Tdc
TDC
Coping with categories
Kevin Cameron
WHEN I WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL, PLAYED a lot of chess, but I never rose above what I’ll call the “coping stage.” That is the condition in which I could just manage to respond competently to my opponent’s moves, but had no capacity left for any long-range strategy.
I wonder if the motorcycle powerplant business isn’t being played the same way. The “opponent” is strong-a rapidly shifting market, government regulations, fluctuating currencies. What long-range strategy has any chance of being right against chaotic variability like that? The only rational response must be something like flexibility, which really means making minor improvements in what you have, while keeping longer-term R&D options on the back burner, in case one of them turns out to be needed. Four-stroke
engines are the established technology, but their water-table of useful ideas is dropping as all the manufacturers pump on it as hard as they can, hoping to irrigate sales with higher performance. Is it reasonable to design a market product toward a 17,000-rpm redline? History says it is-just because the numbers have always increased. But there are associated problems. There are three ways to build more powerful four-strokes: (1)
Make them bigger. But bigger engines are heavier and bulkier. (2)
Rev them up. But dynamic loads increase as the square of the rpm. Therefore, as engines turn faster, they must be made heavier to carry their own internal loads. Ferrari’s current F-l V-12 has a steel crankcase for this reason. Higher revs is the present performance trend in Japanese motorcycle engines. (3)
Blow more air into them. The use of mechanically driven superchargers or exhaust-driven turbochargers can produce essentially unlimited power, but with likewise unlimited problems. The turbobikes we’ve seen had problems with transition from non-turbo to turbo operation. This is not to say that such problems can’t be solved-indeed there’s good reason to believe they can-but for the manufacturers, once burnt, twice shy. Why
not shift strategy? Japanese makers don’t want to give up the highrevving 750 game and build Ducatilike Twins because a) new tooling costs big money and b) it will take strength of character to swallow pride, accept the advantages of big Twins and give up the rpm business. And so the dynos are going, no doubt day and night, in the search for ways to make power up near 20,000 rpm. Categories
make it easier to think about machines, but they ultimately become confining. Only if everyone is making a 600cc transverse-Four does the 600 class have any meaning, for then you can compare 600s with 600s. But what if a maverick company chooses a different marketing strategy, offering more performance per dollar-maybe from a Twin? Then the comparison shifts from being how much power you can squeeze out of 600cc, into being how much capability you can sell at a certain price. You can bet that somewhere, on the warmer back burners in windowless Japanese R&D centers, advanced Twins are being prototyped, tested and pondered. Just in case. Other
kinds of category-jumping are possible. If direct-injection two-stroke engines, of the kind about to be introduced next year in the outboard engine market, were to be offered in sports motorcycles, they would offer strong competition to existing four-strokes. Two-strokes make their high power mainly by virtue of firing twice as often as a four-stroke-and so they don’t have to chase horsepower up the rpm scale into turbine territory. The traditional objections to two-strokes are the smoky exhaust, irregular idle and high fuel consumption. All these problems disappear with direct fuel injection. That’s why DI two-strokes are occupying the back burners of so many stoves just now. There
are three big fascinations in engineering. One is to push existing ideas to wild, improbable limits, tackling the many development problems that arise along the way. Another is to find and implement entirely new ideas that completely avoid existing compromises. The third is to use what is known to actually make a useful product that people can afford. The
new 750 engines coming from Kawasaki and Suzuki lie in the first category. Kawasaki’s present World Superbike race engine is redlined at nearly 15,000 and even this isn’t enough to hold off the liter Ducatis. Therefore, wild, improbable limits must and will be pushed, and it will be fascinating to watch. Can 750cc and a zillion revs prevail against a liter at 10,300 rpm? I shall stay tuned. And
where are the completely new ideas? The crude answer is that they stay where they are until some sufficient crisis justifies their use. The Brittens and the Hossacks of this world build their promising prototypes, Alan Cathcart rides them and writes them up, and nothing more happens. “Why doesn’t somebody do something!?!?” scream our inner voices. The answer is, nobody does anything until he absolutely, positively must. Nobody
does anything because all are busy trying to implement the third engineering fascination: actually making and selling products. Put half a billion of the banks’ money into a new production facility and then see how you feel about innovation. Or
how about a new player? China is the world’s largest motorcycle maker. Despite its cosmetic communism, China has a fast-growing, aggressive business community, eager for world markets. Big stuff-the potential for Japan all over again. As with all freshly planted industries, the first stage is to copy the low end of existing technology for the home market. That’s where they are now. The next stage is mass marketing to the world at low prices, to get market share. Then comes innovation, the way to enduring leadership. It could happen that way with China and motorcycles. □ 16/CYCLE
