Mecum's 34th Annual Las Vegas Vintage & Antique Motorcycle Auction will feature 2,000 motorcycles! https://www.mecum.com/auctions/las-vegas-motorcycles-2025/ Bid live at the South Point Hotel & Casino or register to bid online or by phone, January 29-February 1, 2025.
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Italian boutique motorcycle maker Bimota got its start in the 1970s, when horsepower was exploding on the road and track, but chassis and brakes still had to catch up--especially on mass-produced machines. It is said that Massimo Tamburini, legendary designer of the Ducati 916, decided to build his own chassis after crashing his own four-cylinder Honda race bike in the early 1970s. Tamburini was the "Ta" in Bimota. Find out about the other two founders and the evolution of this interesting and technically progressive brand that's still building bikes today under part ownership of Kawasaki.
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6CLI74xvMBFLDOC1tQaCOQ
Read more from Cycle World: https://www.cycleworld.com/
Buy Cycle World Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/cycleworld
Have a bike to sell? Consigning with Mecum is easy.
Don't want to go out of pocket on your auction purchase? Mecum offers special financing. Get pre-approved now and bid with confidence!
Italian boutique motorcycle maker Bimota got its start in the 1970s, when horsepower was exploding on the road and track, but chassis and brakes still had to catch up--especially on mass-produced machines. It is said that Massimo Tamburini, legendary designer of the Ducati 916, decided to build his own chassis after crashing his own four-cylinder Honda race bike in the early 1970s. Tamburini was the "Ta" in Bimota. Find out about the other two founders and the evolution of this interesting and technically progressive brand that's still building bikes today under part ownership of Kawasaki.
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6CLI74xvMBFLDOC1tQaCOQ
Read more from Cycle World: https://www.cycleworld.com/
Buy Cycle World Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/cycleworld
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SportsTranscript
00:00:00It's the cycle world podcast once again, I'm Mark Hoyer the editor-in-chief. I'm with Kevin Cameron our technical editor
00:00:07We're gonna talk about Bermuda this week
00:00:09we talked about Mecham auctions last week and we went through a long list of motorcycles from that and
00:00:16one of them was a
00:00:18Kb1 of the Moda kb1 and it just really resonated and Kevin and I started talking about you know
00:00:25Bermuda and the challenges of the time and why Bermuda would come to come into an into existence and
00:00:33So we've dug into the archives and found a few things
00:00:42That being said this podcast is brought to you by Mecham auctions the Las Vegas motorcycle auction
00:00:49Should have about 2,000 motorcycles. It's Saturday. Excuse me. It's Wednesday, January 29th
00:00:55Saturday February 1st in Las Vegas at the South Point Hotel
00:01:00And casino
00:01:03Incredible list of motorcycles. I have to go ahead and say Kevin. I can't believe I missed the
00:01:081929 Harley-Davidson Model D. It was their flathead. It was the answer to
00:01:14Indians incredibly successful middleweight 750 the Scout 101 and also I think
00:01:21you know
00:01:23There was the Super X Excelsior had a lightweight sports model. Yes, they sure did
00:01:29They sure this was just supposed to show you that weight growth was a problem even then
00:01:36There's a lot of people were not athletic enough to get on those great big
00:01:41Original bikes and ride off into the sunset. So the idea of the Scout and
00:01:48Other bikes like it was solidly grounded in
00:01:54Rider preference. Well the 29, so I know my grandfather had a 29 or a 30
00:02:00If it was a big bike, it would have been a 29 only but I have one photograph of my grandfather on the bike
00:02:08Dead straight head-on. Yeah, this is the motorcycle that he
00:02:12He took my grandmother on a ride for
00:02:15across
00:02:16Across
00:02:18Frozen Lake Ronkonkoma in January and she was upset
00:02:25That was one of those stories
00:02:26So he had a third I believe his is a 30 because the toolbox is across the fender and on the 29s
00:02:31These D models they had the toolbox on the side in any case
00:02:35There's a beautiful one for sale at the auction and I missed it in our conversation. So I'm
00:02:41awkwardly stuffing it into the beginning
00:02:44Of a Bermuda podcast, but
00:02:47Vegas auction is amazing. If you've never gone you can bid online you can bid by phone
00:02:53If you can get there, it's essentially think of it as two thousand incredible motorcycles in one room and a huge variety of stuff
00:03:00all the way from
00:03:02Teens era cyclones. They have a beautiful cyclone between coming up for sale
00:03:07To the two-strokes that seem to resonate with you guys. We talked about the RZ
00:03:12RZV 500 R and the RG 500 and everyone was
00:03:17Laughing at how you were dashing my dreams of the RZV
00:03:22Telling us about the carburetors doing 90-degree
00:03:25Turns to get into the engine and all that so they were appreciative of you just you know, spitting the hard truths
00:03:34Anyways make them auctions there's financial services you can get a loan basically you can be
00:03:40Pre-approved and financed before you go to the auction for a set amount of money and so you could bid with confidence if you don't
00:03:45Want to go out of pocket?
00:03:47There's all kinds of shipping options for both motorcycles and for all the memorabilia, which is a pretty neat selection this year
00:03:54So we thank me come for the sponsorship. Let's talk about
00:03:58The modas now Kevin I went back just before we even get anywhere about origins. I went back to the 1985
00:04:05September issue
00:04:07And we got a fella in
00:04:09cycle world leathers, we went over to Italy and visited Pomoda and
00:04:14The last line of the story says
00:04:17Pomoda strong beautiful and expensive
00:04:19So this was this was the tasey emerging and this was the tasey with the swingarm front-end
00:04:24Yep
00:04:25tasey emerging and they had a couple of their bikes and one of those
00:04:27There was a little sidebar on the pomoda sp5 which would be the Suzuki pomoda 5 meaning the fifth
00:04:34version of a Suzuki powered pomoda and
00:04:36the price in Italy was
00:04:39$1,431
00:04:42Something like
00:04:44Two three times the price of a GSX are 750
00:04:49But you know, it's beautiful and it's exotic and it was very low production and
00:04:57Pomodas resonated with us
00:04:59so one of the things I like is that Pomoda is Valerio Bianchi Giuseppe Mori and Massimo Tamburini of
00:05:08Kojima and Ducati 916 fame
00:05:11pretty talented guy and that's the
00:05:15Bianchi Mori and Tamburini are the Bimota
00:05:19Yep, and it's it's wonderful
00:05:22The wonderful thing here is that all that my time in motorcycling?
00:05:27I have not known enough about Massimo Tamburini and I have just thought of him as a remote
00:05:35creative artistic figure
00:05:37But in fact in his photographs, he looks like an HVAC technician, which is exactly what he was
00:05:46in
00:05:471966 at the age of what 23 or so he and his two partners
00:05:52Went into the HVAC business. Hey, we got to have a trade here. We're gonna make a life for ourselves and
00:06:00get get on with things so
00:06:03It
00:06:05Turns out that Tamburini from boyhood had been a racing enthusiast and had wanted to
00:06:15Be a part of that scene and thought about it a lot as many of us have and
00:06:23So in 1973 he was
00:06:27Production racing or otherwise
00:06:30Forcing a CB 750 Honda to do things that it
00:06:35Do I have to it?
00:06:38Those were the days when former cycle editor Cook Nelson said to a Honda
00:06:45chassis engineer
00:06:48What are you going to do about the handling of your bikes and
00:06:53Who me was the general outlook of the engineer he said Paul that is
00:07:00handling department
00:07:02So
00:07:09No, I make horsepower, you know, I don't I don't do create the problem I don't solve it so
00:07:16It was an era of
00:07:18not so hot
00:07:20chassis suspension and
00:07:22tires and
00:07:23The tire thing had already exploded at Daytona in 1972 when the new hundred horsepower
00:07:30752 strokes nobody could keep tires on them that the
00:07:35tiny shoots of
00:07:37What would soon be super bike? We're only germinating and by 1975 there would be all these
00:07:44California guys trying to race the new z1 and
00:07:48Then in 76 the the GS
00:07:52Suzuki's and
00:07:54these were
00:07:56Motorcycles that were designed in the Japanese way. Oh
00:07:59Speed limit is this therefore we
00:08:03Will build appropriately
00:08:05The thing that's crazy here is that all these companies were racing at the time in Europe or elsewhere
00:08:12And they knew a lot
00:08:15somebody in those companies knew a lot about
00:08:18chassis suspension and
00:08:20Tires, but the commercial department selling big new highly popular
00:08:28Leader bikes
00:08:30they didn't think that was a part of their business yet and
00:08:34Super bike was about to prove otherwise. Well in this climate
00:08:38here is
00:08:40Massimo tambourini sliding up the asphalt thinking to himself I could build a better chassis than this can't I
00:08:50and and in fact
00:08:53Corrado Cecchinelli
00:08:56Who later worked for he was a Ducati engineer who later worked as a technical
00:09:04advisor for Dorna
00:09:06he said
00:09:08Tambourini worked in plumbing. So it was natural for him to make frames out of pipe
00:09:13And I thought
00:09:16Anyway, they decided they would build superior chassis and in the 1970s this was
00:09:25easy to do
00:09:27Because the concept of handling was not a marketable concept at that time
00:09:34People didn't talk about handling when they opened the magazine the new model on the on the cover
00:09:40They opened the magazine and they went straight to the quarter-mile time and the top speed because those
00:09:47Were important to them something they could understand something that could be quantified
00:09:52so we we came out of an era of triumphs and
00:09:56Harley's in 80 threes and and you know
00:10:00Stuff that made at best 50 horsepower. Yep
00:10:05So like
00:10:071976 I had a Laverda 3cl a liter inline triple and with the correct pipes on it and tuned
00:10:15You know perfectly jetted Delorto's
00:10:18It went it made 70 horsepower at the rear wheel things were things were looking up
00:10:23And so we had all these engines and that's what people wanted
00:10:26But we still had spindly bicycle frames that were used to 50 horsepower 20 or 30
00:10:31So it was a Wobble City and
00:10:3434 millimeter fork tubes and unbraced swing arms
00:10:38It's tiny axles
00:10:41Unbraced swing arms three pieces of pipe welded together. Maybe a little bracket in the corners
00:10:47When we talked about x6 a couple of weeks ago
00:10:52that was the way their swing arms looked and when dick hammer and dick man and
00:10:58Ron Grant tried racing those things
00:11:02That was one of the first things they complained about the rear wheel is trying to go in a different direction from the one I've chosen
00:11:10Anyway, I'm delighted to say that at my local metal shop where I buy supplies
00:11:15You can buy drops from from cuts so you can get all these triangular pieces of steel that are ready to weld in
00:11:24So they built frames
00:11:26and
00:11:28They were being sucked in by the by the need not the demand and the band hadn't appeared yet
00:11:35But what Bermuda did was to create frames for Japanese engines that could do a better job
00:11:43than the factory stuff and
00:11:45this wasn't hard because
00:11:48Bermuda
00:11:49Quite quickly got involved in racing and there were championships involved John Eckerold
00:11:57won
00:11:59350 World Championship on a Bermuda chassis with Yamaha engine and
00:12:05There was a lot going on where
00:12:09Tamburini was at trackside Tamburini worked for a year for Roberto Galena
00:12:16Who was a longtime 500 class private sponsor and
00:12:24Chassis weren't
00:12:27Anything to write home about on the Grand Prix side, but they were a lot better than on the on the production side. So
00:12:35Tamburini was exposed to the problems
00:12:39At first hand he wasn't someone in a metal shop somewhere with a magazine saying wow, that looks cool
00:12:46I I'd like to make something that looks cool like that. It's nothing like foundational knowledge. Is there?
00:12:52Yes, because if you are working with the problems what you have to do is not styling but solutions
00:13:03When you see a
00:13:05Rider comes in from practice and
00:13:08Flops down with the leathers tied around his waist
00:13:11Flops down looking like he's
00:13:13Ready to go to the hotel and these guys are clustered around him with their pads and their papers and the team
00:13:21the
00:13:22The principal is is there going around the map
00:13:27Okay now in turn three what's happening there and they go corner by corner
00:13:32To find the problems so they can work on the solutions and this is what Tamburini was doing
00:13:40and
00:13:43This
00:13:44Pleases me so much
00:13:46because I know that
00:13:49generations of people have gone to art school and have
00:13:54drawn
00:13:56Through long eight-hour days four hours of drawing in the morning four more in the afternoon and they've got a degree
00:14:04And they spend their lives designing wallpaper
00:14:09Now
00:14:10I heard of one person who got a job in the 1930s with a Chicago paper just drawing socks
00:14:19So
00:14:21somehow within Tamburini
00:14:24Was
00:14:27916 was
00:14:29MVF4
00:14:32and also
00:14:33was the germ of
00:14:36T12 which was his last
00:14:39Exceedingly beautiful and
00:14:42simple
00:14:44purposeful
00:14:45design
00:14:46These are not
00:14:49If you if you study industrial design one of the examples you're given is the Gesteppner
00:14:55calculator and it
00:14:57Originally is this bare-bones machine a lot of black metal parts and you enter numbers and then pull a handle
00:15:06and
00:15:07One of these designers designed a bakelite cover for it that made it look a lot more modern
00:15:14Improved sales, maybe who knows?
00:15:18Tamburini was not designing a cover
00:15:22Tamburini was
00:15:25Looking for solutions and
00:15:31Like John Browning he was a craftsman
00:15:35with
00:15:36an inherent sense of design
00:15:40John Browning
00:15:42designed so many
00:15:44gun actions
00:15:46The the famous model 1911
00:15:50Automatic pistol which looks right to so many people
00:15:54because
00:15:55There it was in all of that noir detective film
00:16:00And
00:16:02It is not uncommon
00:16:04for a thoughtful craftsman designer
00:16:08To have an innate sense of rightness about how things look
00:16:13And we can all agree that Tamburini had that in space I will I will insert a relative unknown, uh, Ron Covell
00:16:22master metal worker, uh
00:16:25worked on
00:16:26You know america's most beautiful roadster some years ago and did a bunch of incredible design work
00:16:32I took a sheet metal working class from him how to form sheet metal. Uh
00:16:37and in the class
00:16:39He said i'm going to show you how we'll build a tank we'll build a gas tank from scratch
00:16:44And so he gets out a piece of metal and then he says, you know, I need a curve
00:16:48I need a curve and he pulls a uh piece of welding rod out the uh steel welding rod used I forget
00:16:5430 oh 62 or something
00:16:56Uh 3r. I don't know. He pulls the rod out and he says i'm going to bend it
00:17:01into a shape
00:17:03Until I find it attractive
00:17:06And he just formed it and he would take his thumb and he would
00:17:09Take it and he'd hold it up and he'd set it on the table and he'd look
00:17:12at it and then he'd do it some more and
00:17:15We got a compound curve. That was that was
00:17:18Very nice, and I think it's the same thing at work. You have someone working with the materials
00:17:23and commanding it into
00:17:25Something that that looks beautiful to us. So yes, and it's hard to put a finger on what?
00:17:32What beauty is and what purpose it has in our lives, I know it when I see it
00:17:41And and we see it in the work of
00:17:45Tamburini, but of course tamburini didn't stay with bimota forever and bimota was
00:17:51destined
00:17:53to have financial ups and downs because
00:17:56as we commented, um in an earlier podcast on the subject of
00:18:01superbike racing
00:18:03There was a second generation of japanese chassis
00:18:07Which began around 1983?
00:18:10Notably with the honda interceptor 750
00:18:15These were much more competent chassis
00:18:18Yeah, but suddenly the original reason for bimota to exist and to build chassis
00:18:25was
00:18:26decreasing
00:18:28As the japanese built better chassis it became difficult more difficult to build even better ones
00:18:35I have to chuckle at your bimota had some ups and downs. I was like
00:18:40Let's think about italian motorcycle companies that have had demonstrated long-term financial stability
00:18:47Okay
00:18:49I mean, it's a different era
00:18:51now ducati's doing well, they're owned by uh, you know audi and
00:18:56I think uh
00:18:57management is good and I think they've
00:19:00They've benefited from some organizational, uh discipline and and having some really smart people
00:19:06But the way the way tamburini got to ducati was because of castiglione. Yeah
00:19:12Castiglione is one of those
00:19:14financial ups and downs
00:19:16shadowy figures
00:19:18uh who are buying and selling and moving and
00:19:22playing chess with
00:19:24all these
00:19:25companies
00:19:27and
00:19:28Uh, there was some kind of rapport between the two
00:19:33Not once but twice yes and bought it back not once but twice for one euro
00:19:43Well, in other words it's yours if you can fix it yeah, just fill your boots yeah, so
00:19:51uh
00:19:52tamburini
00:19:53Uh ends up at ducati for a while and there
00:19:59um
00:20:00He produces the 916
00:20:03And I look at the 916 and I try
00:20:08to make sense of
00:20:09What it is that's so pleasing about it. And the first thing that strikes me is that it is simple
00:20:16When you look at it your eyes are jumping around looking at little knobs
00:20:21and scoops
00:20:23And sharp edges it is
00:20:25Simple it's not meant to be supersonic
00:20:28Yes, it's not meant to be supersonic sharp edges
00:20:32and pointed noses
00:20:34work
00:20:35at supersonic speeds
00:20:37But they produce extra drag at subsonic speeds because they have more skin more surface on which
00:20:45the air rubs
00:20:47so
00:20:50The direction in which chassis members and other parts of the motorcycle are going all seem
00:20:58Coherent
00:20:59I think it's a sentence structure was his sentence structure
00:21:03Visually speaking was good. But then there's the beautiful fuel tank because that is the interface
00:21:11That and the seat are the interface with the human operator
00:21:15And this is something that the italians have always done
00:21:19You can see
00:21:20a beautifully shaped organic flowing fuel tanks
00:21:25Back into the 60s even further
00:21:28Oh 50s, you get those jelly jelly mold tanks that they talk about, you know, your ducatis your 175s and stuff
00:21:34They're knockout. I think essentially the 916
00:21:40Is is organic it has an organic feel it because of the simplicity if we look at what nature is made of it's
00:21:48It's usually
00:21:50Pretty economical economical simpler and
00:21:56Not a lot of festoonery now, uh, the the uh
00:22:03steel tube
00:22:04so-called trellis chassis
00:22:07that I examined that was part of the
00:22:09desmosedici
00:22:12Uh moto gp replica of a few years ago
00:22:16I had the chance to examine one of these chassis up close and the thing that's interesting is there are four tubes
00:22:23coming from
00:22:25around the engine
00:22:26Up to the steering head and there's no diagonal bracing whatsoever
00:22:30So the only thing that is locating the steering head is the bending strength of those four tubes
00:22:38So I was at uh
00:22:42One of the ama races one year and i'm talking to colin edwards jr
00:22:49and he was having his legendary battles with
00:22:54Uh the ducati while riding honda's own v-twin
00:23:00And I said the ducati seemed to wallow in every turn that's
00:23:06uh
00:23:08Polite conversation for weave, which is one of the three forms of motorcycle instability
00:23:16And colin looked at me like you journalists are all the same, aren't you?
00:23:21he said
00:23:23Yeah, they wallow but they dig in and go around the corner
00:23:29Now honda in order to finally put the lid on
00:23:34that
00:23:35tube frame
00:23:37Ducati superbike
00:23:39Had to reduce the stiffness of their chassis by about half
00:23:45So that's real that's not arm waving
00:23:48That's what happened and he still loved it a lot more
00:23:52I mean it took a while but he loved it a lot more than the rc45 he got off because I interviewed him
00:23:59And we had that conversation at monza about roll rate because monza has all the chicanes
00:24:04Because you need to change direction. Yes every every ducati
00:24:08would this is that's when um
00:24:10Uh, troy bailess was kicked up into the majors. He was plucked out of vance and hines and he was put on the ducati at monza
00:24:19Because carl fogarty had broken his uh humerus which ultimately ended his career
00:24:23and so they pulled bailis up and bailis was just like
00:24:28Out of nowhere passing four people into chicanes and so forth. It was really something but
00:24:33The when I talked to colin I said hey, you know colin, um, I noticed uh
00:24:38all the ducati guys and and you uh less so but
00:24:42Similarly you all go into the chicane and you pause and the bike goes like this and then you roll the other direction. Yes
00:24:50And he said oh, yeah, you know it winds up and then I said I said but akira yanagawa's uh, 750
00:24:57He uh, he's just he's full left to full right in a fraction of a second
00:25:02And as colin edwards was it was effing this and effing that but he says I don't care what anybody says
00:25:07Akira, yanagawa has the best handling bike in the paddock
00:25:11It was cool. It was very it was it was very cool
00:25:14and it reminded this stuff all reminded me of andrea forney who was the uh,
00:25:18Like the lead test rider for ducati for a long time
00:25:22and I asked him about chassis development for the trellis frames because that's particularly when he was working I was
00:25:27I spoke to him quite a bit sort of during the st2 and st3
00:25:31And st4 the sport touring, you know v twins and um
00:25:36I said well, how do you
00:25:37How do you you know make the chassis essentially what it should be lightweight and stiff enough?
00:25:43And he said well we build a chassis that we know
00:25:46Is too stiff. We just we put all the pipes in and we build the bike and we send the test riders out
00:25:53Ask them how it is and then we start taking parts out and as soon as the test rider complains
00:25:58We put the last part back in
00:26:00And I think that's a gross oversimplification
00:26:02Yes, but it is
00:26:04You know engineering is finding that
00:26:06that what you hope is the perfect balance of stiffness and and um
00:26:11flexibility
00:26:12I I asked
00:26:14Cecchinelli about that wallowing
00:26:18and
00:26:21I said how is it that
00:26:25The chassis
00:26:26Shows instability but is able
00:26:30to
00:26:31Dig in and go around the corner and he said
00:26:34Because it was designed by a genius now. There's essentialism at its worst
00:26:41He he was he was just a real smart guy
00:26:46Um
00:26:47One of the reasons that irv kanemoto got out of moto gp was because he felt
00:26:53That cause and effect as a method of analysis had been abandoned
00:26:59So, uh
00:27:02Essentialism is fun
00:27:05uh
00:27:06My little sister used to say it is because it is
00:27:11but in fact
00:27:12Tamburini
00:27:14Uh had paid attention
00:27:17throughout his life with motorcycles
00:27:20Uh, sherlock holmes says to watson you you see but you do not perceive
00:27:29And
00:27:31Tamburini did pay attention and did perceive
00:27:35And in the end, I think I was told, you know
00:27:39We could build many different chassis that would look identical just by varying the wall thickness
00:27:47Of different tubes. Well, my goodness. Yes
00:27:51Because then the regulating body would either have to saw the chassis up or they would have to use those
00:27:59thickness gauges that all the hot rodders measured cylinder bores with to make sure that
00:28:05The boring wasn't off-center and it's a sixteenth of an inch thick here and three-eighths of an inch over here
00:28:11but
00:28:12What's going on here is?
00:28:14trial and error
00:28:16but informed by experience
00:28:19They knew what they were looking for. They knew what the riders needed
00:28:24And for a long time that steel tube trellis chassis did a good job
00:28:35Supposedly when when 916
00:28:38Began to be developed. It was supposed to have an aluminum chassis, but the decision was made
00:28:43No, we make chassis out of steel tubing
00:28:47It's got a lot going for it. It does well. Yeah
00:28:50uh up to the point that
00:28:53field repairable
00:28:54Yeah that casey stoner said
00:28:57on that thing
00:28:58pointing to the steel tube
00:29:01moto gp bike
00:29:02I can't hit the same point in the corner
00:29:05two laps running
00:29:08Now what's been happening all this time is steadily steadily
00:29:11Tire grip is increasing
00:29:14and
00:29:15uh
00:29:17Dick o'brien at harley davidson said back in
00:29:231969
00:29:24He said we get the chassis working good
00:29:28The riders stop complaining the lap times are right where we don't want them to be
00:29:32And here comes good year with some other goddamn piece of innovation and it makes it none of it works
00:29:40Huh suddenly none of it works and we have to do it over again. Well
00:29:46Welcome to reality
00:29:48Because if you improve one part of a of an integrated
00:29:54device
00:29:55And you don't improve the others
00:29:58There's an imbalance as you know tires and engine power have been
00:30:04Constantly usually engines are ahead
00:30:07but sometimes
00:30:09It's well the famous story about honda
00:30:13Famous story about honda and uh chatter
00:30:16Yeah came out with a new race tire
00:30:20And the grip went up and they got chatter and the first recommendation was go back to the old tire
00:30:25That's what the engineering department said. We'll go back to the old tire if you got chatter
00:30:29But you can't get the lap times because you don't have the grip. So um, we were told the same thing in 1973 in atlanta
00:30:37Uh, tell your rider to ride more slowly
00:30:41What was our problem connecting rod sticking out through the crankcase, oh
00:30:48And there was irv kanemoto
00:30:51Trying to build a fresh engine on top of a 55 gallon oil drum outdoors
00:30:57at atlanta after the previous engine had
00:31:01Poked a rod through the crankcase
00:31:05Why were the rods coming out through the crankcase well
00:31:10We weren't sure because
00:31:12It could be that the piston
00:31:15broke up
00:31:16And then the rod and the wrist pin being free of the piston
00:31:20then just
00:31:22banged their way
00:31:23to glory out through the front door
00:31:26Or it could have been that the first thing that happened was the rod broke at the small end
00:31:32in any case
00:31:33When these things happened those parts ended up in the exhaust pipe
00:31:39You pull the exhaust pipe off shake it and this embarrassing
00:31:44rattling
00:31:45rattling sound and then
00:31:47pretty expensive maraca
00:31:50Expensive maracas. Yes, you tip it up and out comes a wrist pin the small end
00:31:56uh
00:31:57parts of the small end cage a rain of needle bearings and
00:32:02Piston grit
00:32:04So tell me how much could you learn from those parts when they're all scattered like that
00:32:10Well you
00:32:14Sort of like when uh when um
00:32:19Muzzy
00:32:20Was confront was basically handed the the z1
00:32:25Superbike project by the american importer
00:32:29He knew that they were breaking small ends
00:32:32Of the rods and so he would put the crankshaft in a plastic bag
00:32:38With the small end of one connecting rod sticking out with a tight rubber band around and he would polish
00:32:45The area where the failures were occurring so that it was smooth
00:32:49This was the old way. The new way is to shot peen
00:32:52Shot peen
00:32:54uh, and then the second way was to have connecting rods made in the us by
00:33:01quite expensive, um
00:33:04You know the fewer you have made the more they cost
00:33:07Yes
00:33:08So and then the third method was to persuade the japanese to make
00:33:13a race crankshaft for z1
00:33:16Which had all these modifications?
00:33:18so
00:33:19uh
00:33:21in our case, we we didn't have the option of
00:33:25uh
00:33:26Spending a lot of time on each crankshaft because those engines went through crankshafts, uh, typically 400 miles
00:33:34Crankshaft replacement time. So that was a simple fix was to replace more often
00:33:41and to beseech
00:33:43And pray to the japanese
00:33:46for
00:33:47Uh, what do they call them?
00:33:51It was a wonderful expression
00:33:53Anyway countermeasure parts countermeasure parts
00:33:57But what were we told?
00:33:59Maybe six months
00:34:02But actually they sent us pistons that had
00:34:05Uh in the place where they had been cracking they didn't remove all that metal. So now instead of
00:34:11Crack-prone pistons. We had heavy pistons that broke the rods
00:34:17so
00:34:19Like they say sometimes your house burns up and the opposite
00:34:25But uh
00:34:27the thing at
00:34:29At bemota, they had of course new people once tambourini had left
00:34:35uh, they turned in a fresh direction, which was
00:34:40um
00:34:41to build
00:34:44To combine the the the craftsman-like beauty of a grand prix bike chassis
00:34:52with a production engine bemota brought
00:34:56that kind of
00:34:58one-off looking
00:35:01Machines for the job
00:35:03parts
00:35:05uh into
00:35:06commerce
00:35:07So that that precise that satisfyingly
00:35:11Satisfyingly special
00:35:14Just made for me
00:35:16Look that promoters had
00:35:19was
00:35:19A part of this and we saw something related in the u.s. During the quarter of a million dollar chopper movement
00:35:27when
00:35:28chopper builders got
00:35:31commissions from
00:35:33rock stars and
00:35:35Silicon valley types. I want
00:35:37a chopper that is made
00:35:40Such that every part looks like it came from an f-35
00:35:45uh lift van
00:35:47There's two of those in the
00:35:50In a museum in indianapolis and they look like the drawings for every part must have said at the bottom
00:35:56Make this part look
00:35:58perfect
00:35:59as if it cost
00:36:01sums no one can afford
00:36:04So that's that was the look that pomodo was going for and in tasey which was a hub steerer
00:36:11It had no telescopic fork
00:36:14They were also seeking
00:36:17Uh the high ground in technology. It was still the belief in the 1980s which were the era of alternative front ends
00:36:26It was still believed that there must be lessons that had been learned in formula one
00:36:32Which motorcycling
00:36:35Must learn
00:36:37And unfortunately, uh tasey was not
00:36:42a racing success
00:36:45But it was a steady seller
00:36:48people liked the
00:36:50completely
00:36:53Strange look well, it was such a yeah, it was such a statement and we didn't you know, I mean
00:36:59There I was reading magazines at the time and
00:37:02Seeing motorcycles at laguna seca and going up for grand prix's and all that
00:37:07The parking lot at those races was always a great show at laguna in 88 89 and 90. Oh, wasn't it though? Yes
00:37:15Or going up coast highway one year in the rain
00:37:19and I got past I was
00:37:22Just rattling up the road slowly on my beat machine, but I got passed by someone on an rc30 in the rain
00:37:29And I watched the bike step out over the double yellow line
00:37:33Just a little because he was still on throttle and he just took it
00:37:36He took it in stride and just rode away. But anyway, I mean that the the tasey was
00:37:42I mean look at it, you know, it just you knew it was different. You knew it was exotic anything bemota at the time
00:37:47You just were like, oh
00:37:49You know when they did their twin spar frame where it was a straight line
00:37:54uh from the steering head and you could see the frame
00:37:58Spars go right down to the swing arm pivot. You're just like oh, yeah, that's the answer. It has to be
00:38:04It has to be the answer
00:38:07Ultimately, of course japan could perform more
00:38:12repetitions of tests
00:38:14than bemota
00:38:17So that um if the rider said
00:38:20if they all stood there in a row and said
00:38:23After a week of testing we say it stinks
00:38:28You have to fix it
00:38:31Have to stop those complaints
00:38:34um
00:38:35Sheer force of volume. I mean that that was the advantage
00:38:39Funding and bodies, you know, you you could just the volume of tests you could do banks of 30 dinos
00:38:43just running all the time blowing things up and
00:38:47Yep, people microscopically and the notes going to the evening meeting. Yeah
00:38:52so, uh
00:38:55I suppose you could say ultimately
00:38:58the production motorcycle improved to the point that
00:39:02bemota
00:39:05No longer had a role their first role was to provide good chassis in an era of bad ones
00:39:12their second role was to
00:39:15Produce
00:39:18Visually satisfying and technically advanced
00:39:22chassis that
00:39:24looked so much
00:39:26more precise and more
00:39:29Lovingly built than any production chassis
00:39:33But
00:39:34it's possible that there's another approach because
00:39:38uh, the latest buyer of bemota was uh,
00:39:42kawasaki
00:39:43Who bought 49.9%?
00:39:46Does anybody buy 49.9%?
00:39:50I'd like to pay the maximum amount for a minority vote
00:39:56But
00:39:58I thought to myself well
00:40:02Kawasaki engine and a low production highly specialized chassis
00:40:09Could be useful in world superbike
00:40:12Because bemota produces so few bikes per year
00:40:16that
00:40:17Uh, their homologation number would be quite small. I don't know if this is the case, but it's a possibility
00:40:24uh kawasaki's
00:40:26looking for
00:40:28Some they're looking to solve some problem
00:40:32in this way
00:40:34and
00:40:35Kawasaki is as you know, uh
00:40:38left moto gp
00:40:41um, there was uh some
00:40:44legal, uh cut and thrust with dorna
00:40:47But uh, kawasaki haven't been back. They've competed in world superbike instead
00:40:53so
00:40:54we'd all love to see a stable position for bemota in which
00:41:02Sources of design excellence and beauty
00:41:08Could express themselves as massimo tamburini did
00:41:13And
00:41:16I was thrilled reading about tamburini's career to find
00:41:21That all this came from an hvac technician
00:41:27Not from
00:41:28years of expensive education in the best schools
00:41:33instead
00:41:34Instead
00:41:35He went to the best school singular. He went to the racetrack
00:41:41The racetrack got him interested in building frames in the first place and his experience in building chassis for race teams
00:41:50Uh during the 1980s was a tremendous preparation
00:41:54For whatever would come next
00:41:57so
00:41:58And the foundation on something that had to be practical and get done like hvac
00:42:04Yeah, I mean you're you're you're
00:42:06You're what are you sculpt your sculpting air? I mean, that's what hvac is you're you're
00:42:12Sizing vents and all the duct work and what are the pressures and how do we balance the system?
00:42:16I mean, there's there's plenty of subtlety there that uh
00:42:20Would lead you to perhaps vary the thickness of your tubings to get different characteristics
00:42:25on your chassis
00:42:27Oh, it's pretty it's pretty cool. Um
00:42:33I think that there is too much belief
00:42:36in the
00:42:37infallibility
00:42:39of computers
00:42:41Because computers have been sold to us
00:42:45computer designed products have been sold to us
00:42:49but ultimately
00:42:50The products don't sell unless they please human beings
00:42:54And I think that's what tambourine was able to do with his designs I hadn't seen t12
00:43:04Which supposedly was to sell for 300 000 euro
00:43:09But its curvatures are very subtle
00:43:14It's very pleasing to just look at it
00:43:18and
00:43:20I find this mysterious because I don't understand it. But there it is. I want
00:43:26To look at it
00:43:28I'll say it again. This might be a part of the drinking game. But uh as much as kevin would like to uh,
00:43:35And has described himself as a soulless technician
00:43:39He just can't get away from his soul
00:43:42There you go
00:43:44um
00:43:45I want to talk about so
00:43:47You know, we had hb1
00:43:49Which was uh tambourines desire to not be sliding down the tarmac. Yeah, and uh, and then
00:43:57Kb1 kawasaki momota with the 903 if any if any engine at that era demanded a better chassis
00:44:05It was that one that one. Yep, that 903 was a beast and uh
00:44:09at the time but um
00:44:11you know thinking back so the audience responded when we in the last uh in the um,
00:44:17Auction the mecom auction podcast the audience responded to the rzv500r and and rg500 gamma
00:44:25two-stroke conversation and in the 80s
00:44:28we were all infatuated with the multi-cylinder two-stroke because
00:44:34Specific horsepower pounds per horsepower, you know, it was it was so promising and you could have a hundred horsepower. Uh,
00:44:42Five hundred and it had the potential to be so light and so wonderful and bimota
00:44:50Bimota comes out with a v due of 1997
00:44:55Which was a v twin two-stroke direct injection. That was an uncomfortable story. Oh, it was meant to saw I mean
00:45:03oh
00:45:04It was on the cover of the magazine, you know, I was just a just a reader
00:45:08and there it was and it's like
00:45:11Bimota is going to save the two-stroke and we've got you know rider knee down
00:45:15on a bimota v2a facing the camera and then
00:45:20What happened
00:45:22What happened what they told me was our fuel injection sprays against the piston crown
00:45:32Well, if the piston crown is hot
00:45:35then
00:45:36That would assist vaporization
00:45:38But if the piston crown is close enough for the spray to hit it
00:45:43There isn't a lot of time but for that instant and the spark
00:45:49So it would seem to me like the butterfly theory of history if the butterfly had fluttered left instead of right
00:45:57Wellington would have lost the battle and
00:46:01France would still
00:46:03Be ruled by napoleon the 12th
00:46:06Shh so, uh, it just didn't work
00:46:12And
00:46:14this was
00:46:15I'm, sorry. I have to pause because here we are doing a podcast and um
00:46:20Very occasionally have we put up photos and then you have an aside about wellington and napoleon
00:46:26and uh, I just envision putting pictures of napoleon up because sometimes the
00:46:30The youtube viewers want images
00:46:33Yes images
00:46:34I just as soon as you said all that stuff and said napoleon I thought well we could just slam a
00:46:40Slam a napoleon photo up there, but it is a podcast. So let's say you used to be able to buy little
00:46:45Uh mottos on a stick that you would carry in your car. You could hold them up for the instruction of other drivers
00:46:54Um
00:46:56That would work
00:46:58but
00:46:59it was a company sinking operation because
00:47:03If you've based everything
00:47:05On a fuel injection technology that doesn't work
00:47:09Then what?
00:47:11and
00:47:12at that time
00:47:14um
00:47:17The australians were developing a pre-chamber
00:47:21two-stroke fuel injection system
00:47:25that
00:47:26did work
00:47:28And mercury outboard ultimately bought into it orbital, uh, oh, yeah was the name of the company
00:47:36and
00:47:37I even got to go on a trip to gm because
00:47:41My name must have come up fairly often in
00:47:45two-stroke
00:47:47reference
00:47:48uh
00:47:50Collections and they sent me a ticket and I went out there and they said what does this look like?
00:47:55They handed me a cylinder a suzuki I said
00:48:00I passed the first test
00:48:02And that meant I got lunch
00:48:05and as we walked, uh toward the outside door here came
00:48:10a train of little carts each one with a black double overhead cam engine on it and my
00:48:19Minder said you didn't see these black objects. Okay
00:48:24Okay
00:48:26and
00:48:27It was it was fun being there where all this stuff was possible
00:48:32and
00:48:35The guy that I was
00:48:37uh summoned out there by said I would like
00:48:40To fill my shop with racing people because he said they all want to find the solution
00:48:46Instead I find people who by 10 o'clock in the morning are lining up their lunch dates
00:48:53and
00:48:54Then about the time they get home from lunch. They're getting phone calls from their wives saying honey. Could you pick up the kids?
00:49:02I have to do some things
00:49:05so
00:49:09It's hard to
00:49:12You can't reach perfection. It's hard even to approach it
00:49:16and those racing people
00:49:19Don't carry on like that for a lifetime
00:49:22I talked to one man
00:49:24who
00:49:25Burned himself up
00:49:27Living in that. I will find the solution
00:49:30today
00:49:31manner
00:49:32And he had to go and live by the seaside
00:49:36In scotland for a year to to get back to reality
00:49:43Well, that's what uh, you said earlier about uh
00:49:47Hey, could you guys just slow down stop breaking the bike if you just ride a little bit slower
00:49:51It's like no, we're here to rush around
00:49:53Yeah, we are in a hurry 100 like racing. You're in a hurry
00:49:58Everything is a rush
00:50:00There was one wealthy man that I talked to he said
00:50:04when I saw
00:50:06the bemota tasey
00:50:07I loved it
00:50:09And I ordered three of them one for each of my houses
00:50:13Because I didn't want to be separated from it just because I was in florida or maine
00:50:19or new york city
00:50:22and
00:50:23I sympathize with his anguish
00:50:28And if you got him as my comment, yeah, so, um
00:50:35The moda did mess around with some things that just don't work for example making the center of the drive sprocket
00:50:42The same as the center of the swing arm pivot
00:50:45Now that's happened so many times and it's invented every year. It's
00:50:51Right. The thing that is so appealing about it is that it provides constant chain tension
00:50:58The chain does as you sit down on the bike the bike the chain doesn't get tense and then slack again or behave oddly
00:51:07And it will work on a low powered bike it works fine
00:51:12But as soon as you put it on a hundred horsepower bike
00:51:16what happens is that the
00:51:20Squat the squat anti-squat
00:51:24Design of the rear of the bike begins to bite you in the proverbial
00:51:31Because when you turn the gas if the bike squats down
00:51:36The way cars do when you gas it they transfer weight to the rear the front rises
00:51:41When the front rises it means less pressure on the front tire, which means now the front is pushing
00:51:50And so you say to yourself well, let's uh, let's go to the drawing board and lay this all out
00:51:57Once people start thinking about it, they realize oh
00:52:00in lower gears we've got
00:52:03Over a thousand pounds of tension in the chain and there's a tangent force tending to extend the rear suspension
00:52:14How much would that be
00:52:16And so then they realize oh if I raise or lower
00:52:19the swingarm pivot
00:52:22Location I can control whether the bike squats
00:52:26Remains level or like a tz750
00:52:29Clunk tops out
00:52:31When the rider gases it off the corner, right?
00:52:33You're altering the swingarm pivot in relation to the countershaft center line where the so that the chain
00:52:41is pulling and if you can imagine getting the chain to
00:52:44pull if you
00:52:45Uh raise the pivot it would tend to pull the swingarm
00:52:49And cause it to rise and if you try to put in the other direction the chain that thousand pounds will just go
00:52:56and squish the rear end and
00:52:58tear so, uh
00:53:01That was a huge
00:53:03item in the late 80s
00:53:05And early 90s was getting on
00:53:08Had one. Yeah spawned and had one they built a liberta or somebody did with a spawned and frame
00:53:13Uh, we had that at the office many years ago
00:53:17A fellow named ed lutz owned it and it was there was so much going on
00:53:21To when you look into it when you look into it a little closer
00:53:25Turns out the dirt track guys were onto it a lot sooner than the pavement guys
00:53:31uh, because of course they're
00:53:33They're riding all these heats
00:53:35They're the racetrack is changing. Oh the water truck's going out. Oh now we have to change everything
00:53:41and
00:53:44They soon worked out that swingarm pivot height was an important variable and then put it to put it to work
00:53:50For them rather than against them just as in the in the period beginning just five years ago
00:53:59Uh people looked up from their engines which come in a box now sealed by the fim
00:54:05You can't modify anything. You can't even service it
00:54:10You can just put it in and take it out that's the only interaction with engines aside from the keyboard
00:54:20So, where are you now
00:54:22Chain pull
00:54:23Yeah
00:54:24And you said five years ago is the new era. So all the new era was
00:54:28Somebody the people looked up from engines. They looked up from chassis and they said
00:54:33Look at this
00:54:35We have this huge source of energy streaming past the motorcycle on all sides air
00:54:43If we put little air foils out
00:54:46then
00:54:46We can continue to gas it
00:54:49in middle gears when the front end comes up
00:54:53these little air foils will just
00:54:56Push it back down and the rider can accelerate harder without the anti-wheeling system making the engine go did it did it
00:55:06Pure gain
00:55:09Pure gain, and of course it upsets the old gents
00:55:14The old gents who who were saying in 2002
00:55:172002
00:55:19Well, if it was up to me, I'd rip out all them electronics
00:55:23What we got to have on the racetrack is one man
00:55:27one cylinder
00:55:28A lucas magneto and an enamel carburetor then you'd have some real racing
00:55:35But we are in the era that we're living in and
00:55:42Aerodynamics are
00:55:44Yeah, if you want that kind of racing you just go to arma man, there's
00:55:48You can see every kind of racing you want to see
00:55:51You want to see golden era two strokes making popcorn?
00:55:55You can go see it
00:55:57But moto gp is meant to be moto gp, you know, we're meant to
00:56:01We're meant to learn
00:56:03the great thing about the orbital, uh pre-chamber system was that
00:56:08Uh, there was a an injector in the pre-chamber
00:56:11Uh that produced an ignitable mixture
00:56:14So that instead of going pop pop pop pop
00:56:18or ding
00:56:19The engine just idled
00:56:21I rode one of those 50 cc aprilia scooters that had
00:56:25An orbital system on it and it was unreal. It just idled like a four-stroke and then you turn the throttle and away you went
00:56:33so these are
00:56:36Uh things that didn't prove to be useful because uh
00:56:40Originally, you didn't have to wear a helmet in europe to ride a 50 and then the the gray men of brussels decided
00:56:48You could kill yourself on a bicycle so you for damn sure can kill yourself on a 50 you have to wear helmets
00:56:55And that was the end of that product, but I loved riding it was
00:57:02Smooth idle
00:57:04I'm a believer in the freedom to take risks. I always wear a helmet, but
00:57:08I don't know. Well, we're free to drive nails with our foreheads too, but yes, it could be a difficult process
00:57:15Oh, you've seen me work
00:57:19Yes
00:57:23Well, the v2a was such a
00:57:25that was kind of the end for them that really just kind of sunk the
00:57:29company bemota as we knew it and uh
00:57:33There were various attempts to make a v2a into a
00:57:36A viable thing. I think people tried to put regular cylinders on them and a few other things interesting projects
00:57:43But nothing really came of it
00:57:45And then as you said kawasaki bought 49.9
00:57:49And I think it's a good point that they would have a degree of flexibility as a small maker
00:57:55To do things at a more iterative rapid pace than otherwise might be possible
00:58:02yes, that's that's the um
00:58:06What's the name of that outfit at lockheed's
00:58:09No, skunk works the skunk works the skunk works and this was also discovered. Um
00:58:16I think at Dassault in in france, which was if you are
00:58:22over budget and behind schedule
00:58:26Take engineers off the project
00:58:28Don't add more
00:58:30Because the more personnel there are on the project the greater
00:58:35Your operating friction
00:58:37because
00:58:39Individual a has to tell individual b. It's sort of like slow combustion takes forever
00:58:46for uh
00:58:47Combustion or for the word of the day to reach individual z
00:58:54So, uh, well, that's how you've talked about it about slow combustion like handshaking here
00:58:59Taking the message and handshaking over here and sending it across
00:59:03Across the chamber. Well that ultimately goes back to uh, old charles fayette taylor who for years was uh,
00:59:09head of the sloan automotive lab at mit
00:59:13And the reason that he went
00:59:16back to university and became a formal investigator was because
00:59:21When he was like 23 years old, he was made
00:59:25chief of some huge aircraft engine development project and he said
00:59:30I don't know anything and for sure the people around me don't know anything. So
00:59:36What am I doing here? I don't know what to do
00:59:40So, um, he went back to find out what to do
00:59:44And his his two-volume
00:59:46uh set of books
00:59:49um
00:59:50Is still available. It's uh permanently useful
00:59:56So
00:59:57Uh, who knows what will happen with bemota there are all these small entities
01:00:03in italy that are like
01:00:06Badminton, they are bounced around from from one player to another and you're watching
01:00:14and
01:00:16You don't know where they're going to land whether they're going to prosper whether they're going up in smoke
01:00:21But there always seems to be a lot of promise
01:00:24and and it's
01:00:26It's troubling
01:00:28Not to see something
01:00:30Burst into flower. Well, we do have
01:00:34uh tambourines wonderful designs the 916 the mvf4 and
01:00:41uh, the bmw powered t12
01:00:45Have a look at that t12. It's got a subtle. It's got a subtle shape, but it also has that simplicity
01:00:53That we first saw in 916
01:00:57Shit
01:01:00Well, all praise hvac is a training ground let's get out there or plumbing whatever, you know
01:01:07And then we got to make the water flow and the air flow. Um, well, that's it. Uh, thank you folks
01:01:12Once again podcast brought to you by meekum
01:01:15There's a link in the description to the auction. You can go check it out
01:01:18Um, it's a great place to look at a huge variety of motorcycles
01:01:23in just about every condition and from every maker on
01:01:26uh every
01:01:28Part of this earth. It's spectacular
01:01:31Go to vegas end of january and uh, see it for yourself because it is it is pretty cool
01:01:36Pretty sure i'm going to be there pretty sure i'm gonna have a better battle
01:01:39Pretty sure i'd like to get that d model, but it might be a little bit of a stretch, but yeah try anyways
01:01:47um
01:01:48Thank you for listening jump down in the comments and uh, we enjoy talking to you. We'll see you next time