Nine-Tenths Submerged

NINE-TENTHS SUBMERGED

IGNITION

TDC

I'M INTERESTED IN THE PARTS I CAN’T SEE

KEVIN CAMERON

I cebergs are impressive, but ninetenths of their mass is invisible to us, submerged in the sea. We humans love excitement. It can be such a drug to us that people who’ve paid big money to attend a rock concert scream so loudly they can’t hear the music. They are high—not on the music but on their own excitement. The actual substance of the concert (the music) is ignored. We are impressed by the visible part of the iceberg, but the part that tore a 300-foot hole below the Titanic’s waterline is unseen.

The same is true in motorsports. An engine’s power stroke is what actually propels a car or bike, but it is completely silent. The noise—which so thrills our senses—is the sudden expansion of lowenergy waste gas, valved out of the cylinders. NASCAR and NHRA appreciate the intoxicating effect of fantastic noise and have deliberately retained it. Motorcycle roadracing in the US went the other way for years, reciting the mantra, “Less sound equals more ground.”

We accept the idea that many people are offended by loud pipes, but banning them from the racetrack surely made racing less intoxicating. Therefore, MotoAmerica raised the roadrace decibel limit from 107 to 115 last July at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.

Not only are sound and fury intoxicating, but we also associate them with high performance, even though the quiet, muffled streetbikes of today can make more than three times the power of a megaphone-equipped all-out Triumph 500 roadracer of 1967. The fact that noise and power are no longer causally related is submerged. The noiseequals-power idea has devolved into a “brand”—a subconscious association that can control our choices without our even being aware of it.

When dragracing expanded in the 1950s, racegoers saw dramatically raked-out steering heads. They saw the same on Bonneville record-setters. Immediately, people wanted this unusual, exciting look, but the reason for its creation was the weakness and instability of most existing motorcycle chassis and forks. At normal speeds, such chassis were acceptably stable, but at higher speeds they could weave violently. Increasing rake and trail restored stability but at the cost of greatly slower steering. The public cared nothing for this unseen part of the “iceberg,” so the new look became so popular that amateur builders churned out thousands of “drag-look” customs. They had raked-out front ends, 50-mile peanut gas tanks, skinny no-brake front wheels, and rigid rear frames with the widest available tires. In a word, choppers. Each element of their construction came from something originally functional, but what people perceived was contrast with the familiar.

In nature this is called “stimulus generalization.” A fruit-eating species of bird is hard-wired to be attracted to the pink color of ripe fruit, but if an experimenter offers the bird a choice between pink, ripe fruit and 2-inch steel balls painted bright red, the birds choose the more intense color. It was former Cycle magazine editor Steve Anderson who pointed out to me that the public is not attracted to vehicles whose features are an average of what focus groups say the public wants. Instead, they are attracted to the way-out, radical stuff that most gets their attention.

Have you heard of “rolling coal”?

It is the practice of altering a diesel engine’s fuel control to deliver a very rich mixture, producing thick clouds of black smoke (unburned, wasted fuel) on demand. Who wants this? Years ago, highway tractor owner-operators could usefully increase power by a moderate version of this practice, just as an assault helicopter pilot in Vietnam could wheedle his crew chief into a forbidden fuel-control adjustment that could pull a Huey full of soldiers out of tough situations. So in a visual equivalent of the noiseequals-power idea, black exhaust smoke came to signify power. Plus, in our era, what better way for Jack-the-lad drivers of diesel pickups to tease earnest greens, clad in all-natural fabrics in their 12-grain hybrid cars?

BY THE NUMBERS

41°46' NORTH 50°14‘ WEST FINAL RESTING PLACE OF THE TITANIC, 13,000 FEET BELOWTHE SURFACE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC

400 ESTIMATED MAXIMUM WIDTH, IN FEET, 0FTHE ICEBERG THAT SANK THE TITANIC

115 MOTOAMERICA DECIBEL LIMIT AT MAZDA RACEWAY LACUNA SECA LAST SUMMER (EQUIVALENTS ALOUD ROCK CONCERT OR SANDBLASTING)

At the very MotoGP race where it was most obvious that Valentino Rossi was winning because he wasn’t wasting time and driving force by spinning and sliding, the crowd was roaring its approval of the two Aprilia “Cube” entries, which were smoking their tires in giant slides out of every corner—in last and nextto-last place. In that 2004 scene, Vale winning was ho-hum and so was how he was winning—by creating power-transmitting and line-holding tire grip. The “Cube” was going slow because so much of its tremendous power was going up in tire smoke. A success with crowds, it never finished better than 10th in 2004 and was withdrawn. Which reality is more “real”? The enthusiasm of the crowd or what attracted their attention? Or the unseen ninetenths of the iceberg—the welljudged engineering necessary to win races?

I had a friend in grade school who was fascinated by Detroit’s “idea cars” of the 1950s. One I remember in particular resembled two cigar-shaped jet engines from a B-58 Hustler with the space between filled in and with both driver and passenger separately covered by P-51-style Plexiglas canopies that made conversation impossible. Underneath all this was your basic late-i930s car, with A-arm front suspension, live rear axle on 1890s leaf springs, a floppy ladder frame, and an iron pushrod engine. There was nothing futuristic about it; its dramatic style was just a cover bolted to yesterday, its shapes shamelessly cribbed from the supersonic military aircraft of its time.

WE ACCEPT THE IDEA THAT MANY PEOPLE ARE OFFENDED BY LOUD PIPES, BUT BANNING THEM FROM THE RACETRACK SURELY MADE RACING LESS INTOXICATING.

We humans are suckers for this kind of entertainment! We are far more into how something makes us feel than we are into its tiresome function. This is, all too often, the basis of marriage (“He was such a great dancer!”). Does a ballroom attraction turn into an actual friendship of lasting value? We take our chances.

So many of the motorcycles I see today seat the rider on a pointed prong, boldly jutting to the rear. To carry more than 50 miles of fuel, the tank has swollen into a tall popover, and a variety of stuck-on “flair” suggests it might be a stage prop, say from a Captain Tomorrow TV spoof. Okay, I accept, but what continues to interest me is the other nine-tenths—how does it all work?