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What Is A Beautiful Motorcycle? Engsub
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00:00:00Hey, welcome to the Cycle World Podcast. I'm Mark Hoyer, the Editor-in-Chief. I'm with
00:00:04Kevin Cameron, our Technical Editor. Today we're going to talk about beauty, aesthetics.
00:00:11What is beauty? Beautiful motorcycles. So we're going to have a list and it might be
00:00:15somewhat partial. It could be influenced by our life experience or other environmental
00:00:20factors.
00:00:21Oh, could it?
00:00:24What have we seen? Why, if you haven't seen it, you can't know it's beautiful.
00:00:30Well, an example of how a small change can make something that was before unappealing
00:00:38into a fascination. I saw this at Ducati's exhibit at one of the European shows, probably
00:00:44Milan. Extremely bright light on one of those motorcycles that bears the name of a famous
00:00:53long ago rider. And the intense light made every detail apparent. It wasn't just, yeah,
00:01:04that colorful thing there with a lot of parts and stuff. It brought my eye to every point.
00:01:11So maybe something's more beautiful in daylight.
00:01:16The other day I was, I was at the tax man and everyone in the room was smiling. And I
00:01:21said,
00:01:22why is everyone smiling? And one of them looked at me and said, because it's a good day.
00:01:28Hey, all right.
00:01:30So there's a big subjectivity here.
00:01:34Yes. In the tax department, it's a good day.
00:01:38Yeah.
00:01:41Must not be done with their taxes yet.
00:01:44Yep.
00:01:50Well, are you going to offer us a motorcycle or shall I?
00:01:54Well, I think you should do because you're the one with the list.
00:01:58I do have a list.
00:02:00I just wrote maundering sentences about beauty, which is a mystery to me.
00:02:08Yeah, it is a mystery. That's what it's, you know, beauty is an ideal. That's what,
00:02:14that's what one of my philosophy professors said. It's beauty is an ideal. Okay. Sounds good.
00:02:23Well, you know, you know, when you see it, isn't that what the judge said?
00:02:28Um, I do have a list and it kind of coincides with the first bike that you put, which you
00:02:34said 1960s, uh, triumph six fifties.
00:02:37Yeah. Um, I, I would go back to the, um, the core document, the, um, the original, and I would
00:02:46say the 1940, uh, ish, 39, 40 triumph speed twin.
00:02:51Sure. Um, uh, massively elegant. It certainly extended its beauty into the 650 as the bikes evolved, but it is
00:03:00a fabulous, uh, looking machine.
00:03:04It has that live, uh, airiness that you're talking about, that they, they did expand on it by in the
00:03:09sixties through, through the pre-unit and then to the unit, unit twins.
00:03:14Um, there was a little more air around it. It was not as hunkered down because it had suspension and
00:03:20it was a little taller, um, the rear suspension, but, uh,
00:03:25Yeah. Well, those, when, when young people today look at those motorcycles, they say, Oh, that's really different. What is?
00:03:37You can see right through it because the carburetors are just sticking out there with their carburetor-ness.
00:03:45That's a carburetor. And there's a, there may be an air filter box. Um, you can see it, but the
00:03:53carburetor is there connecting to the air filter box and it's all light and airy. Spoked wheels, that is wire
00:04:03spokes, wire wheels, and, um, the traditional drum brake of the past,
00:04:10which sort of was a transition that sort of hinged on 1970. But, uh, that look was the updated British
00:04:24single because they always had these, except for the slopers that they made in the twenties and thirties, but they
00:04:31had this standing up straight cylinder, uh, straightforward as can be.
00:04:37And as time passed, the engine moved toward the front wheel. And, uh, what works in racing soon becomes a
00:04:50style and production as we've seen this time and again, many of the bikes on Mark's list are hinge of
00:04:59fate bikes.
00:04:59They were big changes that occurred that, uh, changed everything like the 86 Suzuki GSX-R. Um, in the past,
00:05:12there had been bikes that weighed as much as a bagger is required to in the baggers championship over 600
00:05:21pounds.
00:05:22And they were calling them sport bikes. Now, why do people croak and complain about baggers? That's not a race
00:05:32bike. And yet, except a, uh, CBX, which is just weighs a ton.
00:05:40And it's a little 125 size fork tubes on it. Well, that's me sneering in retrospect, isn't it? Time to
00:05:48shut that guy up.
00:05:49Well, you're a two-stroke guy, you know, like that big fat inline six, four-stroke street bikes. I mean,
00:05:55what, what the heck, you know, it's time to cut wood. We got TZ 750s, no power valves, just all
00:06:02power, no valves.
00:06:03All power, no valves. That's good. I like it.
00:06:07Well, on the twins, what you say is true about being able to see through the bike. It's a famous
00:06:12Jay Leno quote, never trust a motorcycle you can't see through. He's, he's good for the rye quip, that Jay
00:06:17Leno. Uh, and he's a great collector of, of beautiful things.
00:06:21Everything, yeah.
00:06:22Yeah. Taking that speed twin to the 1960s triumphs, I mean, a Bonneville, the Tigers, they just, they, they, the
00:06:32shape of the tank, they rode handy. They rode lively. They, they look wonderful. They're narrow-waisted. They're easy to
00:06:42engage with. They make that sound. They vibrate a certain way.
00:06:45It, it does communicate to people who have experienced it. And it certainly is an elegant form, which they've extended
00:06:52to the new bike.
00:06:53So as soon as you were saying, like, I could see through, we could see through these bikes, the speed
00:06:57twin, the new speed twin 1200, for example, I took a picture of it out here in the parking lot.
00:07:03And it is, and it is, got a hole in it. And it's got a, it's got fuel injection, but
00:07:09it has very, uh, mono, AML, monoblock carburetor looking fixtures. And it's right there. And you can see through it.
00:07:18And I'm, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll have that image up already.
00:07:21Well, this is why I think the sunlight was coming through. That's why I walked out and it was late
00:07:27in the day. And there's this flash of sun coming through the middle of the bike, the heart of the
00:07:32motorcycle, right behind the engine. Pow. And it, it, uh, they've done a beautiful job with those forms that are,
00:07:40that are so evocative that it, you know, it, there's this, you know, when the first Bonneville came out in
00:07:502001.
00:07:51When they first went retro at triumph, they were trying to be a modern motorcycle manufacturer. They were going to
00:07:56compete it with 600 CC four cylinders. They were going to make 1200 CC land ripping Hayabusa. Like, you know,
00:08:06they were just going for it on in all categories. That was their plan. Yeah. And then they decided they
00:08:12could finally go retro.
00:08:13And in 2001, I went and rode the Bonneville. And what struck me at that time was there was an
00:08:21uneasy truce between that Bonneville and what had come before. It was there. It looked very,
00:08:31It was very close, but they put the kick in the pipes. Yeah. They put the kick in the pipes.
00:08:37It, it was a very good example, but it actually rode less like a triumph than you wanted it to.
00:08:43It was too modern in a sense that Kawasaki W650 actually rode more like a vintage triumph. And it sounded
00:08:51more like a vintage triumph with the way the pipes were.
00:08:53And it was a very interesting time around that. Now with the speed twin, we've seen the newer version of
00:09:01that Bonneville form for so long.
00:09:06They've updated it and kept the essence of the bike, but in a new form with 17s and like neat
00:09:16tires. It's a, it's a, and it's working for them. I mean, it's really, it's really working for them, but
00:09:23it isn't, it isn't.
00:09:25That's what can happen is you listen to your market. Yeah.
00:09:28The market is saying, why does it say triumph on there? If it, if it looks like a Kawasaki, come
00:09:33on, fellas. And they did, they came on. Yeah.
00:09:37So that was that person. Yeah. The persistent form though. It, it, um,
00:09:43you know, when I think of Harley's knucklehead and I think of the, the residency in the motorcyclists spirit,
00:09:53that form has been there for so long. It feels like its own truth. You know, it's just there and
00:10:01you just,
00:10:02and you can expect it and it will be there. Yeah. That's, I mean, that's why I put the 09
00:10:08Harley Davidson
00:10:08Road King on there because it was the new chassis that they're still using. That's a great chassis.
00:10:14That's the foundation of the bagger race bike. So new chassis, much better handling than the previous
00:10:21versions. And the, the Road King was such an essential form that they nailed at that time,
00:10:29especially it was a better motorcycle, but the proportion, the resolution of it going out back to
00:10:37the bags, they really, they really hit it. And particularly that era, that 09 era, the colors
00:10:45and finishes they were doing were just impeccably classic and wonderful. The depth of the burgundy paint
00:10:54on Peter Egan's 09, it might've been a 10. I know it was an 09 because it had the straight
00:11:01cut fifth gear
00:11:02that they changed later. It was too noisy for customers. So they changed to a helical fifth the
00:11:07next year in 2010. Um, but it was just exquisite. And you know, we've, we've transitioned in style to
00:11:16blacked out things like Harley's stuff is blacked out. So even when you do the Road King, which was a
00:11:21very traditional, like what you would call the jukebox look, right. A lot of Chrome and some reds
00:11:27like, it's, it's seriously a column of style for Harley. It's like, do the jukebox bike, whether
00:11:32that's a heritage, there is that segment of customers still would, would like to have that,
00:11:37but we went blacked out and it's still a really nice form, but there's something to be said for
00:11:43the deep, the deepness of those finishes, the deepness of the Chrome and the deepness of that
00:11:48burgundy that you just, you get lost in a reverie. I don't know what else to say.
00:11:54I went to, I went to Bonneville with, uh, Indian. They wanted to set a record and some executives
00:12:03rode into our little encampment where people were cooking dinner, a popular, uh, prospect
00:12:09at the time. And one of the bikes, uh, that those fellows rode had this, uh, creamy green
00:12:23color. That was my uncle's 1948 Buick. Now there is a language without words, which can be very
00:12:33powerful because I remember going to the swimming hole with my uncle who had driven up from New York
00:12:40the night before and had no sleep. And we're jumping on his bed. Take us to the swimming hole
00:12:46in that 48 Buick with that color. So if you know that those colors can be there in the minds
00:12:56of
00:12:56people, uh, of a certain age, you can sell them something. Yes. Strong feelings associated with that
00:13:08color because it lit up right away on my instrument panel. And, um, I'm not sure. I like, I like
00:13:19that.
00:13:19I don't want parts of my brain belonging to controllers outside of my knowledge, but there it is.
00:13:27I noticed that a lot of the bikes on your list here are really, um,
00:13:33moments of big change. The Max Norton, for example, the change to the twin loop frame and all
00:13:39hydraulic suspension with weight forward. Uh, the 1940 speed twin was, they designed Edward Turner
00:13:50designed the engine to fit in the existing single cylinder frame. So what they were changing
00:13:57was a new engine sound, a new degree of performance and a new reason to buy. So that
00:14:05was a big, a big one. 1920 ish, um, Indian scout in the beginning, the big Indians and the big
00:14:17Harleys were for athletic young men, no bones about it. They were for athletic young men. And people
00:14:24asked the reasonable question, what if we made a more available motorcycle, one that more kinds of
00:14:31people could ride. That is what Scout was designed to be. It was done intentionally because somebody
00:14:39was thinking. So here it is on your list. Yeah. It was a, well, it was such an elegant form.
00:14:46A hundred pounds lighter than the competition. Just marvelous.
00:14:52Yeah.
00:14:54And then the Vincent twins, no frame, no steel tubing, thinking again, thinking new.
00:15:07Uh, Perilla Grand Sport. Well, Giuseppe Salmaggi went from company to company designing things
00:15:16when they didn't have someone on staff to do it. Salmaggi at your service sign here. And, uh, the Grand
00:15:25Sport
00:15:25had a high camshaft and you can see it way up there with little, little push rod, little stubby guys
00:15:33going out to the valves, one cylinder. It was a miniature Manx. Oh, I was deadly, deadly,
00:15:40deadly obsessed with buying a Grand Sport for a long time. I was shopping. I found the Grand Sport
00:15:47guy. I was talking to him. He had Grand Sports in his collection. He's like, well, you could buy one
00:15:53of these and, but they were not cheap. And they're also, you know, it's a, it's a 1950s 250. And
00:16:00I was
00:16:01like, well, I'm, you know, I'm a, I'm kind of a gorgeous hunk of man. Am I going to, is
00:16:06that going
00:16:06to be, is that going to be the, the riding experience I'm looking at? Cause the, the elegance of the
00:16:11engine.
00:16:11And I think for me, what's, um, I think the Scout, the Manx, the, and the Vincent have in common
00:16:21with
00:16:21the Perilla that the shape of the engine suggests and forms what's contained within it. And so when
00:16:30you look at the forms of the engine, you're understanding this here is where the timing
00:16:35gears are even the, the 40 triumph or the sixties triumph, that, that elegant, uh, triangle with
00:16:43lots of screws holding it. Yeah. And it just, uh, that's such, such the British thing is like how
00:16:49many, how many screws can we put in to join two, two machine services that are obviously not perfect.
00:16:59Um, but yeah, the Perilla with the high cam, I liked it because it was
00:17:05it's, it is, it is a push rod, but they were moving towards saying we should get rid of these
00:17:12push rods eventually. Shouldn't we? As other people already had, they were just moving the
00:17:16can. And of course, Vincent did the same thing on their Comet single. They raised the cam up.
00:17:26So the push rods became shorter. So it was a step toward overhead cam, which typically uses half the
00:17:35valve spring pressure of a push rod and rocker engine, because there's got to be some spring there to
00:17:41heave the push rod back, uh, and forth and the, to rock the rockers. So that's a point. Commando, um,
00:17:5274
00:17:54commando roadster you've listed here was England's, the parallel twins last stand.
00:18:04Everything they had done to those engines had made them vibrate worse. They made the boars bigger.
00:18:11The pistons were heavier. Um, they didn't necessarily adhere to the six 6,500 RPM of the original
00:18:19back in 1936. So some pretty formidable vibration. And those who remember those twins remember.
00:18:31And of course, for the same reason, the Harley sports are the front wheel whipping back and forth rapidly
00:18:38at idle because the rotation of the engine, the shaking force of the pistons and the
00:18:45counterweights on the crankshaft just sang the same song as the flexibility of the fork tubes.
00:18:53So there's that front wheel doing that thing. And that is, it's a, it's a, an important feature
00:19:01that says, yes, you're among friends because you know this. Yes. It's doing stuff.
00:19:09It's alive. It's alive. And if you pull the brake, if you pull the brake, it changes because the wheel
00:19:14can't, can't dance with it. Right. And they're changing the vibration. That was the thing is
00:19:18that they were changing the vibration to a horizontal. By adding more counterweight,
00:19:24the more counterweight you add, the less it shakes up and down, the more it shakes back and forth.
00:19:29And it was a little, a little more pleasant. The, the most vibratory motorcycle perhaps I've ever
00:19:36ridden neck and neck with the Royal in the 1999 Royal Enfield 500 bullet that was put together
00:19:44rather roughly at the factory at that time. I was, it vibrated so much. It made me itchy.
00:19:51I wrote a six 50 cafe racer Norton in a feather bed. So a solid mount. Um, somebody thought maybe
00:19:59they had used a commando crank by accident because the balance factor of the commando crank is tuned to
00:20:05work with the rubber mounts, which is one of the reasons I picked the commando. I believe the engine
00:20:12is one of those truly beautiful forms leaned forward, the sweep of the pipes, uh, the shape of the timing
00:20:20cover, that three lobed, uh, beauty on the right side. And then the gorgeous glistening polished, uh,
00:20:28primary cover on the left containing a triple chain, you know, a triple chain that virtually never wears
00:20:36out if you take care of it. Um, just as elegant as could be. And the other thing about the
00:20:43commando
00:20:44is it is the, it was really the apex for the British twin. It, it, it did, it brought the
00:20:51most,
00:20:52the eight 50, uh, the shape of the tank, uh, the rubber mounting, the, the way that it ran and
00:21:02made
00:21:03torque. You know, we've talked about the combustion chamber of this engine and the shape of the intake
00:21:08ports and the filling. It is a great running engine when they're right. They are just a spectacular
00:21:15fun. It's got, you know, I think mine on the dyno 48 pounds, pound feet of torque at 5,000.
00:21:24Uh, but with the rubber mount, you know, it, it's the same experience you get on a Harley touring bike,
00:21:29uh, with rubber mount or the dinos that were rubber mount before they changed it. There's the motion
00:21:36at idle, but someone throws a switch and now Harley's done a very good job of broadening that
00:21:41smooth area. Like the new touring bikes, you get all of that. You, you lug it down and you get
00:21:47the
00:21:47chugga chugga chugga and you feel the bike, but it's not, it's the edges are off of it. And then
00:21:52you
00:21:52get up to 2,500 or 3000 and the switch goes off and it is glass smooth, but you've got
00:21:57the soundtrack.
00:21:59You know what you're riding. It's a, it's, that's why I picked the commando because it has that,
00:22:05it has an aesthetic that beyond just parking it at late light and admiring the horizon line on the gas
00:22:14tank or on the, on the, the shiny aluminum covers, it all, it's beauty extends to the, the level of
00:22:22functionality that it brought to that parallel twin form and that it just runs great and it steers nice.
00:22:30It's not as sweet as a feather bed, but it is a, it is a good handling motorcycle and it,
00:22:36you can
00:22:37really have a, you can have a good time. XR 750 dirt tracker. This is the closest to two wheels,
00:22:50an engine
00:22:51and a place to sit that you can come. And when I first looked at one, I thought those wheels
00:22:58could
00:22:59not be rolled any closer to the engine without interfering with the suspension motion or something.
00:23:05And, um, um, of course the engine is like all Harley engines, substantial in weight. Um, but for 1972,
00:23:19it was an outstanding leap forward. They built 200 iron XRs for 1970. And it was a lot of iron
00:23:32and a Daytona. They kept lowering the compression more and more until they got under six to stop it
00:23:40from detonating because iron keeps heat in. That's why they make stoves out of it. So the logs won't
00:23:48cool off and stop burning. And, uh, they just got one thing wrong. Cylinder and head material,
00:23:58scratch out where it says cast iron and write aluminum. Of course it was more complicated than
00:24:05that. And the, uh, limited circulation book on the development of the, uh, XR talks about
00:24:18so many little changes that had to be made along the way, such as the valve train becoming twice as
00:24:25stiff over the life of the vehicle. But where's beauty? I like wire wheels. I like, uh, front sprockets
00:24:37with holes drilled in them. Not because I particularly want it lighter, although I do, but you could make
00:24:46it lighter by making it thinner. Um, except at the, at the sprocket teeth, but there's a kind of
00:24:58important elegance about that. I would like to have sprockets on the wall here. I may yet.
00:25:06Well, I, I, it's the dirt going back to the dirt tracker. Yeah. You said elegance. The, the,
00:25:14the thing that's the most elegant about an XR seven 50 is it is so essential what you were saying.
00:25:20And it is really, it's hard to be, it's hard to reduce the motorcycle anymore than a flat tracker.
00:25:27Yeah. You know, for road racing, we, we have to put some fairings on it because that we're just
00:25:35going to be going that fast. We need all kinds of braking power.
00:25:38It, it changed things. Yeah. Right. Because you have, you have asphalt and you have grip
00:25:45and, uh, you know, throwing a front brake, hard, hard corner entry to hard trail braking on a mile.
00:25:51I doubt it. Maybe, I mean, we could try it. I don't know, but it's, that's what's so beautiful.
00:25:59People have noted that when you lay the thing in there, that the tack goes up
00:26:03because you're getting onto the side of the tire at a lower radius. So the engine has to speed up
00:26:08or you've slowed down and we can't have that.
00:26:12I knew I was getting somewhere on a road race course. The, the first time I started really going
00:26:17fast when I was noting RPM change, RPM going up, going through corners where you weren't braking super
00:26:25hard. I was like, Oh, I see. I understand. And then snap wheelies that you could get where you
00:26:32would be pulling it up on the tire and you were getting like an extra drive essentially from
00:26:38changing the rear gearing as you were accelerating. It kind of hoists the wheel on the tire. It's a real
00:26:44interesting feeling. There have been riders, road race riders who've talked about, uh, continuing to
00:26:49hold the motorcycle at angle of lean because it doesn't wheelie as easily. The center of mass is,
00:26:56has been lowered. Now that's why I said, talked about, it's not proved, but people are thinking
00:27:06about this. Well, where's, where is beauty in all this? Uh, I have hung a picture of the
00:27:17uh, Suzuki RK 67 50 CC twin, uh, 17 horsepower at 17,000 something RPM. And it is basically the
00:27:34bike
00:27:35that sent the four stroke Honda's four stroke home from that class. They pulled their entries. Um,
00:27:45they stopped running in that class because, well, Honda was preparing to enter automotive
00:27:52manufacturing. That's a big deal. Um, they had a purpose in going racing, which was to make Honda
00:28:02a household word. They had done that so they could say, well, um, you know, we could have gone ahead
00:28:10and
00:28:10built our three cylinder or our planned four cylinder 50 and carried on, but that's where we
00:28:18stepped off of that class. Well, this motorcycle, everything is crowded together.
00:28:25The rider is squeezed down onto the tank, which is long and strange looking. They called the bread
00:28:33loaf tanks, but this is at least three loaves end to end. And the engine is a, is quite a
00:28:41massive
00:28:42thing. The gearbox is bigger than the power section, but there are the things that are so familiar,
00:28:49the tack cable coming out of the tack and disappearing down to some little gearbox on the engine,
00:28:54the temperature gauge going to the radiator. Uh, the carburetors you can see still early type,
00:29:05but I think I'm pleased to stand and look at this thing because it's so single-minded
00:29:17has two inch wheels, two inch tires. I should say little tiny skinny things as were the, the men who
00:29:25rode them, uh, 14 speed gearbox, all old tech. After 1967, they discovered that the FIM in limiting
00:29:38gearbox speeds to six had not sentenced them to non-competitive performance.
00:29:45They had required them to discover something new. And so here's this motorcycle, which
00:29:56for most people would be, yeah, what, what's the point of it though? And I have to agree.
00:30:04The most people ride a motorcycle because they like that kinesthesia. They like for, they,
00:30:10they like to ride just as people who first learned to ride horses in central Asia must have liked to
00:30:19ride. And that's something that can never be forgotten, but this is a certain kind of very
00:30:26focused design. And there I, I stand there every few mornings and just look at it.
00:30:32Well, it's, it's what you said about it in your notes. Um, total weight, 128 pounds as close to
00:30:39nothing as possible, which is exactly why I like the XR 750 knowing the engine is heavy, but also that,
00:30:47that weight, especially the crank weight circular flywheel in the middle of the bike. A lot of people
00:30:53really credit the bike's ability to hook up and turn by having its masses where they are
00:31:00functioning in the way they are. So it's a very essential motorcycle. The way that you say this,
00:31:07the Suzuki is, even though it's probably had a fairing, you're looking at it with the body off and,
00:31:12and marveling at what might be a little bit of hidden beauty behind the fairing.
00:31:19They tried to streamline steam locomotives at the end of their period of usefulness,
00:31:25and it didn't work. It just made them look like all the art books have, have the Gestetner calculator
00:31:35case. The Gestetner calculator was one of those things you go chicka, chicka, chicka with the buttons
00:31:40and pull a handle. And it adds that number to the ones you're adding. They thought they could sell
00:31:47more units if they had it styled by a famous designer. So they took it to one and they made
00:31:53a cover for it. They didn't change the machinery. They just put a cover on it with a different shape.
00:32:01And we're like that. We humans change the shape, change the color. Oh, it's all new. I want one.
00:32:10That's okay. You know, I've done an experiment over the years with the cars and trucks I drive,
00:32:19and it's the use of headlights. So on my commute, there are two intersections where people tend to
00:32:25pull out when they shouldn't. They can't perceive your presence and closing speed, or they somehow
00:32:34ignore your size. But what I found statistically, having lived there for a long time, is that if I
00:32:39have my headlights on, they hesitate more because I look bigger. I'm more present by my burning eyeballs
00:32:48on my truck or my car. And think of all the animals who make their hair stand on end to
00:32:54make them look
00:32:55bigger. I'm certain it's true, Kevin. I'm certain. We're wired for it. Yeah. That's why when you have a
00:33:04mountain lion and you're nearby, you don't lean down. You don't turn and run away. You put your
00:33:10hands up really high. And if you've got rocks, you start smacking them together to make loud noises.
00:33:15You got to be impressive to get the lions to be disinterested in you.
00:33:20Yes. Shall I run a picture of a mountain lion? No.
00:33:27No mountain lions.
00:33:31The Indian scout was a terrible story because they created this thing that was conceptually correct.
00:33:40And then Indian played horrible financial games. They bought stock. They played the market with
00:33:50cash on hand and they tried to sell people outboard motors and shock absorbers in their motorcycle
00:33:59stores. Hey, we're diversifying. This is the big trend now back in the 30s. And so then they said,
00:34:07hey, there's some frames here left over from our singles program. Let's cram the scout motor into
00:34:15those spindly little frames. So the scout has all these different manifestations. But what is memorable
00:34:25is that it was made to be a motorcycle for a larger population of riders. And that by making it
00:34:35lighter,
00:34:35as well as smaller in displacement, they didn't throw away performance when they did so. So it was fun to
00:34:43ride.
00:34:43And if you look at those things long enough and appreciate their history, they begin to look right.
00:35:00Now, the bulbous tank that you will find on both Harley Davidson's and Triumphs, the 1940 Speed Twin,
00:35:10that bulbous tank traces back to Howard Davies and George Brough, both of whom
00:35:20adopted saddle tanks at about the same time, 1924, I think. And what had happened was flathead engines
00:35:30had sprouted overhead valves. So the engine became taller. That put an end to the long, low look, which
00:35:38fanciers of it couldn't bear to see end.
00:35:43Oh, flat tanks are... I mean, I had flat tanks waiting, you know, orbiting my list, flat tank Nortons.
00:35:52Yeah.
00:35:53Oh, gosh, yes. Absolutely gorgeous, but also...
00:35:56Could be made. Those tanks were made on a sheet metal break and soldered together.
00:36:02Silver solder.
00:36:05So leakage was a possibility.
00:36:09But there's the Vincent. Now, I want to invoke an empty concept of rightness.
00:36:20Oh, you're begging the question. You bet I am.
00:36:24But the Vincent, with no frame, no steel tubing visible anywhere except in the swing arm,
00:36:33was a step away from the traditional motorcycle.
00:36:39And it was the most powerful and fastest motorcycle of its time.
00:36:44And it has an influence that resounds to this day, because not only because steel tube frames
00:36:59have taken a smaller part in the present day, but because the idea of the frameless construction,
00:37:07the new Superleggera Ducati has a carbon frame that is perched on the cylinder heads at the rear
00:37:22and at the top of the crankcase at the front. And it is as close to nothing as you can
00:37:31make.
00:37:34But that material has so much strength that it takes less of it to do the job that's necessary.
00:37:43And I think there's beauty in that, too. Sometimes it comes and goes.
00:37:48It was Aprilia's 250 GP bike had a essentially curved twin beam aluminum chassis.
00:38:01And I thought that was just a lovely thing. And then they made the RS-1000 and it just had
00:38:10big old chunks of aluminum out there doing the job, but not looking like Brancusi's bird in space.
00:38:18Or like the strange forms taken by icicles as water runs down and drips off the end.
00:38:26I think those organic forms are fascinating because they excite your curiosity.
00:38:33What is in there that's making this happen?
00:38:36Well, you pulled the Vincent back out and the twin, because you'd mentioned the comet earlier,
00:38:43because the comet is what they built. And then they were like, well, you know,
00:38:47what if we put another one of these cylinders on here and doubled it to a thousand?
00:38:55And I think the comet is a pretty nice looking motorcycle, but having the two cylinders at the
00:39:02angles that they run with the two pipes with the sweep going into the single silencer at the rear
00:39:10and the shape of the timing case and that extension of the engine to a twin,
00:39:16for me, changes the aesthetic massively. In addition to adding the performance you talked about,
00:39:24being the big thousand cc ripper that it was, because it's
00:39:33a lot easier to get 50 horsepower out of a thousand twin than it is a 500 single.
00:39:38You can get there, but it's pretty stressed.
00:39:42It's hard work.
00:39:46During World War II, a generator unit powered by a 500 Triumph engine was created,
00:39:56and some of those engines were put into bikes for street use after the war and can be recognized by
00:40:05the fact that on the sides of the fins there are little bosses that can be drilled and threaded to
00:40:13hold the air shroud around the cylinders that was necessary to cool the generator engine in an airplane.
00:40:21And I saw one of those bikes once at a, at a, uh, an outdoor show at the, at that
00:40:30museum in Boston.
00:40:31I can't think of the name, but, uh, fine pitch finning die cast, very elegant, very nice.
00:40:41Yes. All the same. Antique is, is all get out because what did it have a hundred millimeter stroke?
00:40:49However, went a long way.
00:40:51GSX-R 750 air oil cooled, fine pitch finning, still alive in 1986.
00:40:59Yeah, that's true.
00:41:03Part of the lightness factor was not having, you know, that eight pounds per gallon of water,
00:41:10big aluminum radiator. Yep.
00:41:12Seven pounds per gallon for oil.
00:41:17Well, uh, we haven't spoken about the Ducati 916.
00:41:21We haven't.
00:41:23And one of the things that's
00:41:27of special interest about this motorcycle to me is that, uh,
00:41:35Massimo Tamarini was not a degreed engineer.
00:41:38He was a person who understood things in his own terms rather than in those given to him by the
00:41:47textbook.
00:41:48I don't mean to denigrate the textbook.
00:41:51There aren't too many people that, uh, correct the vibration periods of a crankshaft by feel.
00:42:02Although I believe that, um,
00:42:06Phil Irving described a means of doing so that you would make a hole in the crankcase with a plug
00:42:13that would line up with screwed in weights in holes in the crankshaft.
00:42:19And you would unscrew the weights, pull them out through the hole and put in a different set
00:42:24and ride it until you got one you liked.
00:42:29I like it.
00:42:30The point here is that there's more than one way to do these things.
00:42:34One way is to hire engineers from the most prestigious schools and have them design motorcycles.
00:42:42What do they know about motorcycles?
00:42:45They know about, uh,
00:42:49crankshaft vibration.
00:42:50They can calculate material loads and so forth.
00:42:56But the 916 shows us that design of a form has to do with the designer's sense of aesthetics.
00:43:12Which isn't taught.
00:43:16This looks beautiful.
00:43:18This is ugly.
00:43:19Put it in the trash.
00:43:20Uh, there have been a lot of efforts to do that to, to, um, in, in, in art, in the
00:43:27visual arts.
00:43:28There have been periods when some viewpoint was prominent.
00:43:33And of course, there are many people who had to rebel against it.
00:43:38They started their own movement.
00:43:40Soon they were in charge.
00:43:41But the Ducati 916 was designed by someone who
00:43:47created a shape that he liked the look of.
00:43:50And it happens that most of us like it too.
00:43:55And it's a simple shape.
00:43:59Inside we know is this, this big space hogging 90 degree V twin.
00:44:05How are you going to put that between wheels this way, this way?
00:44:10Um, and they struggled with that problem for years until they solved it by making a V4 that who,
00:44:17which had a much shorter stroke.
00:44:19The engine was more compact.
00:44:20And that gave them more options as where they could put it and how it would be oriented.
00:44:29But Tambourini did this, made this design.
00:44:32And I remember talking to a degreed engineer.
00:44:35And I said, to what qualities does Ducati attribute
00:44:45the handling of the trellis chassis?
00:44:49He said, it was designed by a genius.
00:44:54I like it.
00:44:56Hard to argue.
00:44:57I mean, that's, that's a nothing statement.
00:45:00That's, yeah, that's essentialism.
00:45:02It's at its worth.
00:45:03That's your, that's your old, uh,
00:45:05Crower roller rockers ad.
00:45:07He, Kevin always brings it.
00:45:08My favorite.
00:45:09Crower roller, the fifties, you know, roller rockers were, were thing, uh, still are.
00:45:14Crower roller rockers.
00:45:17Roller tappet cams.
00:45:19And what?
00:45:21Roller tappet cams and something.
00:45:23Give results that are positively unreal.
00:45:28I love it.
00:45:29All right.
00:45:29So I say that so much positive.
00:45:31Oh, positively unreal.
00:45:33Cause it's, what is it?
00:45:34What does it even mean?
00:45:36Let's go to marketing school.
00:45:38Well, the nine six.
00:45:39Yeah.
00:45:40Sorry.
00:45:40Carry on.
00:45:41I'm just, well, I am saying because the nine 16, um,
00:45:47we're, we're very easily, uh, signaled by shapes and we're, we're,
00:45:52we're just susceptible.
00:45:53That's why we put the cover on the calculator and we go, Oh, that's nice.
00:45:56You know, like doesn't change anything about it, except it's got to cover, um,
00:46:02motorcycles that became supersonic.
00:46:04And we're kind of in that still in that supersonic phase.
00:46:07I mean, at least we're using arrow and MotoGP and we have wings that are actually interacting
00:46:12with the air in a way that's functional and meaningful.
00:46:15What was nice about the nine 16.
00:46:17There were a lot of things that we could say are sort of dumb.
00:46:21Like why would we put the mufflers both under the saddle and very high and at the rear of the
00:46:26motorcycle?
00:46:27Uh, Eric Buell was right.
00:46:28Stuff it underneath the bike.
00:46:30Uh, let's, let's not move the mass up there.
00:46:32And yet we loved it.
00:46:34We loved the organic shapes.
00:46:37You know, we love the, the contours of that bike.
00:46:40They were simple contours.
00:46:42They weren't folded and corrugated and simple contours.
00:46:46Yes.
00:46:47Complex curves, um, compound, compound curves and suggestive of animal nature.
00:46:57It's why an E-type looks good.
00:46:59It, it, you know, a Jaguar E-type, it, it has.
00:47:02It's the Hopper Hunter on four wheels.
00:47:05It's yeah.
00:47:06And, uh, you know, I go back, I, for me, one of the essential moments for beauty in my
00:47:12whole career and sort of epiphanies of understanding.
00:47:16I went to a metal shaping class with Ron Covell who had done the America's most beautiful
00:47:23roadster.
00:47:24He did all the work with, um, Arlen, a lot of work with Arlen Ness.
00:47:29Arlen Ness did, uh, the, this 57 Chevy, um, custom that he built that had fins on it.
00:47:37Ron was, Ron was an incredible hand forming metal shaper, uh, hammers and dollies.
00:47:43And I took his class and he was say, he was, I'm, I'm going to build a, show you how
00:47:49to build
00:47:49a, uh, chopper tank and he gets, he gets, he gets out a piece of welding wiring.
00:47:55He says, I use this welding wire to, to get a form and I, and he holds it up and
00:47:59he starts
00:47:59to roll his thumb on it and he starts to put a curve into it.
00:48:03And he says, I'm going to, I'm going to form this until it's a feet.
00:48:07It's a shape that I find a pleasing.
00:48:10And I was like, Oh, infinity.
00:48:13Wow.
00:48:13I mean, you're talking about the infant.
00:48:15That's the infinite.
00:48:16It's something that I find pleasing.
00:48:18And when you get those contours, and it's absolutely true that somewhere, somewhere between
00:48:23this straight line and this scribble of wadded wire, you have a, a form that has a taper and
00:48:34a shape that, uh, pleases you.
00:48:36And that's to me, the nine 16 is that it had those contours.
00:48:41It had those narrow, uh, narrow headlamps.
00:48:44You know, there's talk about, uh, tambourine using the NR seven 50 as an inspiration.
00:48:51Cause the NR had the pipes up in the tail section and it had the squat, you know, sort of
00:48:56cat
00:48:56eye, uh, a little bit of a cat eye headlamp treatment.
00:49:00And, uh, certainly we, yeah, certainly we find inspiration in many places.
00:49:07I read other stories when I'm sitting around and I'm trying to write a story.
00:49:11I read other stories and I look for something that, you know, causes a vibration.
00:49:17It makes, makes a feeling happen.
00:49:20I say, oh, how, and I try to take that feeling and say like, what, what can I mine out
00:49:25of my
00:49:25experience that, that might be like that?
00:49:29Yeah.
00:49:31Well, um, there's a point that I want to make here.
00:49:34And that is that, uh, around 2002, the European design, um, adopted this supersonic look
00:49:44with scoops, with sharp edges, um, zigzags, mat, um, stealth coatings, uh, all stuff borrowed from
00:49:58aircraft.
00:49:59At one point, uh, Eric Buell decided that he would bring to the general world, the
00:50:09little known, uh, uh, Harley Caltech wind tunnel fairing, which was an important element in their
00:50:18resounding Daytona wind in 1968 and 69.
00:50:25People called it the whale.
00:50:28They didn't like it because it reminded them of
00:50:36fat.
00:50:41Convex blubbery shapes.
00:50:43Bulbous, bulbous, bulbous, absolutely.
00:50:48And whereas they liked the look of that sort of F one Oh four ish business.
00:50:54Nevermind that the F one Oh four is a fifties design.
00:50:58Um, and we can't criticize this because we know that motorcycles don't go fast enough to benefit
00:51:11from the insights of supersonic flight, but the rounded shape doesn't please people right now.
00:51:22So let's get these things sold, put a cover on it that people like and move it, ship it as
00:51:32it says in,
00:51:33in the famous book about computer development.
00:51:37Well, it was, uh, it was an interesting time, uh, like Honda hurricane, 80, 87.
00:51:45That one on a hurricane.
00:51:47Well, yeah, the form of the fairing was, was very, very simple, but they covered everything.
00:51:54And so the fairing, there wasn't even a gap where you looked at the frame.
00:51:58And that was one of the most interesting things about that bike is all of the design,
00:52:03really the aesthetic was outside. It was the, it was, it was the cover.
00:52:08And then if you took the fairing off, it was like, you know, like as a person who says,
00:52:14Oh, Vincent's are beautiful or Norton Manx's are beautiful because of the form of the engine.
00:52:19This was just all like all the stuff. It had, you know, metal pipes and steel, you know, brackets.
00:52:24And, and, and, you know, they just had like looking under a car.
00:52:28Yeah, they were. Yeah. The bottom of a car. Absolutely.
00:52:31Is there anything less aesthetic than a car that's rolled? How wrong does it look? Right.
00:52:35Yeah. You know, so.
00:52:40So I had a discussion once with the, the people that were doing the,
00:52:51oh, what was that new V twin that, that Polaris did victory? And they said, do you have any
00:53:01opinions about how engines should look? And I said, as it happens, I do.
00:53:11And so they listened politely and then they said, well, we don't think you'll be very pleased with what
00:53:18we're making. But my idea was that I like the
00:53:31the shrink wrap look that the cast cases and case covers should in some degree reveal what is inside
00:53:45them. Just as the human skin reveals that we are built on a bony structure. We have ribs,
00:53:55we have, we have shoulder blades, we have organs. And I want to have an idea that there are mechanical
00:54:08parts here. This is a machine. It is not designed by the Eggman. The Eggman is my absolute unfavorite
00:54:20when it comes to engine design because he decreed that simple motorcycles like BSA's copy of the
00:54:31DKW two-stroke, the Bantam should be built on an egg-shaped crankcase and sticking out of this egg
00:54:40would be a thin cylinder. Oh yeah. Yeah. That makes, that makes sense. Yeah. Every time I go to the
00:54:46fridge
00:54:46for an egg, I think about putting a thin cylinder on it. And it would have a shift shaft coming
00:54:53out,
00:54:53it would have a sprocket and so forth. And this has, this, this egg motor has been there for years
00:55:00and years. And I just strongly dislike it because I feel that the engine is a machine and that it
00:55:09is
00:55:10okay to reveal that it contains gears, shafts, and linkages.
00:55:16Yep. So here's a story about Victory and Indian. So Gary Gray was around at the beginning of Victory
00:55:25and Gary worked, you know, he, he was part of the team that sort of had to discover how to
00:55:31test fuel tanks for tip over bursting and, you know, instituting a motorcycle program from nothing.
00:55:38Now they were a good manufacturer. They're making thousands and thousands of engines for side-by-sides
00:55:43and quads and all that stuff, but they had to go through that. And when they came out, you know,
00:55:50they bought Indian and they started working on Indian and producing Indians. You know, they,
00:55:55they had an aesthetic to begin with because they were evoking the swoopy fenders of the chief, which was
00:56:01very, very nearly close on this list. I liked the essential elements of the 101 a little bit better
00:56:06with the less spender. But, um, Gary said, I, I was interviewing Gary, uh, around the, um, Indian chief
00:56:14time. And I said, well, Gary, uh, you know, what lessons have you learned from Victory that you're
00:56:21applying to Indian? And his first answer was kind of glib. And he said, well, everything,
00:56:25you know, like everything we frame design and chassis and handling and mass, you know, masses and all this
00:56:32stuff. And I was like, well, what about the engine? And he's like, yeah, you know, one thing we learned
00:56:38is that we don't let the engineers style the engine. And the first victory is they had a, they had
00:56:46a,
00:56:46a funny weight to them, at least from my, my opinion is they, they were there. They generated a top
00:56:54heavy tension on the, uh, non-primary side where the, the shape of the cylinders didn't,
00:57:02didn't carry a broadening taper to the top. And it, to me, it, it brought a tension that was
00:57:10like unresolved. It's to me, it's the difference between the soft tail that they do. Now they do a
00:57:17soft tail low rider S, which used to be a Dyna, but they switched everything as a soft tail, which
00:57:24from an engineering perspective is a good design. It's stiffer, it performs better. And it made sense
00:57:30from a manufacturing standpoint, because why are we making two cruiser platforms for a market that is
00:57:36not going like gangbusters? It's shrinking a little bit. So it makes a lot of sense, but I don't think
00:57:43that the low rider S soft tail that they make now resolves in the same way that the low rider
00:57:49S
00:57:49Dyna with the twin shocks resolves. And that's where, when I look at something, I get a tension
00:57:56that says it's there's no, I'm not, it's not finishing right for some reason. And that's what
00:58:02the victory motor was. And when you look at, you know, you look at, at Indian evoking the flathead
00:58:08in modern times and fitting it into the bike. It's a, it's a very good size. It has,
00:58:14it has pleasing angles. And I'm all, I've always, I've always been a little bit like, well, you know,
00:58:20it's not actually a flathead. I know you had to do that, but at the same time, it's like, well,
00:58:25it's like a, it's a cover that looks like a flathead. It should, I wanted it to be more like
00:58:30a motor,
00:58:30but I also understand when you're bringing out a line of flathead wallpaper next. Well, I, you know,
00:58:36honestly, I went to a press, a press launch for the Yamaha, the big B twin Yamaha,
00:58:42uh, the star, and it was a push rod and it was a really tall engine and it, you know,
00:58:47had a very
00:58:47long stroke. I forget what it is, but I was in that meeting, you know, and they were talking about
00:58:51that
00:58:51motorcycle and he said, oh, well we used, uh, you know, we use push rods to, you know, the motor's
00:58:58tall and we, we wanted to make it a little bit shorter. And I said, well, you know, um, I'm
00:59:03curious
00:59:04when the flathead version will be coming out because that would be shorter still. And he was
00:59:07an engineer and he had a good chuck. He was like, I appreciate, I appreciate you, but no,
00:59:12we're not making a flathead. Yeah. I have always wanted someone to make a modern flathead, you know,
00:59:18just to put, just to start from scratch and how, how, how good could you make it? Gordon Blair made,
00:59:24did some research into that at one point. Oh, did he? Um, mostly about, uh, combustion speed.
00:59:32Now, of course the flathead has a lot of unnecessary surface area in the combustion chamber that is
00:59:38exposed to hot gas. And that's a critical factor. And it, it ends up affecting all sorts of things.
00:59:45Like, can we make the cylinder round when the engine is running? But, um, he, he was able to get
00:59:54quite good light up times short, you know, in the thirties and, uh, was able to ameliorate some of
01:00:03the worst features of flathead design by using modern, um, techniques. But, uh, the only modern
01:00:12flathead that I know of, I think Honda built a flathead that needed to fit under the seat of some
01:00:18four wheeler or needed to fit in a little space. So they said, well, take the valves and put them
01:00:26next
01:00:26to the cylinder. And just like, um, Cosworth made the rod ratio 1.8 when they needed to make the
01:00:36engine
01:00:36a little smaller to get air through the Venturi tunnels on the either side of the crankcase. So,
01:00:43um, compromise, compromise. One of the things about the AJS seminar that has always
01:00:54struck me as beautiful is the cover for the camp chain. Oh, exactly. Exactly. And that,
01:01:03thank you for bringing the AJS out. Cause I'm looking at it on the list. I'm like,
01:01:08we didn't talk about that. We got to go next. And here's Kevin. Oh, it's, it's like a marriage.
01:01:13Yeah. You know, we know which way we're going to step. Um, but yeah, the, yeah, the G,
01:01:19the seven R G 50, uh, that case where you, you, if you know anything about the insides of an
01:01:26overhead
01:01:26cam engine with a chain driven cam, you know exactly what you're looking at. And it's a beautiful,
01:01:32elegant cast thing. I, uh, it is really, uh, the, the droop of the seat, the shape of the AJS
01:01:41tank.
01:01:42It's a little bit like the Perilla head has that a little bit of a saddle shape to it of
01:01:47the sides
01:01:48coming down with gorgeous contours. Uh, the Perilla, the same, uh, the G 50, the AJS seminar,
01:01:56and then the little, the little fairing. And it just, um, also with the, the drum break, having the,
01:02:03the circular discs with the, like fins, basically like a giant fin to, to try and take some of that
01:02:10heat off the drum. I'm sure it's, um, it's really got a thing.
01:02:15It appears to me that it was in 1922
01:02:20that AJS discovered intake offset as a means of speeding up combustion.
01:02:26And there it was for all to see because
01:02:33people walked around paddocks and looked at things.
01:02:37It was one of the wonderful things about the English, uh, they called them the, uh,
01:02:43one. There were two English motorcycle magazines that came out on a weekly basis and they called
01:02:51them the comics and they employed artists to draw the features of new, of innovations on
01:03:03both production and racing motorcycles. And there is a trove of those things, uh, in England that are
01:03:12not being used for anything. And it's just, I love those drawings, which many of which are in those old
01:03:21magazines.
01:03:24But, uh,
01:03:27anyone could have looked at that and said, look at this,
01:03:31this, this, this intake port goes in on a tangent. Why would they do that? Um, um,
01:03:38one reason would be to, to make the charge swirl around in the, in the combustion chamber as the
01:03:46piston came up and the action began. But, uh, for a long time, only the English did intake offset.
01:03:57But this is the thing about these motors that are like the Manx. You can say, oh, it has intake
01:04:03down draft.
01:04:04Let me measure that. Oh, well, it says, uh, 12 degrees. Why are they doing it? Well, maybe they want
01:04:14to
01:04:14minimize the short circuiting of fresh charge to the exhaust valve during valve overlap when they're both open
01:04:23a little bit with the piston nearing top center. It was, there were no secrets.
01:04:31And, and yet nobody copied it for a long time. And AJS tried all kinds of creative stuff in the
01:04:401920s.
01:04:41They, they tried overhead cam. It didn't give them any more power. So they went back to overhead valve.
01:04:46Then somebody said, you know, I think the weight of the, of the push rod and rocker is
01:04:55floating the valves at high RPM and leaving the valve open longer and making more power. So
01:05:02why, why don't we try harder with the overhead cam? And the power went right up.
01:05:09But they were learning by doing, they were changing stuff all the time. The late Robert Iannucci
01:05:19pursued for years, a seven hour that it was in South Africa.
01:05:28Which had a gear cam drive. He never found out why it was built or who built it, but he
01:05:36was after that bike
01:05:37for years. And one day he phoned me and he said, I've got it. He was, he was, he was
01:05:45always a seven hour
01:05:46fan and a G 50 fan. And when I was, uh, I had, I had my Perilla phase, which I
01:05:51never acted on the
01:05:52Perilla, but I wanted desperately to have a Perilla, uh, two 50 grand sport. And then I was in a
01:05:57G 50
01:05:58phase where I'm like, I want a G 50 street bike. You know, I want to take them like you
01:06:02would with a
01:06:03manx, you know, turn it into something you could ride on the road and, and experience more than just
01:06:08at a racetrack. And, uh, I, I had a hard obsession with that. And, you know, Rob was kind of
01:06:13a guy
01:06:14guy and he could, he could find one or he's like, well, I know someone who has one for sale.
01:06:18And he kind of flirted with that. And then I got the opportunity to ride one collector in Texas,
01:06:24Herb Harris. And he let me ride a G 50. And, um, what I discovered was I didn't, I didn't
01:06:31actually
01:06:31need it. And it was a, it was a great financial relief because they were not cheap. And I was
01:06:37trying
01:06:37to find ways of doing it. Like, what can I sell? And how could I make this a reality? And
01:06:41I rode that
01:06:42bike. And I thought, well, you know, this is not spectacularly different than riding a Bella set
01:06:49on the street, a 500 single Bella set. And I was like, I think I can live without it. I
01:06:56think I can
01:06:56make it because it made all the beat, beat, beat sounds. And I'm actually, I've always been kind
01:07:01of a cooking model guy anyway. You know, I've always been, I don't need, I don't need their super
01:07:07aggressive cam and the, and the rack, like riding position. Like I understand the emotion behind,
01:07:14you know, the emotion behind clip-ons and the emotion, you know, being a cafe racer or getting
01:07:20on a Panigale V4R. I understand all of that. And I, but also I just like to ride around. I'm
01:07:27very
01:07:28cooking model. I'm very, I own an MSS. I don't own a Thruxton.
01:07:32Yeah. You know, I just, I'm sort of like thinking about that guy riding to his job in
01:07:39Birmingham, you know, to build something in a factory, going to the docks, you know,
01:07:44riding to the docks. In his barber jacket.
01:07:47Yep. I've just always kind of been, uh, been that guy.
01:07:51Well, uh, so I think what we've, what we've played with a little bit here is that the idea
01:07:58that motorcycles that command our visual interests are often departures from convention.
01:08:08They're innovative. Um, but at the same time, the Ducati 250s that I saw when I was a
01:08:22downtrodden college student, which had those sensuous gas tanks, it's just a gas tank. You
01:08:31could have taken that gas tank off and put a, just a regular clunky looking gas tank on
01:08:36it and it would have fed gas just fine. But they chose to make this, this lovely organic
01:08:43shape, which was mysterious because I didn't know why it seemed to be asking me something,
01:08:52but I wanted it. I never had one and it was steel anyway. Who would have a steel gas tank,
01:08:59right? But, but this is, this is, I'm fascinated by beauty because I feel it. I can't get to it.
01:09:09I can't work out what it might be. So good. The mystery persists.
01:09:18Well, that's yeah. The mystery persists. That's a good, that's a good finish off.
01:09:24Well, the mystery persists. Well, it was, it was fun for me. I sure enjoyed that. We'll try to
01:09:30populate this with all the photos. The producer will be excited when I hurl forth the gigabytes of images.
01:09:39It struck me. I was looking at photography of an Egyptian sculpture, one of the inevitable
01:09:46kings or head scribes. And of, it was a straightforward portrait of a person. And being as how it's warm
01:09:59there, he wasn't entirely clothed. And there was the curve of, of his abdomen that was
01:10:08perfectly natural. And this was allocated, this was executed in hard black diorite stone.
01:10:21Now, the artist making this thing had to have a clear picture of what this shape had to be
01:10:27while removing bits of the surface with whatever tools they used. And that shape had to be very
01:10:40well in mind. And what immediately sprang to mind was the mathematically described
01:10:47contour of gear teeth, which are also made of very hard material. And I think that
01:10:57that giving precise shape to very hard materials is just fascinating. I like gears. I keep them
01:11:06around here to look at for that reason.
01:11:12Yeah. Well, thanks for listening, folks. That was beauty. We've, we've done it in a little over an
01:11:19hour. We've scratched it. We appreciate you listening. Of course, check us out on Patreon.
01:11:28Hit us up in the comments. We enjoy our time with you. And we will catch you next time around.
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