Round Up
ROUND UP
THE FUEL shortage may wreak real havoc in the U.S., but nothing at all like it has done in a little country in Europe. As soon as the Arabin oil company supply was cut to that little European country, Holland (a result of the Arab/Israeli conflict), the government acted quickly by stopping all private motoring on Sundays. Just like that they killed all motorcycle sport!
Motorcycling is a one-day sport almost everywhere. That day is Sunday. Over here we hear talk of rationing, and for all I know by the time you read this it may have already become an ugly reality. If that happens, of course sales of motorcycles just might skyrocket. But this does little for the sport.
It does indeed appear that ^vhat is happening to automobiles, i.e. the growth in sales and popularity of smaller, more economical cars, could in time affect motorcycles. It seems strange that while bikes are getting bigger, more powerful, and far less economical, the rest of the motorized market is going the other way. It will be interesting to see what some Federal agency does when they find out that the most miserly, penny pinching, puny, low performance car achieves worse mileage than all but one or two of the biggest, hottest, most exotic fire-breathing motorcycles.
Even more ludicrous is the fact that the hottest 750cc, multi-cylinder, two-stroke road racer that will go 160 miles per hour...gets around 15 miles per gallon. That’s 5 mpg more than the average American car gets now, and probably eight or nine more than they will deliver when the new pollution control systems are mandatory in 1976!
It is unfortunate that our government has not looked deeper into the subject. They are forcing automobile makers to build cars that pollute less. How do they build one that pollutes less? They load the engine down with mechanical devices that require more power to drive or overcome.
What’s the end result? The engines get bigger and bigger! What does a bigger engine do? It uses more fuel! Damn right!
Wasn’t the original intent to lessen pollution? How do you go about lessening pollution when one of the heaviest polluting industries is the petroleum industry which is now going to have to double its output to keep up with the new breed of low polluting gas hogs. Arghhhhhhh!
THAT three-cylinder bike shown at the Paris motorcycle show, built by Motobecane, with electronic fuel injection, is real. I realize I mentioned it here last month, but w’e didn’t have a picture or very much information at the time. Now we do. It’s a two-stroke Three with a roller bearing crank, a 62mm x 52.8mm bore/stroke for 478.2cc, and the compression ratio is 10:1. They claim 55 bhp at 7500 rpm, for the engine, which is hooked to a six-speed gearbox. As any fool can see, it doesn’t have carburetors.
Motobecane says that the standard carbureted fourstroker pollutes a lot due to the loss of fuel air mixture during the exhaust stroke out the exhaust valve. But, say the wiley Frenchmen, the two-stroke does not lose much of the fuel/air mixture due to the fact that a quantity of the mixture stays after the cylinder is scavenged. Then they go on to say that due to fuel injection even that loss is reduced. Though engineering is not my best suit (I prefer my grey wool flannel), I will endeavor to translate myself into even deeper trouble, from the French.
On four-stroke engines with electronic fuel injection, fuel is held down in the inlet port for a long period before the inlet valve opens. When the valve opens, a continuous flow is realized.
On a two-stroke engine with direct fuel injection, the time for injection of the mixture is very small. At 6000 rpm a revolution lasts 10 milliseconds. Quite a lot less than the Latin variety, I might point out. Approximately 1 millisecond remains, with a frequency equal to the engine speed, which can reach 10,000 rpm when gear changing. (I must add here that L would cut my throat if I overrevved an engine that much when I missed a shift. But, who’s perfect?)
So, say they, mechanical fuel injection systems are out! But, the small needle of an electromagnetic injection valve would work. So, they developed one. And that’s what this is all about.
Working with a maker of injection valves, Bosch we deduce, Motobecane worked it out and has patents pending on it. We think it is Bosch because they are making the injectors Motobecane is using. That didn’t take a hell of a lot of intelligence, I realize. Before going on with this I have to point out that the lowly VW uses an electronio injection system right now. But it’s of course a dirty(?) old four-stroke.
Readers will now roll up their pant legs. To obtain the small times and high frequencies the research department at Motobecane developed an
electronic control system based on the discharge of a high voltage capacitor. Patents are also pending on this little goody. The discharge is released by the impulse of a pick-up. Data on engine output is introduced into the electronic control system by metering the inlet port vacuum, speed by the discharge frequency, and temperature.
For starting, a rich mixture is obtained by depressing a pushbutton on the handlebar. Engine speed is controlled by the typical slide throttle found on Formula I racing cars. (Consult Road & Track for more details on that one.) At high speed and when the throttle is closed the injection is stopped.
The twist grip controls the slide throttle and a lubrication pump’s output. A
mechanical pump on the clutch cover provides fuel under pressure for the injector. An electronic computer calculates the precise fuel requests.
End result—fuel economy and a clean exhaust, low idle speed and excellent acceleration. I hope you understood all that. I don’t. But it sounds great.
They claim ta 30-percent increase in fuel economy. They then add insult to injury by saying that the twostroke engine with their injection system now becomes “respectable.”
Our French correspondent tells us that the bike will go into production around the end of 1974 and that it will conform to our 1976 air pollution standards. I hope no Fed reads this.
AIDERS IN the Spanish A round of the European Trials Championship in 1973 were seen wearing helmets for the first time in the history of the sport.
Some pretty strange looking headgear was in evidence; a lot like some of the odd plastic and cork things European ISDT riders wear.
CYCLE WORLD’S first International Trials will be just a memory when you read this. Helmets were required for the event and will probably be seen in European trials from now on.
Some will moan the passing of spectators’ full view of riders’ faces, but they are the ones who miss seeing motocross riders’ faces, now buried behind helmets, dark goggles, mouth guards, etc.
Of course the ones who complain the loudest are not the ones who have bashed their brains out on a rock, had teeth removed without the aid of dental surgery (to say nothing of the pleasures of anesthesia), or had the surface of their faces looking like they had been dragged behind a car on the freeway at 50 mph.
If all trials riders rode trials like I do they would have made them mandatory from the start.
TRICK REAR suspensj^k is the now thing. Yairar ha and Maico have shown some interesting variations in International events and you’ve seen some one-off efforts in CYCLE WORLD.
Increasing the travel by tilting the shock at a steep, forward angle, makes shock absorbers work very hard. Maico’s super factory jobs last only one race day, and at about $100 a pair, that makes things kinda pricey.
C.H. Wheat at Cooper Motors is working with S&W and may soon pass on the benefits to privateers. It seems that the problem is mainly oil temperature. A standard Girling, fashionably mounted, cooks up to ovA 200 degrees after about 4y minutes of riding. Wheat says the S&W experimental units run at about 140 degrees in the same amount of time.
And don’t forget good old George Etheridge, American Honda’s senior development technician. We know he’s messing around with some new ideas. Also, the three leading Japanese motorcrossers have shocks with large oil reservoirs and cooling fins now.
IYCLE WORLD has many dear old friends. None is dearer to me than B.R. Nicholls. “BR” to some “Nick” or “Nickers” tf others. “Brian” to his lovely little English mother. Nick just got married a little while ago. Chris lived just across the street from him. Real small town story, except that the “small” town is London. Nick’s wedding didn’t bear much resemblance to that rather ostentatious affair last November. But I’ll bet it was nice nonetheless.
I “found” Nick back in ’62. I had just launched CYCLE WORLD and desperately needed information, stories and photographs from England and Europe if we were to live up to our title. Nick was recommended to me. Our third issue, March 1962, contained Nick’s first foreign column. It’s been a standard fixture in the magazine since.
(Continued on page 77)
Continued from page 44
As Bob Atkinson mentioned in his first column last month, we have eliminated the European, Italian and Japanese columns for lack of sufficient reader interest. Things are pretty hot and heavy over here these days, and what’s happening in the U.S. is what we are here for. It was a sad day for me. I have pretty strong attachments for what happens in CW and Continental Report has been an essential part of our success.
But don’t ever think we are going to abandon our rctand as the magazine of the 'cycle world, wherever it is. Nick’s input will appear here each month. So will that of another old friend, Carlo Perelli. We will of course stuff in any and all material we receive from these standbys, but it will be showing up in a somewhat different form.
For the record, I said in Round Up that some nut was talking of building a car for Indy. He planned on uniting 10, yes 10, Honda Four engines, for a 40-cylinder, 500 bhp monster! If it came to being it would have had 160 valves, 10 crankshafts, 40 rods, etc. Do you suppose I really believed it?
AFTER THE Scottish Six Days Trial, the one that counts most on the British trials calendar, comes the one held in the rough terrain of the Yorkshire section of England. The country rough, and the trials is run with a time element, as well.
Malcolm Rathmell on a Bultaco won it this year, repeating his win of the Scottish. Local boy Richard Sunter took 2nd on a factory Kawasaki. Hurts, doesn’t it, when you read that a bike we haven’t even seen yet is winning trials in England. New European Trials Champion Martin Lampkin looks like the one who will be the British Champion. He won the John Douglas trial a week before where Sunter took 4th spot.
IN THE Motor Cycle News Superbike Championship, Peter Williams on the John Player Norton was the favored rider, but Barry Sheene on a 750 Suzuki won $2500 and the title. The three race series score changed in the final event drastically when Sheene won outright, giving him two overalls to Williams’ one. Funny how a little perspective changes things.
ANOTHER decision k coming out of the FIM congress in Madrid last November was to allow American speedway riders to qualify for the world championship. Best rider of a series will go to Denmark for the championship in Gothenburg, Sept. 9th.
Yet another, somewhat alarming, announcement came from the congress. No country accepted the bid to stage the International Six Days Trial in 1974! So, at present, there won’t be one. Italy is the only country showing interest. If it doesn’t...sad.
The 1975 ISDT is destined for Austria, and 1976 to Czechoslovakia. In England there was a strong demand to hold the event for ’74 in Wales, but it was turned down. It is an event that will be increasingly difficult to hold with land being harder to find and an increase in public resistance to the noise.
PINAL ROUNDS of the world road racing championship saw most of the publicity being given to the personal fuel between Phil Read and Giacomo Agostini, both riding for MV. Read won the title, but Ago complained. He said that Read was good, but that he did not really deserve the title because he, Ago, had been injured and had been plagued by mechanical problems throughout the season. Ago went as far as to say he didn’t want to ride with Read again, but he would if someone in a superior position told him he had to. Some team.
TWELVE YEARS AGO
THE FEBRUARY ’62 issue looks pretty funny today. The magazine actually looked a lot like some of CYCLE WORLD’S imitators.
Our cover shot was of a guy on a Greeves. Remember them? We didn’t give his name because he “was going too fast.” You know damn well that we didn’t know how to find out who he was back then.
We tested a new BSA Catalina. It weighed 370 lb. according to the bathroom scales we used. It went 83 mph! Wow!
We also covered the ISDT, which makes us the first American magazine to ever do so. We are still doing it, by the way, if you hadn’t noticed.
Rich Buedelier, the big Harley dealer in those days, loaned us a new 250cc Sprint for test. I dropped it in an oil patch on a freeway off ramp returning it ' to them. Sure hurt. It was a neat little bike, though. I miss it.
Oh, we had a super tech article on brakes that would just barely qualify as a kid’s primer in today’s world of technology !
We covered the Rams MC hare and hound. It ran in the Red Rock and Jawbone area of the Mojave desert. Modern day Baja hero Max Switzer won it, riding a Triumph. J.D. Williams (Triumph) and Don Surplice (Matchless) fought it out for 2nd place. Guess which won. AÍ Rogers and Dick Vick were there. They still are. We congratulated the Rams MC on their event, especially Jerry Platt, Jack La Praik, Jack Binning and Ira Chase.
Dick Hammer, or “hammerdick” as he was known by friends, among which I counted myself, won the Ascot TT championship. He beat Dick Dorresteyn and Joe Leonard doing it. Not bad for a swimming pool digger. Skip Van Leeuwen was an amateur. He finished 2nd in class. Jim Goldsmith finished 10th in the expert class. Now there was a rider! Harlan Bast was an amateur, his sons are the terrifying Bast boys that rip things up at Costa Mesa Speedway now.
We ran the complete minutes of the AMA competition committee. We had to. Floyd Clymer over at Cycle magazine was doing it. It must be right. Right? Wrong!
Honda introduced its 1962 models. The 305cc Super Hawk was one of them. Talk about a bike way ahead of its time. Honda should receive a special medal for that one. The 125cc Benley Super Sports Racer was still in production. It would do almost 90, at 10,500 rpm!
We also showed the latest mods from one of the dozens of Japanese firms that ate it in the ’60s, Pointer. Hell, they were copying Honda’s styling and Yamaha’s engineering. And they were in Japan!
Yamaha advertised its new line. McHal helmets spent a bundle advertising the biggest loser of the day, the AcoustaBloc helmet. Honda joined us as an advertiser, showing its European domination during the heyday of road racing. The Berliners were with us, as they had been from the very first issue, along with Yamaha and good old Webco. jöj
