CLASSIC!!!

Well I'm not surprised to hear they're bloody dear, but how much is "not
a lot in it" (out of curiousity ?) 50g or 300g or 750g ? (the pair vs
one obviously) - pretty hard to do an even comparison though I guess

JL

 

Geoff said "maintain", not "detach". Maintenance of a rear shock
involves disassembly, replacement of worn internals, refilling with
fresh oil, reassembly and recharging with fresh gas, not just undoing
two bolts to take it off the bike.

....and in any event, I'm yet to meet a linkage monoshock assembly which
I can't take apart in half an hour. Even the one on my R1, which shares
the cutout in the underbraced swingarm with the link pipe for the
underseat exhaust, isn't really a challenge, and the only reason I had
to **** with it now instead of in 30,000kms time was because I fitted an
Ohlins.

The rest of your post was too stupid to read; replying to it would put
me at risk of a nosebleed.

 

No, it took another six years after that, and even then the bike felt
like it was barely trying.

Yup. If an inline-four engine in an alloy-beam frame is the solution
that works, and what the other guys came up with has some obvious flaws,
what do you do; fix those flaws or try to reinvent the wheel?

Besides, making things light is *hard*.

Between its introduction in 1985 and 1991, the GSX-R750 dealt wih
handling issues by gaining weight to make it stiffer so it wouldn't wobble.

Its solution to handling problems, too, was to slap on more metal. By
the time the YZF1000R reset the clock, it was up to a claimed 214kg dry.
Equipped with the same engine, swingarm and wheels, the Tunderace
managed to be 20kg lighter.

Baloney. Next to everything else that was available at the time, the
Blade was a generation ahead. The ergonomics weren't much different, but
the dynamics still feel current next to bikes they're coming out with
today. That can't be said about anything the Blade went up against when
it was new.

 

OK so it was a lighter and stiffer version of what the opposition had been
making for 5(?) years.
(An "almost-as-good version of what the other manufacturers had produced 12
months earlier" perhaps?)

Nothing new or different then? ('cept the holes?)
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/innovation

 

Sure, "almost as good"... so long as we teleport ourselves into that
parallel universe where "almost as good" is implied by adjectives such
as "lighter" and "stiffer".

The cost-cutting would've been things like leaving out compression
damping adjustment and holding off on the plastic-lens headlights
until 1994.

Honda have dropped no small number of engineering bollocks - they left
the CBR600 stuck with a steel frame until 1999, they've let the
VTR1000 wither on the vine, they've refused to put the V4 motor on a
diet - but the FireBlade's their one direction-chaging design of the
last two decades where credit's due. When the Blade came out, it made
everyone work harder building light bikes in place of heavy ones, much
as the CB750 Four made everyone work harder building reliable bikes in
place of ones which broke down all the time.

 

So they took an addional half-decade and revised the design enough to
actually make it a little better did they?
Certainly not "innovative" though.

You forgot the fake upside-down forks of the Fireblade. Add in the fake
alloy-frames, fake bell-mouths, fake square-section tubing, fake mag-wheels
and we start to see what Honda's contribution it motorcycling innovation
really is.
I consider the truly innovative steps in production motorcycling since the
60s to be;
Disc brakes
Electronic ignition
Fuel Injection
Liquid Cooling
Perimeter "Deltabox"-style frames
Monoshock rear suspension
Antidive front suspension
ABS brakes
Hub-centre steering
Valved exhausts
Fly-by-wire
and maybe self-cancelling indicators.

Honda didn't introduce or perfect much on that list. (But they were happy to
copy them a year or two after everybody else had)

 

Yeah. I think maybe the RZ350 about 1982?

Yamaha on a few models about 1979. It took a few permutations before it
looked like it does today though.

Probably Yamaha XJ750 1981 (for hydraulic antidive. The was a peculiar
mechanical one on the Bol D'or so maybe Honda wo that one)

Yamaha YPVS on the RZ350 for 2-smokes. EXUP on the FZR1000 for four.

Clem

 

oo!

 

I was going to say Elf, but according to That Authoritative Source
(Wikipedia) the idea dates back to the 1920's:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hub-center_steering

Yamaha were latecomers in the 1990's.

Why a bike with a well-deserved reputation for unprovoked wheelies
needed indicators at all, let alone self-cancelling ones, is one of
autmotive history's more interesting puzzles.

 

Yeah but we're talking "production" motorcycles (and we've even narrowed
that down to the mass-produced Jap stuff just to stop Boxer & Moike from
answering
BMW
BMW
BMW
BMW

Well the rider is probably lying on his arse 100m back up the road so
SOMETHING'S gotta turn the indicators off!

 

In aus.motorcycles on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 08:12:43 GMT

And stopping Zebee and Theo pointing out that monoshock rear
suspension on a production motorcycle is Moto Guzzi in 1928. They
had the first fairings in GP racing in about '51 but they didn't
produce one for the road till I think the accessory fairing for the
V7s in 69.

I also have a vague feeling that Rudge did some valve timing work on 2
strokes, I do know they were the first to have linked brakes. On drum
brakes...

Zebee

 

Maintenance of a rear shock (for me at least) involves removing it from
the bike and sending it to a shock specialist who will then rebuild it.

It's been my experience that the total rebuild cost of 2 twin shocks is
almost always considerably less than the cost of rebuilding a single shock.

I've yet to meet a twin shock system I can't take apart in 5 minutes.

Don't get me wrong IK I'm not saying that single shock systems don't
generally offer better suspension control but control isn't much of an
issue at most peoples road riding speeds (hoons aside).

As for the "rest of my post being too stupid to read" are you seriously
suggesting that alloy frames belong on day to day trail bikes where they
get banged around on a daily basis?

They are put on high end moto-x racers because they offer race track
performance advantages (and I never said they didn't do that).

Alloy frames aren't exactly a back of bourke repair your trail bike in a
garage proposition IK... seriously.


G-S

 

The mono shock on the Harley Softail gives an inferior ride to the twin
shocks on the Harley Super Glide.

Not all applications need sports performance remember.

Nope not at all, single shocks do work better in high performance
applications. It's just that roughly 2/3rds of road bikes sold aren't
high performance bikes and twin shocks are generally more suitable for
that sort of application.



G-S

 

Yes I was excluding rising rate linkages.

I was comparing apples with apples rather than with oranges.

The improvement in ride/handling performance with most rising rate
linkage single shock systems is not due to the single shock but due to
the rising rate linkage system.


G-S

 

Apples with oranges mate ! Even this anti-HD neophyte knows what a
compromised suspension system the softail has in order to pretend it's
a rigid. If you're going to compare the worst possible monoshock setup
that could be designed with a fairly run of the mill twin shock
(there's definitely better around), then I reserve the right to
compare the sprung hub (via two really crappy twinshocks) AJS "ramrod
sword of baal" referred to in another thread with say an ohlins
equipped FJR1300 - it's about as far a comparison !!!

Indeed but some designs are about aesthetics not performance, so you
can hardly try and use them as a performance comparison !

Bollocks. I'll cop "you can't tell the difference at low speeds and
low stress" but I won't cop work better / more suitable.
Indistinguishable doesn't equal better.

JL

 

Bloody bush lawyers, so because one system allows you to easily
engineer a better system with zero effort and one doesn't then you
exclude it ? That's a pretty artificial argument. I'd be hard pressed
to come up with a monoshock system less than a decade old that DIDN'T
have a rising rate linkage - are there any ? It's one of the key
advantages of a monoshock (aside from weight) you can easily implement
one.

Besides which it's an artificial exclusion - the original proposition
was that twin shocks were better than mono - now you want to exclude
99.99% of monoshock implementations in the real world ?

So what you really meant was if you really badly **** up implementing
a mono shock then a twin shock system is better. In which case, OK I
agree.

I think you rather made my argument for me.

JL

 

yea Honda are boring... What colours do you get shitcatis in?
fuckin heaps boring.

 

Won't someone think of the poor, overworked suspension specialist?

That's like the argument about adjustment... disassembling the rear
suspension is a once-in-30,000km proposition. I humbly submit that an
extra 10mins to take the shock out and an extra 10mins to put it back
in isn't really an issue, considering the infrequency of the job...
and besides, taking off twin shocks needs to be done standing up or,
at best, kneeling. With a linkage monoshock, you get to have a lie-
down.

Yes, but sensible types who, presumably, like to go touring end up
having their panniers stick out further because the twin shocks won't
let them tuck in tight against the tail of the bike. 8^)~

Not yours, Devo's, with the twin shocks previously declared to be of
equivalent spec mutating into a set of cheapies...

Which is why my original comment stated,

True, but if you've just cartwheeled a dirtbike spectacularly enough
to bend the frame, would you really still be able to ride it even if
some bearded bloke in a bushie's hat did fix it with his oxy?

The funny thing is that the alloy frames of the current crop of
motocrossers and enduro bikes actually appear to be stupidly strong,
although I have nothing more definitive than the crash compilations in
FMX videos to back that up. Way back when they used to get 50-foot
high jumps wrong on steel-backbone-framed bikes, the bike'd hit the
ground and, as often as not, the steering head would collapse and the
front wheel'd end up under the engine cradles. Now, the bikes appear
to just go *boing* straight back into the air for a more gentle
subsequent landing.

 

Paragraphs and proper punctuation needed.

 

Actually I take the shocks off the trail bike after every afternoon ride
through the mud pits, otherwise the grit gets into the bushes and
stuffs them.

I admit that the drought has made the mud less errrr *splooshy* and
there is less of it but removing twin shocks is easy enough that even
lazy slack me doesn't mind doing it.

Cleaning the mono shock unit on a modern trail bike properly is a right
pain in the arse (seriously).

So what I tend to see are lots of trail bikes that people use high
pressure cleaners on at short distances and up and under and around the
rear shock units.

This I believe contributes to the significantly shorter suspension life
that the mono shock trail bikes offer...


G-S