A Vee For Victory

A VEE FOR VICTORY

Allan Girdler

Nothing in the scene made sense. The British motorcycle industry is the ghost of a shadow, current practice is to have more cylinders and less displacement and finally, my family did its best to put George III in his place, that is, out of America.

So there I was, guest of an honest-toblueblood English lord, jammed inside a tent on the lord’s vast estates, in England to see a new English motorcycle, all 997cc and two cylinders of it. For this I’d spent 10 hours on an airplane and one day riding through an English spring, i.e. cold rain all the way.

But then Lord Hesketh and Mike Hailwood (Yes!) pulled the giant Union Jack from atop the object on stage and there was this big red roadster with gleaming 90° V-Twin bristling with twin cam, fourvalve heads.

The sun was shining.

I took that to be an omen.

For a more proper beginning, a few words about the sponsor.

Lord Alexander Hesketh, age 29, really is a lord of the realm. Born to power and privilege and—one infers—accustomed to doing things his way.

Further, he is immensely rich, intensely patriotic and keenly interested in technical matters. Also, Hesketh is a practical man and likes to have his ventures based on some expectation of return, perhaps even a profit.

Hesketh got into motor sports as the backer of a Grand Prix car. He and driver

James Hunt (known in our world as Barry Sheene’s Pal) won some races and did well, although most of the non-sports press paid attention because Hunt is a photogenic driver, good copy and Hesketh made a point of being in racing for the fun of it; no sponsorship, no flaming great advertisements on the side of the car, etc. But the team retired as the cost of sportsmanship exceeded even a lord’s budget.

The Hesketh estate, thousands of acres, sheep grazing in the meadows, a quaint village even within the walls, a manor house with formal gardens, is a national treasure and as such the exterior cannot be changed by so much as a thatched roof. (Hesketh adds that he likes it this way.) But beneath the thatch, behind the weathered stone, anything goes. The former stables became a complete machine shop during the car racing period. While the Hesketh team was doing their own work they began doing engine repair and rebuilds for other teams. All the winning Cosworths during 1979 and so far in 1980 came from the Hesketh shops.

Which is why the motorcycle business. Lord Hesketh began as a sportsman but when he decided to drop the sporting part of cars, he already had a complete staff of engineers, mechanics draftsmen, designers, and all the machine tools, engine dynamometers, etc. Team Hesketh was in fact a consulting engineering firm.

So. Lord Hesketh looked around. He had, literally, a stable of talent, men who’d

worked on the world championship BRM racing cars, on the Weslake speedway engine, and for Norton and BSA. What the firm needed was a project worthy of these men, and a project that they could use to build into something with commercial possibilities and yes, maybe even do something for England. After considering aircraft and cars and other fields crowded with competition, capital intensive and hemmed by governments, Hesketh came up with motorcycles. More specifically, with Superbikes. There is still, he decided, a place for big, powerful, road-worthy, carefully crafted sporting machines. His staff had the talent and the background. England still has the reputation; when Honda decided to test the NR500 engine in a conventional frame, Honda R&D didn’t build it. They bought the frame from an English specialist.

Engine configuration for the motorcycle project almost decided itself. Fours are conventional, Sixes are no longer remarkable, so there’s no sense going in that direction. There’s no way to make a Single do the job, a Triple strikes most people as being not quite a Four, hence a Twin, in Vee, in the tradition of Brough and Vincent.

But not exactly that Vee. The Hesketh has its cylinders at 900, as done by Ducati. (The Italians have used the quarter-turn engine for so long they have a name for it; L-Twin.)

There are several good reasons for the 90° layout and only two drawbacks, one minor and the other less than minor.

The Hesketh’s cylinders are fore and aft, like Ducati, Vincent, Indian, even Husqvarna and BSA in the days they made V-Twins.

Crossmounts, as done by Guzzi and Honda, provide a low frame and short wheelbase but make for wide engines. With fore and aft, though, you get minimum frontal area, no more than that of a big Single, with a potential lean angle no multi of comparable displacement can match.

The 90° Vee separates the cylinders. The front is nearly horizontal, the back nearly vertical. Lots of room for cooling air and intake plumbing, neither of which is in oversupply on, for example, Harley's 45° Vees.

Best of all, the 90 ° is in perfect primary balance. The two connecting rods share the lone crankshaft throw, so when one piston is at either end of its travel, the other is half way through its stroke. The stop and start of the pistons is an arc; the front piston arrives at top dead center and a quarter-turn later, the rear piston does the same. This means a rotational force that you can nearly balance with the crank’s counterweight, which also swings its mass, so to speak. A vertical Twin, whether with 180° or 360° crankshaft

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throws, can never do this, nor when you get into larger displacements can counterrotating balancers get the vibrations completely out. This is one of the reasons really big Twins, beyond 750cc, have nearly always been Vee or opposed.

The minor drawback to the quarterturn design is that the horizontal front cylinder dictates a long wheelbase, no worry here because a big roadster needs a long wheelbase.

Less than minor is that putting two conventional connecting rods on the same crank throw puts them side by side, so the barrels are offset and there will be a tiny lateral imbalance, not enough to cause concern because the various other forces surely will be far more noticeable.

Oh yeah, if you want to look it up in the books, the 90° Vee, like all Vees, will have a staggered firing order and a cadenced exhaust note. Nobody who ever heard a Harley or Vincent will worry about that.

Anyway, the parameters fit the job. Classic, different, and practical.

The overall design was done by Weslake, under direct Hesketh supervision.

The crank rides in two main bearings, one roller and one ball, with plain metal bearings for the rods. Primary drive is gear. There are five speeds, all indirect.

At 95 x 70 mm bore and stroke the Hesketh is oversquare but not radically so. Previous Weslake motorcycle engines have been racing units and the Hesketh was designed for stress. Almost all of the cylinder barrel snugs down into the high cases; there’s room for only three fins on the barrel itself. Oil leaks will not be a problem, nor will distortion under load.

The top of the engine is virtually a slice of Cosworth V-Eight. Logical, as that’s what the Hesketh team works on, and logical because the Cosworth is now in its 11th year of beating the Twelves and the turbos.

Lord Hesketh says this Cosworth influence is just that, an influence rather than a copy. They set out to get efficient power and the twin cam, four valve design came out like the other good engine.

Two cams per barrel, four valves, with the narrow valve angles and shallow combustion chambers seen on the latest Suzukis and Varna has. The combustion

chamber shape is pentroof, less peaked than the Honda version. Piston crowns are nearly flat while compression ratio is 9.5:1; not too high for the miserable stuff sold as premium by your neighborhood OPEC frontmen.

Normal valve springs and cup followers with valve clearances adjusted by shims. Right, the cams must come off for maintenance. Cam drive is chain, with a nice if intricate system of slipper tensioners. Lubrication is wet sump. No exterior lines, no leaks, no separate tank. Almost unBritish. Oil capacity is 3 qt., average for the displacement, and an oil cooler is standard equipment. Ignition is electronic, Lucas RITA. Carbs are 36mm Amal and exhaust is two into two.

Claimed power at introduction was 86 bhp at 6500 rpm, with 69 lb.-ft. of torque at 5000 rpm. Working redline is 7000 rpm and speeds in gears, again in pilot-model form, was 50, 77, 103 and 124 mph. With rider prone the prototype was clocked at 138 mph during testing and returned 50 mpg at cruise.

The gearing gives nearly 20 mph per 1000 rpm. Harley country, that, loafing along at legal speeds below 3000 rpm. With the 5.5 gal. tank the bike will have the long range all big roadsters should have.

The frame is beautiful, and different. Material is Reynolds 531, good quality steel, nickle plated. The engine was designed to be a stressed member, again in the Vincent, Ducati and (on occasion) Honda tradition and there is no frame

backbone as such. There are four main

tubes, upper and lower, right and left, angled back from the steering head, to, the front and rear of the engine. Each side is triangulated and each side has a horizontal tube running back to the upper shock mounts. All the tubes are straight, the best way to get strength and lightness and obviously, the engine and frame were designed at the same time, by men working in unison.

A dividend here is that the swing arm pivot is at the back of the gearbox and the rear frame tubes are outboard of the engine. The gearbox contains a secondary countershaft; the front sprocket is directly in line with the swing arm pivot and there is no variation in chain tension due to suspension travel. Not new. If memory serves Rokon did this once, but good thinking. Because engine torque no longer will compress the rear suspension, the chain can’t whip and snap, so the chain can be smaller and lighter than the engine’s power would otherwise demand.

Lord Jiesketh is English but not blind Forks are Marzocchi, the rear shocks arà Girling and the brakes-two Il-in, discs. in front and one 10-in, disc in back, are Brembo, The back is full, floating. Clutch activation is hydraulic, so there's no cable drag and the leverage and travel can be more, easily tuned to the effort needed. While there is no kick start, there iS :3 27:amp..bour battery, which should do the job The headlight is a proper quartz-halogen Bosch, 8 in in diameter

Wheels are alloy assemblies. There are two halves, with spokes and one side of the rim being each half, and the parts are riveted together. Sort of like the Honda ComStar and for the same reason; as sembled wheels are, cheaper and have some useful flex, when compared to cast wheels, and they can be built to closer tol erances and need less maintenance than lace-up wheels need. The Hesketh. people say these wheels were designed before the ComStars, or at least before Honda's wheels were made public, but that their development took more time. Not copies, in other words.

The tires are from Avon~ Model name is Wnom and they come with a V, or high speed ratin~. Sizes are 110/90-18 front, 130/90-17 rear and the specification charts say von developed the tires es pecially for the Hesketh. -

Styling was done by John Mockett, known in England for his work on the Eu rope-only line of water-cooled Yamaha two-stroke road bikes. Personal reactions here, obviously, but the tank is right, the tail section a nicely executed mix of road and raciiig shanes. plus a usefully ions

rear fender that will keep spray under con trol and isn't-thank goodness-a piece of black plastic hiding beneath a duck-tail spoiler. The tiny semi-fairing looks like it's more a different place to put the headlight.

The panel around the oil cooler and be neath the fuel tank runs back in almost a skirt, filling the space between the cylin ders. Mockeu said at first that was done to be sure the rear cylinder got enough air. Turned out the back barrel runs cooler than the front but because the team liked the way the panels look, they kept the ex tra piece. (I don't like the panel, and told Mockett so and he didn't take offense. Per sonal opinion, is all.)

Restraint has been used on the contro1s~ as there is a good big tachometer and speedo. a clock and voltmeter and the usual warning lights, all done on a plain black panel. The instruments are from ND. Repeating, 90 percent of the bike is British, but where the team thought they could do better with Italian or Japanese bits, they used them.

Details. Wheel base is 62.5 in. and the listed dry weight is 506 lb. Both figures are

right close to the Ducati 900s, so there is no excess. The weight may come down, as some of the mechanicals were sand cast ings and the full production parts will be lighter. Seat height is 31 in., ground clear ance is 4.5 in. The bars, which are low and sporting, once again as they should be, are 26 in. wide. Room for two people and the seat is curved and lipped for location, but not so's you'd be forced to sit in the wrong place.

Lord Hesketh made it quite clear that the bikes we saw were not prototypes. in stead, they were pilot models for produc lion. The team guys have been riding Heskeths for nearly a year and everything on display was evidence that the bike and the controls, the positions of things, had been done by people who understand mo torcycles. No focus groups or surveys here, which probably wilt be the secret of the Hesketh's success.

Reporters are paid tO be skeptical. After the ceremonies the shops were open for tours and I managed to walk through the place with Hailwood, who is Eoyalty in his own way. Gave me permission to risk being rude, S I took a :~ .ieture or two of one of the mules, a battered blue roadster that the mechanics told me had run up 12,000 test miles. They never wash the mute and it sits outside every night no matter what the weather, just so they'll know what the thing will be like in real life. Why are you taking pictures of that? the press officer wondered, . we~ have a much better looking machine parked. in the garden.

I didn't answer, but I was taking pic tures of the mule because 1 wanted some • proof that the Hesketh does run and has been ridden. Perhaps the English wouldn't do such a thing, but I have been to press shows in which the stars were gold on the • outside and plywood on the inside.

• The doings at the castle, with the tent .Eand the celebrities and the flags and even some trumpeters in uniform-they didn't play, sorry to say-were strictly an intro duction. No riding, no chance for even an impression of what it was like to circle the garden. The engineers did run the engines and ride from this photo locale to that one, but that was strictly all.

Enterpreneur is a funny word to use about an English Lord with piles of money and his own viIlage~ but that~s what Lord Hesketh is. He's spent hundreds of thou sands of pounds on the motorcycle. He be lieves in the project and the men behind it. He says it will be built and I believe him.

There are three options. First, the team can build bikes, two per week, in the dis guised stables. Second, a production com pany could be formed with outside money to increase production, but still on a urn ited scale. Third, an existing company could build Heskeths on some sort of Ii censing arrangement. One candidate comes to mind and by no coincidence the two top people from Triumph were at the show. They were as politely evasive as only the English can be.

The home market comes first, mostly because of logistics. Hesketh is new and efficient and engines of the same general layout are already certified for the U.S.

It will take some time, like a year, be fore the Hesketh crosses the pond. If Team Hesketh does it all, the price will be higb~ if some form of semi-assembly line can be nanced. the Hesketh will sell in the nor mal high range, along with Harleys and 1ii~~1 BMWs.

Have faith. It's easy to joke about the English, and how they kicked away their world leadership. This project is not like that. These people care about bikes. They're building the motorcycle they'd like to ride. Like Harley~~ they are too smart to build something the bigger fish can build better.

During the catered lunch, in the great bail with butlers and so forth, I got to talk ing with a man who'd be known in Eng land as a City Gent. Educated, polished, does things with money in the financial district.

He didn't know much about motorcy cles, He was there as a scout, for potential investors who'd like to put money into the Hesketh if it looks like a good investment: What did. I think, and how should they sell the bike?

"invest," I said. "It looks like a motor cycle and it sounds like a motorcycle. It'll sell itself."