The last tenth......

[jeff kushner]

When I glance at the various threads in the repair sections of the forums I belong to, it dawned on me that 90% of the costs of a lot of these repairs are due to trying to get "the last 1/10th.

When guys race, we all start out giving nine tenths. Don't misunderstand this...we are all...riders, builders, managers all giving 150% but we achieve only 9/10ths. It's the guys that can squeeze out just a blonde C/H more out of their bike than the others, that last 1/10th, that wins. Same in sports too, we hear it all the time.

Now shift the paradigm closer to home.

The EPA began around '70. They mandated strict controls based on CARB(CA air resources boa...) that brought us the choked intakes, cats and egr to start with, then came the charcoal canisters for fumes. All in all, not too bad and for us old guys, we remember how dirty the air(and ground) was prior to this, hell they even dug up an Indian to cry on TV for us for years! In '75 the CAFE standards began.....and we watch manufacturer live and die by them today, driving up costs in search of the last 1/10th.

It was the same thing with pollution controls. Cat converters and EGR's got us 90% reductions. No need for cam phasers, two piece plugs et al.

Back in the dark days of DOS, when RAM cost $45 per MEGABYTE we that built and ran our own gear used to call having the latest equip the "Bleeding Edge".


All this is for the last 1/10th.



At least that's how I see it but I'm curious how others see this too.....


jeff

 

[Trainmaster]

There are two dynamics at play here, as I see it. One is the love of technology and the use of advanced technology for technology's sake without regard to cost/reliability/benefit. Driving this overuse of complexity is a government that has turned on its people and is simply out of control.

There was a time that complex cutting-edge stuff was offered for those who wanted to pay to play with it and basic things were available for those who wanted them. We were a more free people back then.

Of course human nature will always pursue perfection. So there will always be those who want to get better and will spend double to suck out that last hundredth of a percent of speed/reliability or efficiency. But a society that imposes that mantra on everyone can lead toward oppressing those who don't agree with government's mandate. That's not how a free society's supposed to work.

 

[bobmbx]

Keep in mind we live in a time when government says its ok for a company to advertise and sell a product or service as "unlimited", and then puts limits on it. NASCAR was born in the garage by guys trying new things to go faster. Now, the way to victory lane is not through innovation but through pit strategy and being lucky enough to not get involved in a crash. If you examine the rules of NASCAR and the way they are implemented, every team could switch to pedal-powered tricycles and the road to the championship would be the same. Pit strategy and no crashes.

Currently, innovation is merely the effort to comply, not discover.

 

[powerboatr]

fake indian, he was really Italian , i think i read somewhere ..it was a shocker to me to when i found out.
anywhooooo
i like the clean center of the roads now vice what the were in the 70s and into the 80s and now they are real clean.

i have to dig up my book about a F1 engine using a spark plug in a crevice right next to a fuel injector that creates a very similar small combustion area very similar in theory to the honda ccvc or was it cvcc? engines form days gone by. any way the result is impressive and makes terrible power..we could never get without innovation and the human drive to meet government mandates it also gained a 45 % thermal efficiency
this is in a 1.6 liter v6 engine that jumped from 850 hp to nearly 1000 hp.
read all about it in www.ADandP.media november issue

 

[jeff kushner]

I read a little about how they neutered NASCAR and like many things, the IDEA was sound but I think they fumbled it. The idea of making all engines equal isn't bad because it allows those of little means($$$$) to compete with the Factory teams BUT it destroys engine innovation and instead, as Bob pointed out, the race very often comes down to pit strategy & efficiency.......but wait a minute, isn't that where races have been won for 100 years? Yup....so what should they do? 200mph is about all that Talladega can run, Road America a bit more I think and their engines, restricted as they are (they reduced the holes in the restrictor plate another 1/16th or 3/32s(?) this season) can still break loose on both tracks. They don't NEED more engine but isn't that what racing is all about?

I know that when we raced, two poor-assed wannabe racers started in club racing and we progressed. I was taken under a guru's wing & got our engine much faster and we even raced in some endurance races with "the big boys". Longevity is key in that genre so build quality and prep becomes as important as the pit crew and even led a couple of laps. The point is, had we been better riders, we may have been able to win because we were able to port our engines to that last 1/10th....just like they did, then back a couple of hairs to make it last.

We were getting over 200hp from 500cc GP engines- just 30 cubic inches...yeah, check the record. We KNOW how to make power, as the article posted above shows as well.....and we knew how back then too, the car guys were getting their parts straight from the track and we riders finally got into the act with the original '69 H1....but in '69, people got nervous and in '70...we know the rest.

Be wary it doesn't happen again as more and more HP is available to the public!

jeff

 

[chuck s]

You youngsters and your computers. Cost me over $150 to add 8K (kilobyes!) of static RAM to my Heathkit H8 memory card so I could run BASIC which needed a minimum of 16K (there is it again) of RAM. No sure there's enough places on my calculator to translate what the 16Gig in my laptop would be in 1970's RAM prices.

Most of the innovations I see for our cars and trucks are not road legal -- off road only. Doesn't stop anyone. We still think we're smarter than the factory engineers and play with intake, exhaust, and ECU tuning. Race tracks don't seem to add anything.

Automobile racing used to be developmental. That's long past. Speeds got beyond the ability of the tracks to hold them so are restricted to the boring level. On the oval tracks drivers only need to press their right foot to the floor and steer a little bit. Skill seems secondary to courage at those speeds. Road courses are a bit more challenging but several hundred repetitions of the same corner means you know how to get thru it fast. The only exception appears to be rally driving on actual roads -- any left in the US?

Heck NASCAR isn't about stock cars anyway, they're all the same chassis with the same tires and same fuel like big go-carts and just painted to resemble stock cars. The Formula cars ain't any better with all their restrictions. Find some old sedan races on YouTube and watch those old Cortinas run fast corners in road races with their inside front tire off the pavement. Much more fun.

-- Chuck

 

[bobmbx]

With an eye towards driver, fan, and environmental safety, NASCAR announced today that starting in 2022, all races will be conducted via a Play Station interface.

 

[1955moose]

A 53 Hudson hornet, vs a 53 Chrysler hemi,vs a Oldsmobile 88. That's Nascar. Run what you brung! Back in the John Wayne screech around the track balls out racing days. Even motorcycle racing back in the days didn't use restriction plates, like the Japanese bikes do in mile flat track. Come on let Harley step up and build a faster xr750, don't make Kawasaki, or Yamaha have to detune to keep it even. I'm all pro American, but how hard would it be to squeeze out another 10-15 hp to be even. Hell they've been building the same motor since 1969, you'd think they'd be able to bump it by now.


Sent from my N9131 using Tapatalk

 

[jeff kushner]

Forget the XR750, yes I said Motorcycle Sacrilege by saying to forget arguably one of the best bikes ever built.....but look what Indian has built.....an XR slayer! In the FTR750 that won it all, it's first year out!


jeff