TECH: Torquing factors: Vehicles vs. Bikes

Alan Dowds enlightens us…

My Dad, Jim Dowds, began his working life as a automotive mechanic, although by the point I got here alongside, he had moved on to work on the IBM pc manufacturing facility in Greenock. Amazingly, again within the Nineteen Sixties, computer systems had lots of mechanical components in them – solenoids, relays and the like – which means hands-on sensible abilities have been helpful to the American mainframe maker.

He all the time labored on his personal vehicles although, so I grew up watching him keep and restore a collection of Nineteen Seventies and 80s motors – from a Ford Anglia and a few Austin Allegros to a Vauxhall Viva. Then, once I acquired my first bike – a Honda CG125 – he had the instruments, the talents and the boldness to assist me learn to repair the bloody factor. Six months later, I had handed my check and had an honest summer season job, that allow me purchase an enormous bike – a Kawasaki GPz550, which felt like an utter rocketship. After all, I quickly blew that up, and was stripping it down on the kitchen desk, with assist from my outdated Dad once more.

Now, although, he was amazed by the hi-tech equipment earlier than him. The GPz550 engine was an outdated design by 1990 once I purchased it, with air-cooling and two valves per cylinder – but it surely had double overhead camshafts, 4 particular person carburettors, CDI ignition and 130bhp/litre efficiency. By comparability, the Nineteen Sixties and 70s vehicles he was used to had pushrods, or perhaps a single overhead camshaft. They’d factors ignition, one reasonably nasty carburettor, little in the way in which of efficiency engineering in any respect, and made perhaps 70bhp from a 1600cc inline-four.

Over the following couple of many years, I labored away by myself bikes – and my very own vehicles. And that hands-on expertise confirmed that motorbike engines have been miles forward of vehicles. The Japanese bikes I owned had engines with all-aluminium crankcases and barrels as a substitute of forged iron blocks, four- or five-valve heads as a substitute of two, and digital ignition as a substitute of factors, coil and mechanical distributor. Okay, I used to be coping with regular household vehicles, not high-end sports activities vehicles, however the level remained. Automotive engines gave the impression to be designed with the minimal potential effort whereas trendy Japanese bikes – even pretty commonplace fashions – have been on the innovative, making 150bhp/litre with complete reliability. It’s wild to consider it, however the 2002 Ford Ka was utilizing a 60bhp, 1297cc model of the identical Kent OHV engine used within the 1959 Ford Anglia my Dad discovered to spanner on. Even Harley wasn’t attempting to flog a Fifties engine within the twenty first century.

Lately although, issues have swapped round a little bit. Automotive engines are actually a lot larger tech – partly as a result of they need to be to satisfy emissions regs. They’re now filled with high-powered computer systems and sensors to analyse combustion and exhaust processes, whereas turbochargers are frequent to assist cleaner, smaller capability engines make the facility wanted to drive more and more lardy SUVs round. Variable valve timing, direct gas injection, light-weight all-aluminium development, they’ve acquired the lot, and even a reasonably commonplace household automotive now makes over 140bhp/litre.

By comparability, bike engine tech arguably has stagnated a little bit. There are exceptions: the Kawasaki H2 has added a compact engine-driven supercharger (although growth there appears to have stalled), whereas the litre-class superbikes are making 215bhp/litre with pure aspiration, which is an unbelievable achievement. Issues just like the BMW Boxer unit powering the brand new R1300 GS are fabulous designs, making nice energy with the ShiftCam variable valve arrange. Ducati’s desmodromic valve actuation continues to be distinctive, giving it a selected benefit. And there have been spectacular advances in digital driving aids, coupled with ever-smarter ride-by-wire gas injection and engine administration.

However basically, bike engine design has stood nonetheless, and even retrenched, with cheaper, much less highly effective parallel twin engines now dominating a number of essential areas of the market. They’re nice powerplants in their very own manner, after all, however they’re not doing a lot to drive forwards expertise in the way in which that automotive engine design has been doing of late. When you took a 2024 Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade engine again 40 years to 1984, the efficiency would blow the thoughts of any engineer who checked out it. However they might take the design as learn: there’s nothing bizarre about it compared with a up to date machine just like the CB900 or VF750: 4 valves per cylinder; twin overhead chain-drive cams; plain-bearing crankshaft; gentle aluminium pistons; aluminium crankcases; moist clutch; sequential canine gearbox; chain closing drive…

The explanations are manifold, however the gradual decline within the European ‘huge’ bike market has to play an element, whereas the high-performance bike market has declined much more, for causes everyone knows: an getting older demographic, with much less curiosity in sportsbikes to be used on congested, closely policed roads excessive up on the listing. Bikes have needed to meet emissions regs, too, prior to now 20 years, and have tended to take action with much less revolutionary strategies. Certainly, companies are beginning to surrender. Yamaha’s R1 and R6 have been discontinued as a result of the agency doesn’t wish to spend the cash wanted to cross tighter regs. The engines within the substitute R9 and R7 are a lot much less highly effective, however cleaner and cheaper designs.

My Dad handed away a number of years in the past, and whereas he largely gave up engaged on vehicles as he acquired older, he nonetheless knew what was what. He was all the time amazed by the tech within the bikes I visited on over the previous 20 or 30 years – and much more so by the facility they made. And in a pleasingly symmetrical twist, the pc abilities that he gained from working for IBM would now switch properly again into the automotive and bike world the place he started…