Car Thread

[mustang_flht]

Hi,

 

And the MOTO-GUZZI 500 V8, the best sound of motorcycle, Forza Italia 😁

 

 

 

 

 

 

[michaelwjones]

3 minutes ago, mustang_flht said:

Hi,

 

And the MOTO-GUZZI 500 V8, the best sound of motorcycle, Forza Italia 😁

 

Several years ago at the Frist here in Nashvegas fully restored M-Gs were on display and and are truly works of art, IMHO. I guess that's why they were on display at the museum...

[Islander]

On 8/2/2022 at 8:39 AM, Schu said:

Honda Honda RC162 250cc  rev'ed to 22,000 rpm's in 1961

 

Yes, but it was a 6-cylinder bike, so each cylinder (or piston, to be precise) displaced only 42 cc.  With pistons the size of salt shakers, they’re so light that the stresses they undergo are greatly reduced, plus the stroke was very short, so the piston speed may not have been as crazy high as the revs would lead you to expect.

 

Tom Faulds, the director of Honda Canada, had an RC162.  It was on sort of permanent loan to him, so I got to hear it at Mosport, revving out as it would in a race, since Tom had the track to himself, and he had been a competitive racer in the Sixties.  Where is that bike now?  Unfortunately, Tom managed to crash it, and Honda politely asked for it back, so it now resides at Honda in Japan.

 

It was a bit odd to hear the sound of the RC162 at high revs.  The exhaust pulses blended together, so it sounded more like a 2-stroke than a typical 4-stroke.  It was a kind of wail, but that was in 1978 or so, so my auditory memory is not quite crystal sharp looking back that many decades.

 

Incidentally, that engine was approaching the maximum possible rpm for a gasoline-powered engine.  The RC162 was a special case, due to its tiny parts, but with larger engines, there is a maximum possible rpm, and it has nothing to do with valve technology, or stresses in the piston and crankshaft.  It has everything to do with piston speed and the flame travel speed.  Pistons could (it hasn’t happened yet) reach a speed where the flame in the combustion chamber can barely keep up with the speed at which the piston is retreating from it.  Of course, at that speed, the rpm would be self-limiting, because if the pressure in the expanding volume of the combustion space can’t remain high enough to push the pistons, then the revs can’t increase beyond that point.

 

Racing engineers really are approaching theoretical limits that can’t be exceeded.  Before, the issues were the materials available, starting with iron cylinders and brass heads, and including the oils and grades of gasoline that could be obtained.  Decade after decade, better materials were found, better oils were formulated, although for a long time the best oils were based on castor beans, due to their very high film strength, so that even under low oil pressure situations metal-to-metal contact rarely occurred.  That oil was important enough that Castrol took their name from it.  I used Castrol R30 in my TD-3 Yamaha race bike in the Seventies, and it did smell great, as well as making seizures much less likely.

 

So here we are today.  The material and lubricant issues have mostly been solved, as well as the design factors.  Now the bikes have so much power that the trend is toward making the bikes easier to ride, with wider power bands, and even different crankshaft designs for better traction.  Yamaha came out with their crossplane crank that spaces the engine’s power pulses irregularly, which lets the tire grab traction in the spaces between pulses, just like the Big Bang 2-stroke engines in the 1990s and early 2000s.  This allows the rider to roll on the power earlier during corner exits, in effect making every straight a bit longer.  You can imagine what a help that would be.  The crossplane crankshaft is even part of the R1 super sport street bike.  The engine sound has a lower pitch than engines with “flat” crankshafts, a sort of deep buzzy sound.

[Islander]

42 minutes ago, mustang_flht said:

Hi,

 

And the MOTO-GUZZI 500 V8, the best sound of motorcycle, Forza Italia 😁

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A very interesting bike.  A 500 cc V-8!  Like the RC162, having tiny parts allows much higher revs and therefore much more power is possible.  That “dustbin” fairing helped, too.  Between that great engine and the very aerodynamic fairing, that bike could reach 175 mph/282 km/hr.  And this was in 1957!  Imagine going that fast on 1957 tires, and then having to grab a big handful of those 1957 brakes.  Scary stuff.  Within a few years, those fairings were banned, partly due to the speeds that the bikes weren’t really ready for, and partly due to their susceptibility to crosswind-induced instability.  The bike wasn’t around for long either, partly due to the expense and complication of it.  Even so, the Moto-Guzzi V-8 is and always will be an icon of motorcycling technology.

[Dave A]

Any of you have a chance stop by the Barber Motorsports Museum in Birmingham,AL. It will take a day to go through.

[Islander]

2 minutes ago, Dave A said:

Any of you have a chance stop by the Barber Motorsports Museum in Birmingham,AL. It will take a day to go through.

 

Thanks for the tip, Dave.  Another great museum to visit is the Sammy Miller museum in England, and Sammy is often around.  He was a very competitive road racer, then when he got older, he switched to trials riding, and won many championships.  There are some videos about the museum on YouTube.  It’s definitely worth a look.

[OO1]

1 hour ago, Schu said:

Castor oil

 

Two bikes of mine... a number of years ago (late 1990's)

 

 

 

A friends Shop...

 

 

 TZ  Yamaha's ,    is that THE  illegal kenny  Roberts flat track  TZ 750  or is it a replica 

[Schu]

4 minutes ago, OO1 said:

 TZ  Yamaha's ,    is that THE  illegal kenny  Roberts flat track  TZ 750  or is it a replica 

 

that's it... those ALL are the real deal. I have more bikes from that era.

[OO1]

20 minutes ago, Schu said:

 

that's it... those ALL are the real deal. I have more bikes from that era.

Fantastic

[RocketFoot]

On 7/27/2022 at 6:02 PM, OO1 said:

what kind of motor -----tranny is she running   

302 built to 306 with mild cam and 289 heads.  It has a C4 auto transmission.  Just enough to make some noise but still run on pump gas all weekend!

[Schu]

I worked here when I was a teenager... Racing restorations in Long Beach in the early 1970's... when the men were fat and the tires were skinny.

 

this car is so rare, there were less than a handful left at that point.

 

 

 

this video is one I found on youtube of the car, probably after it was sold after Jim passed away and rebuilt to a different spec.

 

 

[OO1]

1 minute ago, RocketFoot said:

302 built to 306 with mild cam and 289 heads.  It has a C4 auto transmission.  Just enough to make some noise but still run on pump gas all weekend!

it's in great shape ,  paint , body , motor 

[RocketFoot]

9 minutes ago, OO1 said:

it's in great shape ,  paint , body , motor 

She's mint!  I do need a new carb and 4 new tires though!  I have been spending fun money on stereo stuff instead of car parts lately, LOL!!

[OO1]

@Schu    never seen a Veritas  ,   Tx  For sharing  , the pictures of such a rare car 

[geezin']

TZ750s while cool as hell are so pedestrian.

 

 

Only 10 of these exist. And sadly John Britten is gone.

 

 

 

[Islander]

6 hours ago, Schu said:

Castor oil

 

Two bikes of mine... a number of years ago (late 1990's)

 

 

 

A friends Shop...

 

 

 

Nice bikes.  The Daytona Special is cool, and where did you find the RD250?  Were they ever sold in the US, or is that a European model?  I like the blue paint.  We only got the red 350s in Canada.

 

I see Eddie Lawson's leathers took a beating.  You don't see very many crash pictures in the American magazines, but you see it occasionally in the European mags.  Pity they're so damned expensive, like $15 or more per issue.  The Cagiva elephant is white in Europe, But because of the negative connotations of a white elephant, the elephant is grey over here and at races.  I don't know if they switched over the logo everywhere.

[Islander]

46 minutes ago, geezin' said:

TZ750s while cool as hell are so pedestrian.

 

 

Only 10 of these exist. And sadly John Britten is gone.

 

 

 

 

Yes, John Britten was taken way too early.  I did get to see and hear one of his bikes at the Sportbike Rally in Parry Sound, Ontario.  It was one of a kind, and so was he.

[Schu]

16 hours ago, geezin' said:

 

 

 

Only 10 of these exist. And sadly John Britten is gone.

 

 

 

 

 

I almost bought one of those brittens YEARS ago... there was a point when one or two cam up for sale at auctions... those days are long gone. I think it sold at that auction for less than 25k... to bad I wasnt more forward thinking.

[geezin']

Last one I saw sold for $250K usd in the early 2000s. They'd go for over a million now. And his wife is making sure parts are available for them too. You'll wait but she'll see that they're made for you.

[Schu]