Unsettled By Change
UNSETTLED BY CHANGE
IGNITION
TDC
REAR SUSPENSION ON A MOTORCYCLE? NONSENSE!
KEVIN CAMERON
In 1969, the future of the motorcycle looked smooth and predictable. It would be British and American machines, rumbling and vibrating, for the "real" motorcyclist, and for the newbie and the callow youth, small inoffensive Japanese bikes. In a year, those certainties blew away. Mighty men on urgent, shaking Sportsters were left behind by those who stood over their Kawasaki His, spun the tire, sat down, and disappeared. The long-awaited triples from BSA and Triumph had a fleeting moment of glory but had no reply to the wave of mass-produced 750s and 903s from the Orient.
It was a lot to swallow. There was worse to come: two-strokes! How the traditionalists hated them!
Today’s disturbance is motorcycle control electronics—traction control, launch control, anti-wheelie, and slide control. Old-timers grind their teeth and chorus, “If it was up to me, I’d rip all the electronics out and then we’d see who the real riders are.”
Oh? Who would be World Champion in an electronics-free series? Not Marc Marquez?
Change is hard to accept, hard to get used to. But it has always occurred and it always will. When World War I ended, people “knew” that a proper motorcycle had a rigid frame (“Nothing steers like a rigid!”) and a flat-head engine. Flat-heads won a last Isle of Man TT or two, but then machines with overhead valves rudely left them behind. Yes, the “overheads” comically sent their exposed pushrods rattling down the road if overrevved, but they were fast, and soon their pushrods were enclosed. Get used to it? Change is as unsettling as a holy book that reads a little differently every time you open it. Where’s the comfort in that?
Overheads needed more vertical room in the frame, but the gas tank had always been hung between an upper and lower
frame tube. That looked right. It was right. But rider-engineer H.R. Davies in 1924 showed a new way to do it—the “saddle tank,” which sat over the top tube like a saddle on a horse, giving more room beneath for taller OHV engines. Riders had come to love the long and low look, and HRD’s taller saddle tank looked wrong to them. Then Davies became the only person ever to win both the 350 and 500 TTs on a 350, a bike he had designed. Yes, his initials later became part of the brand name Vincent-HRD, and, yes, once bikes with saddle tanks won all the races, they were perceived as beautiful.
Gyro Gearloose inventors had been trying to make a rear suspension that would work on a motorcycle since the earliest days, but real riders knew it was silly nonsense, something to be ignored. It just didn’t work. Then, in 1935, Stanley Woods smoked the rigid Nortons in the TT, on a Guzzi with rear suspension. Suddenly what had been true was false: All that earnest belief in rigid frames had no place to go. Norton’s own racing engineer, Joe Craig, publicly stated that no one could win in the future without rear suspension.
The men who rode the unrideable 500 two-strokes were our heroes. A high-side could strike at any instant on those exploders, but the top riders could seemingly will them not to happen.
Then, in 2002, suddenly everything shifted and the big new four-strokes were ridden in a completely different way—smooth and so fast through corners. Was nothing sacred?
People have been offended by cast wheels, by rider leathers that are not black in color, by disc rather than drum brakes, by full-face helmets. Real men don’t need electric start. Electronic fuel injection will strand hundreds of people far from home. Where are the fins? Water-cooling just doesn’t look right. Depending on when you were born, a “real” motorcycle
BY THE NUMBERS
84.68 WINNING SPEED, IN MPH, OF STANLEY WOODS' MOTO GUZZI ATTHE ISLE OF MAN IN 1935. WOW.
ZERO NUMBER OF FLAT-HEAD MOTORCYCLE ENGINES PRODUCED TODAY
1973 LAST YEAR HARLEYDAVIDSON BUILT A FLATHEAD ENGINE, FORTHE SERVI-CAR TRIKE
has three speeds. Or was it four? Five? Six? Date yourself! Let us not leave out the special case of tank shift and foot clutch, to say nothing of the philosophical emptiness of clutchless upshifting and downshifting. Hold the line at any cost! No plastic parts, ever (even if some are stronger than steel)! I want to see the engine, not just a bunch of plastic with stuckon graphics. How come the gas tank looks like a mushroom?
It’s best to not dismiss DCTs or inveigh against slushboxes and CVTs; one of these systems is soon quite likely to rise up and make nonsense of the 100-year tradition of riders having to periodically take their attention away from riding to physically adjust the gear ratio between the engine and the rear wheel. What are you, a 1940s factory worker running a lathe with change gears? Isn’t that as obsolete as
a phone system with operators lined up at plug boards? “Your call, please. Extension two-eight-nine, thank you.” Not anymore.
How does this conservatism arise? Why are we so upset by change? I think it’s because motorcycles can be so important to us, meaning something different to each. We learn to ride, we learn a culture, and we may even learn the intimacies of valve adjustment. We form a curiously strong multilevel relationship. Yes, a motorcycle is just an object, but it is one with powerful emotional content.
Mess with that at your peril. Our relationship with it is based on a kind of trust, a constancy. Then the nature of the thing changes, and some people are hurt. Riders who “got their minds right” about Triumph Bonnevilles cannot recognize their beloved in a Ninja 600 or a Monster. I saw it happen in the dealership when
Triumph, forgetting the unspoken relationship of trust with buyers, dropped its iconic black tube frames, black fork sliders, and sausage-shaped chrome mufflers. Young men wanted those things—
I was surprised at the strength of their feelings. This reminded me of the changes that can accompany marriage, when some couples get so serious that they no longer recognize each other.
This is a large part of what is meant by brand, which is the part of a thing that we carry in our heads. Harley understands this implied trust well, but for most other makers technology is the loose cannon that constantly disturbs people’s relationship with the motorcycle. Package technology right and it can sell new product. Do it wrong, and it can un-sell just as easily. We humans don’t like to be unsettled by change. E1U
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“YES A MOTORCYCLE IS JUST AN OBJECT, BUT IT IS ONE WITH POWERFUL EMOTIONAL CONTENT. MESS WITH THAT AT YOUR PERIL.”
