- 16 hours ago
Find us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/cw/CycleWorldPodcast
Purpose-built production racebikes were available and pretty affordable in the early-to-mid 1970s, but humans will race just about anything. So as streetbikes started to improve and the term "superbike" was born, it didn't take long for people to start racing production bikes at local tracks. One of the most famous was Cook Neilson and Phil Shilling's Cycle magazine Ducati was born as the California Hot Rod, while Butler & Smith BMW's Udo Gietl turn the R 90 S into a race- and championship-winning bike. Kawasakis and more hit the race track, too. At first, modifications were limited, but once the first AMA Superbike Championship was launched in 1976--an idea and its class rules born on an empty California apartment floor in 1975 between John Ulrich and Steve McLaughlin--the motorcycles evolved quickly. Join Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Cheif Mark Hoyer for a discussion about the birth of the Superbike.
Purpose-built production racebikes were available and pretty affordable in the early-to-mid 1970s, but humans will race just about anything. So as streetbikes started to improve and the term "superbike" was born, it didn't take long for people to start racing production bikes at local tracks. One of the most famous was Cook Neilson and Phil Shilling's Cycle magazine Ducati was born as the California Hot Rod, while Butler & Smith BMW's Udo Gietl turn the R 90 S into a race- and championship-winning bike. Kawasakis and more hit the race track, too. At first, modifications were limited, but once the first AMA Superbike Championship was launched in 1976--an idea and its class rules born on an empty California apartment floor in 1975 between John Ulrich and Steve McLaughlin--the motorcycles evolved quickly. Join Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Cheif Mark Hoyer for a discussion about the birth of the Superbike.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00:00Hey, welcome to the Psycho World Podcast. It's Mark Hoyer, Editor-in-Chief. I'm with
00:00:05Kevin Cameron, our Technical Editor. Check us out on Patreon. There's a link down there.
00:00:11We're doing extra podcasts on Patreon. You can, for a small fee, get everything commercial
00:00:17free for one, this one included, that will be posted on YouTube and Spotify. But you
00:00:23can also get all the other stuff, the extra things that we're doing, and we're going to
00:00:27figure out more cool stuff to do over there. So join us on Patreon. Today's topic, close
00:00:33to my heart, near and dear to my heart, which makes me laugh that I'm going to say the subject
00:00:39is unfit for purpose. Near and dear to my heart, unfit for purpose. The origins of AMA Superbike,
00:00:48Superbike racing in America, and the modern analogy that we have, which is bagger racing,
00:00:56also unfit for purpose, yet evolved into genuine race bikes, improving the breed.
00:01:05So prior to AMA Superbike racing, I think we were probably racing just about anything, but
00:01:13the era of the Superbike was upon us, sort of circa 70. We had the Honda CB750 and then the
00:01:20Ducati
00:01:21750 Twin. And Cycle Magazine, I believe, was the first magazine to coin the term Superbikes. They
00:01:29did a comparison and called them that set of bikes, Z1s and KZs and CBs and all that, Superbikes. And
00:01:39Cycle World was soon to follow. And it was our big Superbike comparison. And away we went.
00:01:59And by 1975, it seemed reasonably formalized. Steve McLaughlin, a longtime racer, and John
00:02:13Ulrich, a racer himself, decided to codify this and try to get the AMA to make a class,
00:02:22an official racing class for Superbikes. And as John Ulrich and Steve McLaughlin recently told
00:02:28this story to us at Daytona at a dinner, Steve McLaughlin's very ex-wife had moved out. There was
00:02:36no furniture. John Ulrich rode over what they described as his first date with his longtime
00:02:42wife, Trudy. And they sat on the floor with a typewriter and wrote the rules for Superbike
00:02:50as a class for 1976. And so all these wobbling, smoking bicycle frames, skinny tire things showed
00:02:59up and started racing legitimately. Racing cane. Yep. So to kind of finish the brief origin,
00:03:09brief but long origin story, you know, the West Coast guys were calling them California hot rods.
00:03:16And Cook had called his bike the California hot rod with Phil Schilling. And that was kind of the AFM
00:03:25origin of that part of these guys thinking about it. And there we were at Daytona, three BMWs,
00:03:31Udo Giedel, not a tuner, not a race tuner, who became a race tuner of great note, obviously,
00:03:37with his R90s. And his later employment by Honda. That's right. Everybody got employed by Honda later,
00:03:47didn't they? Schuster and all those guys. So tell us, Kevin, you were far more there than I was.
00:03:54Well, we knew this big new Kawasaki was coming. And when I went to Japan in October of 72,
00:04:07I mentioned one of these code words, which I'd heard from Kawasaki personnel in the presence of
00:04:15of the big cheese. And he said, how you know this name? That's a very secret. And
00:04:30well, of course, in those days, the Japanese companies were porous to corporate spying. So
00:04:37everyone knew what everyone else was doing. Now, the big deal in 1972 was that Kawasaki took the new Z1
00:04:46and set a 24-hour record of some 2,600 miles.
00:04:52And a lot of people were there working on it, riding it. And it was clear that Kawasaki wanted
00:05:01people to know that this was the new king. And in 73, there was an open production race,
00:05:15which was won by Yvonne de Hamel on a Kawasaki. He was one of their contracted riders.
00:05:23So it began. And a group of conspirators
00:05:33embraced by Steve McLaughlin included Jim France, who has always wanted to see more productionized
00:05:43racing and less thinly disguised factory specials racing. Well, people writing in retrospect
00:05:55like to say that super bike was an every man's class, that you could go to the showroom, buy yourself
00:06:05a Z1 and with minimal modifications, get out there and do it. But what I found when I reviewed what
00:06:15I knew
00:06:16and read a lot more interesting new stuff was that these motorcycles were unfit for purpose.
00:06:26And therefore, in order to race them, they had to be re-engineered by people who knew what they were
00:06:34doing.
00:06:36Now, you might think this was the way it was, well, way back at the beginning, you know.
00:06:43But as late as 1982, which was the last year of the first era of super bike, the sit-up
00:06:50bikes,
00:06:52a thousand cc's, they brought all their, Honda brought all their gear to Daytona and they had not spared expense.
00:07:05Steve McLaughlin had been made initial team manager and he bought bins and boxes and crates of connecting rods
00:07:14made of titanium, valves made of titanium. And his view was, Honda enters, Honda wins. So let's do it. Fill
00:07:25in the blanks.
00:07:28But he was replaced by Ron Murakami, who came over from the automotive division to run the race team.
00:07:36And he said to me, here's the way the sport is at the moment. The three or four factory entries
00:07:47come screaming by.
00:07:48And then there's a pause. And then a scream of somewhat lower tone is heard. And last year's factory bikes,
00:07:59now owned by private entities, come tearing by. Then there's quite a long wait. And finally,
00:08:09here come the privateers on, now these were his words, and I had to birthed out laughing, smoking junk.
00:08:18Now that sounds very contemptuous of the efforts of private persons to soup up their bikes. But we
00:08:28have to remember this. What was the aftermarket building? Were they building for 50 mile races? No,
00:08:34they were building for 1,320 feet, which is a quarter mile. And so it was imagined by these people
00:08:44that
00:08:45they could build road race engines turning 15,000 RPM. The present day superbike engines do
00:08:55reach and exceed that RPM.
00:08:58And that pistons and connecting rods and so forth just were failing right and left.
00:09:08And they were failing on the factory entered motorcycles. When Rob Buzzy was finally made,
00:09:20put in charge of this building, the super bikes for Kawasaki,
00:09:27he had to deal with connecting rod failure. They were breaking near the small end. Now,
00:09:36this is unfit for purpose, because Japanese engineers had been told speed limit in America is 60 miles an hour.
00:09:47So
00:09:49let her rip. And at least that was an excuse that was given later. So Muzzy had a three-tier
00:10:01program for that,
00:10:02what he could do today. If there's a race tomorrow, what he could do in a couple of weeks for
00:10:12races,
00:10:13a couple of months ahead, and finally, a total solution.
00:10:19So what he did was he put a crankshaft into a plastic bag with one rod sticking out, and he
00:10:27polished and smoothed
00:10:30the area where the breakages were taking place to eliminate surface defects that could expand into cracks.
00:10:39A lot of grinding and polishing, a lot of coughing up metal particles, breathed in by the people doing this
00:10:48work.
00:10:49Polishing is one of the most dirty and disgusting things that you can do as an industrial operation.
00:10:55Yep.
00:10:56And those, the guys doing it are always like, like this with one finger missing. It's really,
00:11:01I think they've probably figured it out better, but I went into some early polishing operations in my
00:11:06career where it was just, just rooms where the corners of the building were gone with a black
00:11:12matting of the polishing wheels and the rouge and everything. Oh God. It's really, we've, we've come a long way.
00:11:20You took your cast hot rod wheels to a polish shop, get them polished. You take your aluminum
00:11:28intake manifold to a polish shop, get it shiny. It looks cool. Anyway, that was the first step that made
00:11:37the engines more erasable. The second step was to take the crankshafts apart while ordering titanium rods made
00:11:49by whoever was willing to accept the contract and then reassembling with steel rings pressed into the
00:11:59big end of the rods for the rollers to run on. These were Z1 as a roller crank. So were
00:12:06the GS Suzuki's,
00:12:07which were about to arrive in 77. So then you had to true the four cylinder crankshaft. And this is
00:12:17an
00:12:17acquired taste. I don't think that there are people who do this for recreation, but it's a way to get
00:12:25a
00:12:25crankshaft in your motor this week that is straight. That's such an interesting concept in and of itself.
00:12:35People who don't do this for recreation and yet you just gotta. Yeah. Yeah. Well, who else is going to
00:12:43do it?
00:12:43The polish shop is gonna do it. Yeah. So then the third step was the factory, meanwhile, is working
00:12:51hard to develop connecting rods and other crankshaft related parts that will enable them to ship you
00:12:59race cranks from which you can take the crank and put it into the cases. After, of course, checking it
00:13:05for straightness. Um, because it used to appear to me that the follows truing cranks for one brand was,
00:13:13was cranking away at the rods and looking at the dial gauges going back and forth and giving the
00:13:20smart tap with a soft hammer. And once he got the dial gauges to stay within the green zone,
00:13:27then he threw the crank through a hole into a bin downstairs for shipping.
00:13:34But, um, as I say, it's, it's an acquired taste and people teach themselves to do it. They can learn
00:13:42it from those who are adept in these black arts. Well, when you talk about throwing the crank through
00:13:48a hole, are you saying that it's going out of true when it hits the ground or it's the bin
00:13:52where all the
00:13:53others are? That's what I'm suggesting. That's what I thought because it reminded me of what factory
00:13:58was it? BSA or Norton? They were casting things in the foundry and then they'd put it on a cart
00:14:04and they would take it very hot outside to the other building. And that really hot iron would be
00:14:12shot cooled and they were having terrible problems with cracking in their castings. So,
00:14:18well, just like Harley's trouble with the, um, cylinder, there was a cylinder finishing machine,
00:14:25which was this, this tremendous, um, you'd expect it to be surrounded by worshipers bumping their
00:14:33foreheads on the floor. It was truly impressive. And, uh, in the winter, sometimes it would throw junk.
00:14:41It would be way off dimension and they had a big meeting and they actually had employees there for the
00:14:48first time. And these employees are sort of looking at each other. And finally, one guy said, well,
00:14:53I can't stand it. I'm going to tell him. And he said, I know you guys are engineers and you're
00:14:59real
00:15:00smart and so forth, but we noticed that it's, it's, it's, it throws scrap when they opened the big
00:15:07overhead door in the back of the gear, gear line to bring in the gear stock. And that cold air
00:15:14comes
00:15:14rolling in straight to the cylinder finishing machine. Oh, thank you. And that's so much for
00:15:25cooperation between upstairs and downstairs. Anyway, uh, they had to do this primitive work with the
00:15:33crankshaft. Now, if you read other accounts about the early days of super bike racing, you will find
00:15:38that the European bikes, uh, the, uh, goosey BMW Ducati had an advantage because they were, uh,
00:15:50made to handle to the standard of European riders. The European riders did not just tear out the part
00:15:59of the magazine that said quarter mile time and top speed. They wanted to
00:16:04be able to cross the Alps in fine style. Well, this is true to a certain extent. And
00:16:13one account that I read this past week said that the European bikes could be taken off the showroom
00:16:20floor and raced with little or no modification. Well, now let's list some of the modifications
00:16:28that Phil Schilling, the late Phil Schilling and Cook Nelson, the first modern editor of the now
00:16:36defunct cycle magazine. Um,
00:16:43the things that they had to do to their European motorcycle to make it do the job of racing.
00:16:53They went to Jerry branch repeatedly for bigger valves and the engine was reported for these
00:17:02valves. The cylinder heads were welded to change the shape of the intake port to make it more felicitous,
00:17:11more inviting to the little air molecules teaming around the intakes. Shall we dive in?
00:17:17I wonder if that's what they wrote on the, on the board in the, you know, the porting shop,
00:17:21more felicitous. Is it one of their kids? Yeah. Well, uh, they found, for example, that
00:17:31the intake and the exhaust valve on overlap were coming extremely close to one another. And that was,
00:17:39that was the limit on valve size. You couldn't have a larger valve unless you
00:17:45reduced overlap timing, which would take some horsepower with it.
00:17:51And finally, Jerry branch said, I'm just going to sink those things. I'm going to sink the seats
00:17:57and which pulls the valves deeper into the head so that they come less close to one another. And the
00:18:06final, uh, valves that he was using, I think were from an, uh, XR seven 50.
00:18:11Well, that's, that's an interesting note because talking to Udo Giedel and Bill Werner at Daytona.
00:18:17So I went down with BMW to Daytona and we wrote, we rode those bikes. We rode the R90s that
00:18:23Udo had
00:18:24built and Udo was there. So I'm chit chatting to Udo and Bill Werner. And Udo's like, oh yeah,
00:18:30we tried XR, uh, cams. We had to go to roller, uh, eventually to get, uh, non-symmetrical and,
00:18:39and, uh, more rapid lift. It was just fascinating, but you're talking about sinking the valves and
00:18:45welding the heads. So move the ports and the three bikes there, um, Fisher's bike, McLaughlin's bike,
00:18:52and, uh, Reg Pridmore's bike. All of them had different intake port angles that Udo had
00:18:58experimented with. Yes. Little or no modification necessary. Well, that's so, what's so great about
00:19:05it is the, they said in the rules that you could reposition the shocks. Yes. And so, so the BMW
00:19:14show,
00:19:15the BMW shows up at Daytona. Now Reg's bike had twin shocks and it was Reg wanted to, uh,
00:19:22adhere to the rules. This is the lore. And, um, but, uh, Steve's bike and Fisher's bike had single
00:19:29shocks and everyone joked that Udo repositioned the one shock to the shelf in his shop. In the parts
00:19:36room. Yeah. In the parts room. Now you can reposition it. So single shock, there was a lot
00:19:42of interpretation. We read the, we read the popular, uh, prints about how much modification
00:19:53was necessary for the Japanese bikes that they had to be. They needed new swing arms,
00:19:58new forks. Um, that is parts made for racing that they had to have their frames reinforced to
00:20:06stiffen them. And this include plate and gusset. The steering heads were boxed in as if this was not
00:20:15done, uh, by the people running the European bikes. Now Udo moved the engine forward in order to get more
00:20:26weight on the front wheel to be able to accelerate and also to have the higher stability that increased
00:20:32load on the front tire brings with it. He, he said, have you ever looked at the steering head
00:20:40of a stock BMW? And I said, well, no, actually. And he said, well, the tubes going, crossing over each
00:20:47other to join to the steering head are not welded together. He said, I'm sure they built it welded
00:20:56nicely to begin with, but then they found that BMW buzz, which became a, an issue as the pistons
00:21:05became larger and heavier, um, which is the engine trying to do this because the connecting rods are not
00:21:14in the same plane. They cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Yeah. The rocking couple,
00:21:20if you offset the rods, which they had to do, and then you make them bigger and heavier as you
00:21:25did
00:21:25with the 900 and they're going like this, you can imagine when the both pistons drop like this,
00:21:30this one's pushing this way and this one's pushing this way. Twist the whole engine that way.
00:21:35Yeah. If they were perfectly aligned, then you would have no vibration. For example, if there were
00:21:40two rods on one side and one on the other, you could have them in the same plane and BMW
00:21:45buzz would
00:21:46not exist. Yeah. Big, big rod, big single rod on the right side and two light rods on the other
00:21:52side. He said they, uh, they deleted some of the welding in order to, uh, let the frame wiggle at
00:22:01engine level without transmitting it all to the bars, which BMW customers do not like to be disturbed by
00:22:10vibration. Um, not that any touring rider likes to be, but
00:22:17the Gietel bike had to have its steering head reinforced. Then he ran diagonal tubes from each, uh,
00:22:29swing arm pivot point forward to the steering head, rather like, uh, a Sealy matchless frame.
00:22:38Um, although that's a bit of ancient history, it's not wrong. And the, uh, Schilling, um, Ducati
00:22:55had, they, they asked Pierre de Roche to lighten the bike while stiffening it. Their weight reduction
00:23:05program took 67 pounds off the bicycle and Pierre greatly reinforced the steering head.
00:23:17Now this would call for some, uh, the van that has picked up this privateer bike at the showroom
00:23:25and is taking it to the race. Presumably all these pieces of work are going on.
00:23:33And now, meanwhile, all of these California builders are having it out with each other
00:23:39on local tracks, notably, uh, Laguna and, um, perhaps Willow. So they're, they're keeping track
00:23:49of what everyone is doing. Oh, those guys have edged away from us. We've got to, you know,
00:23:55and at one point, um, in the, in the, uh, Schilling Nelson narrative says that the,
00:24:05I think the race crafters, um, Kawasaki had 119 horsepower and they were making somewhere in the eighties.
00:24:14And everyone was also going to the drag strip. Oh, nice to see you. Um,
00:24:25in order to get a baseline on their acceleration, this was going on for four or five years
00:24:33before Cook Nelson and that bike, the Ducati that he and Phil built was ready to win
00:24:44the Daytona super bike race.
00:24:49And this was a, a wonderful program of development. And the way they describe it,
00:24:56we worked eight hours at the magazine and then we worked eight hours in the shop. Um,
00:25:07my experience of marriage would suggest that that's not the entire picture, but, um,
00:25:16they put a lot of work in. What do you do when you discover that your production bike
00:25:22is case crushing its gears? The material under the case hardened surface layer is not strong enough to
00:25:31prevent the load from the teeth on the other gear from cracking the hard case, which is nitrided or,
00:25:41um, carburized, cracking it, and then spalling off pieces of the hardened,
00:25:51the case hardening. Well, they send you to Webster gear and Webster gear says, well,
00:26:00we'll have to make all these gears out of vacuum remelted 93 10, which is a real gears deal.
00:26:07Mind you, we don't want to bad mouth Ducati because this was built as a street motorcycle and
00:26:14the parts that they made for it are perfectly satisfactory in that role.
00:26:19But when we're talking about racing, they were unfit for purpose.
00:26:25It's the classic,
00:26:27classic tuning creep where you, you, uh, you seek more power and then the clutch slips or you're
00:26:34breaking spokes or the chains inadequate. There's just every possible, you're vibrating so much more,
00:26:40whatever it is. It's just,
00:26:42it's a constant squashing of bugs, you know?
00:26:45And of course, meanwhile, the four cylinder guys, the, um,
00:26:48um, Yosh, uh, Suzuki,
00:26:51Yoshimura worked with Kawasaki's initially.
00:26:53And then in 77, he switched to, uh, to Suzuki's because he was, um, I hope they made him an
00:27:02offer that
00:27:02he couldn't refuse. Um, but those, uh, four cylinder bikes were improving as they brought
00:27:14professional resources to bear upon the problems. For example, I was told, um, by, uh, Gary Mathers,
00:27:25who was managing Kawasaki at this point. Uh, he told me that we couldn't keep stock brake discs on the
00:27:36thing. So we went to, uh, persons unknown and we said, we need stable, non-tackling
00:27:44brake discs. And what was done was that they, the material was cast an inch thick and it was then
00:27:52put on the Blanchard machine and ground thinner. And then it was stress relieved. And this went on in
00:27:58steps, grind, stress relief, grind, stress relief until they had discs of the desired thickness
00:28:10that did not shrink from their duty. And that solved their problem. If you look at the photographs
00:28:20in, um, the little book that, uh, John Owens and I did on early super bike, you will see some
00:28:28of
00:28:28the trick calipers that were used in early super bike. Clearly billet stuff. Well, what's it going
00:28:38to take then go ahead and build it. So here we are at Webster gear and there are the beautiful
00:28:44gears
00:28:45that have been made. One of the most important changes was a taller first gear because street
00:28:53motorcycles typically have a low first for starting away from uphill stoplights with a passenger on the
00:29:00back. Well, full of whatever. Udo said he did the opposite. They had a, they had a custom first gear
00:29:10to get that BMW off the line. Ah, yes. And then they use the rest of the gears. And when
00:29:15I raced at
00:29:15arm on the, uh, uh, r75, uh, slash five, it was also a low first gear, it was a close
00:29:24ratio racing
00:29:24gearbox with the, with the starting gear to pound that guy off the line versus 120 horsepower Kawasaki's
00:29:32in the case. So there you are at the counter at Webster gear and you pull out one of those
00:29:39bank envelopes full of hundreds and start laying them out. Well, these private tiers that made little
00:29:47or no modification must've had some good relations with the bank because that can't have been cheap.
00:29:54Webster made gears for all kinds of race cars, champ cars, for example, and they knew how to make
00:30:01racing gears. Uh, so, uh, with the Ducati, they tried all kinds of pistons. They had oil control
00:30:14problems. So they switched to a different kind of rings, different ring pack. And all of this stuff
00:30:21was going on while they're trying to race it in California. And they are learning so much.
00:30:29This is the kind of program, uh, to die for that you should participate in such a grand, um, elevation
00:30:41of your own knowledge and experience because you've decided to do this crazy thing and you can afford it.
00:30:49So, um, meanwhile, of course, Butler and Smith were backing the BMW effort. They started out racing
00:30:57in California with a slash five, uh, 75 slash five. And when the R 90s became available, they, they switched
00:31:07their knowledge and experience to that. So, uh, Butler and Smith told, um, Giedel and Schuster and
00:31:17Kenny Augustine, who was responsible for enticing the air to enter the combustion chamber.
00:31:23Uh, you boys have free run of the warranty parts. So any, any stuff that was returned
00:31:34for any reason belonged to the race department. One of the great discoveries that was made by, uh,
00:31:44Schilling and, um, company was slick tires. They had started out with K 91s, I think.
00:31:52K 81s was it. Yeah. And on little narrow rims, they very quickly had to switch to
00:32:01cast magnesium Morris wheels. And when they switched to slick tires, they dropped 3.2 seconds a lap on
00:32:11whatever course this took place on. 3.2 seconds. Can you imagine increasing engine power enough to go
00:32:223.2 seconds a lap quicker? No. This was an effort to build every aspect of the motorcycle toward racing
00:32:34success. And therefore we have to say in retrospect that early super bike began with people like Pierre
00:32:46de Roche, uh, who were trying to do the best thing they could with what they had gaining experience
00:32:58but quickly evolved into a whole factory deal. And one of the, one of the amusing things that took place
00:33:08was
00:33:08in 1979, um, Freddie Spencer was hired to ride, uh, one of the four cylinder bikes. And it had been
00:33:23enunciated by the top people in super bike who were all older fellows, except for David Aldana, who will be
00:33:34young
00:33:35forever. Um, that it takes an older, more experienced kind of rider to ride these difficult motorcycles, much as it
00:33:50takes a
00:33:50test pilot to do developmental flying on a prototype. Prototypes can be tricky. So Freddie arrived, they
00:34:04gave him a running motorcycle and he disappeared. So the principle was denied.
00:34:14Professional riders only from this point. And this is how, uh, people like, um,
00:34:25well, Freddie for one, uh, were launched from super bike into international racing, Grand Prix racing.
00:34:33Because it was an intensely competitive class. It became an intensely competitive class.
00:34:40Uh, the European bikes had their time in the sun, which was the first year of the series, 1976.
00:34:51And never again, they continued to win races here and there on the European brands. But once
00:35:00they got the hang of making a racer out of those thousand CC bikes that were conceptually
00:35:11the double the power of a hot triumphant twin of 1965 in a sixties technology chassis with sixties tires and
00:35:26sixties suspension, that all got washed away and replaced by what it takes to win races. And this
00:35:35is why baggers is so such a wonderful demonstration. It shows that the most unlikely motorcycle,
00:35:43namely a bagger that is intended for
00:35:49smooth touring cruising, long wheelbases, plenty of weight, lots of torque and that, that kind of
00:36:01motorcycle attended to by with the same medicines that were applied to early super bike, the sit up era
00:36:12makes a racer of it makes a much more capable machine.
00:36:16And so I got to, I firsthand got to understand how much the bagger is now just a legitimate racing
00:36:26motorcycle. So I went to COTA for the test for bagger world cup, Harley Davidson. So excuse me,
00:36:32F I M Harley Davidson bagger world cup. The first round is the 27th of March. Uh, it's that the
00:36:39weekend.
00:36:39We shall be on the, on the edges of our seats. So bagger world cup is the spec series. Harley's
00:36:46built all the bikes
00:36:47and, um, they're giving them to international riders or their international riders are, we're all paying an entry fee. That's
00:36:55how,
00:36:55how this series is working. They're paying an entry fee and they get bikes and they get allocations and parts
00:37:00and all that stuff.
00:37:01Um,
00:37:03Americans have been racing these since 2020 when the series was conceived and they had an exhibition race at Laguna.
00:37:10And we've just loved it. And the bikes revolved and everybody's they're now they're super bikes and they are exquisite.
00:37:15The, the work on them is exquisite. The triple clamps, the, it's a super bike, Olin's fork, uh,
00:37:21Marcosini wheels, the, the tooling and machine work on the primary cover, uh, the twin shocks,
00:37:28the tuning on the Olin's twin shocks, the swing arm that starts as a 200 plus pound billet that is
00:37:34machined
00:37:35into a featherweight sort of 20 pound ish, gorgeous piece. Warren trust. It is a race bike.
00:37:42Now Americans have been racing these since 2020. And so we're like, Oh, bagger world cup.
00:37:46We have four Americans showing up, uh, to, to do this along with, you know, uh, an Australian kid
00:37:52who's grown up in Spain, a Spanish kid and Italian. And, uh, you know, somebody from Indonesia or
00:37:59whatever, you know, some, it's a global, a global phenomenon at this point. And who was fastest
00:38:07three foreigners, three international riders, not Americans were fastest. They went out,
00:38:13they had an organized team and they, they're like, Oh, wow, this is a, this is, this is a race
00:38:19bike.
00:38:20And they just did what you do with race bikes. They had to cope with the weight and they had
00:38:24to
00:38:25understand the probably 165 foot pounds of torque and 200, maybe a 15, probably with these, these are
00:38:32tuned a little bit down, but racers who grew up racing in super bike and super sport and moto two
00:38:40were out riding that bike at the limit and doing lap times that were nearly competitive
00:38:45with the moto America test that had happened just days prior.
00:38:50They were close. They had a better rear slick. They had a higher spec rear slick and
00:38:56perhaps a lower tune, definitely a lower tune to the engine. Just something that is
00:39:02equal, all the deck heights, all that. They just, they're not trying to beat another manufacturer
00:39:06like Indian. They're just competing with themselves. It's a spec series. Let's make them consistent,
00:39:12reliable and good power. You can back away from the edge, not quite so much compression, not quite
00:39:18Yeah. And they, and they don't want to use the engines up as fast. Right. You know, so, um,
00:39:25it's a 100% legitimate race bike out of a touring model and they are using stock rubber engine mounts
00:39:32and a stock frame. That's the rule. And so they, obviously it's a good, strong platform for this,
00:39:40but it is a, it is a race bike. And one of the guys who grew up, who had raced
00:39:46in moto two said
00:39:47it really handles it. It corners like a moto two bike. We're doing corner speed on this bike at this
00:39:54track. They're doing corner speed, which means it has grip in addition to having traction.
00:40:01And when you see them on the racetrack, you see that they slide frequently and grandly
00:40:08under control. Now, um, um, it takes some, uh, motivation to slide, um, a Moto GP bike because
00:40:21everything on a Moto GP bike is quite rigid, including the tires. So, uh, a high side is possible.
00:40:32High sides are less often seen in baggers. And I think it's because of the 620 pound minimum weight
00:40:42because the tire tries to grip. I'm going to throw this guy over the moon and the mass of the
00:40:49motorcycle says, no way, keep sliding. It's cool. And they change direction quite quickly. Although you
00:41:00might think, Oh, 620 pounds, this thing is going to knock down all the cones in the slalom.
00:41:07But what's happening is you're changing, you're, you're rolling the motorcycle by steering the
00:41:14tires out from under it. Now that takes some doing, but it works just as well on a 620 pounder
00:41:21as it does
00:41:22on, on a, uh, a 212 pound 250 of the, of the old days. So something to note, something to
00:41:31note of that
00:41:31is I rode one and the seat is tall, but the bottom of the engine is wide. They've machined, uh,
00:41:40you know,
00:41:41outer covers that are tucked in super tight and everything, everything they can do to make it narrow,
00:41:46but the bike is raised. And in the riders meeting before all these guys are first riding the bike,
00:41:53just a few days ago, first time they ever been on one part of the riders meeting was,
00:41:58okay, here's something different folks. This is a very tall motorcycle. I'm a, I'm an average height
00:42:05person. I cannot flat foot this motorcycle. And no, I am a tall person and I could not flat foot
00:42:11it.
00:42:11You hang off one side, your leg goes down. Uh, it is tall. And so they've moved the mass and
00:42:18the mass
00:42:19is centered around the center. So the wheels are going like this. It's not, it's at the center of
00:42:27rotation of the bike. I'm sure that they have, they've concentrated the mass as, as you always
00:42:32point out. It's, uh, the difference between turning a ladder very rapidly, holding a rubber ladder,
00:42:38you know, a 10 foot ladder horizontally and trying to rotate your body quickly versus holding that 10
00:42:43pound bowling ball. You can rotate the bowling ball far more quickly. And I think that's what we're
00:42:48seeing on the roll response. Now the wheelbase is long, but for the few laps that I got to do
00:42:53on that
00:42:53bike at Coda, not going particularly fast because it's a very complicated track and I'm riding a
00:43:00complicated motorcycle. That's a lot different than anything I've ever ridden, but it was,
00:43:05the steering was beautiful. Like you're, it just disappeared. And then the, the, uh, what did
00:43:12try, uh, uh, Travis Wyman, uh, tested my bike to make sure it was sort of in the ballpark, you
00:43:17know,
00:43:17that it was just a good, solid, correct setup. And he came back in and he says, it's a big
00:43:22old
00:43:23pussycat. Just watch your quarter entry speeds because it's weighs a lot more than anything that
00:43:29you've ever gone this fast on. Yeah. And, uh, but yeah, the, the steering response was exceptional.
00:43:35And one of the weird things about it is those motorcycles have a negative fork offset. The
00:43:39factory Harley Davidson touring bikes have a negative fork offset. So it's, it's, it's to control
00:43:45weight on the front wheel. You can come up with your rake and trail numbers the same way, but that
00:43:50race bike has a negative offset, which also shortens the wheelbase negative offset, meaning your steering
00:43:56head is here. And on normally on your super bike, your fork legs, here's the steering head. Your
00:44:01fork legs are ahead of, uh, the steering head, steering pivot. And so you steer the bike like
00:44:07this on the bagger, they're back here. So the pivots in front and you look down and you're like,
00:44:12huh, that's unusual. Cause you really don't see that on the Harley. It's not something that's
00:44:16displayed. There's lots of things in the way. What you're supposed to see is a large ashtrays,
00:44:21a large angle of the fork tubes. It looks raked out, but it's pulled back so that the steering
00:44:29geometry isn't as terrible as it looks. I mean, 31 degrees and four and a half inches.
00:44:36So, uh, also the motorcycle is raised not only for cornering clearance, but also to reduce the
00:44:44steering head angle. Now this was the norm during the brief reign of the 883 class, a class in which
00:44:54many, uh, young people who went on to become top riders later got their first, um, national exposure
00:45:05and the front ends on those 883s were raked out. So what did they do? They just jacked the back
00:45:13end up
00:45:14like crazy. Every inch that you raise the back end is roughly a reduction of one degree in steering
00:45:22head angle. Yeah. They had incredibly long shocks. I remember covering that stuff. Um, Eric Bostrom was
00:45:29coming up in that class and it did build some really great riders, but yeah, the, the shocks were just
00:45:34ridiculously long, you know, as they were just, I, I understand they were a really good handling bike
00:45:41with the solid mounted engine. Um, they made them work very well. And when the XR 1200, uh, spec racing
00:45:49class came out, there were a lot of challenges there because they, you know, the, the Harley XR has had
00:45:54an 18 inch front wheel rubber mounted engine by the time that class came around. So it was what it
00:45:59was
00:45:59at the, uh, Oh, Oh four model year, I think. Oh three, Oh four. When they rethought the sports
00:46:05certainly gave them rubber engine mounts to smooth it out. Well, by the time the XR came around, still had
00:46:10rubber engine mounts, had an 18 inch front wheel, but when they converted those, the race bikes,
00:46:15it, it, it kind of eliminated the trail and you had the rubber elements of the frame winding up a
00:46:22lot
00:46:22of tension with not a lot of trail. And, um, anyway, people lauded the handling of the early bikes
00:46:30cause they were the 883s. They were solid mounted engines. What's remarkable about the bagger is they're
00:46:36using stock engine mounts. The engine is still rubber mounted. People have experimented with not
00:46:40running balancers, but they've had problems and you know, they're vibrating so much. It's like,
00:46:47what, what's happening to the electronics with this jackhammering? Cause like you're taking out
00:46:53a counterbalancer that's four to five pounds, but it's, it's to more of a detriment than leaving it in
00:46:59and having the smoothness. And then it's just, I think, I think we're seeing, you know, when you look at
00:47:08Kyle Wyman, I think has somewhere in the neighborhood of a 50% win race in bagger racing
00:47:14over the course of the entirety of it. So the decisions that are being made are leaving the
00:47:22balancer in, they tried it without it, but they're leaving the balancer in and keeping it smooth. But the
00:47:28bike is handling well, you know, Oscar Gutierrez, uh, needy racing, racing, the bagger moto to kid
00:47:37corner speed. The Americans were blown away. They're like, they're losing time in the S's because
00:47:43they're pointing shooting like we do in the States so much. And that the, you know, the moto America
00:47:47baggers have a, have a bit more punch. And so they're, they're parking it, turning it, and then
00:47:52pulling the trigger. And this European comes in and finds the chassis amenable to corner speed
00:48:00and rides it like a moto to bike. Like it was really something. I mean, what an engineering
00:48:07accomplishment for a 620 pound bike and, and each cylinder, roughly 1,100 cc's per hole, making
00:48:17something like 105, 107, 110 horsepower per cylinder. When you crack that thing on the edge of the tire,
00:48:24I was like terrified because it, it's so there. I only accelerated really hard in low gears a few
00:48:32times. I had four laps, um, four laps by my own doing, because I did fall off the bike and
00:48:38I'm very
00:48:38sore and I apologize. So, um, I don't apologize to myself. I apologize to him. And I thank them for
00:48:45the opportunity to ride that bike. It was a very foreign experience, but it was, it was wonderful.
00:48:51And also keeping in mind the RPM range that you're functioning in, they're revving to 7,000.
00:48:59That's not even on for super bikes. That's like, that isn't, it's not indicated on the tack. I mean,
00:49:06obviously it is indicated on the tack, but who's paying attention to 7,000. That's where the show's
00:49:11ending. You feel the bike taper off on the top. So your entire perception of the bike in a corner
00:49:19seems wrong because you're in this low part of the rev range, but it's all there. I would love to
00:49:26see
00:49:26the dyno curbs. We, we, Kevin and I off the air, we, as I was going to go test this
00:49:31bagger, um,
00:49:33talked about, uh, BMEP and saying, you know, how a race, a race engine, a highly developed race engine
00:49:40might have a 200 PSI brake mean effective pressure. And Kevin can, we could do the podcast on BMEP
00:49:46probably. Um, but we just started messing with numbers at 7,000 RPM at this many PSI BMEP.
00:49:54What are we thinking? And you know, at one 90 at 7,000, it was 225 horsepower, somewhere in that
00:50:02range.
00:50:02And then doing the further math to say, what's the torque, uh, using that classic formula with the
00:50:095252, um, you were looking at 165 pound feet of torque. And that's a lot. And it, and it's,
00:50:18and it's interesting and useful and awesome. And even with all of that, European riders were doing
00:50:24corner speed and, and being cause in relation to its weight, it is a Moto2 bike. It's power to weight
00:50:33ratio is small. And, uh, because, because there's so much weight, uh, the late, um, Rob Muzzy told me
00:50:45about a day when Kenny Roberts rode one of his five hundreds. Uh, no, it was somebody else's. It was
00:50:53a Norton
00:50:53Manx and he saw that Kenny was riding it in point and shoot style. And he spoke to him about
00:51:02it. He said,
00:51:03you know, these, these motorcycles make 50 horsepower and they weigh 300 pounds. So they're basically like
00:51:12a 125. They can't do that point and shoot thing because they can't accelerate that fast. So ride it that
00:51:20way. And he immediately went faster. He just, you know, was, was riding it the way he rode reflexively.
00:51:29So, um, if you weigh 620 pounds, do you, do you want to come to a near stop at the
00:51:38apex and then count
00:51:39on blasting off to, uh, a competitive corner exit speed? But I think the, what pleases me so much about
00:51:49this is that, uh, it refutes essentialism. This thing's a Harley. It doesn't have any place around
00:51:59a racetrack. Wait a minute. Let's check. Let's investigate. Now the investigation has been done
00:52:09and it doesn't matter what name you put on it. When you apply racing technology to a motorcycle made
00:52:18anywhere by anyone, you will get racy results.
00:52:24So, and I can remember being, uh, offended by when I would go putting along on my little motorcycle
00:52:32and Harley riders would go by as if they were the high and mighty and I was not to be
00:52:38waved at because
00:52:39I had given in to the temptation to buy cheap piece of undesirable material.
00:52:46Oh, you said late Rob Muzzy. I just want to update that. He's okay.
00:52:53He's not racing anymore. I think he's 83 ish, but he's still with us.
00:53:02We wonder sometimes. Rob Iannucci. Rob Iannucci. There you go. Yep.
00:53:10Just to get that straight. Um, sorry about that. So all the robs. Yeah. Rob to Louie. He's with us.
00:53:22He's the man who, after years in formula one, found it boring and wanted to do different things.
00:53:32And of course, ultimately, a lot of those tasks that look so glitzy from the outside have a certain
00:53:40inevitable rhythm to them.
00:53:43Yeah, definitely.
00:53:45Oh, it's Thursday. So we must be doing this dismal task.
00:53:48Well, imagine how excited I was to get a TIG welder and start welding many years ago now. And, um,
00:53:55I thought, man, welding, the action in welding is going to be phenomenal. It's just going to be
00:54:00absolutely great. And I can do all this stuff and I'm going to weld. And really what welding is,
00:54:06is a ton of prep and you're cutting and you're making fit fitting. And if you're doing exhaust
00:54:12pipes, we're cutting them square and making the joints perfect and all that stuff. And welding is
00:54:18actually like a very small percentage of, of the work because once it's set up, you're just going
00:54:25to go and then it's, it's over and it's pretty, it's sort of tedious. The prep is tedious. It's just
00:54:31like paint a hundred hours and sanding the area. And then, you know, 20 minutes and shooting it.
00:54:37Yeah. I took a crash bike to C and J frame in California and they said, yeah, we, we can,
00:54:43we can fix that for you. And it was just as you described, it's going over there to the stock
00:54:51rack and getting a piece of tubing and sort of look at it, coming to the bike and holding it
00:54:57up and
00:54:58going over to a tool and doing some things. And just seemed like I was going to be there at
00:55:05two
00:55:05o'clock in the morning and unwashed and without food. But once he had it all set that prepared the
00:55:16area, he just welded the replacement repair in and there that ought to do it. And it did it
00:55:27so much for, um, preparation and then operating the, the welder as if it were installing a zipper.
00:55:38Now it's held together. Yeah.
00:55:44So what happened with super bike, um, after 82, 82 was the last year of that first era
00:55:52is that the many reports that had gone back to Japan from the unfit for, uh, purpose early bikes
00:56:04had persuaded the higher ups. Wait a minute. We race in international Grand Prix race. Let's let
00:56:13the engineers responsible for that. Talk to the people who are designing the new, uh, motorcycles
00:56:20for the next phase. And I think that's exactly what happened because, uh, the bikes that replaced
00:56:29those big leader sit-ups were far more sophisticated to the point that
00:56:37they were almost raceable off the showroom. Super sport was basically a stock motorcycle
00:56:45category that allowed you to change the tires, the brake pads, uh, to do a five angle valve job
00:56:53instead of the factory three angle and to change certain suspension components. And then number plates,
00:57:02um, lights off, go racing. And that those classes, 600, 750 and open were tremendous, uh,
00:57:16uh, hotbeds of new talent because you could get in fairly cheaply. Once you're racing,
00:57:27you spend everything you have. So that's a constant and you could get noticed.
00:57:37Who comes out of the paddock leaving with more money than they showed up with?
00:57:45Yes. Racing eats it all. Not sure anyone. I want you also to bear in mind 3.2 seconds from
00:57:53switching
00:57:55from 1960s tire technology to, uh, mid seventies tire technology, slick tires.
00:58:04Big stuff. They are a miracle. They are absolute miracles. Yeah. And look at what, look at what
00:58:09super bikes are now. When you look at a Ducati Panigale or a BMW M 1000 RR, um, MotoGP.
00:58:18Really? I mean, that's, it's that close. They're just, they're otherworldly now.
00:58:23And this is because as, uh, people said, have said to me in every decade in which I've been close
00:58:31to racing,
00:58:32um, our new street bikes are better than the race bikes we were running 10 years ago.
00:58:40Kevin Schwantz went to a press launch. I didn't go on it, but there was a press launch for the,
00:58:44uh,
00:58:47uh, uh, GSXR 750, I think in, in one of the eras and sort of, uh, 2005, 2001. I was,
00:58:53as I said, I wasn't on it, but the story came back and everyone printed it.
00:58:57Cause he was something he was saying at dinner. Kevin was on the launch and he said, I could have
00:59:02won easily won the Daytona 200 on this bike as it is.
00:59:06Yeah. And of course they, they, one branch of the company is participating in 500 CC two stroke, uh, GP
00:59:18racing.
00:59:19And the people who are designing for the U S with its 60 mile per hour speed limit are in
00:59:25their own little box.
00:59:26And what had to happen was get the saws all and put a door right here.
00:59:33And, uh, the results were, were tremendous.
00:59:38A, a very elevate, a great elevation of production by capability took place because those first era sit-ups were
00:59:49so dreadful initially.
00:59:50And the steps that were taken to make them suitable for purpose, if they were incorporated in production would not
01:00:00be that expensive.
01:00:04So that's why, um, the, uh, street bike of today is comparable with the race bike of a decade previous.
01:00:15It's it's things move right along.
01:00:21And of course, tires are the ones that change the most.
01:00:26We had a revolution, um, in 83, when they dropped the super bike displacement from a thousand to seven 50.
01:00:36Um, but there have been many revolutions in, uh, tire manufacturing.
01:00:44In 19, somewhere in, in the mid to late sixties, Goodyear discovered the effects of terpene resins and aromatic oils.
01:00:57They found that by adding things of this nature, they could raise the, um, glass transition temperature of the rubber,
01:01:08the point at which it changes from a glassy solid to a rather sluggish energy absorbing and very grippy rubbery
01:01:21substance.
01:01:24And those Goodyear people were over the moon.
01:01:27They just resins and oils.
01:01:30Bring it on.
01:01:32And there have been, I'm sure that my ignorance prevents me from informing you about other tire revolutions that I
01:01:39don't know about.
01:01:41I'm just telling you about the ones, the slick tire, for example, uh, was one.
01:01:46And then came the radial tire in 84 and so on.
01:01:53Wonderful changes.
01:01:55Yeah.
01:01:55There was a fellow at the, uh, Coda, uh, Bagger World Cup test who used to work for Michelin.
01:02:02And, uh, we were, we were reminiscing about the, uh, the overnight tire.
01:02:06So back in the day before there was a spec tire, Michelin competing with other brands, uh, in MotoGP or
01:02:13Grand Prix racing, as we called it, were making tires overnight based on the weather, uh, report and how things
01:02:19went at the track.
01:02:20So they were making them and flying them to the race to be there in the morning to put on
01:02:26the bikes, to give Michelin the advantage.
01:02:29And, uh, we, we reminisced about that as a wonderful, interesting time when people were competing viciously to get faster
01:02:39and faster.
01:02:39And then when you get a spec tire, it's like automatically like, well, let's use the hard ones because they
01:02:44just last longer and we have fewer problems.
01:02:46You know, you're not, you're not treading the edge as hard, so you don't have to necessarily strive in the
01:02:52same way.
01:02:53Not that you aren't developing, but, um, it's a different game.
01:02:57Yeah. Where else are you going to get a 280 horsepower motorbike to test with?
01:03:06So it's a, um, cooperative enterprise.
01:03:11Well, that's the origin of the super bike and how it relates to modern bagger racing, which are the newest
01:03:17versions of super bike.
01:03:19Just keep in mind, folks, no wheelie control, no traction control on a bagger race bike.
01:03:23They've got maps. They can change the delivery.
01:03:25They can change the engine braking, but there is no TC.
01:03:30Let's remember one other thing.
01:03:32And that is that the 500 Grand Prix riders called super bike in the early days, they called them diesels.
01:03:39Yeah.
01:03:41Because of their truck-like weight and handling.
01:03:46That soon changed.
01:03:48It did.
01:03:50No more diesels.
01:03:52Well, we've come a long way, you know, computational fluid dynamics and modeling, uh, instrumented everything, sensors on everything happening
01:04:01in the engine, using those to manipulate the engine in any way we wish.
01:04:05It's none of this voodoo stuff.
01:04:07That was, I think, the fascinating thing to me about the Irv Kanemoto and Kevin Cameron and Kel Carruthers era
01:04:16was, it wasn't particularly instrumented.
01:04:18They were working on it.
01:04:20There were things, I'm sure that there were things that were instrumented and there were wind tunnels and all that.
01:04:24Irv Kanemoto was an instrument.
01:04:25Yeah, but that's the thing is where exactly that, where the person and the intuition and the understanding and that
01:04:33global digestion of all the data and what his rider is saying and how the air smells and the smoke
01:04:42and what's the needle doing and porting and the sound of the engine.
01:04:47Like someone going to the big bang test when Honda rolled out the big bang and said, Hey, wait a
01:04:53minute, that ain't right.
01:04:55Cause it sounded so different from a screamer.
01:04:58Yep.
01:04:59Just the, the human brain doing all of that and then taking action and your instrument is the stopwatch and
01:05:08what the rider is telling you and what's hap, you know, you're reading things like reading the plug or you're
01:05:12reading the tire.
01:05:13That's the instrumentation.
01:05:14It's not as it's happening, it's after it happened.
01:05:17And what's the evidence to indicate what had happened.
01:05:20It's fascinating.
01:05:22And what must you do next?
01:05:24Yeah.
01:05:24And how do you find the answer indeed?
01:05:27So we have a lot more tools now, but, um, but gosh, we just keep finding new ways to apply
01:05:33them.
01:05:34Yeah.
01:05:34So, um, that's it folks.
01:05:37Thanks for listening.
01:05:38Check us out on Patreon.
01:05:39Please like comment and subscribe.
01:05:42We love the comments.
01:05:43We're always there.
01:05:44I appreciate it a ton.
01:05:46And, um, thank you for being with us.
01:05:49We'll catch you next time.
01:05:51We'll catch you next time.
Comments