Living Museum
Living museum
TDC
Kevin Cameron
DAYTONA IS MY FAVORITE MUSEUM OF technology, in which all the exhibits are living and developing before my very eyes. It takes a week to see it all.
Out behind the last row of garages on the east end is Factory Row, with eight glossy, recently washed tractor-trailer transporters, their auxiliary engines chugging to supply power for light, compressed air and air-conditioning. Mechanics continually shuttle between these and the garages, while tourists like myself make their lives difficult by trying to occupy the same space at the same time.
Al Ludington, Eric Bostrom’s crew chief, said, “This season’s going to come down to sheer consistency. The depth of talent means you can’t afford to drop a single point.”
About his talented ZX-7R rider, Ludington said, “Eric is into braking now. When he learns (what he can do with) early acceleration, no one will be able to catch him.”
The teams with Ducatis-HMC and Competition Accessories-were running the older desmoquattro engines. The new testastretta, with its higher power, was deemed unnecessary for the U.S. scene. I can never make sense out of decisions like this one, unless there is a problem with AMA homologation.
A rules change for this Daytona limited the number of workers over the wall at pit stops to four plus fire-extinguisher operator. Next year, the current air-operated lifts will also be banned in favor of manual-only units. I have never seen the appeal of pit stops. Racers hate to stop what they are doing, and fiddling with gasoline under severe time pressure invites mistakes. To me, race starts and finishes have much more interest, but three 67-mile heats have no appeal for Daytona management. Pit stops it is!
The factory Yamaha YZF-R7 OW-02s had very abrupt throttle response during warm-up, reminiscent almost of the old Honda 250 Sixes. Low crank mass? Or just excellent fuel delivery? Yamaha was just about the only holdout not using the ubiquitous large Brembo four-piston front calipers. Theirs were Nissin sixes, mounted in modern fashion, directly behind the front axle. This not only resists brake pad knockback during fork flexure, it also makes front wheel changing much easier.
The Harleys looked just as before, in-
cluding the ancient Willie G.-styled halffairing. This team is supposed to get some aero help from Ford, and it would have been nice to have it here. No cigar. AMA rules no longer require all streamlining to be behind a vertical plane through the front axle, but Harley remains close to compliance. Kawasaki has taken maximum advantage of this nonrule, with a long, tapered snout coming almost 8 inches farther forward than before. Honda had put its bikes and riders into a wind tunnel, and then coached the riders into minimum-drag positions. Even the very Daytona-experienced Miguel Duhamel picked up something from this exercise. Fairing nose shape divides into two rough categories-the “dive plane” look, possibly intended to increase front wheel load a tiny bit, and the more streamlined “zeppelin” look.
An interested spectator was Kenny Roberts Sr., at Daytona to watch son Kurtis. Speaking to FIM officials about their new four-stroke GP racing rules, he had said bluntly (he has no other kind of speech), “What about fly-by-wire? You going to say anything about that?”
Double-size 990cc four-strokes will make so much power, he contends, that it will be necessary to put a computer system between the rider and the actual throttles-fly-by-wire-in an attempt to make tires live. The rider will tell the system what he wants and it will figure out how to do that with the least rubber sacrifice. Such systems are routine in combat and commercial aircraft. Kenny suggests that they will require more development money than the engines
themselves-which will cost plenty.
“We got some prices on four-stroke engines. Very nice prices...straight from Formula One,” said Roberts.
Returning to the real and present world, he indicated that his third-generation two-stroke KR3 500 GP bike “is coming together; it’s just like a Japanese bike now, everything works, and we can make adjustments and get predictable responses.”
On pit lane, Yamaha took the prize for Most Offensive Generators, which are used to power the tire heaters. Extrastinky diesels! Back in the garages, Leif Gustafsson showed me his new automatic-thermostat system to control tire heaters accurately. When he asked tire technicians how hot tire heaters should be, most had no answer. A few tires have been cooked in over-enthusiastic heaters, so the control is a good idea.
When bikes rolled in during qualifying, tire techs knelt down behind them, inserting a temperature needle into the hard-worked left-center of the tread, once, twice, pulling the tire around, sampling rapidly again and again. I learned that one reason why tires increase in hardness as they age at temperature is “outgassing,” the slow diffusion of volatile softening agents through the hot, gel-like rubber to the tread surface, where they evaporate. When this happens too rapidly, the gas forms bubbles in the tread rubber, which is called blistering. Usually, the rider feels vibration as the symptom of a blistering tire, and can slow down.
Some Yoshimura Suzukis were equipped with three infrared heat sensors, pop-riveted to the tops of their swingarms. One “looked” at the all-important right side of the tire tread, which can cause first-lap crashes if its rubber is too cool. The other two were devoted to left and left-center, where most of the heat is. Mladin’s bike had left sensors only.
While Suzuki’s new GSX-R750 streetbikes have a new double-butterfly intake EFI system, the racebikes have what you would expect on a race engine. There are two fuel injectors for each very short stack-a “showerhead” hovering over the metal bellmouth for top-end fuel delivery and a second one below the single butterfly for part-throttle operation.
I’m sorry when Daytona ends. I want to do it again next week.
