weight, because that's what those tires
00:39:27are made to bear.
00:39:29That's just a glimpse into Kevin Cameron's daily life, folks.
00:39:36Well, yes, I think about that considerable thump when a big airplane, 7777, they make the runway
00:39:49at the touchdown area at least three feet deep, and it's concrete, and it's full of re-rod.
00:39:54And it's designed to take the thump.
00:39:59And why, my goodness, re-rod and concrete, it's a composite, isn't it?
00:40:05It is.
00:40:06Just like CFRP.
00:40:08So the lovely swing arm, Mark talked about the suspension.
00:40:15Now the brake calipers, they're rather coy about just how it works.
00:40:24But they have, Brembo, have come up with a way to completely release the pads from the
00:40:34disc surface when you're done braking.
00:40:37And they did it as follows.
00:40:39There's a spring that holds the pads toward the rear on a very slight slope.
00:40:47And as you apply the brakes and the pads touch, they go click forward slightly up that slope.
00:40:57And you do your braking.
00:40:59And when you release the brake, the springs pull the pads back down the slope slightly.
00:41:08That part of the slope moves away from the disc surface.
00:41:12So the pads are positively retracted.
00:41:16And you're talking about the, you're talking about that oblique angle where the pads, so the pads usually slot into
00:41:23the calipers and are held on either end to carry the load when the brakes are applied.
00:41:27And so that.
00:41:28Yeah, the end of the backing plate has to butt into the backing.
00:41:31Yeah, and so the backing, so we're talking oblique this way to put the pad into the disc.
00:41:39They're giving a slight servo effect, a power boosting effect.
00:41:43Now, to me, this is, this is a level of precision that must have been infuriatingly difficult to achieve because
00:41:51what you're looking at in the old way of getting just enough retraction, you were relying on the rubber seal.
00:42:02And the way that would work is that you would pull the brake and the piston would slide in the
00:42:07seal and then pressure would rise and it would grip the piston and then you would brake.
00:42:13And then when you released, the seal was deforming and allowing the piston to go do its braking thing and
00:42:20it's waiting, it's under tension.
00:42:21And when you release the pressure, it pulled the pad back a little bit.
00:42:26Until it's worn enough for the piston to advance a slight amount again.
00:42:31And that's why there can be variations in lever height as this process takes place.
00:42:37Now, Kevin got a Brembo guy in trouble one time because they had a delightful dinner conversation.
00:42:44And Kevin asked him the question about, well, isn't this where all the real action is, is in the rubber
00:42:50seal doing this stuff?
00:42:51And he's like, oh, someone I could talk to.
00:42:53And he gave you lots of stuff that was superb.
00:42:57And, you know, he was fine, but these are the truths that we're searching for.
00:43:02So we're going to, we have the opportunity to talk to a Brembo person and we're going to take advantage
00:43:09of that, Kevin.
00:43:10We're going to ask about these calipers because the idea that a spring is retracting the pad.
00:43:15Sideways.
00:43:16Sideways.
00:43:17That where the, the pad, the backing plate is interfacing with the caliper has a, an angle to it to
00:43:25coordinate all of that, to make all of that exceptional and beautiful and perfectly repeatable.
00:43:31I got to give him huge credit because just getting regular brakes to work on your pickup truck can be,
00:43:36can be a pain in the ass sometimes.
00:43:38Take enough one.
00:43:38Yes.
00:43:39Well, these are the, these are the calipers that they're running on the bagger race bikes, uh, like the Harleys
00:43:44and stuff.
00:43:45And, um, they clean them all the time.
00:43:49They've got a quick disconnect and they've cleaned the pistons.
00:43:52That was another thing actually talking about the pistons, the ends of the pistons that are contacting the backing plate
00:43:59are radially drilled.
00:44:01Sure.
00:44:02To let, to, to keep heat transfer lower from going into the fluid.
00:44:07Yep.
00:44:07Don't want that.
00:44:09How many extra machining steps is that?
00:44:11Right.
00:44:12Or the, or, oh, these calipers are machined from billet.
00:44:15The machine that does that is exquisite because the caliper is a bridge.
00:44:20This isn't bolted together.
00:44:21You don't get caliper halves where you can just go take your hand drill and put in, you know, piston,
00:44:26piston bores.
00:44:28It's, it's like this.
00:44:30It's, it's just a little U and they have a machine that goes in and goes and machines it and
00:44:35pulls itself out.
00:44:36It's just, uh, and when this was told to the Japanese, they said, of course, this is not possible.
00:44:44And of course, then they had to show them how they were, how they were doing it.
00:44:48And, uh, such a step forward.
00:44:52The calipers that, uh, TZ 750 came with were cast iron and they weighed four pounds a piece.
00:45:03The calipers that are on MotoGP bikes weigh under 450 grams.
00:45:09I think under a pound, under a pound.
00:45:13Good stuff.
00:45:15I think, you know, it's a moment to, to say when we look at all of the photographs of this
00:45:21motorcycle and the components,
00:45:23you look at the carbon fork upper and you look at the frame, uh, you look at the crankshaft.
00:45:32When you look at the crankshaft, the sheen of the material speaks to its content.
00:45:38It's just wonderful.
00:45:40Just the way that the carbon fiber is when you look at the fibers and you know that those fibers
00:45:46were laid with intent to take precisely the load in the directions they need to take the load and to
00:45:55have give where they need to have give.
00:45:58And that someone has thought, thought about this and you, it's all there on the surface.
00:46:02It's all there on the surface.
00:46:04The fork lower, the machine, the machined fork lower is just exquisite where it carries the caliper and that's what
00:46:10the fork tube.
00:46:11And of course, what's happening is that the effort on the part of the two calipers to follow the disc
00:46:18as braking goes on is transmitted to the rest of the motorcycle by that thread at the bottom of each
00:46:25fork tube.
00:46:25And that will lift the back of the motorcycle off the ground.
00:46:29And how far that is from the triple clamp, the amount of leverage.
00:46:33Yes, it's quite a lever there.
00:46:34That lever from where it's taking the force at the brake input up to the triple clamp is just fantastically
00:46:41long.
00:46:41And that's where your carbon upper comes into play because it's 30% lighter, but stiff as hell.
00:46:47This was one of the most persuasive arguments in favor of alternative front ends and alternative front suspensions was, why
00:46:57should we send the force up to the steering head and then back down into the rest of the chassis?
00:47:03Why not have a swing arm pointing forward with a pivot inside the wheel hub so that the line of
00:47:13transmission of force was direct, but it didn't work as well as the best.
00:47:23Telescopic forks.
00:47:24Telescopic forks, and it still doesn't.
00:47:26And Honda put several years into trying to make it work in the 1980s.
00:47:33And every year the bike was sort of, oh, you know, fifth, fourth.
00:47:41So it was promising, but when the rider gave direction for what he wanted changed for next year, it was
00:47:52always back towards the qualities of a telescopic.
00:47:57And the purists were just tearing their hair out because they wanted this revolution.
00:48:03They dreamed it.
00:48:04They'd made prototypes.
00:48:07And here we are with telescopics, they still work better.
00:48:12Yeah, the advantages didn't outweigh what you were losing.
00:48:17I got a photo.
00:48:19I got a couple of photos this morning from somebody at COTA for the MotoGP this weekend.
00:48:27And they show a rack of fuel tanks.
00:48:30And there are little squashy ones.
00:48:33There's hardly anything to them.
00:48:35They're for qualifying.
00:48:36Quali tanks.
00:48:38And then there are the big lumps of fuel that have a beak that goes up where the filler cap
00:48:47is in the air box in the normal place.
00:48:54So that if the rider tucks in, it's here somewhere in the middle of your chest.
00:49:00So, and they're all beautiful looking aluminum weldments.
00:49:05Just lovely.
00:49:07A little detail on, oh, sorry.
00:49:10Yep, go ahead.
00:49:11No, a little detail on the brake, the brake calipers and fork lowers.
00:49:15The ones on the baggers have these beautiful little tongues sticking out that take, that guide the axle in the
00:49:23right direction to their place in the place where the axle goes through the fork lower.
00:49:29And as a home mechanic and not as an ongoing race mechanic tuner type person, I don't get to see
00:49:36this very often, but they were changing front wheels on the baggers.
00:49:39And those calipers have these beautiful black plastic pad spreaders that are put in from the top side.
00:49:46Yep.
00:49:46And so when you roll that wheel in, it's caught, it's captured at the axle and it's guided to its
00:49:52place where the axle goes through.
00:49:54The discs go slicing in.
00:49:56And the discs go into the calipers and knock out those spreaders.
00:50:01Yes.
00:50:01So you just, without much trouble at all, you just roll that aluminum marcasini wheel in with its iron superbike
00:50:07discs and it knocks out those things.
00:50:09And then you slide, and the axle just goes, there's no big rubber mallet, dead blow, people trying to pound
00:50:17an axle through.
00:50:19It's, it's all beautiful fit and well thought out.
00:50:22It was wonderful to watch.
00:50:23Legacy of the AK-47.
00:50:25Yeah.
00:50:29Because.
00:50:30I'm sure that was, that's on the, I'm sure that's on the Olin's development department wall, AK-47.
00:50:38Yeah, gold tint.
00:50:39Uh, Momola showed me, uh, a, a, uh, an RG 500 factory transmission, uh, at Daytona one year, maybe it
00:50:49was 80 and it was so loose.
00:50:53The gears were sort of clattering on the, on the shafts because they had made this wonderful, precise gearbox and
00:51:02it had been their worst problem in the first two years, um, racing that bike.
00:51:09And, uh, and, uh, they fixed it.
00:51:14We humans have a problem though.
00:51:16A, a person of authority says, let it be made this way.
00:51:21And it doesn't work.
00:51:23Are we going to tell that person?
00:51:26It didn't work.
00:51:27Your idea didn't work.
00:51:29Or are we going to kind of just go about our business?
00:51:35Because.
00:51:37In engineering, social problems are the worst.
00:51:43I've heard that.
00:51:44Yeah, well, I repeat myself often because I have a limited repertoire.
00:51:53I worry about it.
00:51:54I like it.
00:51:55Um, yeah.
00:51:56So there's 500 Superleggera V4 Centenario bikes in the special red color.
00:52:01And then there are 100 tricolore bikes.
00:52:06So you might have a chance at 600, uh, the, the tricolore.
00:52:11Sorry if I butchered that folks, but, uh, further mark this historic milestone.
00:52:16So that's pretty, uh, what do you think we're going to see on this?
00:52:21I mean, they're usually six digits.
00:52:25Yeah.
00:52:27Six figures.
00:52:28Well, this is the thing, um, you have to be able to, to tap this market because if you
00:52:40base your sales on the power of the U S middle class and its mass market, which at one time
00:52:48was the most powerful force on earth, uh, you could be walking on shifting seats.
00:52:59So the people who have, uh, like, uh, Moe's Allison said in the song, but nowadays the old
00:53:09man got all the money.
00:53:12And so if they can sell 500 of these things to be stored away in, uh, temperature and humidity
00:53:23controlled rooms, all the better for the rest of us, because it keeps Ducati healthy.
00:53:31And that's what we want.
00:53:32I asked Claudio, uh, Domenicali, uh, once, why are you introducing this V4 at a time when
00:53:42sales of big sport bikes are not doing so well?
00:53:47And he said, because our clientele expect us to lead.
00:53:55And that's why I have to advise those people who are disappointed that this bike does not
00:54:02have a single sided swing arm.
00:54:03Would you, I must ask them, would you prefer Ducati to lead motorcycle design or to celebrate
00:54:12history?
00:54:17Well, mad respect all along, you know, they were a singles company in the sixties and they
00:54:24could clearly see what the future was looking like.
00:54:26And they made a V twin and it became their signature.
00:54:29And we, we, we loved our V twin Ducatis all the way through our belt tribes and eight 51s
00:54:35and 900 SS engines.
00:54:38Sure.
00:54:39V twins made, made sense.
00:54:41It's did the job, but they got to the point where they took the V twin to its, uh, natural
00:54:47limit, perhaps bores of 116 millimeters, something like bigger, bigger than a, uh, four 54 Chevy.
00:54:58That's a big piston.
00:55:00And when they were looking at the next evolution and wanting to compete in MotoGP, twin wasn't
00:55:07a rational choice.
00:55:08So we got V fours out of it and look at us now.
00:55:11And it's, that's, that's, what's cool about it is they have, they are, they are entrenched
00:55:16in traditions.
00:55:16They still make twins.
00:55:18They still make Desmo twins.
00:55:20They're doing rational things with spring heads and you know, you're getting spring head V twins
00:55:24now monsters with spring head V twins and spring head V fours and the adventure bikes and, and
00:55:30all of that.
00:55:31But here we are at the, at the outer limit building a bike.
00:55:35I don't think anyone else is trying to build or could build in a way.
00:55:39And I just, I look at the development team on something like this.
00:55:44And I say to myself, if you're an engineer and you love motorcycles, is there any better
00:55:50thing to be locked in a room to say like, have at it, whatever it costs more fine.
00:55:58Carbon, carbon four cuppers call and see if let's make this happen first street bike.
00:56:03Just going down that and building that.
00:56:05And it's gotta be, I mean, it has to be frantic and you have to have, oh, the massive pressure
00:56:11of building something that's truly amazing.
00:56:14It has to function, right?
00:56:16This is as much as we know that getting on this and riding this to its limit is for a
00:56:22very
00:56:23chosen few of physical and mental capability.
00:56:29Nonetheless, there it is.
00:56:31I mean, I don't know to be able to be, to be on that team.
00:56:34The great men of Brussels have approved it.
00:56:36Yeah.
00:56:37Well, let's talk, we talked so much about the caliper.
00:56:40How about those discs?
00:56:42Sure.
00:56:43Carbon ceramic.
00:56:45Years ago, Irv Kanemoto said, I went down the wheel rack and they brought all these wheels
00:56:52beginning of some season or other.
00:56:54And he said, there's all the carbon discs, but he said, there's other discs that they
00:56:59look like stone.
00:57:02And I think that's what, that's what this is.
00:57:05It's a ceramic, such as silicon carbide that is strengthened internally by carbon fibers
00:57:20and wonderful stuff because I picked up the front wheel.
00:57:28My son bought a CB900F and he was doing things to it.
00:57:35He sort of lost interest after a while, but what a heavy front wheel.
00:57:41Great big thing, great big stone, just massive discs.
00:57:47All the parts were, and of course, the first thing they did in 1980, when they decided to
00:57:53go super bike racing with that as the basis, they put on 16 inch Morris mags because they
00:58:03didn't want the rider having to put both hands on one handlebar to yank the thing to go around
00:58:10the corner with that tremendous mill wheel on the front.
00:58:15And these new discs are presumably highly durable.
00:58:23There's not a lot of things that are harder than silicon carbide.
00:58:28And they are, uh, lightweight.
00:58:33The wheels are lightweight.
00:58:35One of my favorite items to jump to the other end of the motorcycle.
00:58:40You ever take the spring off of a single rear suspension unit?
00:58:44That thing is heavy.
00:58:46It's very heavy.
00:58:49And it's offensively heavy.
00:58:51How can this awful thing be on this otherwise filigreed and attenuated motor vehicle?
00:58:59Well, Ducati, uh, got a spring designer to go after this problem.
00:59:07So can't we, can't we do better than this?
00:59:11Yes, we certainly can, but it calls for specific materials, specific heat treat.
00:59:16Essentially what they're doing is they're working less metal harder, 27% less metal, fewer turns,
00:59:27smaller wire, and the maximum stress in that wire is a larger fraction of its yield point
00:59:36than in previous sort of, um, pedestrian springs.
00:59:45Like something you might find on an old pickup truck.
00:59:49So we're getting more, we're getting fewer windings, necessary windings per inch.
00:59:54You're reducing the amount of material that's required to make the spring.
00:59:58And running, working the spring material harder.
01:00:01Harder.
01:00:02And so that's when you say, what is a high performance spring?
01:00:05And if you look at the rear shocks on, I don't know, some vintage triumph or some old Harley or
01:00:11something,
01:00:11they're going to be really fat wire.
01:00:13And it's going to be tightly wound coils, a lot of coils, because they can't,
01:00:18they just can't stretch as far before they just go, nope.
01:00:20And they give up.
01:00:22We broke one.
01:00:23Yeah.
01:00:24When you see that spring that has a few, a few windings, fewer windings, you know,
01:00:28like a valve spring.
01:00:30Yeah.
01:00:31Like a valve spring.
01:00:32That process has gone on for years with valve springs.
01:00:36They worked the material harder.
01:00:38The last I heard, 140,000 PSI for the peak fiber stress.
01:00:44It's probably gone on beyond that since.
01:00:48But that's the principle.
01:00:50And also, this is not so important in a suspension spring, but in an engine,
01:00:56the less mass you have whanging back and forth, the less fatigue the spring sees because these
01:01:09reflected stress waves are not constantly ringing back and forth.
01:01:14The spring with the spring with fewer coils has a much higher frequency than previously.
01:01:21Anyway, lots of little points.
01:01:25Every part has a story.
01:01:27We're trying to bring you some of them.
01:01:33Yeah, the carbon fiber body work.
01:01:35One more detail.
01:01:36Carbon fiber body work.
01:01:37Again, very lightweight, but also incorporating the ground effect.
01:01:42The corner side pods, they call them.
01:01:44So, when you really deck that thing, they've got side pads and the fairing that are helping
01:01:48increase the downforce of the bike to increase the grip.
01:01:51Again, an edge case scenario for the best, fastest riders.
01:01:55So, keep working on it.
01:01:57Keep working on yourself.
01:01:58The bike's important.
01:01:59But the most important part is the rider, typically.
01:02:02No question.
01:02:04And after that, the tire.
01:02:06Yeah.
01:02:07And I will say that the most recent generation, a couple years old, we are finally seeing the
01:02:17airfoils at the front that aren't just decorative.
01:02:20They're working on these bikes, on Ducatis and BMWs in particular.
01:02:26They're doing the job.
01:02:27So, you're feeling that at high speed when before, maybe you weren't.
01:02:32So, it's wonderful to get that far that we have this stuff.
01:02:37It's not just, hey, it looks like MotoGP.
01:02:39It actually acts like MotoGP.
01:02:41The earliest, just externally adjustable forks, you turn the clickers, they weren't connected
01:02:48to anything.
01:02:49They were just something to play with on certain bikes.
01:02:54Yeah, we joke about early adjustable rebound shocks on the sport bikes of, you know, 80s,
01:03:0290s era.
01:03:03And it was a four-position rebound adjuster.
01:03:05And I'm not sure there was any difference between one and four.
01:03:11Yeah.
01:03:11But we've come a long way.
01:03:13This stuff is real.
01:03:14That's what's wonderful about it.
01:03:17Yes, it is.
01:03:19Because think about Alcock and Brown trying to fly across the Atlantic.
01:03:24And think about yourself bellying up to the counter and saying, any seats on 276?
01:03:32You know the product you're going to get, and it is an open cockpit.
01:03:37And it's likely to reach the destination.
01:03:41So, this new motorcycle is a collection of works of art.
01:03:49And the reason that we gave at the start of this diatribe, there are two of us, is that
01:03:58the harder you work to make the shape of parts the same as that of the stresses that flow through
01:04:06them, the more they please us visually.
01:04:12I used to, when the new race bikes would come to Boston Cycles, pry the lid off the crate,
01:04:19push the sides down, I would take cylinders off and go home.
01:04:24And I would make a pot of coffee and walk up and down looking at the cylinders, looking
01:04:31at the porting.
01:04:33Because I wanted to load all that data so that I'd have something to think about.
01:04:40It was wonderful.
01:04:43It was a real treat.
01:04:45Yeah.
01:04:47Well, we can't wait to see and ride this thing somewhere.
01:04:52You get a lot of stuff with the bike.
01:04:55It goes down a list.
01:04:57Electronics package, 60 IMU, four-level quartering ABS.
01:05:01You could go through all of the...
01:05:04Oh, DVO.
01:05:05DVO, electronic assistance, racing exhaust with software and dedicated calories.
01:05:10Liberation, dedicated lower fairing, open carbon fiber clutch cover, which you can't use on
01:05:15the street.
01:05:15They say alternator, cover protector, headlight, side stand, number plate holder, indicators
01:05:20removal kit, machined aluminum racing fuel cap.
01:05:23Don't use it on the street.
01:05:25Neoprene racing seat.
01:05:26Dedicated wooden crate, dedicated paddock stands, mat, and motorcycle cover.
01:05:30I mean, you're getting the whole enchilada.
01:05:33I don't know.
01:05:34What is the Italian version of an enchilada?
01:05:36The whole lasagna.
01:05:38You get the whole lasagna with this thing.
01:05:40Anyway, that's the Ducati Superleggero Centenario.
01:05:43I think they're overlooking a possible sales, missing out a little bit, because it's clear
01:05:52from MotoGP that these motorcycles, like horses, are not comfortable on their own.
01:05:58They always go in pairs.
01:06:00Every rider has two bikes.
01:06:03Shouldn't the customer buy two so that they won't be sad and lonely?
01:06:13Well, if I didn't mind what I wrote on the check, I would certainly have two.
01:06:20It's always good to have a spare if you're going out there and you're really going to
01:06:23do it.
01:06:26Well, thanks for listening, folks.
01:06:28I don't want them to be lonely.
01:06:29Yes, indeed.
01:06:30Thanks for listening.
01:06:31It's another Cycle World podcast in the books.
01:06:36It was fun to do.
01:06:37We love new products.
01:06:38We talk about plenty of stuff that starts in 1865 or 1900 or we start at the molecular
01:06:44level.
01:06:45That's how it is.
01:06:47It's certainly part of our entertainment.
01:06:48We hope it's yours, too.
01:06:50But what a spectacular piece of engineering and, as Kevin pointed out, art.
01:06:57So thanks for listening, folks.
01:06:58Check us out on Patreon.
01:07:00There is everything there commercial-free for a low cost that comes direct to us rather
01:07:06than some of the large unseen machines that host this podcast elsewhere.
01:07:13So thanks for being with us.
01:07:15We'll catch you next time.
01:07:16We'll catch you next time.
01:07:17We'll catch you next time.
01:07:17...
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