Dynasty? Franchise? Legend? Yes! The Honda Gold Wing was born "naked" in 1975 as Honda's first liquid-cooled model. The entire Cycle World road test issue said "Gold Wing" only one time but now it's the name that everyone associates with technical luxury touring and t he Gold Wing has won an amazing 25 CW Ten Best awards since its introduction. Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer talk about how the Gold Wing entered the market and how the consumer drove its evolution into the full-rig luxury mile-eater it is today. They'll even tell you about the box truck with seat factory that was used to make new seats overnight during development!
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00:00Welcome back to the Cycle World Podcast. It launches every Wednesday. If you haven't subscribed or
00:06clicked the bell or any of that stuff, go ahead and do that because it just keeps coming.
00:11This week, Kevin Cameron and I are talking about the Honda Goldwing. Every time I start these,
00:22I say something about the legendary whatever, whether that's Kevin Cameron or the bike we're
00:26talking about. I wasn't going to say legendary about the Honda Goldwing, but how can I not say
00:31legendary about the Honda Goldwing? We were just joking that it was born naked in 1975 as the GL1000.
00:40It had no fairing. Cycle World's road test of the bike was very Gentleman's Express. The entire issue
00:48said the words Goldwing one time. It wasn't even a thing. It was just a GL1000. It was a new super
00:55bike. It really wasn't a touring bike, but look at us now. Other remarkable statistics. Since that
01:05introduction in 1975, the Honda Goldwing has been named to Cycle World's annual 10 best bikes list
01:12a remarkable 25 times. It's the most. It's a franchise. It's a classic. It's evolved in so many ways.
01:27And here we are. It's still going strong in its latest iteration with DCT. It introduced airbags to
01:35motorcycles. It had a four-cylinder that grew and grew. It then had a six-cylinder.
01:41And it still has a six-cylinder with some really neat technology we hope we have time to talk
01:46about. And with that, Kevin, I'll let you say something now.
01:52Okay. I've been back and forth with people talking about what the intention of Goldwing was on Honda's
02:02part. And I think that it's interesting to note that the steering head angle is one degree
02:10more raked out and an inch more trail than the CB750, which was Honda's first real super bike.
02:24And so that gives us an inkling that this motorcycle was designed as a compromise between
02:32sporting setup and a sporting setup in which you want rapid response and a touring setup in which
02:39you want stability. And you can sniff that out by looking at the rake and trail.
02:45And then this was Honda's first liquid-cooled engine for motorbikes. And I think
02:58we might trace this back to the Clean Air Act in the US of 1970, which basically said,
03:10we're coming to get you polluters, all of you, when we get to you. And that might have made it a good
03:19idea to build a water-cooled motorcycle because you would learn, you'd get advanced notice on what
03:27you could and could not do emissions-wise. Another thing is if you're building a big, heavy motorcycle
03:34with a substantial engine, a very important point is how the motorcycle feels when you're standing still
03:43at a stoplight or maneuvering at low speed. And what's important there is to have weight low enough
03:53so that if the motorcycle begins to lean, that you don't have a lot of weight up high that
04:01creates leverage that fights against your ability to keep it upright.
04:06It was a 600-pound motorcycle.
04:10Yeah. So a flat four not only has the crankcase at a normal level, but also the cylinders are at
04:23that same level. Whereas an inline four, the cylinders are sticking up. They're higher.
04:28Another thing that was done in the interests of setting weight lower was to make the cover
04:36over the engine's induction system as a dummy and move the fuel back and down underneath the seat.
04:44Now, nearly all high-powered motorcycles today use this type of construction, and it is universal
04:52in MotoGP. They want to put the heavy masses on the horizontal line of the center mass, which makes
05:02it easier to change direction with the motorcycle. So that technique was really pioneered with the
05:10original GL-1000 Goldwing. And since that time, if you look at the spec sheets, which you can compile
05:24endless wonderful details. When were the hydraulic tappets adopted? You can find that there is a steady
05:36trend toward stability and away from the rapid response of a sport bike over the entire 49 years
05:48of this motorcycle's history. And the reason for this is something that at least some people at Honda
05:55are proud of. And that is that product planning has in large part resulted from the market itself.
06:07And one of the principal proponents of this was Shuji Tanaka, who is, I'm told, no longer with us.
06:16But he was the man who came to the U.S., learned English, and spent years trying to understand the market
06:26so that Honda product planning would not be simply sending new ideas into the void, only to find that
06:36some of them, shoo, while some went whoop. So there are a lot of personalities involved in this story.
06:44But what is continuous through it is to bring engine RPM down so that you don't have that buzzy feeling
06:53on the interstate at naturally 60 miles per hour, never mind that everyone's going 85.
07:02And that the pulsing of the cylinders as they fire and the starting and stopping of the pistons
07:10do not impose vibration that will make your day in the saddle into punishment rather than
07:19the best time of your life. And this work has been carried out in stages, but it has never deviated
07:32from this trend, which is toward lower RPM, smaller pulsing from combustion, and less interference
07:46from starting and stopping of pistons. Consider the fact that in a flat four, which is two boxer engines,
07:54that two pistons are at top dead center while two are at bottom center. And this kind of thing
08:03means that there is an inertia torque. Every 90 degrees, the pistons accelerate from a dead stop at top or
08:13bottom dead center to a maximum speed. And in the next 90 degrees after that, they decelerate again
08:20to a dead stop. And that energy, those pistons weigh something. That energy is constantly being
08:28is treating the crankshaft as a bank. It takes the energy to accelerate the pistons and the
08:36crankshaft slows down. And then the crankshaft, the pistons stop. They give the energy back to the
08:42crankshaft and it speeds up. So there has to be some kind of torsionally flexible
08:50element in the drive, or there has to be a big flywheel. And it turns out that the early fours
08:55had a substantial flywheel. And I think that was there to deal with some of that piston start and
09:02stop business. Everyone on Spotify appreciates your sound effects.
09:09Yeah, absolutely. You know, the six, the latest six is one of the great motorcycle engines. We've
09:17talked about it on the show many times, but you're, you're looking at, um, more than a hundred pound
09:24feet of torque at around a thousand RPM. And it peaks, uh, I think torque peak is 108 at 1200 RPM,
09:32uh, which is making it a spectacular engine for just gliding away. And it's doing it with six
09:38cylinders and it's impeccably smooth. Um, it also makes it incredibly suited to the treatment with DCT,
09:46the seven speed automatic. It has seven gears. The ratio spread is the same as the six speed,
09:51but they add another gear to smooth that one, two, three, because usually first and second's a bit
09:56of a gap and they can make the ratios narrower so that the shift is smoother. And it is really smooth.
10:03And in fact, about 80, 80% plus, uh, gold wing buyers are taking a DCT. So it's a, um,
10:10it's a successful package. I do want to talk about the origin and what you were saying about the
10:17evolution of the motorcycle, because it did start as a naked motorcycle and it was sort of Honda's
10:25people called it a super bike. It was the new super bike. It was liquid cooled. It sort of had
10:30Honda was really flexing its technical muscles, you know, from, from this period forward,
10:37certainly launched by the CB seven 50, but they started to really do a lot of interesting things.
10:42Uh, CBX, for example, you know, an inline six, I mean, crazy, awesome, crazy and awesome. And, um,
10:52but the GL 1000 came out without a fairing. It wasn't really pitched as a long distance touring
10:57bike. And indeed touring was kind of owned, you know, by what Harley Davidson, you know, and then
11:02people put in wind jammers on kind of whatever they felt like it, but that's what happened is
11:07that this bike was suddenly really outfitted and people started using it this way and did direct
11:13the development of it. Because at one point, I believe the Goldman came from the factory with
11:19the wind jammer and then it evolved to all the other true factory in, you know, initial design
11:27concept, having all of this stuff, uh, integrated into the motorcycle, not a motorcycle with a
11:33fairing put on it, but a design that integrated all of that.
11:40So, uh, that, that continuous evolution, uh, had a big, had a big step in it when they decided
11:52what to do next after GL 1200, because, uh, uh, the original motorcycle, the pistons were
12:01all 250 CCs. And by the time they got to GL 1200, the pistons had grown to 300, the cylinders,
12:09uh, individual displacement was 300 CCs. And there was a, there was a question as to how to go
12:18forward. And, uh, uh, the six cylinder was an inviting pathway because the prototype on which
12:28the concept of a flat motor, um, with shaft drive was originally tested. Uh, it was a six
12:39and, uh, that we've all heard the story about how the six cylinder people were there and the,
12:48uh, in the shop in the evening and, uh, the fast food wrappers were underfoot. And here comes the
12:55old man and he looks and says, what's this? And the people sort of, uh, well, uh, you see,
13:06we've, we've been exploring, uh, uh, trying different, um, where are the keys? I want to try this.
13:13And he rides off into the night, leaving them all quivering with fear because they know the
13:21thing handles like, and because it's this, this big prototype motor in an existing chassis that
13:29was never built for it. It's got a BMW final drive unit. It's, it's a cobbled up test piece.
13:38And supposedly, uh, Mr. Oguma was there and he's, he supposedly referred to the, to the flat
13:51engine as a Volkswagen, I think probably sarcastically because, uh, he had his own ideas
13:59about all these matters and he was a very unconventional person.
14:03So, uh, that was an Irmajiri project. Was it not though? The engine? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So it's,
14:12so each Irmajiri is, you know, uh, the legendary Grand Prix motorcycle engine designer and CBX leader.
14:20And, you know, they brought him in and threw him in at the deep end. They said, here's the 50 CC twin
14:28with these two little pistons and it won't, it won't win races. So fix it. And he did. They
14:37managed to win, I think the 1965 50 CC championship with it. And he learned a lot from that about
14:44engine friction. So I think he, he turned into a, a wonderful all rounder and was given all
14:52these projects. Uh, but when they, when they got to 1200 and they needed more power because these
15:02motorcycles have to keep up with traffic, they're building more interstate highways all the time
15:07at that time. And people are riding farther and faster. The question was, how do we deal with the
15:16pulsing from these growing cylinders? Originally, uh, they bored the engine out, uh, three or four
15:24millimeters to make the 1100. And then they, for the 1200, they, uh, managed to squeak another half
15:32millimeter on the bore and got the rest of the increase from stroke. They went to 66 millimeters,
15:36but there are limits to that. When you get your motor starting to get a lot bigger than it was
15:44planned for, uh, it's hard to keep it smooth. And of course it already had this big flywheel on it.
15:53So the idea of the six was a natural one. Why didn't they go with a six to begin with? Because
16:01they were nervous less the market should say, Oh, I don't know. Six cylinders seem like an awful lot.
16:08And actually when the six did come out as a GL 1500, people loved it. Yeah. Yeah. People loved it. And
16:20it was clearly the right way to go. They, they were able to do away with the flywheel completely.
16:27And part of the reason for that is that you have three boxer pairs that are all phased at 120 degrees
16:38apart so that it gives even firing and you have a short, uh, rotation of the crankshaft between one
16:47firing and the next. So that takes care of, of pulsing. And then you have, uh, because you have
16:58these pairs at 120 degrees, you no longer have all the pistons stopping together, starting and then
17:05stopping again. You can do without the flywheel to try to, that's trying to smooth that out.
17:12And the latest, uh, the generation six GL 1800 has a marvelous collection of dampers in it for all
17:23sorts of purposes. They don't want you to feel the reaction against the shift forks. Um, in, in,
17:31in the 1500, they began to worry about clunking from the main bearings. They may have even been
17:40earlier than that, but this, this clunking of the main bearings, of course, was caused by the fact
17:45that if you've got an inline four, they're all pushing down on the crankshaft. So the crankshaft is
17:49sitting down on the bottom of the bearings. But if you have them pushing from either side,
17:56it's going to be able to move. So what did they do? They closed down the main bearing clearances
18:06and they reduced the oil viscosity and they increased the, the surface finish on the journals
18:15so that all the little mountainous asperities, the engineers like to call surface irregularities
18:22were much less tall. And this was, this was a big success all around. It's the process for making
18:34those journals as smooth as that is widely used in the automotive industry. Now it was originally
18:40developed in the war for breaking in aircraft engines. And then it was forgotten. And who
18:46brought it back? Junior Johnson, the stock car racer and Honda motor company.
18:53I think it's your, uh, um, your aspiration to put asperities into the motorcycle enthusiast
18:58lexicon. Um, but yeah, it's, it's, uh, it is remarkable. Um, I think one of my favorite
19:07qualities of the latest version of the Honda Goldwing is how they've, uh, integrated the,
19:13um, charging system and starter into a single, into a single unit. Less copper. And yeah, so
19:21you have one, you just have one big sort of AC generator guy that also, uh, acts as the
19:27starter and the motor generator. Yeah. Yeah. And what's, what's neat about that is that
19:33it's, uh, I believe it's concentric to the crankshaft. And so when you hit the starter
19:38button on a, on a new, the 2017 and later Honda Goldwing, it just goes bang. Like it
19:44just turns on. It doesn't crank. It's not trying to figure out what to do. It just goes and
19:51turns on. It's, uh, it's great. So 88 was the GL 1500. It also got reverse. Um, and it ran
20:01the GL 1500, I think was a 13 year run. Yeah. Long time. Long time. And I think, uh, that,
20:11that this, uh, technology stream of trying to smooth the engine out is, is remarkable because
20:21it is so different from the, uh, trajectory of modifications in developing a sport bike
20:30where the RPM is going up and up and up in the GL series, it's going down and down and
20:36down. Originally the torque peak was at, at 5,500 RPM in the GL 1000. And the horsepower
20:45peak was up at 7,500, which is not exactly, uh, comfortable. So, uh, whereas sport bikes,
20:57there were 600s turning 17,000 RPM and nobody cared if they, if their pistons started and stopped
21:06or whatever, because everyone was hell bent for, uh, Daytona. That's why they hired professional
21:14riders to ride those little 600s because they sold a lot of them back in the day. But at
21:19the same time, serenely gliding onward is the GL series going in a completely different kind
21:28of direction. Well, it's very American. I mean, it's a big block. It's exactly what we've always
21:34wanted to do, which is increase displacement and move the power down where your average person
21:40kind of rolling around. And, you know, that's, well, I noticed in the little economy cars that
21:46I've driven lately, that when the engine gets pulled down to 1300, it shifts.
21:55And the reason for that is you begin to feel the driveline. And I remember the first time I rode
22:01in a four cylinder car, it was a Saab and it drove away from the stoplight with me in the back seat.
22:08And I could, I could feel that thing pulsing away and the drive shaft downstairs was, uh,
22:13boinging away. Uh, it must've been a V4 had to be. That stuff was real. Yeah. That stuff was real.
22:22Uh, torsional vibration, uh, trying to do away with crankshaft thump. These people were madmen
22:29looking, working toward, uh, an extreme result, which is what they've described as a magic carpet ride.
22:37Yeah. Well, here's a, here is a madman story for you. Uh, seat development on one of the gold wings
22:46in the eighties, I believe seat development was a box truck with a, a seam person, a sewing person
22:56tailor in a box truck with all the equipment and all kinds of pads. And they would ride all day.
23:04And the box truck would go to where they were going and they would test the seat. And then they
23:10would say, well, I'm finding this part of my posterior is unhappy. And they would re-sew a seat
23:16and they would have a new seat in the morning to try again, to see how it was. And that is crazy.
23:25Awesome. That is like that. That's the kind of engine or motorcycle development story that
23:31just makes me want to throw it all and get into it because it's just, well, it's just so real. It's
23:36so real and dedicated, you know, like it's like blowing up the engine on the dyno and having the
23:41connecting rods in the ceiling or breaking the lights or whatever, because it's so real.
23:46Yeah. It's so real. And one of the things they found in that seat development program was
23:54they reached the limit of the comfort they could develop by shaping the seat and by various types
24:01of padding supporting your posterior. And they concluded finally that it was the lack of stretchiness
24:10of the material that was of the material that was subjecting the skin of the rider, presumably pink,
24:20from
24:25from finding
24:28equilibrium with this lack of stretchiness of the seat covering material.
24:32So that when they, when they included stretchiness in the material,
24:40they found that many of their complaints melted away.
24:47So, uh, yes, mad men.
24:55So 2001 was the 1832. That was the, that was the 1832 CC kick up.
25:02And it really introduced a new era for Goldwing. It, uh, twin spar aluminum frame, uh, the marketing
25:08materials at that time and the, uh, the television commercials and the print stuff really emphasized
25:14performance. There were all kinds of burnouts. I want to say they sent Nikki Hayden out to a dry
25:19lake bed and he, uh, kicked us Goldwing sideways and made big puffs of dust and trails of dust and
25:27much drama late light, uh, racing leathers and all that. And in fact, by the end of that run of that
25:33Goldwing, what is it? Was that a 17 year run? Um, at the end of that, they had kind of gotten away,
25:41gone away from that aggressive sporting. It was all, it was back to comfort, et cetera.
25:46And, um, so an interesting evolution over time, but certainly, uh, a big change. In fact, we, uh,
25:54cycle world in 2001 did a lap of America with the Goldwing starting at the press launch. Cause
26:02they were, uh, uh, doing that in Maryville where they make the bikes. And, um, we rode around the
26:09country. We did, uh, about a thousand, thousand miles a day over handing off the bike. I went from
26:17Florida to Washington DC and, uh, got a tire changed at Statesboro Honda. Shout out. Thank you for, uh,
26:25all these years later, uh, changing the rear tire. And it was, uh, it was made easier on that model,
26:30uh, than it had been before with the single sided swing arm. Yeah.
26:36Well, uh, I think that, that, uh, one, one of the descriptions that was made of what they
26:45hoped to achieve was that, uh, dad in the front seat would have some sporting enjoyment of the
26:57motorcycle as a motorcycle and mama on the back seat would have a magic carpet ride.
27:05So all things to all people.
27:09It's truly one of the few motorcycles, it seems where
27:14the passenger got at least equal billing, if not better than the rider.
27:19And I know executives at other companies when they were redoing a touring model, um,
27:27were forced leadership was forced to ride as a passenger, uh,
27:33Harley Davidson touring bikes. They went out, you know, whatever test facility, probably APG,
27:38the Arizona proving grounds. And they made them get on the back and, and ride as a passenger to have
27:45some concept of what it's like. And, um, I think one of the great jokes is there's two ways.
27:52There's two ways to look at introducing someone to riding on the back of a motorcycle on a Honda
27:57Goldwing. One is don't expose them to the Honda Goldwing because they will never want to ride on
28:03the back of anything else. Or the other is it's a great inducement because it is so comfortable
28:08and it makes you feel good having the back rest. And they, they really, they really did take care of
28:13the passenger in a way that, that other bikes, uh, did not. Sure. Well, uh, one of the trends that,
28:21uh, has existed for the 49 years is a longer wheelbase from time to time and moving of the engine
28:30forward. Now, the original problem with the engine, not so far forward was where do you put the rider
28:37without having the rider's feet against the cylinders? And, uh, a variety of clever means
28:48have been used to deal with this such as, um, moving the engine forward until it became necessary
28:55to curve the radiator in order to move it any farther forward. Uh, looking at the motorcycle
29:02from the side, you can see that as the rider moves forward, uh, his seat is no longer on top of the
29:10rear tire, but it's starting down the hill. And one of the things that touring riders often, uh, want
29:19is low seating position. And these things started out in the, in the low thirties and they're now around
29:2629 inches. Uh, I think there are some machines on the market with lower seating positions yet,
29:34but, uh, each, when they went from the four to the six, it was a big consideration. Where do we put the
29:40rider's feet? Uh, when they went from the, uh, fifth generation to the sixth generation, they made the whole
29:49engine more compact by a variety of really clever, uh, means, one of which was a change in the material
30:00of the crankshaft. Now this, this is, uh, reminds me of Irmajuri because he, uh, made the main bearing
30:11smaller and smaller on that little 50cc twin until he began to get fatigue cracking.
30:16And then he started using higher and higher specification materials to prevent the, the
30:24fatigue cracking. So in order to shorten the crankshaft, you have to either make the bearings
30:31narrower. You have to move the cylinder bores closer together. Uh, and in this case, there's a disc in the
30:40crankshaft that has a crank pin on either side of it that are at 180 degrees. It made those discs
30:46thinner. All these little changes added up to an engine that's 29 millimeters shorter.
30:53And they keep mentioning that moving the major masses forward improves handling.
31:02And I remember sitting in the, in the engineering library at MIT when I was a technician,
31:09um, reading the Japan society of mechanical engineers. And there was a paper in there
31:16about weight distribution motorcycles. And this must've been early sixties running a motorcycle
31:24on a belt to test for stability. And as they moved the engine and the rider forward stability up,
31:31up, up, up, up, up. I'm sure that's been cited many times in these meetings that go on forever.
31:39Yeah. Remarkable.
31:41The JSME paper. But in any case, uh, it was always a concern that there was stiction in the front fork,
31:50which is a telescopic. First thing they did was to chamfer the bushings in hope that as the bushing
31:57moved along the tube, that oil would see that tapered area. Oh, that's where I'm going.
32:05And then the following year, they went to a Teflon impregnated syntallic bushing to try to reduce
32:12stiction. And now in the sixth generation, um, they combined the problem of how can we move the engine
32:22even farther forward with the problem of how can we get rid of stiction now and forever by having the,
32:28uh, Hossack front end, which has two parallelogram, uh, A arms. And at the apex of each one is a ball
32:39joint. And on that ball joint is the, the front fork. So instead of sliding bearings, you have
32:47rotating bearings. And instead of the wheel sliding up and back, which requires the engine to be farther
32:56away or the radiator or what have you, it mostly goes just up, which allowed another little movement
33:03forward. And somebody had to have all these details in mind all the time. And presumably some of them were
33:13able to leave it all at work, but others sat up in bed at 4am thinking, I've got it.
33:21And so the next time you enjoy the magic carpet ride, you can, you can think about those
33:28engineering types who were dreaming of how to do this.
33:32Well, it's a, it is a remarkable motorcycle to cover ground with and, and in any weather that's,
33:38uh, we did a, uh, a big ride, um, oh, six or seven years ago. And we'd done all this, uh,
33:45touring around California and we were having dinner on the last night kind of wrapping up.
33:51And we were talking about all the places we'd been and the fact that the next day
33:56it was going to be 48 degrees and rainy for 500 miles.
34:00And we're like, who cares? Like you just, I mean, it isn't, it isn't ideal, but if you have the gear,
34:08you know, if you have, I had an arrow stitch I was wearing. So you've got good, uh, water repellent
34:12properties. You're wearing a fiberglass hat, generally pretty waterproof and gloves. Yeah.
34:19You know, fine. As long as you have heated grips and you, and we did, I had a heated seat,
34:23heated grips and you just don't care the wind protection, the weather protection, uh,
34:28you get on and you ride 500, 500 miles in the rain and you don't think twice about it. The,
34:34the linked breaks, you know, you don't notice the linked breaks. You just get remarkable stopping
34:41power. You get, uh, whatever they've done with that Hossack fork to there's, it doesn't bind under
34:49braking. The thing just immediately drops anchor when you hit the pedal or you hit the lever. It just
34:58stops. And it's, it's so confidence inspiring of the walking mode. This is one of the reasons I'm
35:04a big fan of DCT is that, you know, they added reverse in on the six and 88, which is great,
35:12but this is basically a walking mode for parking lots. And you just put it into that mode and you
35:18pull the trigger to go forward or you push it to whatever it is. You, you do it forward and reverse
35:23with your fingers. So you can go into the parking lot and back it up on gravel, move it around three
35:28point, turn it, do whatever you need to do. It's all about making it easy and keeping you in this.
35:36I can go anywhere state of mind. You know, I can, I can park where I need to, and I'm,
35:41it doesn't conspire to kill my cool.
35:45I can't have that. I was looking at the, at this, uh, layout diagram of the DCT, uh,
35:54the dual clutch transmission and I'm, I'm counting the ratios. Yeah. There's seven of them. What's that?
36:00What's that Morse chain doing there? I'm thinking about that. And then later on, I, I was
36:08reading about the, the, uh, walking mode. And I realized that that Morse chain is the reverse
36:16because normally the two shafts rotate in the opposite direction to one another. That's the way
36:22gears are. Can't be any other way, but the chain makes the two shafts revolve in the same direction,
36:28which means you're going to back up. And I, I thought, okay, thank you. Now I understand.
36:35Well, that's, that's a, an insight into Kevin Cameron's, uh, constant brain operation. This is how Kevin is Kevin.
36:46I like that Morse chain. Yeah, it's cool.
36:50Same sort of thing that drives the, uh, the camshafts. That was another way to make the engine shorter.
36:55The first engines came out with tooth belt cam drives, one for the, uh, right-hand bank and one for
37:03the left-hand bank. The right-hand bank is slightly farther forward than the other. And the, the two
37:08belts are offset from one another. And, uh, the belts had to be fairly wide in the beginning because
37:15the quality, the durability and the horsepower per width of tooth belts is steadily improving,
37:22increasing every year, uh, by small amounts. So if they were going to do it again, the belts would
37:30be narrower. But at one point they decided, okay, um, we're going to have to, uh, make the cam drive
37:37narrower. So they switched back to, uh, silent chain, which is quite narrow.
37:45Every little detail.
37:51Yeah. And I think, you know, if you think about the marketplace that it
37:53entered and where we are now is it entered a us, you know, us dominated, that was sort of the,
38:01the full dresser, uh, Harley Davidson, booming along low RPM, all of that doing what it's doing.
38:10And Harley had had a great evolution up to that point growing with the interstate system, as you
38:14point out, getting the engine ever larger and, and, uh, and all of that. But the gold wing really,
38:21the gold wing came out at a time where the not Harley aspect of the market was
38:29becoming highly technically oriented. And you were looking at 75 horsepower, seven fifties. And
38:36then it was by the, you know, the eighties, it was a hundred horsepower, seven fifties, you know,
38:40it was this last year plus 5% or whatever it was. And we were selling, we were selling motorcycles
38:46on, and I dive and all these new things that were happening that were meant to give us performance.
38:53We never could have dreamed of. And gold wing did a really interesting thing in, in applying all that
38:59technology to the idea of ultimate ease and comfort and unstoppability.
39:06It was just the real technical birth of it. And they kind of put everybody out of business
39:15in that segment.
39:16Yeah. Well, that, that can happen that one product, uh, prevails or in the case of, of, uh,
39:23uh, the GLs versus Harley Davidson, two products, you know, there are the Harley people who are never
39:29going to ride anything else. And, uh, then there are the, the GL people and, uh, we hope that they
39:37enjoy one another's presence.
39:41Well, it's such a different concept of riding because the,
39:47I wouldn't, I don't want to say the gold wing is trying to disappear,
39:50but the gold wing is absolutely trying to
39:54melt the barriers. And what does it have a suggestion of moving parts, but it is,
40:01it's so subtle and the Harley is meant to be something else entirely, you know, and now Indian,
40:06Indian did a really, Indian did a remarkable job of making their engine have a beautiful,
40:14beautiful sound and to be present in the riding experience. It's really part of it. You know,
40:20you're really, you're, they're still rubber mounting Harley Davidson touring twins because it gives you
40:28the opportunity to tune the feeling through the chassis and give you a relationship. And that's,
40:34that still exists or they're far more capable than they ever were, but they're still there.
40:41Years ago, Earl Werner was, uh, chief engineer at Harley. And he, he said, uh, everybody who tours
40:52wants vibration done away with because it's tiring. But
40:58Harley riders, when they are at a stop, at a stoplight, want the bars to shake to let people
41:06know what heroes they are for being able to tame this wild beast. Now, that's okay. That's a way to
41:16look at the motorcycle. The GL way is to make a motorcycle that does not come to the rider's attention
41:24in any unpleasant way. You aren't thinking to yourself, my, my hands are tingling. My other parts are
41:33tingling. Um, you don't want the motorcycle to be singing to you unpleasantly so that your ears are
41:42ringing. And so, uh, the GL engineering group over these 49 years has had to consider that they are
41:55creating a mobile environment for human beings. And, uh, it's just supposed to do what it's told
42:04and otherwise to be quiet and unobtrusive. That's the magic carpet. But there's another contrast with
42:15the whole sport bike wing thing with the sport bike. You want as much compression as you possibly
42:21can because it boosts torque and you want all these super performance. Everything is squeezed to the
42:27limit. And the limit is detonation. When the fuel air mixture in the cylinder gets hot enough that all
42:34kinds of crazy chemistry happens and out at the edges of the cylinder where the combustion,
42:42the last part of the, of the charge to be reached by the flame front, it tries to start a revolution.
42:49Little points of light as the little pockets of mixture auto ignite and they burn at supersonic
42:57speed and they make that knocking noise. When I think of knock, I think of hitting two stones together
43:03underwater. It has a strange otherworldly sound. Well, in GL, uh, the emphasis has been on bringing the
43:15RPM down. And that makes an engine more likely to knock because a knock is time dependent. You,
43:23you're baking this explosive in your combustion chamber and the longer time you give it, the more
43:30likely it is to knock. So they've had to very quietly make sure that those early GLs, which had, uh, air
43:39circulation, axial swirl, they call it, which was produced by offsetting the intake port like this so
43:48that it created the axial swirl. That held off, uh, detonation. And when in the sixth generation, uh, 2018 model,
44:01they went to four valves. They had the valve area to just bring the torque down to unguided
44:09the low revolutions like 850. The notion of opening the throttle at 850 RPM on anything other than a
44:19truck diesel just seems like an invitation. Come and knock me out. So, uh, in that engine, they made use
44:30of tumble. The air coming in through the intake valves goes across the other cylinder wall and forms
44:39a loop. And as the piston comes up, that loop is compressed into smaller and smaller space. It breaks
44:46up into little turbulent cells. The spark plug lights a few of them. And by their rotation, they spread the
44:53flame everywhere. And as long as they can keep ahead of the process of detonation, the engine is
45:00wonderful quietness. No knocking. This is something that they've had to give just as much attention to
45:08as any hop-up operation trying to win the Daytona 200. But it's going in a different direction. And I think
45:16that's unappreciated. I wanted to bring it to your attention. Yeah, well, we've, we've, we've clearly
45:25appreciated the Dawn to Goldwing here. Um, anything else you want to stuff in, in the last moments,
45:32Kevin? Well, it's just that, that again and again, things, things crop up in the, I was reading
45:41yesterday. It said at one point they were able to increase the rear spring stiffness and still
45:54improve ride quality because they had brought in compression damping that had been developed in
46:01racing. Now, the problem with compression damping is that it, if it doesn't get out of the way at
46:09high velocities, when you hit a bump, you get a God awful punch. And that's really harsh. It's
46:17unpleasant and it destroys traction because you may have, the tire may get airtime during which
46:22point it can get moving. And so these little details that somebody in a meeting said, uh,
46:31well, sir, what about this new compression valve that the people over here in racing are talking about?
46:37Get those guys in here. And this, this is important. If you have a large organization that is
46:45investigating a great many technologies at once, how do you get the ones you need when you need them?
46:53And that used to be what they referred to as Mr. Oguma's refrigerator. They would develop things
47:02like power brakes that motorcycles didn't need at the time, but it would be there in Mr. Oguma's
47:08refrigerator as a starting point. If we suddenly need power brakes, we know where to begin.
47:17And there are many other technologies that are sitting in the cooler waiting for the need to
47:24develop. Communication is, is one of the hardest things about having that and getting that across
47:30the organization. And I think Honda and many other manufacturers have a, a fairly vigorous rotation of
47:36people. They do. And they would get somebody who was familiar with racing and then would say,
47:43Oh, Hey, you know, over here, we were doing this and that it's, it's woven into who they are. They
47:48don't have to discover it. It's there and they can apply it to the new problem.
47:53Another thing that, um, has been discovered as for instance, if you read about Lockheed's famous skunk
48:00works, uh, they discovered that the best way to correct, uh, a program that is over budget and
48:13beyond schedule is to reduce the number of engineers because of the communications problem
48:19that you just mentioned. If you can get them in the room together and they can have a conversation,
48:25there's a good chance that they can iron out their problems. But if you, another project that I
48:32remember in the motorcycle world, I won't identify the manufacturer. Um, the motorcycle, the racing
48:40motorcycle was broken down into areas. Each area was given a study group. The study groups presented
48:46their reports and nobody was saying, uh, uh, this is a motorcycle. It, every part affects every other
48:56part who's integrating the system. Uh, Oh, nobody. We didn't have the budget. So, uh, yes, this, this,
49:09I think internal communication is a very important thing. And that's one of the reasons why, uh, Mr.
49:16Oguma, who was a prominent character in the seventies, um, when he had a group of engineers in a foreign
49:26country, he would make them go to the museums of technology, such as the Deutsches museum in Munich
49:33and look at the displays and discuss what was there because it's all too easy to just fall into a
49:44groove. Oh, it's nice and comfy in here. Please turn out the light and go to sleep. And that's why Frank Whittle
49:54invented the jet engine without ever having worked for an engine company. And the manufacturers of aircraft
50:00engines never invented the jet engine because it was just too different. So get those crazy guys talking and gals
50:11and see what pops out. Well, it's a real big thing because if you have a business that's doing all
50:18right, that's where your resources go. It's very hard to peel that off. It's very hard to start a new
50:25department that doesn't just go like, well, if we put a dollar into a jet engine, what, you know,
50:32like, what are we going to get back from that? Yeah. Big deals.
50:41Well, thanks for listening to everybody. Um, we sure appreciate the feedback in the comments.
50:47We've really enjoyed the comments, uh, since we started this, I went to Moto America, uh, last weekend,
50:54which will be two weekends ago by the time this plays for the first time. But, uh, I went to
50:59Road America, Moto America, lots of America. Bagger racing was back. It was spectacular.
51:06Indian got, uh, oh, I want to say four, four podiums. And then Kyle Wyman did a, a beautiful
51:13draft pass to take the victory. A wonderful, a wonderful, uh, stimulation for the,
51:20something that hasn't existed for a long time, the Harley Davidson racing team.
51:24Yep. They have, they have shirts and jackets that say Harley Davidson racing team. Yep.
51:32I hope that, that the dear departed Dick O'Brien is listening because, uh,
51:41I never thought I'd see it, but here it is. Here it is. And it's helping those guys. Oh yeah.
51:47And, uh, Troy, Troy Herfas. Yes. Australian super bike champion is just a really great guy and an
51:57incredible rider, uh, did well in the rain and, uh, given the amount of track time he had,
52:04he did a pretty darn good job of setting lap times. Uh, anyway, it was, uh, it was particularly
52:12fun to show up at that race and have people say, Hey, Hey, Hey, you, you're, uh, you're doing that
52:19podcast with Kevin. I'm like, yeah, I sure am. Like I recognize your flannel, which is an indication
52:23that I should, I'm not wearing a flannel today precisely because I've got to get new flannels to
52:29wear, but, uh, we appreciate the communication and, uh, and feedback, uh, about, um, about the podcast.
52:38We enjoy doing it. And, uh, well, we were just talking about communication being necessary
52:43inside of an R and D organization and we're trying to develop content to present to you
52:50in the future. So communicate. Yeah. Let us have it. We'll present it. Let us have it.
52:55So, uh, thanks again for listening. Uh, we're on Spotify, Apple podcasts, and of course, uh,
53:01here on YouTube as well. And we'll catch you next time. Thank you.