- 6 hours ago
At its core, Honda tries things. Honda superbikes were established as V-4s in the early 1980s, but when Honda Motor Co. saw Ducati winning with a V-twin in World Superbike, it build a new V-twin engine for the 2000 season. And won. Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer talk about the origins of the RC51, also known as the VTR1000 SP1/SP2, and its World Superbike championships in 2000 and 2002.
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SportsTranscript
00:00:00It's the Cycle World Podcast. I'm Mark Hoyer, the Editor-in-Chief, and I'm with Kevin Cameron, our Technical Editor.
00:00:06Today we're going to talk about Honda's RC51, the V-Twin Superbike.
00:00:12Introduced Circa 2000, hitting the track.
00:00:15I happened to be at Monza when it launched.
00:00:18Well, it launched for me. That's where I got to see it firsthand with Colin Edwards.
00:00:22And he said in the pits, I asked him, what's the difference between the RC51 and the RC45?
00:00:28Which he'd been successful on the RC45, done a fine job.
00:00:32And he said that the RC51 wasn't trying to kill him in every corner.
00:00:36It actually turns. That's what he said.
00:00:41So it was a very interesting race at Monza.
00:00:44And of course, it was a pretty epic season.
00:00:47And that was the first race that Troy Bayless came along for Ducati and World Superbike.
00:00:52And my, didn't he put on a show there?
00:00:55He was incredible on the breaks at Monza, going into chicanes.
00:01:00And he was so good, they stole him from Vance and Hines and put him on the factory Ducati team.
00:01:07Because Fogarty had just been injured?
00:01:10Yeah, his humorous was...
00:01:12He was learning that he wasn't coming back.
00:01:16You get a nerve injury and your brain sends the signal, do this.
00:01:22And only a faint reply is heard.
00:01:26Well, Davide Tarazzi said, I said, well, what about Carl?
00:01:32Because Troy was there.
00:01:34And he said, we pray to God to heal the bone.
00:01:41And anyway, RC-51, the V-Twin Superbike.
00:01:45It was an interesting time for Superbike racing because we had 750cc 4s and 1,000cc roughly V-Twins.
00:01:53Suzuki was experimenting with the T-1000R.
00:01:56And Honda, of course, decided to mess with the rules and come out with the RC-51.
00:02:02It was an interesting time philosophically for Honda on a street bike basis because the RC-51 was a different
00:02:12motorcycle philosophically because it was a race bike.
00:02:15It was different than the 929, the CBR 929RR.
00:02:21And that was, you know, Tadalbaba's bigger circle bike.
00:02:26That's what he said.
00:02:26They would develop the motorcycle to have a bigger circle, to be an easy steering, excellent street bike.
00:02:34But it wasn't really a race bike.
00:02:35And the softness of the 929, the compliance of the suspension, was really different from the RC-51.
00:02:41The RC-51 was hard.
00:02:44Everything was for a Honda.
00:02:46It was not nearly as hard as a Ducati.
00:02:48Ducatis of that era were just, boy, I think rock hard, everything.
00:02:52Rock hard suspension, rock hard seat, pretty committed riding position.
00:02:58RC-51, still a Honda, but anyway, much different than the 929.
00:03:02So, of course, we were there.
00:03:05And Kevin's talked to these folks quite a bit during development.
00:03:13And, boy, did he give us some notes.
00:03:18So, let's do this, Kevin.
00:03:20Okay.
00:03:21Well, I think one thing I want to say up front is that there are two narratives here.
00:03:29And one of them is the product called RC-51 by insiders.
00:03:40And those who have them today treasure them as if they were an artifact of a better time.
00:03:51They are special.
00:03:53They are wonderful gems that were not repeated.
00:03:58When Honda was done with racing the things, they basically cut it off.
00:04:06And I think they were produced for a while, but it wasn't under development any longer.
00:04:15So, the street product did not get the benefit of all of the suspension and chassis development
00:04:26and engine development that the World Superbike did.
00:04:32When Colin rode the street bike prototype, he said that it was pretty undistinguished.
00:04:44It was 12 to 15 clicks slower than the competition.
00:04:48It was this.
00:04:49It was that.
00:04:50And it was also clear that test tracks in Japan were glass smooth because the bike was so hard.
00:05:03And this was, in a way, a Honda tradition with race bikes because RC-30 and RC-45,
00:05:12after it had the reputation of no front feel, poor performance on rough surfaces because they were so hard.
00:05:22And meanwhile, there's another story thread that's going on.
00:05:26Because in 97, a little-known person at that time, Shuhei Nakamoto, was trying to decide what should be done
00:05:39about Max Biagi's NSR-250 two-stroke V-twin.
00:05:46And he decided, let's try flexible.
00:05:51Let's make the chassis flexible.
00:05:53And it was so flexible that Max could not reach top speed on it without having it start that three
00:06:00-cycle-per-second weave
00:06:02that threatens to send you to the moon.
00:06:07And so, before Max could really get to grips with that, Irv Kanemoto caused the chassis to be made stiffer
00:06:18outside of Japan,
00:06:20and Max went on to win the title.
00:06:22But the concept of a more flexible chassis is important in this narrative because, also, at the very end of
00:06:32the RC-45 period,
00:06:33this motorcycle, which was notable for poor performance on rough surfaces, began to show some grip.
00:06:45And it improved rapidly toward the end, such that John Kaczynski was finally able to win Honda a Superbike World
00:06:56Championship.
00:06:59Well, these concepts, these ideas of a more flexible chassis were circulating within Honda, but not widely.
00:07:17Rob Muzzy said, speaking of events at Kawasaki, he said,
00:07:23the race department and the production department did not necessarily talk to one another.
00:07:30And in design, for example, the cylinder head for the production line would be designed with different goals from the
00:07:40goals of the race department.
00:07:44And this is the nature of organizations.
00:07:50The brain doesn't necessarily know where all the fingertips and toes are or what they're up to.
00:07:58So, this is part of the story.
00:08:01Well, then, how did RC-30 win two Superbike World Championships in 88 and 89?
00:08:10It won them because it could accelerate.
00:08:14And there are a lot more turns than there are straightaways.
00:08:19It just happens that Massimo Bordi, when he went to Cosworth to complete some of the work that would result
00:08:32in the 851 and the 750 before it,
00:08:36a four-valve, a new thing for Honda, for Ducati, and a departure so great that there were two factions
00:08:49within Ducati,
00:08:51namely Bordi faction and the two-valve forever faction led by the old man.
00:09:02Tamboriki.
00:09:03No, the older old man.
00:09:05Yeah.
00:09:06So, what happened is that Ducati started out with a four-valve engine that had wildly excessive valve timings
00:09:22that came to it from Formula One, which is what Bordi saw when he was at Cosworth.
00:09:31And the Ducatis had no mid-range at the time that the RC-30 was winning those championships, and so
00:09:40it could not accelerate.
00:09:43And I remember Keeley saying that he must ride in the corner speed style because in terms of acceleration, it
00:09:53was more like a 125.
00:09:54So, it was like an 850.
00:10:00And so, what began at this point is a slow march towards shorter valve timings, a little bit more valve
00:10:09lift.
00:10:09These are steps toward the modern ideal of the four-valve, which has not very much open time because two
00:10:23inlet valves expose flow area so much faster than one larger valve,
00:10:2841% more of the same total area, that they don't need that long timing.
00:10:37And long timing is what kills acceleration because while it still fills the cylinder very well at peak revolutions or
00:10:48at peak torque revolutions,
00:10:52at lower revolutions, there isn't enough intake velocity to keep flowing into the cylinder as the piston's rising on compression.
00:11:01So, what happens is you filled the cylinder and now it pumps it back out.
00:11:08So, that was where Ducati was coming from.
00:11:11They began to shorten their timing, and when they did so, valve accelerations went up, and so did the stress
00:11:19on valve train parts.
00:11:23So, that is the sub story here.
00:11:27They're waiting for a new design to come.
00:11:30It's coming.
00:11:32Wait for it.
00:11:34And
00:11:36Meanwhile, here's Honda with RC45, which had a lot of power, which did not go well on rough surfaces.
00:11:45And
00:11:47they tried things.
00:11:49They moved the engine forward.
00:11:51They fattened up the cam profiles without increasing the timing.
00:11:59They did a number of things to improve it, but it was a losing battle.
00:12:06Because, meanwhile, RC30 was not replaced by the 45.
00:12:13Gary Mathers called it the terrible 45, because so many riders had legendary difficulties in riding it.
00:12:23So, the 45 was delayed until 1994.
00:12:27It took them three years to win the World Supers Championship.
00:12:34And they put a lot of effort into that engine, and I think they were impressed with that.
00:12:41Meanwhile, here is Carl Fogarty winning races.
00:12:49Now, I see in my notes that Fogarty showed up at Ducati as a disheveled, bumish-looking person asking for
00:13:01an engine.
00:13:03And they decided to loan him an engine, and he did really well with it, such that they said,
00:13:10Come here, boy, I'm going to make you a star.
00:13:14And Fogarty proceeded to make Ducati's motorcycle in transition look like a star, won championships for them.
00:13:26But this is further persuading Honda, we've got to do a twin.
00:13:32Because our 45 is now turning close to 16,000, and piston acceleration is proportional to N-squared, where N
00:13:43is RPM.
00:13:46And Ducati's N is only 12, or 11.8 at this point.
00:13:53So they designed this thing, 100 by 63.5.
00:13:58It's quite over-squared, but not radically so.
00:14:01It's four valves.
00:14:03It has a 90-degree V angle, which makes it possible to balance primary shaking force 100%.
00:14:15And as was commented upon by Ducati engineers, when Honda makes a V-twin, they copy what we've done, and
00:14:25then they improve on it by doing the things we wish we'd done.
00:14:31One of the problems is that as Ducati kept increasing their displacement, 851, 888, 926, 955, it just went on
00:14:44and on.
00:14:46And finally, the cylinder liner is so thin that it's cracking all the time.
00:14:52The cases have been bored out until there's nothing to hold the studs in place.
00:14:58And this thin cylinder is not sealing very well.
00:15:03You can see this is a concern, because they started out with a one-piece oil ring, and it ended
00:15:09up with three pieces.
00:15:11And that's a classic for scraping oil off of a distorted bore.
00:15:17So they needed a new engine.
00:15:20They're making all these adjustments to it.
00:15:23So there are these streams of development.
00:15:25There's Honda.
00:15:26We're going to start over again.
00:15:27Clean sheet of paper.
00:15:30Ducati are trying to bring out a completely updated new engine.
00:15:35They're making do with what they have.
00:15:38And what they have is good handling.
00:15:43And not too much later, Colin Edwards is going to say,
00:15:51I see the thing is, he's up ahead of me wobbling.
00:15:56And with every wallow, he gains five feet.
00:16:00He's pulling away from me.
00:16:02And I can't do anything about it.
00:16:04Because the harder I ride, the more chatter I get.
00:16:08So Ducati are preparing the Testo Strata engine, the narrow head.
00:16:18They've hired Angelino, oh, what is his name?
00:16:24Marchetti, who has just retired from 30 years at Ferrari, to design the head.
00:16:36They are developing the engine to run above 12,000, but it won't reach 12,000.
00:16:48They trace, they find that it's rising friction, steeply rising friction above 12,000.
00:16:56And they trace it to the head.
00:17:00And this is important for Ducatisti, because it is a fundamental belief that the desmodromic system essentially contains no friction.
00:17:15And that the savings in friction is passed to the rear tire.
00:17:20Meanwhile, Ducati engineers are telling me, we come up with a new cam profile.
00:17:26It gives us four extra horsepower.
00:17:29But we find five more friction horsepower in the cylinder head.
00:17:34And so the program is a net loss.
00:17:38So they're having to struggle through this mysterious cylinder head friction.
00:17:46And Honda arrives on the scene with Colin Edwards, Jr., and he blasts them in 2000 and makes it look
00:18:00pretty good.
00:18:03Strong performance in the first year of use in racing.
00:18:11Now, the new Ducati appears, and it has bigger valves.
00:18:19It's got all the stuff that they've been sort of on the edge of their seat.
00:18:24But much of their R&D strength has been going into things like crankcase cracking.
00:18:30I remember being at Laguna a couple of times and just seeing them feeding engines into those bikes.
00:18:37They must have brought, you know, 30 or 40 of them.
00:18:43Also, the Honda has a cassette gearbox so that if there's a certain turn on the racetrack where they need
00:18:50to change the RPM in a certain gear by 200 or 300 revs, no problem.
00:18:57We have that right here.
00:18:58Just slip this in.
00:19:01A cassette gearbox, you just pull it right out and you can change your ratios.
00:19:06And it's a boon to...
00:19:09There's a plate on one side that has both gear shafts and the shift drum.
00:19:15And it just pulls out and plugs back in.
00:19:19Yeah, it makes it very rapid and easy versus...
00:19:24In order to have the benefit of the other ratios that they've made, they have to build up engines with
00:19:31those ratios because it's a vertically split crankcase.
00:19:36And Bordy wishes that he hadn't done vertically split, but that was what they began with.
00:19:42And so, therefore, they can't change the gearbox without taking the engine out of the frame, taking it all apart,
00:19:49separating the cases.
00:19:51Ah, the gearbox.
00:19:53Oh, it's 5 o'clock.
00:19:56We missed practice.
00:19:57No, don't want.
00:19:59So they have to bring engines with the right gears in them.
00:20:03You know, first guess, second guess, maybe third guess.
00:20:07Already ready to go.
00:20:08So they're having this problem, these durability problems with an engine that is rapidly evolving.
00:20:19Its valve timing is getting shorter.
00:20:21What it's turning into is what I like to call the Euro 5 syndrome, which is the emissions people want
00:20:31short valve timings because that means the overlap,
00:20:34that top dead center has to practically disappear, and short valve timings give you broad torque because there isn't the
00:20:45opportunity for back pumping charge that you've already pulled into the cylinder.
00:20:50So they're moving in this direction.
00:20:53They incorporate these changes into Testestrata.
00:20:58So in 2001, Ducati blows them away, Bayless, and the Honda guys are doing this head scratching, and they've jacked
00:21:14the back end up, and they've done all these different things to try to get it to hook up better.
00:21:20They've moved the engine forward 10 millimeters.
00:21:27You know how thick a 10-millimeter bolt is.
00:21:29It's not very much.
00:21:33And it's not really working.
00:21:36It's like so many times if you've had any experience in racing as a mechanic.
00:21:40The rider comes in, and you say eagerly, how'd it go?
00:21:44Oh, about the same, I guess.
00:21:50So it makes you wonder.
00:21:52I should have been a shoe salesman.
00:21:54That's what I should have done.
00:21:56Make some real money and sleep at home.
00:22:01But all these forces are in play during these three years of collision between Honda and Ducati.
00:22:11Honda has given up the V4, which is their favorite all-time everything, in favor of a V-twin, because
00:22:20they could see they weren't getting anywhere with RCs, 30 and 45.
00:22:26But at the same time, those motorcycles were built to the obsolete idea coming from MotoGP, coming from 500 two
00:22:37-stroke Grand Prix, really, that the more rigid the chassis can be made, the more easily handled are the terrible
00:22:45slips and grips that you get as you're accelerating out of a turn, and you're trying to use as much
00:22:51throttle as the rear tire will take.
00:22:53And oops, oops, oops, oops, oops, each one of those eggs could grow into the monstrous chicken of a high
00:23:01side and the twinkling of an eye.
00:23:06So this modern power band is what Ducati are growing toward throughout this whole period from 88 to the turn
00:23:19of the century.
00:23:21Honda, meanwhile, producing lots of street bikes, are nearly there.
00:23:30They have the short valve timings that work best in four-valve engines.
00:23:36They already appreciate that fact.
00:23:39And they don't have durability problems with their valve train because there's no rubber tooth belt.
00:23:48See, the problem that Ducati had is that as they keep making the valve timing shorter, the valve acceleration has
00:23:57to increase, and therefore the peak forces on the levers opening and closing and on the drive have to increase.
00:24:05And finally, they would get to a point where they were changing belts every day.
00:24:11And after that, they got to a point where they threw the belts away and went to a silent chain.
00:24:18But here's this fascinating collision in Ducati's new engine comes home, comes into battle, and it manages to defeat Honda
00:24:32in 2001.
00:24:36But in fact, the Ducati engine may not have been the deciding factor because if you can't connect your motorcycle
00:24:45to the pavement, you're not going anywhere with any distinction.
00:24:52And Colin's remark about losing five feet with every wobble or every weave is very much to the point.
00:24:59Well, you could see the difference at Monza when they were racing, when Bayless was racing with Edwards that first
00:25:05race that Bayless was on the bike.
00:25:08It was so plain through the chicanes because the Ducati's would pause.
00:25:15So, you know, you'd go in and if it's a left-right combo, they'd go in left, stand the bike
00:25:20up to roll to the right, and the Ducati's would pause.
00:25:25And you would watch the bike just, I mean, it's just a heartbeat, but it would go, and the bike
00:25:29would do this, and then as soon as it settled, in they went.
00:25:34Akira Yanagawa on the Kawasaki 750, it was shocking how fast his roll rate was.
00:25:42He could just roll no pause.
00:25:44I said it to Colin Edwards.
00:25:45Now, Colin's RC51 at the same track, at the same race, had less of a pause than the Ducati.
00:25:52He could roll more smoothly, but not like Yanagawa.
00:25:55And I made that observation to Edwards, and he said, as Edwards would, I don't care what anyone says, Akira
00:26:06Yanagawa has the best handling bike on the track.
00:26:08And it was.
00:26:09He could really steer it and put it anywhere.
00:26:12I think he was down on power.
00:26:13It was evident.
00:26:14But you could watch, you could just watch the Ducati's dig in on the exit.
00:26:18You know, they move a little bit at the top.
00:26:22They roll it in, and then they just kind of like, I don't know, pump a little bit going out.
00:26:26And as you said, you know, five feet every time it happened.
00:26:29Well, one of the comments that was made by a suspension specialist in all of this was that Ducati, because
00:26:40they had such a featureless power band at this point, this is not the quarter speed special with all the
00:26:49power up high.
00:26:50This has now been broadened out very considerably, so the comment was made that they could tolerate a very loose
00:27:00setup, a very flexible chassis.
00:27:06And at Honda, a gathering conviction that something needed to be done about the chassis, not always Honda's big, strong
00:27:18suit.
00:27:18So you think of Honda, I think of Honda, and I think of engines primarily.
00:27:24But now they're getting busy on this chassis thing.
00:27:28They buy, this is what Colin told me, they bought a Ducati.
00:27:33They measured its stiffness in various directions, and they found that in the direction of interest, namely lateral flexibility, that
00:27:45the Honda was twice as stiff as the Ducati.
00:27:49Well, and of course, they've had all these rider comments about wallowing and five feet at every wallow and what
00:27:58have you.
00:27:59All this is taken into consideration.
00:28:02So what happens is they start to play with it.
00:28:07They're making little changes here and there.
00:28:09And finally, they decide that they want to make a modification kit that would allow the flexibility to be introduced
00:28:22step by step, not suddenly committing something that might be a disaster.
00:28:29Honda creates a disaster.
00:28:30That's not the headline they want.
00:28:32Who would?
00:28:36Well, during the era of aluminum twin spar frames, when that stuff was coming in, all we saw was bigger
00:28:43and bigger pieces and fatter, more reinforced steering heads and big welds and big plates.
00:28:50It just, everything got really burly.
00:28:53And that was what we believed was the truth.
00:28:56And then here comes Ducati with the trellis frame, possibly not knowing what they had.
00:29:04Yes, we know that they didn't know what they had because when Preziosi decided to build something stiffer, he went
00:29:14all the way in the opposite direction with carbon fiber and built the black pyramid,
00:29:19which rested on the pyramid, which rested on the cylinder heads and held the steering head out where it belongs.
00:29:28And this was not a modification to Tamburini's creation.
00:29:34Tamburini was not an engineer.
00:29:38Tamburini liked motorbikes and he observed them.
00:29:46So Honda decided they're going to try this and Al Luddington told me the story of being at Laguna and
00:29:53he said the Hondas went out.
00:29:59Well, there's one Honda because they only entered Colin in 2002.
00:30:06And Friday practice in the morning, he said it was skating.
00:30:12It was poorly connected to the pavement.
00:30:16It showed instability.
00:30:20And that evening they started on something.
00:30:25The next morning he said that motorcycle was hooked up.
00:30:33So, uh, Honda having passed through this, there was a gray period in the early to mid nineties when people
00:30:45knew that the motorcycles were too stiff, but they didn't know what to do about it.
00:30:49People were doing crazy things like, let's saw this cross member out.
00:30:54Let's make a gash in this swing arm right about here.
00:30:59This is not science.
00:31:01It's desperation.
00:31:03You have to combine the two.
00:31:05Desperation forces you to accept things that you would not dream of otherwise.
00:31:13And Honda did that.
00:31:15They, they, they created this system by which the stiffness, lateral stiffness could be adjusted and they deployed it and
00:31:25Colin left all Bayless behind.
00:31:30And I think this is a, this is a wonderful story because there are so many subplots.
00:31:37It's like a novel or a mystery story of the better sort.
00:31:45But not the Butler did it.
00:31:48Well, it was a sensible choice to go to a V twin because you got the displacement and, and you
00:31:54could build the acceleration without the RPM.
00:31:57The thing that was important though, was that they didn't do without much RPM because they're pushing past 12,000
00:32:04Ducati.
00:32:05They did.
00:32:06Yeah.
00:32:06And so this was the unfairness.
00:32:09I later decided that, um, that it should have been a thousand CC twins and eight 35 four cylinders.
00:32:22But there actually isn't a way to predict who, which manufacturer is going to really push the RPM, which manufacturer
00:32:30is going to push the hookup because there's so many ways to improve a motorcycle.
00:32:38And this story is so fascinating because so much was going on that made a contribution Ducati overcame their wrongful
00:32:50beginning with those tremendous long Cosworth valve timings that turned it into a corner speed bike because it didn't have
00:32:57the mid range to accelerate.
00:33:00They knew they'd accomplished something good when Fogarty said that stop, that's enough mid range.
00:33:06It's too much, too much mid range.
00:33:09Okay.
00:33:12And riders were saying, you have to, on this bike, you have to take up all the slack in the
00:33:18throttle so that when you start to feed power, there won't be any sort of overdoing it.
00:33:26But even so, these bicycles were capable of some real, when they, when they began to throttle up.
00:33:33So that had to be, but the thing was, the formula couldn't have predicted all of this.
00:33:41Oh, we see Ducati is doing this with valve timing.
00:33:45How does it try to catch up in, in, uh, chassis characteristics?
00:33:51Oh, it was just accidents of the time.
00:33:54And Honda was fortunate that they had that experience of, of both the, um, NSR 250 that Nakamoto was working
00:34:05on and the last minute modifications to RC 45 that caused it to become a winning bike in, uh, 97.
00:34:19So I loved studying this.
00:34:22I learned so much from it.
00:34:24Well, they were leaving the bolts, the RC 45, they were leaving the bolts out of one of the engine
00:34:29mounts, were they not?
00:34:30Oh, well, they certainly did with the 51.
00:34:3351.
00:34:34Got it.
00:34:34Yeah.
00:34:35The engine bolt that goes, um, attaches to bosses on the front of the rear cylinder.
00:34:42Now, having the cylinders cast in one piece with the upper crankcase went back a long way with Honda.
00:34:49And it went back to 1962 because when they built their first, their two 54 cylinders, uh, the two crankshafts
00:35:00are, are doing this.
00:35:01And they are essentially trying to break the lid off of a can of cat food by wiggling it back
00:35:09and forth.
00:35:11And what suffered was the cylinder base gasket because the cylinder and the engine are doing this and they're sliding
00:35:20against each other and rolling the gasket up into little balls.
00:35:24Uh, like trying to get rubber cement off your fingers.
00:35:28So.
00:35:30Hurricane.
00:35:31Uh, when was that?
00:35:3387.
00:35:34Mm hmm.
00:35:34Um, they cast the upper crankcase and the cylinder block in one, just as they had done in the sixties.
00:35:44Uh, because that meant they would never have, uh, base gasket or head gasket trouble.
00:35:52So.
00:35:54These, uh, Honda had certain advantages when they jumped in with no experience of big V twins because they had
00:36:03an excellent engine department.
00:36:06Uh, and, uh, Ducati had tremendous experience in that race series because they had one design of engine and one
00:36:18design of chassis the whole time.
00:36:21So they got to know those things.
00:36:23Well, it's all, it's marvelous to have your, your brand new engine win the championship as it did for Honda
00:36:31in 2000.
00:36:32And as it did for Ducati in 2001, that's real competition on all kinds of levels.
00:36:40Wonderful.
00:36:41I want to go back and live it again.
00:36:44Now that I have some vague understanding of, of all the currents that were flowing.
00:36:52So that's my story.
00:36:57And of course, the, the street bike, uh, that is now a revered icon, um, and justly so is nothing
00:37:07like what was raised.
00:37:12Because it doesn't have all these people saying, well, we have to do something.
00:37:16What is it going to be?
00:37:19And while we're not going to do this, well, how do you know we're not going to?
00:37:23Well, because I, I say, I think I say so, but I'm not sure.
00:37:28And that's the time when change can take place.
00:37:32When all the stuff you've tried fails and you have to make a big change.
00:37:42Honda made a big change by adding flexibility to their chassis.
00:37:47Oh, the chassis was a completely, it was a novelty as well.
00:37:51This was, they called it the pivotless construction because there was a big lug on the back of the gearbox
00:37:58of the RC, RC 51, uh, V twin.
00:38:04The swing arm, um, was linked to that lug that primary strength and the thing, but the frame also came
00:38:14down and it had holes through which the swing on pivot path.
00:38:19And if, uh, if, uh, I have a, a big set of drawings, I think it's something you can get
00:38:27at the visitor center, um, at Moto Guzzi of the V8.
00:38:32The Guzzi V8 had a great big old lug on the back of the gearbox to which the swing arm
00:38:39attached.
00:38:40So that's not a new idea, but Honda adopted it.
00:38:48And they ended up with a chassis that in the tradition of the racing they were familiar with, namely, uh,
00:38:55Grand Prix, they were the right choices to make.
00:39:00And they were able to get off of dead center and actually make the change of increasing chassis flexibility because
00:39:12it was desperation time.
00:39:14Ducatis come back and knocked us flat.
00:39:18What are we going to do about it?
00:39:21And in the process they learned, uh, they really started the business of chassis flexibility being intentionally used to provide
00:39:34suspension.
00:39:35When the motorcycle is leaned over at 63 degrees and bumps are acting down here.
00:39:44They're not acting with the motorcycle upward straight, straight upright.
00:39:52So they had to have lateral flexibility to function as a suspension when the motorcycle was leaned over.
00:39:59This, the lack of this is why RC30 and RC45 had their reputations for being impossible to ride on rough
00:40:09surfaces.
00:40:13Well, look at, uh, you know, I looked at the RC51 frame, uh, the bare frame, and then some body
00:40:20off images.
00:40:22And what was fascinating is that the front, uh, the front engine mount, you know, so you have the spar
00:40:27coming down and then you have this triangular piece that's welded onto the bottom of the spar.
00:40:31And it's, you know, I don't know, 15 millimeters thick, maybe more.
00:40:37It's a, it's a big fat piece coming down to bolt to the engine.
00:40:41And, um, if you look at what's happening in MotoGP now, uh, somebody got a picture of the steering head
00:40:48and, uh, a cover that's normally over the steering head area of the front of a Ducati, uh, MotoGP bike.
00:40:56And the cover was off and they got a photo was, uh, Peter Baum, uh, who's at all the races
00:41:02and got a, got this photograph.
00:41:05Steering head is up here and the, the opening is huge.
00:41:10The distance from the back of the opening to the steering head is massive and there's just acreage.
00:41:17There's just space.
00:41:19And then the engine, the engine mount plates are these sheet metal things that are thin.
00:41:24And they have some contour and they're, you know, they're bent.
00:41:27Somebody puts it in their brake and bends them up.
00:41:30And, but there were these blades, uh, the upper triple clamps on a lot of these bikes now are blades,
00:41:37little thin blades.
00:41:38And all of that is to give what Kevin's talking about, that lateral suspension.
00:41:42You know, it's easy to control the bumps when the suspension has four inches of stroke available to it.
00:41:48But you lean the bike over, it still moves a little bit over a bump, but that, you know, the
00:41:53lever here between your steering and the wheel on the ground is a long, long distance.
00:41:58And you got to have some give there.
00:42:00Certainly you get a little bit out of the tire and then, uh, all, all, all the way through to
00:42:04your handlebar grips.
00:42:06And, uh, they're designing this stuff to be, you know, sort of parallelogram-ish so that you don't get torque.
00:42:15You don't want to get torque.
00:42:16You just want it to move in a linear, uh, sideways.
00:42:19Well, the swing arm is the obvious case because it has these beams which are vertically very tall.
00:42:28Uh, and they connect to a rigid box in the front.
00:42:32So it's like a rigid box with two triangular beams sticking out of it.
00:42:35But the thickness of each beam has been getting smaller and smaller over the past several years.
00:42:43I first looked at, when I first got to where I could gauge this, 32 millimeters.
00:42:50Then I saw 25, and Mark is talking about less.
00:42:56So we're getting to a region where you might expect to throw the chain off.
00:43:03But, uh, this is, this is the cutting edge right now.
00:43:08If you can hook your motorcycle up, then all the wonderful, uh, ingenuity that you've displayed in smoothing the power
00:43:19band means that you can give the tire.
00:43:25An environment in which to work, in which the force that it is called upon to deliver is nearly constant,
00:43:31not constantly spiking from, uh, bump responses and so forth.
00:43:37You're trying to, you're trying to, to give the tire a comfortable life.
00:43:43And it responds by gripping because it isn't getting airtime.
00:43:53Airtime means that whatever forces are acting on the motorcycle, mostly its own inertia, are going to tend to make
00:44:00it go straight rather than turn because all the troubles happen in the turns.
00:44:08Accelerating like mad down the straightaway on a bike that doesn't hook up.
00:44:16See, the Ducati riders are talking, Pecco first among them, about spinning all the way up into fourth or fifth
00:44:25gear down the straightaway.
00:44:27Because once the tire starts to spin, it's hard to get it to hook up again.
00:44:35Now they've put enough spring on the motorcycle so that when they lean over into a turn, that the suspension
00:44:43compresses.
00:44:46And, and there's a lot of force there.
00:44:49The tires are very stiff.
00:44:51The whole thing is designed as though it were fiendishly designed to be impossible to hook up.
00:45:00Because the whole thing is so close to being rigid.
00:45:04That the slightest deviation from flatness in the road becomes a problem.
00:45:12And several times in my notes, I see that it says that bikes originally come from Japan quite often stiff
00:45:23in spring and damping because Japanese test tracks tend to be glassy smooth.
00:45:30Yeah, this was a deal with Kawasaki for a long time, you know, circa 2000 around this era.
00:45:39Every Kawasaki street bike had really stiff compression damming from the 90s through, through this period of time.
00:45:47And we were, we were all convinced of exactly what you said, that Kawasaki's test track must be exceptionally smooth.
00:45:53Because once we got them over here on the street, you had, you felt everything on the compression damping on
00:45:59those bikes.
00:46:01Yeah.
00:46:02So.
00:46:05It's a.
00:46:08People never tire of saying that the motorcycle is such a, an integrated thing.
00:46:16One, every part affects the ability to perform of every other part.
00:46:22You can't just say, oh, we've got grippier tires, put them on and we'll now win all the races.
00:46:28Because there was old Dick O'Brien back in, in, uh, 69 saying, well, about the time we get the
00:46:37chassis working about half decent, said Goodyear comes along with a, with a new tire, more grip.
00:46:47And I'm omitting all of his salty speech here in the interest of, uh, a finished public product.
00:46:55But you can well imagine it.
00:46:57He said, here comes Goodyear with this new tire and all of our work is for nothing and we have
00:47:03to repeat it.
00:47:04So this is the kind of thing that happens in, uh, 2003, Ducati joined MotoGP and they brought a ton
00:47:13of horsepower.
00:47:16Honda had built a, a bike that, uh, was sold to the public as, uh, using nothing above super bike
00:47:29technology.
00:47:29It was going to be easy to ride.
00:47:31It was going to be a new day for Grand Prix racing.
00:47:38And here comes Ducati with all this power.
00:47:41So what do you do?
00:47:43How can you do very quickly?
00:47:45You close the intake valves later.
00:47:49What does that do to your power band?
00:47:51It's, it lowers the mid range because that's where pump back is now taking place.
00:47:56So you have a harder hit as you reach the torque peak.
00:48:02And that harder hit is going to break traction in certain places on the racetrack.
00:48:08That's just what happened.
00:48:11Honda put, dumped in a bunch of power and it killed their handling and their hookup.
00:48:16And they had to, took them a while to get it back functioning properly.
00:48:23And to get a, permit the phrase, to get a grip on these problems.
00:48:32But that's how it is.
00:48:33Every part affects the function of every other part.
00:48:36So you can't just say, we've increased this by so much.
00:48:43Well, very, you know, uh, injection, you know, how many bar are you pumping?
00:48:50How many injectors do you have?
00:48:52Where are the fuel injectors?
00:48:54What, uh, what mythologies or visions are you having when you're making all these decisions?
00:49:02Yeah.
00:49:02Um, you know, I think some of the race bikes were like five bar at the time.
00:49:07Yes, they were.
00:49:08They were around five bar.
00:49:10Um, I think there were some who had, uh, two level injection.
00:49:15There was a low pressure to broaden the range of, uh, the injectors.
00:49:21And then Ducati had the period where they had three injectors, a shower head above the intake
00:49:26bell mouth, a vernier, um, which was to handle off idle and the first part of, uh, acceleration.
00:49:36And then the main fuel injector, both of those are under the butterfly for most of the running.
00:49:45And then the, the shower head would take over at a certain RPM or a certain condition.
00:49:54But then the next year, uh, after the three injector deal, they went to a single injector
00:50:01in the shower head position because I think Morelli said, well, this is what we're developing
00:50:07now because formula one is dumping a lot of money into this.
00:50:11And I, we think we, you ought to get into this.
00:50:13I'm imagining this, but that's a plausible scenario that, uh, we don't want to produce
00:50:20a backward system for motorcycles.
00:50:23And at the same time, uh, breaking new ground in formula one.
00:50:27So they said the single injector was a little hard when it first came on, the initial hit
00:50:36was, but after that, it was very smooth.
00:50:40So what can you do?
00:50:44Roughly tuned flat slides kind of reminds me of that.
00:50:47It used to, used to roll in if you, if you didn't have your CO set up just right, you
00:50:52know,
00:50:52you were looking for a 4% CO and then you'd have enough fuel, uh, to, that your roll on
00:50:58would be clean.
00:50:59There'd be no coughing, but, uh, yeah, 72, five bars, about 72 PSI of fuel pressure, which
00:51:06is a lot for, for, I think most of us normal citizens who are looking at, uh, oh, you know,
00:51:1230 to 50 these days seems to be the, the rule, but it's, it's all of those components
00:51:18happening at once.
00:51:20It's every little subtle change.
00:51:21It's the angle of the injector.
00:51:24It's Kevin's talking about-
00:51:25RC-51 started as the production bike with four hole injectors.
00:51:30Uh, RC-45 had single hole injectors to begin with and the transition took place during that
00:51:40time.
00:51:41Um, and, uh, they finally went to 12 hole, um, later on with RC-51.
00:51:50Now, why was RC-30 replaced by RC-45?
00:51:55This is a fairly clear case.
00:51:57When that motorcycle arrived in World Superbike, its power threshold was at 7,500 RPM.
00:52:06Um, a year later, they were facing increasing power from the V-Twins and they changed the
00:52:15cam timings, et cetera.
00:52:18Power threshold now moved up to 8,500.
00:52:22And when the motorcycle was no longer competitive, um, 1990 and later, they, and the RC-45 wasn't
00:52:36ready yet, they continued to soup it up such that the power threshold moved to 10,500.
00:52:45So, this is a mature design.
00:52:48No, this is, this is an attempt to make an obsolete motorcycle to extend its competitiveness.
00:52:57And this is what happens in, in reality.
00:53:01You've designed something.
00:53:02It's a step forward.
00:53:04You have some success with it.
00:53:06The other guys come with their new ideas.
00:53:10Soon, your success is no longer interesting because the other guy's success has taken
00:53:16over.
00:53:17This is, this is a big hole into which to throw money.
00:53:23Well, just think of the plane bearings.
00:53:26RC-51, you just had an engine that was fully modern and, you know, Ducati was still playing
00:53:35around with rollers, right?
00:53:36And I mean, it's rolling bearings on the crank and plane bearing rods.
00:53:40Yeah.
00:53:41Crazy.
00:53:42And, um, Bordy was saying that he had, he had a bunch of things that, that he had planned.
00:53:48And then he took a job at a tractor company.
00:53:52He left Ducati and took a job at a tractor company.
00:53:56Now, maybe that was just, he wanted to calm down.
00:54:00I don't know.
00:54:01It'd be interesting to know more about him.
00:54:03Um, people write books about Churchill.
00:54:10They don't write books about Bordy.
00:54:12There's much wrong with this picture.
00:54:16Yeah, seriously.
00:54:19We could use another book on Ducati, couldn't we?
00:54:22Well, there, I've got a pile of them here.
00:54:25Such a...
00:54:26They all have beautiful pictures because, of course, that is what people see when they
00:54:32look at a Ducati.
00:54:33But it is well to bear in mind that they are an imaginative engineering group.
00:54:42And they're doing fascinating stuff, always.
00:54:46This is, this is below the paint.
00:54:49The paint is lovely.
00:54:51The shapes are lovely.
00:54:53This has always been a characteristic of Italian motorcycles.
00:55:01But, uh, this type of intense competition doesn't always come about.
00:55:10Doing one five in a row, five, uh, 500 GP championships, 1993, um, count, count from five.
00:55:23And where was the competition?
00:55:26People were saying, he should slow down and make a race of it.
00:55:32Would that be a race?
00:55:33Or would that be a scripted outcome?
00:55:39You know, kind of trade the lead and stuff.
00:55:42It's exciting for the spectators.
00:55:46They told Showbert when he was racing the RS750 Honda, they told him to roll out.
00:55:52Because they didn't, they didn't want to get restricted, which is.
00:55:56They got restricted anyway.
00:55:58Yeah, kind of.
00:55:59Well, they got restricted probably later.
00:56:01Didn't they get a few more wins that way, you know?
00:56:04But, uh, he was rolling out on this.
00:56:06That is good advice.
00:56:07Sure.
00:56:10Ride on the needle.
00:56:13Yeah.
00:56:13I mean, RC51 came out to battle with the Ducati and it had Honda qualities to it.
00:56:21It had, it had its plane bearings, it had, um, RPM and it had a twin sided swing arm.
00:56:30And Ducati, Ducati hung on to that single sided swing arm until, uh, the, the triple nine and
00:56:35they got the double sided swing arm.
00:56:37And then the styling, uh, was definitely controversial and, uh, rapidly dismissed for, for Ducati, a very short period.
00:56:47You know, Ducati's, uh, Ducati's styling cadence was always, um, call it steady.
00:56:54You know, they would make the bike and they would make it a long time and they would make some
00:56:59detailed changes.
00:57:00And then they were evolving the engine as Kevin was pointing out.
00:57:03And then here's, you know, the narrow head that's coming out and that's, uh, foretelling the next generation is, uh,
00:57:11the next generation of street engine is, is it's fascinating.
00:57:15And, uh, they were doing, you know, for Ducati, it's a technical company.
00:57:22It's a strange combination of a, being in a technical, it's different now, but then it was a technical company
00:57:27with a very traditional styling base.
00:57:32We've got to have the single sided swing arm and, you know, when the 10 98 came out, that was
00:57:38confirmed by talking to the designer who was there, who finished that bike to get rid of the nine, nine,
00:57:45nine version, the turbo launch version.
00:57:48Yeah.
00:57:48And he said, I, I had dinner with him in Germany and I asked him about that.
00:57:54And I said, you know, to me, it always seemed like the 10 98 was, uh, it was just conservative
00:58:01enough and it was an apology.
00:58:06And he said, Oh, it absolutely was, you know, we were really, we wanted to kind of make up with
00:58:11the Ducati fan base.
00:58:13And that's why the single sided swing arm came back for a while.
00:58:17But of course that's gone now, you know, your V twins, eh, they're there.
00:58:21They're, it's still a big part of Ducati's personality and soul, but, um, it seems purely, it seems so much
00:58:30more purely technical now, you know, when you're dealing with the V fours, they're fantastic.
00:58:35I mean, they're just absolutely fantastic motorcycles and they're in a way kind of ruthlessly technological now, different, different than
00:58:45the V twin era where it was a little more swoosh, you know, I don't know what else to say.
00:58:51Well, the V twin era, um, started out with some, uh, heavy baggage.
00:59:00The vertically split crankcase imposed limitations.
00:59:03The placement of the studs imposed limitations because they, uh, could not make the larger bore engine.
00:59:13Uh, the test of strata went to one Oh four by 58.8.
00:59:18And suddenly they had these gigantic, gigantic valves.
00:59:23The cylinders were happy because they could fill through those wonderfully large valves in the short time, shorter time that
00:59:31they were open.
00:59:32They started out with long timings that killed the engine's mid range.
00:59:37This was sacred.
00:59:39This must not be changed, but it was changed because desperation forces change.
00:59:48We humans like to be comfortable.
00:59:51We don't want to be upset by new ideas.
00:59:58But there are times when we absolutely need some new ideas to break out of problems that can no longer
01:00:06be solved in the old way.
01:00:07And this was very much what Ducati was doing until test of strata.
01:00:14Whereas Honda were able to look at the problem.
01:00:16Um, as not a heritage, but a design exercise.
01:00:24Well, and they were forced in a way to do it, you know, they, they had, uh, expressed their 750
01:00:30V4 probably about as much as they could.
01:00:34At that time.
01:00:35Yeah.
01:00:35At that time.
01:00:36Yeah.
01:00:41But, uh, to push, uh, the V4.
01:00:47RC-45 to make the kind of power that these other engines were making, uh, over 180 horsepower, it would
01:00:57have to travel the same path that the RC-30 had done with its power threshold rising by a thousand
01:01:03revs with, with regularity.
01:01:06So the motorcycle was becoming harder and harder to ride well.
01:01:13And meanwhile, Ducati had, by being in a period of shortening cam timing, its power band was described as being
01:01:22so featureless that they could use, uh, a very loose chassis and setup.
01:01:30Because nothing, nothing sudden was going to get it shivering.
01:01:38And this is, I think it's very hard when you're in the middle of working these problems out to mentally
01:01:46stand back and say, wait a minute, here's where we're trying to hammer nails with our forehead.
01:01:53Let's stop doing it.
01:01:54It hurts.
01:01:55It hurts the whole program.
01:01:59It's very easy for organizations to become stuck on their tradition.
01:02:08And of course, the styling thing, we perfectly well understand this, just like at Harley.
01:02:14The people who want these motorcycles look at some designs and they say, that's not a Ducati.
01:02:20That's not a Harley.
01:02:23And they are the definition of what is correct.
01:02:28They won't buy it if it doesn't please them.
01:02:33And that's accepted.
01:02:35And it's easy to get into that same frame of mind with respect to the design.
01:02:39Oh, well, we've got to have a single sided swing arm.
01:02:43We've got to have this, that, and the other thing.
01:02:48No, we have to consider what we're trying to accomplish.
01:02:52Can we do it with that?
01:02:55Honda built the NS3, which had two cylinders up and one cylinder forward, two stroke.
01:03:03And then for 84, what were they going to do?
01:03:09The original plan was, well, we'll soup it up more.
01:03:13Do you think you could win these races?
01:03:15Was the question that was asked in some famous boardroom with polished wood table.
01:03:23And after deliberate thought, the answer came, no, we don't think we can win that way.
01:03:32Because we'd be refining this motorcycle to the ragged edge, which is what had happened with RC30.
01:03:40We don't want that.
01:03:41You want to start with a design that has enough room for improvement built into it, that it can last
01:03:50for more than 15 minutes in that business.
01:03:54And so that was the decision.
01:03:56No, we're going to build, the rules allow a four cylinder, we're going to build a four.
01:04:01And that's what Ducati did when they got into MotoGP in 2003.
01:04:07They considered building a twin with gigantic, bigger than a 454 Chevy piston.
01:04:17And they said, we don't know how to burn a cylinder that big.
01:04:23They later learned it when they made the twin so big, the 1200s.
01:04:29But at the time, they didn't have that information.
01:04:32So they said, we're going to have to go with a V4.
01:04:37Because it won't sound all that different.
01:04:41We're going to have the crank pins 70 degrees apart for reasons that are covered elsewhere.
01:04:51And that's how it went.
01:04:55Lots of people were disappointed that they built a V4.
01:04:59Now people are being disappointed that they're putting valve springs in some model.
01:05:04They're not doing it for fun.
01:05:10Or to annoy you.
01:05:15So, change.
01:05:17Well, it's such a combination of art and science and their motion.
01:05:25And as you said, you know, the residents and the customer's mind, if the customer doesn't believe what it is,
01:05:33or the story doesn't help them move into a new era, then they're not going to move into the new
01:05:41era.
01:05:43Ducati did a great job because what did Ducati do?
01:05:46Ducati showed up and said, well, we need a four-cylinder race and MotoGP.
01:05:51And, of course, we're going to make street bikes four-cylinders.
01:05:58This is a very important point because Domenicali talked about this.
01:06:05He said, for years, our bikes did not accelerate or have the high top speeds of some of the Japanese
01:06:14products.
01:06:15And people would say, oh, well, but Ducati have European flair while you're looking at the license plate on some
01:06:26rice burner.
01:06:31So, Domenicali said, we're going to compete directly with the Japanese super sport models.
01:06:41We're going to go to the top.
01:06:44Yeah, 1098.
01:06:47Yeah, 1098, they geared it to run a good quarter mile.
01:06:53And they were just saying, we're going head to head.
01:06:56You know, we're not going to rely on some spirited interpretation of what Italian-ness is or European flair.
01:07:07You know, that's fine, have it, use it.
01:07:10But that's what's great now, you know, is I think Ducati has successfully converted itself to a performance company.
01:07:22You know, we are technology and we are performance and we are MotoGP.
01:07:26We are Trickness.
01:07:28It's just all of that is what Ducati is.
01:07:33So, when you look at the bike, you're not going, you're not sad that,
01:07:37a Panigale V4R is not a twin.
01:07:44You're excited for what it represents and that you get a sliver of that MotoGP-ness and you get that
01:07:52taste.
01:07:53That's what I think Honda, for so long with the V4 750s, like a VFR, you know, pretty soft street
01:08:03bike,
01:08:04great all-around motorcycle, VFR 750.
01:08:07You know, it evolved away from the Superbike, the RC30 was the homologation special,
01:08:12but you got a piece of that.
01:08:14And during that era, 95, I mean, the first new motorcycle I ever bought was a 95 Honda VFR 750.
01:08:22And it was because of gear-driven cams, the sound of the crank.
01:08:27It had a single-sided swing arm like the RC30, but it was affordable and I could, you know, I
01:08:32mean,
01:08:32I had to scrape.
01:08:34I had to get that bike bought.
01:08:35I didn't buy a 900SS because it was more expensive and, you know, I'd considered it,
01:08:41but I couldn't, I didn't know about Desmo valves and rubber belts and it was all,
01:08:48I couldn't solve that problem at the time.
01:08:51And so I bought the Honda.
01:08:53But it was a sliver of oval pistons.
01:08:59It was a sliver of gear-driven cams.
01:09:02It gave you a taste of that Honda technology.
01:09:06There's a relatedness, yes.
01:09:08That lovely sound of those gears, which, of course, you have to work very hard to suppress
01:09:16if you're going for certain levels of quiet.
01:09:21Well, when they're set up, when they're set up.
01:09:23Gears are exciting.
01:09:25Then they were.
01:09:26There's a were.
01:09:28When they're right, there's a were, you know, and it's great.
01:09:34But, you know, Honda is so, I don't know, they're agnostic about, they've always been relatively agnostic
01:09:42about their accomplishments and the tools that they're using to get there.
01:09:47I mean, they said, we're going to go race dirt track.
01:09:50They experimented with, you know, that CX.
01:09:55Turned sideways, yeah.
01:09:57Sideways CX.
01:09:58And then they said, no, let's just do this.
01:09:59And they just, they built the bike.
01:10:01They kicked ass.
01:10:02I'm like, okay, great.
01:10:03Bye.
01:10:04You know, just, yeah, we did that.
01:10:06We'll move on.
01:10:07RC 51, you know, we're a V4 company and we're, we're vested and we're doing RC 30s and RC 45s.
01:10:13And then bang, here's this twin and they work at the twin and they, and then they move on.
01:10:20They could see that world super bike was like steeplechase.
01:10:25All these participants are rushing towards this huge hedge.
01:10:30You have to jump over it.
01:10:33It no longer appeared that the RC 30 or RC 45 was going to go over the hedge.
01:10:40It was going to lodge among the branches.
01:10:44They had to have a machine that could sail over the hedge.
01:10:52In other words, a fresh design with plenty of room for improvement.
01:11:00They cast heads for, for some of these engines with extra material around the ports so that experimentation could go
01:11:09forward.
01:11:10On airflow, on the nature of power bands, that information is somewhere in a notebook.
01:11:18Gary Mathers, who was the head of racing for American Honda for so many years, said that one of the
01:11:27problems with Japanese engineering is that every year, one third of the engineers will be shifted from your department to
01:11:37outboard motors, lawn care.
01:11:41Who knows what, and they will take their notes with them as part of their resume.
01:11:52And they will take their notes with them as part of their resume.
01:12:11It's just different ways of doing business.
01:12:14Yeah.
01:12:14I think what you mentioned earlier about what Muzzy said at Kawasaki about production, not talking to racing.
01:12:25I think Ducati's had a, you know, they're dealing with a lot smaller volumes.
01:12:29They're not, you know, they're not trying to build 150s to sell in India in, you know, as a hero
01:12:36Honda at the time.
01:12:37And, you know, they're just, that communication, I think is probably easier at Ducati just by the sheer difference in
01:12:46size between it and the Japanese company on the performance side.
01:12:50But that, that communication, it's just fascinating how, how you can have that chasm between racing and production.
01:13:01One of the changes that was made that Muzzy spoke of was that production bikes began to, were soon being
01:13:10given smaller intake ports.
01:13:16And what that does, of course, is it fattens up the mid-range because now instead of when you're 3
01:13:25,000 revs below peak torque, the air velocity was sort of languid.
01:13:31So as the pistons started to rise on compression, the air said, oh, okay, I'm out of here.
01:13:38Make the ports a little smaller and there's enough velocity to keep on filling the cylinder.
01:13:44The English Formula One people were always doing stuff like sleeving it back one-sixteenth of an inch to correct
01:13:53a zone of weakness in the torque curve.
01:13:58So anyway, I love this stuff.
01:14:05My middle son tells me that the, our show here is, has a reputation among his friends of being nerdy.
01:14:16Well, bring it on.
01:14:18Bring it on.
01:14:19Because who is going, who is going to abandon a tradition that has a powerful grip on management and say,
01:14:30we have to go this way because this is what will happen if we don't, we won't have a product
01:14:37that can do this.
01:14:39We need to plan that product without regard to, but it's going to look funny.
01:14:51Well, that's it, folks.
01:14:53Thanks for listening.
01:14:54That's RC51 and more.
01:14:56The nerds, the, and more, yes, and the nerds' perspective.
01:15:01I just wanted to bring those threads together so that there's a story.
01:15:06Yeah.
01:15:07It was a fascinating time.
01:15:09It was, um, I was so fortunate to go to Monza at that particular moment in time to watch RC51,
01:15:17watch Bayless coming in first race, first race on Michelins, driving through the trees to Monza.
01:15:25I mean, you know, you don't, you don't realize history is being made some days, but it was, and, uh,
01:15:34looking back, what a, what a time.
01:15:37Well, thanks for listening, folks.
01:15:39Check us out on Patreon.
01:15:40Share this with your friends.
01:15:41Uh, we appreciate you being here.
01:15:43Get us in the comments and we'll catch you next time.
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