The very fact that almost anyone with a modicum of riding experience can jump on 95% of the worlds motorcycles and use them in relative safety to get from point A to B should be a clear sign that the modern motorcycle is a humble technological marvel that takes some previously insurmountable engineering challenges and makes them look about as difficult as finding a Trump supporter at Sturgis. So here’s the top breakthroughs that transformed that arcane 1885 experiment into the modern motorbike we know, love, and ride today.

#1: Suspension

As anyone who’s ever attempted to ride a skateboard on an imperfect surface will know, suspension is a freaking wonderful thing to have. The first motorcycle fitted with some kind of dampening system to protect the rider and bike itself from feeling every little bump and hole in the road’s surface took more than two decades to surface, which is either a great testament to the power of pneumatic tyres or proof that most motorcyclists a just a little bit crazy upstairs. But it was indeed the 1908 Scott that is noted in the history books as the first commercially available motorcycle with front suspension.

Of course, motorcycles at this very early stage of development were nothing more than internal combustion-powered bicycles, and there’s plenty of bicycles around—even to this very day—they get along perfectly well without the need for suspension. But adding an engine to a bike means much more speed, and what may be a relatively mild or avoidable pothole when you are traveling at walking speed can take on a whole level of kidney-pummelling danger when you hit it at speed—or indeed when your forward velocity makes it nigh-on impossible to avoid without losing control.

And what a popular breakthrough it was; almost all motorcycles that took part in WWI had some form of front suspension, meaning that the technology went from rare to commonplace in as little as 6 years. And by 1935, BMW had developed a practical hydraulic damping system to make sure that those road bumps were dispensed of and not just transmitted back to the chassis and rider at a later date.

#2: Electric Starters

You haven’t lived ‘till you’ve almost killed yourself trying to start a kick-only motorcycle in the middle of nowhere while also noticing the approaching storm and the rapidly failing light. Ahhh, moto life’s simple pleasures!

But seriously, kickstarting motorcycles was an amazing deterrent to ensure many people who wanted to ride just plain didn’t. And while it undoubtedly has some very cool upsides for those that can manage to work them, it’s hard to defend them when it comes to practicality and user-friendliness.

Remarkably, the first motorcycle with an electric starter went on sale in 1914 (and only 4 years after the first kickstarted motorcycle from Scott), when the Hendee Motorcycle Company (who would go on to rebrand themselves as the Indian Motorcycle Company in 1926) installed a very early design onto one of their bikes.

Weirdly, though, the system never took off, and believe it or not, it took Honda’s revolutionary CB750 in 1969 before electric starters were small enough, refined enough, and effective enough to provide a real alternative to kickstarters.

Of course, when you think about the added weight an electric starter system adds, it does make sense that riders were willing to forgo it until something truly functional came along. And the fact that most bikes with an electric starter still needed to sport a “back-up” kickstarter as well meant many engineers and riders felt it just wasn’t worth the additional cost and weight. And speaking of Honda breakthroughs…

#3: Disc Brakes

If you still aren’t convinced that Honda and its CB750 pretty much invented modern motorcycling, along with electric starters, the Shizuoka behemoth also fitted a front disc brake to their breakthrough 1969 motorcycle. Unbelievably, early motorcycles had absolutely no brakes at all, apart from those things at the end of your legs your mother gave to you.

Then in 1902, Steffey Motorcycles of Philadelphia included a “spoon” brake (aka “a lever system that rubs on the bike’s tyres to slow them down”) to see if they could stop the mysterious habit their customers had made of crashing into things.

Of course, drum brakes preceded Honda’s fancy new disc system, and even the most ardent disc brake fan would have to admit a properly adjusted drum brake is surprisingly effective. But the devil is in the “properly adjusted” part. See, drum brakes had a regrettable tendency to lose stopping power in the wet and they also have a pretty major dislike of getting hot, which for a brake system is like a boat being afraid of the ocean.

They also needed much more adjustment than this new disc system, and soon enough, they were resigned to the annals of moto history, too. Except if you were the owner of an 80s Jeep, but that’s a funny and non-moto story for another place and time.

#4: Anti Lock Braking

What! More brakes? Anyone would think that braking on a motorcycle was important or something. Jokes aside, here’s a rather sobering point to consider; before ABS systems became more commonplace on motorbikes during the ’90s and ‘00s, a vast majority of riders on the world’s roads would have crashed their bikes rather than been able to bring them to a safe stop if they were forced to perform emergency braking at freeway speeds. Scary, huh?

The undeniable fact here is that when faced with a panic braking situation, riders would just grab a big fistful of lever and lock up the bike’s front tyre, giving them a sudden and very memorable date with Old Man Bitumen and his wife, Misses Gravel Rash. And while many riders might insist that they are skillful enough to be able to control themselves in such situations, the injury and death stats speak for themselves. ABS stops accidents and saves lives. End of story.

In a similar fashion to electric starters, ABS systems were available from the 80s onwards (Thanks again, BMW), but their size, expense and immaturity meant that the moto world just had to sit back and watch as manufacturers refined the systems and effectiveness of the results until ABS became a no-brainer. And then in 2016 or thereabouts (depending on what country you happen to ride in) most places made it mandatory for manufacturers to include ABS on all their bikes.

#5: Fuel Injection

The latest of all these giant leaps was the gradual transition from carburetion to fuel injection. And while some of you may be quick to blame emissions controls for its popularity, that’s not strictly true. While carbs are the hand-down winners when it comes to simplicity and cost, fuel injection pretty much has it beat on all other counts, including fuel efficiency, power, performance, climatic adaptability and user-friendliness.

The 1980 KZ1000G from Kawasaki was the first mass produced, fuel-injected motorcycle (take that BMW) and within a decade the writing was on the wall for the poor old carbie—especially in the four-wheeled world.

By the end of the last decade, even very traditional makers like Royal Enfield were making the shift across to the decidedly not traditional fuel injection systems. And now exactly none of their new bikes are made without it.

For the younger riders amongst us, the fuss here may seem a little over baked, but for the oldies and those who’ve ever had the dubious distinction of owning a properly old motorcycle, the years it takes to get your head round the black magic goings-on required to make an old carbureted bike do what you want it to is beyond most of us in the time-poor modern riding world.

Of course, we’re living through the next big breakthrough right now; that of the electrification of motorcycles. And while it may seem like a strange new world to those that know and love the art of internal combustion, you can bet that just like all the other innovations above, once it’s baked in and commonplace, most of us will be thinking the same thing. How did we ever do without it?

The post The Five Most Important Tech Breakthroughs In Moto History appeared first on webBikeWorld.

See, as we all know far too well, the real challenge with learning about motorcycle physics is that if you get it wrong, you can end up seriously hurting yourself in a motorcycle crash. Compare that to something like cooking or music, where mistakes are just annoying occurrences that you make, figure out and move on from.

But make a proper mistake in the world of motorcycling and the consequences can be hospital, permanent disability, or even a one-way trip to the big MotoGP racetrack in the sky. The result of this game’s high-stakes is that most riders treat the art of riding a bike kind of like a game of Russian roulette—and rightly so. No one should try and get their knee down during their very first ride on a bike. That would be insane.

But what this big “bike on a hinge” attraction at the Moto GP does is allow people to push the limits of motorcycle physics safely; it shows them what happens when a bike leans and provides a greater level of understanding regarding the forces at play. It also breaks down the process into something easy and memorable—and most importantly, it lets participants understand what happens when a bike leans without them actually having to attempt a similar move at high speed.

In essence, they are learning the theory of movement and physical interactions before putting it into practice. That, my custom leather race suit wearing friends, is what they call physics.

So let’s put our moto mortar board hats on and look at what actually is happening when you ride your beloved motorbike down the road and through a set of corners. I’m going to break this whole she-bang down into three main parts: acceleration, braking, and cornering.

Naturally, cornering is the big daddy when it comes to physical forces, so let’s leave that one to last for when you’re properly warmed up.

1. Acceleration Physics

What we are doing here is bringing a common, garden-variety motorcycle from a standstill up to a comfortable cruising speed. Needless to say, at a standstill and with the engine turned off, a motorcycle only has one main force acting on it, and that’s gravity.

Gravity & Torque

Go ahead and turn the engine on. It now has two forces acting on it: gravity and a large rotating mass spinning inside of it. Put simply the pistons, crankshaft and other assorted gubbins that form the rotating mass inside an engine create “torque” (a force that can cause an object to rotate about an axis). Rev the engine and Sir Issac Newton’s third law kicks in here—and it states that “For every action (or force) in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

In this case, as the engine spins up, it also exerts an equal and opposite force on the bike itself. In the case of my BMW and its boxer engine, when I rev the engine at a standstill, the entire bike rocks to the right. This is, in fact, the counter-clockwise rotation of the engine’s crankshaft pushing against the rest of the bike and trying to spin the entire bike in a clockwise direction.

Thanks to gravity, the crank’s rotational axis, and the fact that the bike is resting on the ground, this force translates to the top of the bike moving to the right.

But the best “opposite forces” here are the ones that propel you and your bike forward, namely the ones that this very same spinning engine is imparting on the rear wheel. It does this by pushing the bike forward and in another example of Newton’s third law, it also sees the bike itself push against the road, or if you want to be really dramatic about it, it’s actually the bike trying to spin the entire planet in the equal and opposite direction to the bike’s direction of forward travel.

Take this idea to its logical conclusion, and a bike that had enough mass and torque could stop and/or change the planet’s spin—but that’s a Friday beers conversation we’re not going to have here.

So basically, the force of the engine turning is transmitted to the rear wheel, which pushes against the road and moves the bike forward. And as most motorcycles have a fairly short wheelbase as compared to their centre of gravity and its distance above the road’s surface, a motorcycle that has enough torque applied to its rear wheel will eventually raise its front wheel off the ground.

This is why drag bikes tend to sit low and have very long rear swingarms: the longer the wheelbase of the bike, the harder it is for the torque pumping out of the rear wheel to lift the bike’s front off the ground. And in drag bikes, it’s all about how much force you can impart to the ground without looping the bike and having the thing land on top of you; hence their epic length.

Why Motorcycles Stabilize As You Ride

The other force that comes into play at this point is the force of the bike’s two wheels spinning. Now, unlike the turning force of the engine, this force isn’t just present under acceleration. Instead, it is present at all times and is entirely reliant on the speed that both the wheels are spinning at. A motorcycle won’t want to wheelie if you are cruising at a constant speed, but the angular momentum generated by the mass of the spinning wheels and tyres is constant. And thanks to the rules of conservation of angular momentum, the bike’s spinning wheels will tend to keep the motorcycle upright and travelling in a straight line.

Don’t believe me? Then think about how many times you have seen a MotoGP rider have an off only to see their bike right itself and continue on in a straight line until it hits a barrier. That, my friends, is the wheels conserving angular momentum. And how many of you have seen a stationary bike stand up by itself without a stand? Exactly none, right? Again, that’s because the bike’s wheels are not spinning—and therefore there are exactly no forces at work apart from gravity.

The final main force here is also regarding good ol’ Newton. He also stated that objects at rest will remain at rest. So when you apply the throttle and the bike moves off, your body will want to stay stationary. At gentle accelerations this is barely perceptible, but if you really give it some beans, the bike will launch forward and you will get the feeling of your body wanting to slide backward off the bike.

The most natural reaction here is to tighten your grip on the bars, but guess what? That’s right, your primary handhold on the bike is also the throttle; and that’s that part that makes the bike go faster. Ever heard of whiskey throttle? Boom.

The other (albeit more minor) force at play here is wind resistance, which also pushes against you and the bike. But we won’t go into that here because unless you plan on a session at the local race track, the forces aren’t enough to have any meaningful effect at regular speeds. Certainly not one that’ll endanger you.

ACCELERATION SAFETY LESSON: During acceleration, torque forces will counteract the force of gravity keeping your bike’s front wheel on the road, reducing the effectiveness of the steering and possibly raising the front wheel off the ground. The force of a motorcycle’s spinning wheels keeps the bike upright and wanting to head straight. Your body will want to “stay behind” when your motorcycle accelerates, affecting your posture, grip on the bars and how much throttle you are applying.

2. Braking Physics

I’ll avoid repeating myself here, so rest assured that a bike will always have the force of gravity pushing it downwards and if it’s moving, the wheels will have angular momentum. But what happens when you apply the brakes on a bike? Funnily enough, it’s pretty much the exact opposite of what happens when you accelerate hard. If you think about it, a bike under hard acceleration will wheelie, but what does a bike under hard braking do? That’s right, it’ll do a reverse wheelie, or a “stoppie”. Fun if you are expecting it and can control it, but super dangerous and even deadly if you aren’t.

Friction & Inertia

When you apply the brakes with enough force, the friction that occurs between the front tyre and the road’s surface does the opposite to the bike that engine torque does; as the bike’s centre of gravity is above the road’s surface, it will tend to try and rotate the entire bike around the point where the tyre is in contact with the road because the bike’s mass is above that point. Again, if the bike was as long and low as a car, this wouldn’t happen.

The very same forces lift the rear wheel off the ground, really reducing its effectiveness in the overall stopping equation. In cars, the weight distribution is different, so you’ll never see a car do an emergency braking manoeuvre and flip on its roof. Instead you’ll just see it dive so the nose goes down and the rear comes up. Likewise, a car under strong acceleration forces will raise its nose and squat at the back.

Like on cars, ABS—or anti-lock braking systems—on bikes stops your wheels from locking up entirely under heavy braking. For cars, this is important as you can’t steer a car with locked wheels. But as an additional bonus on bikes, it’ll also stop you from being launched over the bars of a bike that otherwise would have done a spontaneous cartwheel. Make no mistakes, a full emergency stop on a motorcycle is a very dangerous and avoid-at-all costs event, but it’s good to know that ABS has your back (and your hands, face, legs and arms) if it does happen.

The other “same but opposite” force here is the one where your body that’s in motion will want to stay in motion. So instead of being forced off the back of the bike as with acceleration, here you’ll be forced forwards towards the handlebars as the bike slows and you don’t. Luckily there’s no opposite to whisky throttle (no, vodka braking is not a thing) and your average riding posture means that it’s a lot easier to deal with braking forces simply by pushing against the bars than it is for “pulling” acceleration forces.

BRAKING SAFETY LESSONS: Hard braking on a bike without ABS will raise the rear wheel and possibly throw you over the handlebars. Of all the emergency situations that can occur on a bike, hard braking is the one you want to avoid the most. If there’s real speed involved, it will almost always put you in serious danger. And despite what seasoned bikers will tell you, it’s incredibly hard to modulate your braking force on a non-ABS motorcycle in an emergency. 95% of riders—even the good ones—will just apply all the brake at once given a big enough scare.

3. Cornering Physics

OK. This is where the rubber REALLY hits the road. The physics involved in cornering a bike are super complex, so we’ll only cover off the most important ones here. Sharpen your imaginary pencils and pay attention. It could save your life.

Picture a snapshot of a motorcycle taken mid-corner. These aren’t your average urban corners, either. While the physics are largely the same, for the sake of argument, let’s imagine a big sweeping rural corner. The ones that last more than a few seconds and see you and the bike leaned over a good amount. Here there are three main forces at play.

Equilibrium (Balance) & Centrifugal Force

At this imaginary frozen moment, the bike is leaned over at (say) 45 degrees. Now obviously if you did that while stationary and with your feet on the pegs, the bike would just come crashing down. But why doesn’t it? It’s because there is an equilibrium—or balance—of forces pulling the bike downwards (gravity) and wanting to push it upright. This upright one is a “centrifugal” force. Centrifugal quite literally means “centre fleeing”; and now you can see why. This force pushes you away from the centre of the turn.

In short, the lean the rider imparts on the bike by their inputs into the ’bars and transferring their bodyweight to the inside of the corner counteracts the force that wants you and the bike to be launched off the road and into the undergrowth like a kid on a merry-go-round that’s been spun up too fast.

The life-saving force here is of course the friction between the bike’s wheels and the road. It’s the same friction that also helps your wheels rise off the road when pinning the throttle and smashing the brakes above, so just when you think friction maybe kinda sucks, here it is saving your life. No friction, no cornering.

And all that’s only considering the forces at play in one axis of a bike leaning. Now imagine looking at all the other forces at play. The wind resistance pushing you and the bike backwards. The angular momentum of the spinning wheels wanting to sit the bike upright and keep it going in a straight line. And to all that, you can add the angular momentum and torque forces at play as the engine in the bike changes both revs and undergoes changes of angular momentum as its spinning mass is moved around. And what about the whole countersteering thing? My god. The helmeted mind boggles.

Now you can probably start to picture why it’s really not a good idea to brake hard mid-corner. Or accelerate hard. Adding a rapid change in speed and friction to this already complex equation and all hell will break loose.

In the end, the fact that motorcycles can corner at all now seems kind of remarkable, doesn’t it? It’s also mindblowing to know just how far you can take this whole equation when you look at a MotoGP bike cornering. Them getting their knees, elbows and even helmets (gulp) to touch the ground is nothing more than an attempt by the riders to reach a cornering equilibrium, but in this case that balance allows them to corner faster without being thrown off.

Similarly, if you wanted to build the world’s fastest MotoGP bike, all you’d need to do would be to allow it to lean over further than the 64 degrees we referenced at the start of this piece.

As the speed through the corner increases, so do the Centrifugal forces wanting to toss you off. Balance that with a greater lean angle—hence allowing more gravity to come into play to balance the centre fleeing—and you, my friends, now have a race winning bike. If you could just figure out how to keep enough rubber on the road, where to put the rider’s feet and how to design a bike that looks like an upside down pyramid.

Put it all together properly and this is what physics (and a buttload of skill) can do.

CORNERING SAFETY LESSONS: Cornering a motorcycle is about balancing your lean angle (i.e. the force gravity is pulling over the leaning bike) with the centrifugal forces trying to lift the bike up and push you to the outside of the corner. A large percentage of cornering accidents occur with the phenomena of target fixation; a condition where a rider loses faith in the bike’s ability to corner and returns it to an upright position, therefore running wide. Always look through a corner  and never into it, and never make any sudden applications of brake, throttle or steering once you have committed to a corner. Remember that the weakest link in the chain is you; almost all motorcycles can corner much harder than you can.

The post The Physics of Motorcycling appeared first on webBikeWorld.

What you don’t think about at first, however, is that it is also a nation that has a tight and very significant relationship with motorcycles. More specifically, it is a nation that had a great first date with mopeds, moved in with the scooter, and is now married to dual-sport, dirt, and ADV bikes, although you will still find some modern cruisers and sportbikes around. There are many reasons why the Finnish love their bikes—way too many to write a single article on—so we will focus on the three most well-known.

So sit back with some traditional mustamakkara from Tampere, or a plate of mämmi if you’re especially adventurous, and let’s investigate this friendly nation’s obsession with two-wheeled motorized transportation.

The Pappa-Tunturi Motorcycle Clubs

Throughout Finland’s entire history as a nation, which dates back to only 1917 when it declared independence after being a part of the Swedish Empire and then a duchy of the Russian Empire until the Soviet Revolution, there has been a lot of extremely rapid, high-quality, and high-tech engineering and design occurring. In the city of Turku, on the South-Western coast of Finland, brothers Aarne and Eero Harkke opened a small bicycle repair shop in 1922 called Pyöräkellari Oy. What started out as a repair shop quickly evolved into small-scale bicycle manufacturing.

The name of the company was changed to Tunturi, the Finnish word for a fell, or a large, barren landscape that is moderately hilly, as these were bicycles that were meant to be able to be ridden “from Helsinki to Lapland and back again.” The small shop was soon traded for a factory as the sturdy, reliable bicycles became a near-overnight sensation.

It was around 1950 that Tunturi encountered their greatest success, however, when taking all they had learned over the years, they put a tiny 50cc, single carburetor engine on a specifically built frame, and within just a couple of years, they were the domestic market leader by a fair percentage in mopeds.

From the 50s up to the early 90s, Pappa Tunturis were as indistinguishably a part of the Finnish landscape as spruce trees, reindeer, and moose.  Because it was 50cc, there was no license requirement to ride one in the otherwise quite strict Finnish road laws, and because it was a moped, it was also technically a bicycle. Because of this, two large groups of riders appeared. Teens, who are allowed in Finland to start riding mopeds at age 15, suddenly had a “motorcycle” without needing a license.

The second group of riders, as it happens, were older Finns that did not have a driver’s license, or were considered too old to be granted one, leading to the moped being nicknamed the Pappa-Tunturi, literally “Grandpa Fell.” It was also incredibly sturdy, like a two-stroke Nokia 3310, in that it would work on the hottest of summer days and the coldest of winter nights. You could drop it off the top of a building and it would dent the sidewalk instead of breaking.

Thanks to such sturdy and inexpensive innovations, it was not long before small motorcycle/moped clubs started to pop up across the country. Most often small community clubs, they steadily grew in popularity among the moped-loving Finns. One of the strangest of these clubs was Halvatun Papat, which translates roughly to mean “Heck’s Grandpas.” Despite what people say about them, the Finns do actually have a wicked sense of humor; the name is a pretty direct stab at the name “Hell’s Angels.”

Of course, with Finland being one of the big three nations that produce some of the best rock and metal in the world, it was no surprise when Halvatun Papat, a club only ten members strong, turned into a comedy music group, using the Pappa-Tunturi as both transportation and, after making some modifications to one, as a musical instrument for their rock songs.

Somehow, in a very Finnish way, this turned into TV sketches about a rowdy motorcycle club riding Pappa Tunturi’s. The sketches often show the members showing their “male prowess and bravery,” like the one involving their “initiation ritual,” which requires a new member to, well, relieve himself on an electric fence. If you want to watch the minute-long sketch, you can see it here, but it is very early 1990s Finnish humor and a bit crass, so viewer discretion is advised.

Today, you can still find moped clubs all over Finland. These either require members to have a moped of any kind—or, for the more discreet clubs, you need to have a working, rideable Pappa Tunturi. Unlike motorcycle clubs pretty much everywhere else in the world, the objective of these clubs is not so much to go riding all the time. Quite often, they’ll meet up at a cafe or someone’s home and sit around talking about fond memories of their Tunturi mopeds while sipping coffee, as many of these clubs have some quite senior members, often over 60 years old, who had grown up with their Pappa-Tunturi and have hundreds of thousands of kilometers on the odometer.

When they do go on group rides, it is often described as the sound of a swarm of bees approaching, and then you’re passed by about 20 riders on their Pappas going the speed limit and enjoying the hell out of the ride. No massive, dangerous sport-bike highway takeovers, no rolling thunder rides that stretch for a mile or two, just 10 to 20 riders on their mopeds buzzing on by with a happy little wave to you.

That, in a nutshell, is what makes the Pappa-Tunturi moped clubs so special. It’s a series of clubs dedicated to one model, from one manufacturer, that can be fixed with a hammer and a couple of curse words, some of them being over 40 years old and still in rideable shape, and it allows the older generation to get that feeling of riding together that is often excluded in other motorcycle clubs around the world.

Oh, and just as a note—most Finns like their coffee black, if you ever meet up with one of the clubs when you visit Finland and want to chat with them about it.

Why Dual Sports & ADVs Are the Favorite Bikes to Own in Finland

Touching back on the first thoughts that occur when you think about Finland, one of them is that the country, despite having less than 6 million citizens, is an information technology powerhouse. A lot of innovation has come from the small population, especially when compared to the nearly 400 million existing US citizens and over 36 million Canadian citizens.

To list just a few—Nokia is Finnish, and their brick phones and flip phones were nigh indestructible at the turn of the century (and also had many cell phone and smartphone firsts). As mentioned already, Linus Torvalds is from Finland, still lives there, and is the creator of Linux, which made Unix operating systems much more accessible to the commercial and home-use markets. A few years back, a not-very-well-known smartphone game appeared called Angry Birds, developed by a small Finnish startup called Rovio that only made several billions of dollars from licensing, direct sales, and a movie made about the game.

The reason we are pointing this out is that, once you go North or NorthEast of Tampere—which is the city with the highest inland population (244,000) of any of the Nordic countries—you enter into the famous Pohjanmaa and Savo counties of the nation. In English, these counties are often grouped together and called “The Land of 1,000 Lakes,” and apart from the main E75 highway that snakes its way up to Utsjoki (the Northernmost municipality in the country in Lapland county), the roads are gravel or packed dirt. Some of those roads famously host the 1,000 Lakes Rally of the World Rally Championship, which is known as one of the fastest, most scenic, and most technical rallies on the calendar.

If you were just taking the E75 highway up and down the nation, then a cruiser, a sportbike , or even a neo-retro bike would serve you perfectly well. However, there are two important factors to consider about the nature of Finland.

One: Finland is in the Northern Baltic/West Ural Mountains region, which creates a perfect weather inversion system that plunges the country into long, bitter, and very cold winters. Two: lots of people have cabins or small cottages out near one of the over 1,000 lakes in the middle of the country, and these are often quite far away from the main E75 highway to give the most peace and quiet possible.

If you’ve ever tried to ride a sportbike with street sports tires over gravel, it feels like you’re trying to balance on top of a popular gelatin-based dessert that Americans are very fond of. It’s a bit better on dirt, but remember: street sports tires are meant to grip hard asphalt, tarmac, or pavement as part of their design, and are not suited at all for off-road use. This is a bit of an oxymoron as well, because while the gravel and packed dirt roads are, by literal definition, roads, they are not the type suited to semi-slick, rain-siped tires.

Indeed, Finland is quite literally a place where a dual-sport or ADV bike is king. With some appropriately knobby tires, you can happily ride down the gravel or dirt road from your cottage to your favorite fishing spot, spend a lazy summer’s day fishing, maybe catch your supper, and then ride back to your cabin before sundown and prepare for the evening’s sauna.

Very common as well in this region is that the sauna is wood-fired with rocks on top to ladle water onto to get nice steam going, known as a löyly—so being able to ride down to the lake to fill up a jug or two of the pristine lake water is also a great example of why off-road based bikes just work in Finland.

As well, because Finland is mostly in the arctic circle, when winter hits, it packs one hell of a wallop. Many of those 1,000 lakes will freeze over, with the ice being several feet thick. The back roads will become inundated with heavy snow, so if you need to travel to and/or from your cottage or cabin and all you have is a bike, you can get spiked or studded tires and be able to ride through the snowed-over roads.

There is also another reason many Finns will make the trip to the frozen lakes in winter. Since the Finnish are a very hardy, Northern people that don’t really mind the cold all that much, you will see cars and SUVs hauling trailers of 1 to 4 dirt bikes up the main highway, and then turning off down a country road for a few kilometers. The reason that they are doing this? Read on below!

Wintertime Just Means More Fun: Finnish Ice Racing & Sisu

Since the country undergoes five- or six-month-long winters, the Finnish are not very good at waiting around patiently to have fun. Some will go snowmobiling; others will go to a rally school to learn how to race on snow and ice, but many will take part in Finnish Ice Racing.

To break it down as simply as possible, using motocross bikes with spiked tires, wearing several layers of warm clothes, and using the same classes as motocross, the people of Finland have developed a sport that lets them go fast, go very sideways, and have a blast doing it. In fact, it is so popular that there are now multiple variations of the sport, including flat-track racing on ice!

There are multiple leagues from regional amateur and just-for-fun pickup leagues, all the way up to national championship leagues, much like pro motocross. For an example, watch this video, which is a regional final for the SuperMoto 450 class. These ladies and gentlemen are not fooling around! Also, the “Jäärata” in the video title literally translates to “Ice Racing.”

For many non-Finnish people, the idea of riding at over 100 KPH in sub-zero temperatures with spiked tires and having to literally carve the rear wheel through a corner might seem like insanity. In Finland, however, there is a word that describes that specific insanity in fairly plain terms. That word is “sisu,” pronounced see-soo, and is not so much translatable to English as it is a single word to describe a full concept.

Sisu, in the basest concept, is about being stoic, determined, brave, full of grit and tenacity, and resilient in the face of challenges. It is so ingrained into the Finnish that they consider it to describe their national character, and it also helps describe why so many Finns seem to have that little bit extra when it comes to powersports and motorsports with world champions like Mika Hakkinen, Tommi Makinen, and the late, great GroupB WRC driver Hannu Mikkola. In terms of ice racing, sisu is core to the entire sport and is part of why it is so beloved as a pastime.

First of all, straddling a 125cc to 500cc motocross bike on the frozen surface of a deep lake with 19 others in a heat race, with spiked tires and the willingness to race hard is about as perfect a demonstration of that courage described by sisu. Then add the fact that these bikes are leaning over 40 to sometimes 50 degrees in the corners, their rear wheels carving away behind them as they countersteer, and requiring that grit, tenacity, and determination to keep it in the throttle, on the edge of catching and flipping you into a highside or losing the front and sliding out in a lowside. It is about as Finnish a sport you can get, and the Finns absolutely love it.

Another reason that the Finnish are, in American terms, a touch crazy is specifically because of their winters. An example of this is that to get a motorcycle endorsement on your license in the USA, or a class 6 license in Canada, you take a training course, you go to the DMV/registry, and you take a road test. You pass, voila, you have an unrestricted motorcycle license, and you can get one as young as 16.

In Finland, you can also get a motorcycle license at 16, known as A-1, but there are major differences. You can ride a motorcycle up to 125cc, with a maximum power output of 11 kW (15 HP), and which has a power to weight ratio equal to or less than 0.1 kW per kilogram. In essence, this license limits you to scooters and dual-sport/off-road bikes.

If it’s close to winter, you also have to demonstrate as part of the test your ability to handle the motorcycle on a slippery surface, in the same type of way that people pursuing their B license for cars have to demonstrate skid recovery on a soaked skidpad.

If you can see the equation forming already, then you can understand why the Finnish so enjoy their winter sports and races. Take a 16-year-old full of grit, determination, and bravery, plant them over a 125cc motocross bike on a frozen lake, and let them race. When your winters can last up to six months, you could either stay inside and read, as Finland does have the highest number of library books checked out per capita, or you could go out and have some fun! We know which choice we would make…

Acknowledgment

I must take a moment here and thank my long-time friend Jarmo Puskala for translations, links to videos, and an inside view of the Finnish culture, including sisu. You might have come across his writing—as he came up with the concept and co-wrote the script for the movie Iron Sky, which is not only one of the most widely seen Finnish-produced films but one of the biggest crowdfunded films of all time.

The post Finland & The Motorcycle: A Very Unique Relationship appeared first on webBikeWorld.

In the world of motorcycles, at least at the moment, it is expected that when you buy a new bike, you get access to everything on the bike. You’re already paying thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, for a vehicle, and you expect everything to be there and working as soon as you take delivery. There is, however, a worrying precedent being set in the electric motorcycle market that some of those expected amenities will be locked away behind a paywall.

If you are familiar with the Information Technology business, the idea of offering something—such as a server, a complete computer system, or some kind of software—on a rental-style payment system is fairly commonplace. These are known as “as a Service” plans, and are implemented in case you do not want to hand over the sometimes tens of thousands of dollars for specialized systems and software licenses.

A very common example of this is via Adobe Software and their Creative Cloud Software as a Service, where you “rent” the license to use things like Photoshop and Premiere Pro for as little as $10 per month, instead of the $1,000+ each piece of software would cost to buy outright. But how does this apply to electric bikes?

What Kinds of Things Can Be Locked Behind a Paywall?

This kind of idea does exist in a very limited way in the automotive market—in that if you want to listen to satellite radio, you need to subscribe. In Tesla EVs, if you want to use autopilot on a secondhand model, you need to hand over the cash to do so as the new owner. However, in terms of safety features, you don’t buy a car and then expect to find that to use the ABS, you need to subscribe to the manufacturer’s braking system, as an example.

Convenience features, however, are quite liable to be put behind a subscription or a paywall. Say, for example, you buy an electric motorcycle and plug it in to a charge point, either in your home or at a charging station in your city. The bike itself is capable of 150 kW charging, but when you plug it in, you find that the bike only charges at 75 kW. Surprise, that 150 kW charge rate needs you to buy the 150 kW charge rate pack, for only an extra $1,500!

Other prime targets for paywall restrictions include features like rider-set riding modes, heated grips, electronically adjustable suspension, even connectivity to a smartphone app to track battery usage and average miles per kWh ratings. While they don’t take away from the functionality of the bike to move and be ridden, they are features that most riders would realistically expect to simply be available.

The extremely worrying thing is that the example of the charge rate doubling above… wasn’t hypothetical.

A Case Study: Zero Motorcycles & Locked Features

Zero Motorcycles, as many know, were one of the first manufacturers to leap headfirst into the electric bike market. It could be argued that they helped kickstart the electric motorcycle movement in the Americas, and have had moderate success in changing people’s minds about whether electric motorcycles will actually catch on. However, with the release of their 2022 SR/F and SR/S bikes, using the new Cypher III+ management software and associated smartphone app, they have fully introduced the concept of “Features as a Service” behind extra paywalls.

For example, with the 2022 Zero SR/S, if you want to charge your bike 17% faster, that’s $295. Want to use the built-in dash-display navigation system? $195. To double your charging speed, as explained in the previous section, that is $1,495. Live somewhere chilly and want to use the included heated grips? That’s another $195.

This doesn’t just relate to charging and features, however. The truly worrying paywall is the battery itself, which is marketed as a 15 kWh battery, but is realistically an almost 18 kWh unit. Why? Because if you want to unlock an extra 10% of battery capacity, that is a whopping $2,195! To put that in perspective, to add 10% more capacity to an artificially locked battery, you need to pay just about 80% of the MSRP of a Honda Metropolitan scooter.

It gets even worse with the 2022 Zero SR/F. While the SR/S has rider aides and bonus features locked behind a paywall, the SR/F has actual performance and safety locked away. It is advertised as having 110 HP, 140 lbs-ft of torque, and a 124 MPH (200 KPH) top speed, with lean angle sensitive six-axis stability control and a fully-featured dual-zone ABS system.

You get that… if you buy the premium trim.

If you buy any other trim, you are restricted to 74 HP, 122 lbs-ft, and 104 MPH (167 KPH). Crucially, you also only get accelerometer-based stability control, and single-zone ABS on the front wheel only. To unlock the true power and safety of the bike, you need to fork over another $1,795.

To lock safety features behind a paywall goes beyond worrying to flat-out concerning, especially when you’re paying $17,500 or more to get a top-of-the-range Zero bike. Want the Premium SR/F with all the power and safety unlocked, but none of the extra features unlocked? That’s nearly $22,000, with nearly $4,300 needed to unlock all the features that you would expect to already be included at that retail price.

To play the devil’s advocate, there is a method behind the madness. By implementing software and firmware locks on features and power, it means that only one basic bike needs to be built. It’s after the bike has left the production line that the locks are put in place (or the bike is left unlocked if it’s a premium model). This streamlines both finances, materials, and production speed to optimize delivery times. Also, the pay-to-unlock features, as they are already built-in to the motorcycle, are nearly 100% pure profit.

It also allows for the possibility of incentivizing the features locked away. For example, maybe Zero will unlock the heated grips for the first week of September, when fall winds are in the air and it would be lovely to have toasty warm hands. It could also have demo days, such as during the summer, the first Tuesday of each month, your bike will be at full power with all features unlocked, and you can ride around to test them out. By showing how convenient the navigation system is to help you find a charge station, and then also allowing you to charge at the full power capability, you might just be tempted to pay to unlock.

To a rider, or potential owner, the complete opposite is true. You’ve saved up as much as you can, you’re really excited to be on the bleeding edge of environmentally-responsible green motoring, as well as looking forward to the immediate torque and power an electric motor provides. Imagine, then, the sour taste that would be in your mouth after buying your shiny new 2022 Zero SR/S and finding that to even charge it at the advertised speed, you need to hand over another full paycheck’s worth of money. Just to charge it at the advertised speed.

There is no way that this will catch on, right?

Will this Actually Succeed? Comparing Features as a Service to Other Paywall Models

The simple fact of the matter is that we, as a society, are already neck deep in “as a Service” models. You have a smartphone plan, an internet/tv package plan with your favorite channels on a subscription, a Spotify subscription, and for every seven coffees you buy from your shop of choice with your plan card or by using your Google or Apple wallet via that shop’s app, you get one free.

Breaking that down, that’s voice/text as a Service, internet as a Service, entertainment as a Service, music/radio as a Service, and a rewards-based plan to entice you to use that specific coffee shop repeatedly. This is a gross oversimplification, but the point is that we, as North Americans, are already living with most of the things we use day to day on a “as a Service” model, with a rewards-based system for participating in it.

If you or anyone you know also plays any online games—such as World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV—that require a monthly subscription, you can bundle “Game as a Service” in there as well.

Again playing the devil’s advocate, the simple truth is that it’s already happening in the automotive sector, especially in the luxury market. BMW has recently introduced a paywall to unlock heated seats in their 3 and 5 Series cars, despite the fact that the physical systems to make them work are in every 3 and 5 Series. As well, the unlocks to all of the items for Zero are one-time payments attached to each owners’ Cypher III+ account, so if your bike is written off in an accident and you get another Zero, once the account is connected, the unlocks will apply immediately.

Realistically, the only way that this type of “Features as a Service” trend will not succeed is if the voting for it is done with wallets—for example, buy a KTM Freeride E-XC instead of a Zero FX. Don’t unlock the heated grips or double charge rate unless you absolutely need them. Don’t buy the SR/F if you can buy the SR/S, because at least the SR/S has full motor power and safety features unlocked.

The truth is, however, that we are a society of convenience in North America. What is $195 against untold miles of toasty warm hands? What is $1,500 if it means you spend 20 minutes at the charge station instead of 45? Time, as the saying goes, is money, and going from 10% to 80% charge in 20 minutes means you’ll already be halfway home by the time the guy that didn’t unlock the double charge rate even reaches 80%.

So will “Features as a Service” succeed? In the concerned opinion of this author… most likely.

The post The New (Worrying) Trend Coming with Electric Bikes: Features as a Service appeared first on webBikeWorld.

This poses some interesting questions, as most electric motorcycles these days have their batteries built in, with various levels of charging from normal to supercharging available. Companies such as Livewire, Zero, and Energica have their bikes set up this way, but is there actually space in the market for a motorcycle that might take 2 or 3 interchangeable battery packs to run? Or is it better to have a big built-in battery and charge it up when you need to?

It is because of these questions that we’re going to take a look at how both systems operate, dig into the actual costs of each approach, and investigate why both approaches have some really big positives and negatives.

Why Both Systems Are Viable

To answer the first question of there being space in the market, we first need to investigate the viability of both systems.

For built-in batteries, the big draw here is that they can hold a larger charge than a size-limited swappable battery. You will see this on most bikes as having multiple “range” batteries, such as normal range, extended range, extended range plus, and the like. Some will simply involve a bigger battery in the bike, while others will add a secondary battery up under where the fuel tank would be in a normal bike.

The counter-effect of putting a bigger battery in a bike is that batteries, by their very nature as densely packed items, are heavy, and the more battery you have, the higher up the bike the center of gravity will move.

For built-ins, their other major benefit is that since they are a permanent part of the motorcycle, heavy-duty charging cables can be routed to them. This is why some electric bikes, especially those with extended ranges, are high-charge and supercharger-compatible or can be hooked up through a home charging station on 240V power.

Since these batteries are also smaller than what most electric cars carry, they won’t need as much time at the charge station to top off, with the downside that even with supercharging, it might be a 20 to 40-minute wait at the charge station.

It is for that exact reason—wait times at charge stations—that the Big Four banded together to make the Gachaco swappable batteries. In much the same way that a lot of households in the US will have a set of rechargeable AAA’s or AA’s for things like wireless mice, TV remotes, console game controllers, and the like, the Gachaco system is just the same idea, but on a macro scale.

When you’re low on your battery pack, say 15% or so, you simply go to the nearest service station with a Gachaco rack, pull the battery from your scooter, slot it into an open charge space, pull out a fully charged battery, put that in your scooter, and off you go again with 100% battery. In places like Tokyo or Osaka in Japan, or Los Angeles or New York City in the USA, this kind of a-la-carte battery swapping makes complete sense.

The benefit here is that you don’t need to worry about home charging at all, even though you will be able to buy home chargers for the Gachaco system. Simply ride down to the gas station with a battery rack, or a charge station with a few racks, and swap out the batteries.

This also works well for motorcycles, since the battery packs as they are are small enough that you could put two or even three in line under a flip-up fuel tank cover, and have a day’s worth of light riding, or a half day’s worth of canyon carving with your electric bike. Also ensuring that you need to slot in a battery to recharge before you can take out a charged battery means that in most cases there will always be batteries ready to pull from a Gachaco rack.

Which Is the More Affordable Solution: Investigating the Actual Costs

The biggest thing in most people’s minds when thinking about electric vs gas-powered vehicles is cost. That’s why some of us who want a big, powerful Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R will instead settle for a Yamaha R7 or Kawasaki ZX-6R. They’re all fast bikes, but the latter two are gas sippers against the ZR-10R, which can down a tank of gas on some happy throttle at a track or a canyon in just 150 miles traveled, if that. In that vein, which of the two systems, charging versus swapping, actually has the better cost?

This is actually a bit more complicated than it seems on the surface. While there is a fixed rate at most charge stations per kWh recharged on each level of charging (normal, fast, super), do those values also apply to a swappable battery? In other words, while the entire reason that the Gachaco alliance was made was for easy swapping, who is paying for the electricity to recharge a drained battery pack?

As far as we can find out through some pretty extensive research, there are two solutions to the swappable battery question. One is a system already in use in Taiwan with their very-similarly-named Gogoro eScooters. You can either buy an eScooter or rent-on-the-street, much like Car2Go or Lime in US cities, and pay a subscription fee per month or per year.

There are multiple tiers of subscription, from low-cost flexible plans perfect for someone doing only a few swaps a month, to high-usage tiers for someone that is swapping every day. Using an app on a smartphone and NFC, or a Gogoro prepaid card, you slot your drained battery into the charging wall, tap when the system prompts you, and if it sees you have a valid subscription and enough money on the card, it pops out a fully charged battery for you.

From what we could find from Gogoro’s own website, a “high usage” flex plan, which encompasses 600 KM (373 miles) and charges NT$2.3 per Ah used, is NT$1,269 per month for the base subscription. In USD, those values are 7 cents per Ah used, and just about $42.70 per month, which translates into “mighty affordable.”

Each swappable battery carries 1.3 kWh of charge, which is more than enough for an eScooter to get around for quite a while, and assuming you swap every other day, for 15 days per month, that adds only $1 to $2 a month on top of the subscription fee.

For bikes that have a built-in battery, using as an example a Harley-Davidson Livewire One, the kWh of the battery is the biggest draw. Instead of using a small 1.3 kWh pack, the Livewire One has a 15.4 kWh battery built-in and is equipped to charge from a 120V wall socket in 11 hours, or 0% to 80% in 40 minutes on a 400 Volt DC fast-charge station.

For those looking to charge at home, according to Business Insider, the average rate per kWh in the US for 2021 was 13.73 cents, meaning that to charge the Livewire One overnight on the 120V wall charger from absolutely drained to 100% would be $2.10. If you ride daily as a commute, with an average of 20 business days and one or two Saturday rides a month for 22 total days, you’re looking at $46.20 per month.

The real cost comes when you access a DC fast-charge station, with the average cost there being 25 to 30 cents per kWh, with some very high-traffic regions being much higher. The reason for the added cost is that charging stations themselves are not exactly inexpensive and have to be paid for, and the infrastructure to ensure that high voltage electricity is safely provided may have had to be built before the charge station could be put in place.

While you do get a much faster charge (40 minutes instead of 9 hours for 0% to 80%), if you charge all 15.4 kWh of a Livewire One, you are looking at a median average of $4.21 for a “full tank.” If you follow the same 22-days-a-month schedule as the home charge, that’s $92.62.

Potential Issues with Both Systems

As seen in the investigation above, what really drives the price you are willing to pay for charging versus swapping is convenience, first and foremost. However, the elephant in the room is the type of motorcycle actually in use.

The biggest known issue with the swappable battery packs is that they carry, as stated, only 1.3 kWh of charge. For something like a small Yamaha or Honda eScooter, with a 2 to 4 HP DC motor, that’s plenty. For a Livewire One, which has a DC motor that is equivalent to 100 HP, that’s enough to get you down the street, around the corner, and maybe a few miles after that.

If you had a much more lightweight motorcycle, such as a Zero FXS, even the base spec there carries a 3.6 kWh battery and has a 36 mile combined range city/highway.

Realistically, it would be a supermoto or dual-sport bike that would benefit the most from swappable battery packs, but as they are already carrying twice the weight of an eScooter, it would affect the range just as much. To get to the same 3.6 kWh on the FXS, you would need three battery packs, which also would add a touch more weight than the built-in battery. It’s one of those cyclical issues where there are benefits to one side, but it brings up more issues on the other side.

The biggest issue that arises with built-in batteries is that unlike the swappable battery packs, there is no “I need it now” recharge option. Even the top tiers of EV motorsports, Formula E, Moto E, and Extreme E Rally, with 900 Volt or higher superchargers, still need at least 30 minutes between heats to recharge to at least 80%. Since the Livewire One does not have a Tesla supercharger compatible connector, as it uses the CCS1 EV connector, that means if you are riding and hit 5% battery, better bring a lunch along because you’ll be sitting around for at least 30 to 40 minutes at the highest charge rate a CCS1 can handle (400 Volts).

Both systems have their pros and cons. Swappable batteries and eScooters make much more sense for densely packed cities like New York in the US, Toronto or Vancouver in Canada, and the like, and if you outright buy one, it’s much cheaper than buying an electric motorcycle. The flipside is that to use it, you’ll be paying a subscription fee or a per-swap fee. Built-in batteries carry much more charge, and while heavier, have a longer range than most eScooters have unless you are pinching pennies and get a low-range motorcycle.

Things are looking good in the future, however, as battery power density is becoming a major area of interest to many car manufacturers that are bringing out EVs before 2030. The more energy you can pack into a smaller area, the better efficiency you will get out of a battery. Density is one thing, the battery materials are another, and advances there include graphene, lithium-tungsten, and even sodium-based batteries that hold more charge than the standard lithium-ion batteries of today. Then there is the whole discussion to be had about hydrogen-powered cars and bikes, which really is an article in itself. Even sustainable ethanol fuels could enter into the discussion.

Ultimately, it’s like the old adage says: “Wait and see.”

The post Charging VS Swapping: A Discussion on the Future of Electric Motorcycles appeared first on webBikeWorld.

But whatever your motivations, taking something that’s broken and fixing it never gets old. Modern life can seem like an endless series of emails, spreadsheets and social media rubbish; but spending a day or two away from the screen while working with your hands on something that’s real and right in front of you can be seriously good for your body, mind and soul. So let’s dive right in.

First Things First

For the sake of simplicity we’re assuming you have your junk bike, a simple set of moto tools and some basic mechanical knowledge. If you don’t, I’d suggest that you’ll probably find this pretty hard. But don’t let me dissuade you. If you truly get stuck and you throw in the towel, you can always just part the bike out by dismantling it and selling it piece by piece.

Sure, it’s a bit of a hassle, but you might be surprised at how much you can make by selling 100 bike spare parts for $30 a pop. Actually, anyone with basic math skills wouldn’t be surprised at all, but you get my drift.

And there’s another proviso I’ll mention here. We’re also assuming that the bike we’re fixing up hasn’t got serious mechanical issues. If the bike was thrashed to the point of failure, then this whole process will be for nought. If the bike has caught on fire, if it has cracks in the engine casing, or if it’s missing any vital components like carbs (sorry kids—we’re not covering fuel injected bikes here) or wiring, then you’re most likely wasting your time. Piston’s connecting rod sticking out through the side of the engine? Forget about it.

Back to Basics

Assuming you’ve passed all those hurdles, then you’ll need to do a few checks before we get our hands dirty. Make sure that the bike’s battery is charged and in good condition. You can either buy a charger or get a new battery and connect it up while ensuring that the bike’s battery leads are making proper contact. Also check that the bike’s fuses are not blown. Lastly, you’ll need to be sure the bike’s motor isn’t seized.

This is pretty easy on a seized kick start bike as the kick lever will also be stuck; this is something you’ll soon discover as you try to kick the bike over. On an electric start bike, just try and start the bike in first gear. If the bike jumps forward, it’s not seized. If it stays still or only moves very slightly, you may have an engine that needs serious tearing down and reassembling, if not a raft of replacement motorcycle parts. Time to call a professional or get busy parting it out.

Oil’s Well?

Now check your motorcycle oil. To get the thing running, the oil doesn’t have to be in amazing condition, but it does need to actually be in the bike and at the right level. If it’s low, top it up. If it’s not deep black or golden brown and runny like warm honey, do an oil change. Bikes left for long periods—especially those left outside—have a habit of getting water in their oil and fuel. This is bad, and you’ll have a hell of a time getting it started if you don’t remedy it first.

Air Apparent

Now that the oil’s good, open up the bike’s air box. Most likely, you discover a completely blocked filter, no filter, or a badly decayed filter. Or a mouse nest. In all cases, you’ll need to remove everything inside and ensure it’s spotlessly clean. Yes, once the bike is up and running again, you’ll need a new motorcycle air filter, but for now, we’ll just need to make sure that the engine can breathe and that it’s not going to try and pull any small rodents in. That would really suck; both for the mouse and for you.

Fuel to the Fire

Now you’re going to flush the fuel lines and tank. It’s pretty simple on most bikes. Find the petcock at the bottom of the tank and reroute the fuel line into a waste metal gas can. Drain it completely. While you’re at it, make sure the fuel filter is clean and that it’s allowing the fuel to flow from the tank to the carb.

Also, have a quick look inside the fuel tank to make sure it’s looking clean and it’s not a muddy, rusty mess. If it is, you can always just supply fuel to the bike’s carb using a jury-rigged tin can suspended above the bike and plumbed using a spare length of  fuel line. And if the tank’s fine, add some fresh fuel to it and make sure the fuel lines are put back where they belong.

Start as you Intend to Proceed

Just for shi(f)ts and giggles, let’s try and start the bike now. Chances are that it won’t start, but if it does, then count yourself very lucky. Pat yourself on the back and jump to the end of this article. But for most of you, the bike will (hopefully) just turn over without ever firing up. Fear not. This is par for the course.

The cause will almost always be with fuel supply or lack of spark. And if it’s stone cold dead, then you’ll need to go back and check all the bike’s electrical connections to make sure the starter motor is getting volts and that the starter switch is actually connected.

A Little Lightning

Now let’s check that the bike is getting spark. Remove one of the bike’s spark plugs and stick it back into the black lead that was connected to it before you yanked it out. Now rest this loose plug and lead combo on the engine block making sure you can see the part of the plug where the sparks happen. Crank the bike over again. There’s two possible outcomes here. You’ll either see a spark or you won’t.

Assuming the plug was making proper electrical contact to the engine block, then seeing a spark is a great sign. It means that your bike’s electrics are A-OK. No spark is a bigger hassle. Try replacing all the bike’s spark plugs and leads and check again. Still no spark? Then you’ve got some problems with your ignition system. Probably time to get a pro who knows how to use a multimeter on the job.

Full Carb Diet

So now we’ve got a spark. The only thing left (barring some pesky gremlins that sometimes throw spanners in the works) will be your bike’s fueling. As you’ve probably read before, leaving a bike to sit for years and years will do bad things to a bike’s carbs. Gaskets perish, floats stop floating, needles get gummed up, and generally speaking, your carb (or carbs) will eventually end up being totally screwed.

There’s two options here; you either get a new carb or you restore the one you have. The first option will be easy, but it’ll cost you. Thankfully, carbs for most bikes aren’t too expensive to replace and neither is restoring them. Unless you live a long way from civilisation, you’re sure to find a local mechanic who’ll be able to tear down a carb and restore it to working condition. Or if you’re really feeling daring, you can try it yourself.

Complete gasket kits for motorcycles can be purchased easily online, and with the help of a YouTube tutorial and an old toothbrush, you just might be able to do it yourself. But it won’t be a walk in the park. Carbs are complex beasts with plenty of fiddly little parts to keep track of.

The Home Stretch

With the carb now doing its job and sparks happening, there’s not much to stop your bike from starting apart from the obvious. Is the bike’s choke working and is it in the on position? Does your bike have a decompression lever and do you know how to use it? Has someone installed a kill switch in your bike that you don’t know about?

As mentioned, there’s always the chance of some infuriating and no doubt niggling little issue that only a seasoned pro will be able to spot. But if the carb is functioning correctly and the spark is sparking, an engine that is turning over has to start. Just like starting a fire, if there’s fuel and an ignition source, it’ll happen sooner or later.

Remember to keep your battery fully charged after any extended attempts to start a bike and never discount trying a can of aerosol engine starter, or as my Father calls it, “START YOU BASTARD.” You can also try a hill start, but remember that if it doesn’t kick over, you’ll need to get it back home at some point that will most likely involve you pushing a bloody big bike uphill against gravity.

There’s also the internet oracle. You’ll find endless online forums where you’ll be able to tap into the global brain’s trust and have your question ignored, mocked, misconstrued or maybe—just maybe—answered. Common issues stopping your bike from starting at this point may include timing adjustments, poor compression, and valve problems. None of these are show stoppers, but they aren’t for fainthearted beginners, either.

The Sweetest Thing

And then, after what will seem like eons and eons of frustrating hell, the bike will actually start. The sheer elation you’ll experience at this point is truly sublime. Sadistically, the harder the bike was to start, the bigger and more memorable this elation will be. Drink it in, people. It’s better than any social media dopamine hit ever. It’s the same feeling doctors experience bringing a patient back to life or politicians feel after brokering a nuclear peace deal.

And the real genius of the process? That pile of useless metal you started with is now a working, riding motorcycle that has suddenly increased in value. You’re very welcome!

The post How to Revive a Junk Motorcycle appeared first on webBikeWorld.

But why didn’t it stick? The idea of adding a turbo to a bike and instantly creating a new, faster model seems like a no-brainer, yeah? And it’s not like customers went off going fast and showing off to their friends. So let’s look at why it happened in the first place, why the manufacturers stopped doing it, and what took its place.

The Pressure to be First

As you probably guessed by the image above, the ‘82 Honda CX500 was arguably the world’s first proper factory turbo bike. Soichiro Honda’s dislike of both forced induction and of two-strokes seemingly had no effect on the company’s product line-up, as they spent a large part of the ‘70s and early ‘80s going to town on both these technologies.

Logic suggests that they chose the CX platform for turboing because of its legendary reliability and water cooling. But consider that Honda had little experience in designing either v-twins or water-cooled engines up to this point, and you’ll get a sense of just how adept their engineers were; from zero to hero in a single blueprint. With 500cc and 82 bhp, it was quick—but by no means was it a world-beater.

As is the rule in the Japanese motorcycle industry, many of the other brands quickly followed Honda’s lead for fear of being left behind and/or missing out on a nice big slice of what potentially could be a profitable new segment. So at around the same time as Honda’s CX was revealed, Yamaha stole a little of their thunder with their rather odd little XJ650 Turbo.

Undoubtedly a parts-bin special with a turbo thrown in for good measure, it put out a claimed 90hp but was noted by reviewers of the time to have less-than-ideal handling and a few overheating issues to boot. Ooops.

The Turbo Bandwagon

Next, Suzuki released their 673cc XN85. With arguably better, more ‘muscle bike’ looks than the rather upright, rather more sensible design of the Honda, the Suzie only managed to convince a handful of buyers to part with their hard-earned money. Despite this, it stayed in Suzuki showrooms—or at least it appeared in Suzuki catalogs—until 1988.

As always, Kawasaki took their time before they played their turbo hand. But boy, when they did play it, they had really done their homework. So in ‘84 they pulled the covers off their GPZ750 Turbo. Better late than never, huh?

With a full two years until the Top Gun appearance of the company’s Ninja ZX900, they were still looking for that ‘next big thing’—and it appeared that all the signs were pointing to turbo engines as being just that.

Packing an impressive 112bhp, the engine could purportedly be pushed to around 200 horsies with the right mods. And all that in 1984, no less! But as with the other brands, the bike proved to be a bit of a sales flop and it was discontinued a mere 12 months later.

Rad or Bad Fad?

So the million dollar question is, what the hell went wrong? Turbos are good. Speed is always good. And they make that ‘look at me’ whooshy sound. It seems like the perfect package, no?

Well, the answer to that rhetorical question is actually ‘no’. Japanese turbo bikes of the 80s were not the golden goose that they might seem at first glance. But why?

Sure, if they had been positioned at the apex of the manufacturer’s range, they might have had a different reception. But for those who did buy one, they still had to face the harsh reality of rocking up to the local Sunday biker’s hang-out knowing that any of the other riders there on 1000cc (or 1100cc) models were still able to kick their butts in most situations.

In this sense, they seemed like more of a gimmick than ‘proper’ bikes, a fact that was backed up by the lack of factory racers using the things. And needless to say, the turbo gear bolted on the motos also made them heavier than their normally-aspirated mates. Those who thought these new turbo bikes would make them King of the Hill would be sorely disappointed.

Fast, Faster, but not Fastest

The other big issue for this ‘80s go-fast tech was the now-infamous ‘80s turbo lag. Unless your revs were already up in the stratosphere somewhere, the thing was going nowhere fast, and by the time you got on the gas, increased the revs, and got the turbo on song, your riding buddies had probably sped off down the road with broad, patronising smiles on their faces.

Sure, modern tech has managed to iron out all these bugs to the point where it’s now all upsides for turbos—but back then, you were probably going to be left with a bad taste in your mouth that screamed ‘I fell for a sales trick and this damn bike just doesn’t live up to the hype.’ Feeling foolish, you then would have sold the thing at a loss and probably got the normally aspirated GPZ900R Ninja you secretly always wanted.

Of course, the manufacturers knew this as well, and they proceeded to drop their turbo platforms faster than a mechanic trying to repair a hot wastegate with no gloves on.

Back on the Boost

Fast forward to 2014 and—much to the amazement of speed freaks all over the world—Kawasaki announced the no-holds-barred and spy plane-named ‘H2’ superbike. The tech geeks amongst us will no doubt be quick to point out that the H2 was in fact supercharged and not turbo’d, but I feel that in the historical arc of ‘boost’ on motorcycles, this motorcycle is an important inclusion in the discussion. And while it seemingly didn’t spawn a new segment of boosted bikes, it did correct all the faux pas of the 80s turbo models.

Gone was their lag and the lack of rideability, along with the empty promises of their giant  ‘turbo’ labeled plastic fairings. Instead, the H2 kept its secrets hidden; well, at least it kept its supercharging hidden. And that’s because the thing’s about as subtle as the moon crashing into the earth.

There was little doubt that this moto was fast. 310 hp of supercharged go-gos will do that to a bike. And in that way, Japan—via Kawasaki—showed it had learned lessons from the 80s and had finally perfected the idea. Good ol’ Kawasaki. Better late than never, huh?

The post BLOWN AWAY: Factory Turbo Motorcycles and Why We Don’t See More of Them appeared first on webBikeWorld.

Introducing the 1.9lb ‘Brain Bucket of the Future’

World, meet Vata7’s new brainchild – a smart helmet bristling with technology and a taste of the future. 

Our press release states that the X1 ‘Speed and Light’ LED Smart helmet – the only one in the world to feature ‘100% carbon fiber with aeronautical technology’ – boasts ECE 22.06 / DOT / SNELL / JIS / FIM MotoGP homogations, comes ready with SENA Bluetooth communications, and is the lightest helmet in the world. 

While a 1.9lb lid sporting such top-notch qualifications is magical enough (it beats the crowd fave MK1 smart helmet from Forcite by 1.5lb), the neatest feature of this bucket has to be the integrated lights on the lid. They’re not just there for show, they actually work and sync up to your bike within 30 seconds of mounting. 

It’s exactly the type of helmet technology many of us have been waiting for, since wearing a helmet with lights stickered on is an aesthetic DIY disaster and running a wire down your jacket and into the bike’s battery is…well…itchy and hazardous at best.

 On top of all this, we’re told Vata7’s CEO has also “produced a mobile app that lets riders customize their own, personal LED sequence on their VATA7 gear.”

This means riders will be able to play with the lights’ modes, flash speed adjustments, and the ‘motorcycle, snowmobile, bicycle, and ESK8 modes’ that the app has ready-made for the customer (on both Apple and Google).

A former member of the U.S. naval underwater demolition team, VATA7 Founder & CEO Brian Jon Garvey is just about as stoked for the new helmet as we are. 

“…the GEN2 LED Tech Packs are currently being built and the molds for the X1 LED Helmet are being constructed now at their factory in Lugano, Switzerland. Size medium is already finished, as you can see in our videos.”

“We’re crowdfunding to know how many X1 LED Helmets and in what sizes are needed for our first production run.  It’s like we’re building your custom X1 LED Helmet for you!”  

“X1 helmets and GEN2 Tech Packs will ship this summer, 2022.”

We’re curious to see what the full pricing will be; the crowdfunding price tag is currently wiping the floor at $699 USD, and with Forcite presently owning the smart helmet market with their MK1 – available for around $1000 USD – (and keeping in mind that the X1 is lighter than my cares on a long weekend), we’ll be keeping a sharp eye out for any more juicy news that comes down the pipeline. 

We’re also eying that pretty bag that Vata7’s been flaunting on their press media:

Stay tuned for updates and be sure to check out Vata7’s official website, where you will find more tasty tidbits of this helmet. 

Hope y’all are enjoying 2022, and as always – stay safe on the twisties.

*all media sourced from relevant press release and Vata7’s official website*

The post Vata7 Unveils Crowdfunding Campaign for X1 LED Smart Helmet appeared first on webBikeWorld.

To that effect, CycleWorld tells us that Kawasaki has outfitted their next hypersport Ninja H2 SX with a blind spot radar – provided by none other than Bosch (we covered their ‘Help Connect’ software that served to automatically send emergency aid to a crash site here). 

“Back in 2019 Kawasaki announced a deal with Bosch to use the German company’s front and rear radar system on future bikes, giving the firm access to adaptive cruise control and blind-spot monitoring ahead of its Japanese rivals,” states the report. 

“All the bikes we’ve seen using Bosch’s radar system so far, including the Ducati Multistrada V4 S – which is the only model to use the rear sensor as well as the front one – the BMW R1250 RT, and the latest KTM 1290 Adventure S, have left the radar units fully exposed.” 

We should clarify – the 2019 deal with Bosch is different from this new patent which explains how Kawasaki is hiding the rear radar on the same bike. It’s clever, it’s now embedded into the bike – and it’ll be ready in time for the newest H2 SX. 

Want to know how they did it?

“The license plate hanger is made of three sections: a structural core that carries the weight of the plate, the rear turn signals, and the radar sensor, plus upper and lower covers.”

“The core is made of resin that includes metal and glass fibers to give it rigidity and strength, allowing it to be a stable mount for the radar sensor. Meanwhile, the upper cover (which hides the structural part and the electronics) is made of a much thinner resin without any glass fibers or metal.”

“The cover has little strength, and even needs to be molded in a specific shape with a horizontal ledge across its upper section to maintain its shape, but it’s radar-invisible, allowing the electromagnetic waves to travel straight through.”

Among the other details of the patent was a diagram of the same embedded system in another bike – and it was unmistakably the tail section of Kawasaki’s Z900RS, so expect that little surprise to surface in the next year or so. 

Let us know what you think and drop a comment below, we love to hear from you; in the meantime, be sure to brush up on the latest news from Kawasaki and as always – stay safe on the twisties.

The post Kawasaki Partners with Bosch for H2 SX Embedded Blind Spot Radar System appeared first on webBikeWorld.

This is the directory of all wBW articles on motorcycle repair and maintenance. It includes repair tips and information on installing motorcycle accessories, parts, lighting, brake lights, LED lights and more.

This list also contains reviews of products for BMW motorcycles, Ducati motorcycles, Moto Guzzi motorcycles and Triumph motorcycles. However, this information is also useful for owners of any type or make of motorcycle.

Suspension and Steering

SW-Motech Bar Back Bar Riser review.

SuperBrace Fork Brace Stabilizer review.

Ducati Multistrada chain adjustment

Ducati GT 1000 chain adjustment

Motorcycle chain adjustment basics

Installing Progressive Fork Springs on a BMW R65

Handlebar risers installation on a Moto Guzzi 1100 Sport (Convertibars)

Cleaning a motorcycle chain with Motul Chain Clean, Motorex Chain Clean 611 and kerosene; a comparison.

Raising the fork tubes changes the geometry of the motorcycle’s front end and can quicken the steering.

Changing the Chain and Sprockets is a necessary maintenance task and there are many tips and tricks to consider.

Fork Oil Change article shows you how to perform this maintenance task.

Front Tire Installation is not that difficult, but here are a couple of tips here that can help make the job  easier.

Progressive Suspension 420 shock absorber installation.

Converting high to low handlebars on a BMW K75 or K100 from the standard to the lower “C” bars.

Fork gaiters can extend the life of fork seals by preventing dirt and pitting on fork tubes.

Wheels and Tires

Adventures in Re-Spoking Motorcycle Wheels by Chris B.

Rebuilding and Lacing Spoked Wheels by Texas Joe

Rod Neff’s balancer is highly accurate, well-made and easy-to-use; you can do it yourself and save $$!

Motorcycle tire bead breaker costs less than $5.00 and works as well as anything we’ve tried.

Body and Paint

Caswell Fuel Tank Sealer

Plastex Plastic Repair Kit

Ducati Hand Guards and Manic Salamander bar end weights installation

CRG Bar End Mirror Installation

BMW K75S windscreen adjustment system.

Paintguard paint protection film is easy to install and can be reused.

Carbon fiber parts are relatively easy to make, believe it or not!  This article shows you how.

Installing the SheerMask pre-cut paint protection film kit to protect your bike’s paint and finish.

3M Scotchcal paint protection film can be purchased in bulk and cut to fit your motorcycle.

Rusted steel parts can be easily fixed with this special coating.

Bar End Mirrors installation article points out a few modifications and some more information on where to get the parts; it’s based on Gary Gavin’s great instructions on installing Napoleon bar end mirrors.

BMW K75 Low to High Seat Conversion with information on converting the “low rider” seat on a K75/100 to the standard height seat.

BMW K75 and K100 standard windscreen buffeting problems can be partially solved.

LED Lighting

Clearwater Krista LED Driving Lights

Clearwater Glenda LED Visibility Lights

Denali LED Light Installation

Multistrada LED Brake Light Installation

Hyper-Strips LED Accent lights can really show off your bike!

LED brake light or tail light complete conversion to replace the bulb with LED lights for ultra-visibility!

LED Bulb Replacement by LEDTronics: is it worth the cost?

LED Brake Light Bar by Signal Dynamics: installation information.

Flexible LED accent lights can be installed as auxiliary directionals or just for fun!

Super-Bright LED brake light bulb LED cluster can replace the standard 1157 brake/tail light bulb.

RiderLight LED Wireless brake light for helmets, saddlebags and more!

LED Wireless helmet brake light – the Signalfly unit fits on the back of a helmet!

Lighting, Brake Lights, Tail Lights

LED Bulb Comparison and Video

Replacing the GT1000 brake and tail light bulb

Motorcycle Headlight Upgrade  Ducati Designs upgrade for the BMW K1200LT.

Yellow headlight bulbs for motorcycles?  Comparison with standard white H4 bulbs.

Install an HID motorcycle headlight for more power and visibility at night.

Install headlight protection film to protect expensive headlights from stone damage.

Ducati Designs headlight upgrade for ST2 and ST4.

Using turn signals as brake lights – good idea or not?

Brake Light/Tail Light Bulbs discusses the best light bulb to use for your combination brake/taillight. Covers 21/5W, 2057, 1034, 1157, 2397 and 2357 type bulbs.

Brake Light Flasher installation and review of the Comagination Visi-Stop.

Turn signal relay replacement on a BMW. Applicable to other makes.

Improving Brake Light Visibility how to brighten up your rear end!

Halogen brake light replacement bulb by DesignTech: Too hot to handle?

Headlight Modulators

Installing a Comagination dual headlight modulator and a modulator with solid-state headlight relay

Modulator Regulations for the U.S.A.

Headlight modulator installation and review of the Comagination Visi-Path.

Kisan headlight modulator review and installation.

Brakes

Installing Stainless Steel Brake Lines (Redux)

Bleeding motorcycle brakes is easy with the Actron vacuum pump.

Harrison Billet Mini-6 brake caliper installation can improve braking.

Installing stainless steel brake lines can improve brake feel and performance.

Carburetion, Fueling and Fuel Injection

G2 Throttle Tamer helps to smooth the initial throttle input and it is available for many different brands of motorcycles.

Booster Plug fuel injection fix for BMWs and Triumphs

K&N Air Filter review and replacement on a BMW R1150GS

Fat Duc O2 Sensor Replacement

Ducati GT 1000 ECU replacement

Installing a G2 Throttle Cam to change the throttle opening profile.

Ducati GT 1000, Multistrada and Monster throttle cable adjustment (1000DS engine)

Ducati evaporative emissions canister maintenance and inspection

“Poor Man’s Carb Adjustment“: a story for cheapskates.

Sea Foam carburetor and fuel system cleaner.

Bing carburetor replacement silicone gaskets last the life of the engine.

Air filter replacement can be easy or difficult, like on this Triumph!

Air injection system removal for post-1980 BMW Airheads.

Change the fuel filter on a Moto Guzzi V11 Bassa with this article by Rich Arimoto.

Engine and Transmission

BMW Scooter Oil and Filter Change

Ducati Multistrada 620 oil and filter replacement tips and substitute oil filters for Ducatis

Ducati 1000DS engine oil and filter change

Ducati engine case guard protects against damage from broken chains.

Oil change problems to avoid; oil types to use; sources for replacement oil drain plugs.

Valve adjustment on a modern Triumph also has useful information for other makes.

Valve Adjustment Tips and some performance improvement tips from wBW Visitor “J.B.”

Coolant Change –  How to perform a coolant change.

BMW Airhead Spline Lube – 1986 BMW R65 Monoshock spline lube with photos.

Adjust Moto Guzzi valves with this step-by-step approach by Steve Saady.

Electrical

Installing a Battery Tender SAE Wiring Harness – Simple, cheap and easy.

Suzuki DR400 Clock Repair – A possible fix for an inoperative DR400 clock in the electronic display.

HealTech GIpro with ATRE

Ducati 750 GT Alternator Replacement

Part 1: Motorcycle Ignition Coil Replacement (Thunderbird Sport) and Part II: Ignition Coil Replacement on a Triumph Trophy

Install a speaker on a Garmin i3 or i5 GPS unit.

Posi-Lock connectors are a fantastic way to splice wires on your motorcycle!

How to install a horn relay to get full power to those Freeway Blasters!

Installing a headlight relay can make your headlight burn brighter.

Sealed Batteries – Installing a WestCo sealed battery is easy! Instructions and photos

Electronic ignition module maintenance – applying heat sink compound.

Install a tachometer on a Moto Guzzi Jackal with instructions by Steve Saady.

Tires and Wheels

Dymag carbon fiber wheels are light weight and expensive!

Portable motorcycle tire balancer is very accurate and can fit in a tank bag.

Motorcycle tire bead breaker – make your own in a matter of seconds!

Tire sizes can be confusing; read this interesting article regarding tire widths.

Motorcycle tire information on sizes, conversions between numbering systems, speed ratings and more.

Motorcycle tire and wheel balancing with Rod Neff’s tire balancer

Miscellaneous

Handlebar End Weights

How to Adjust a Motorcycle Chain

Go Cruise Throttle Control Installation and Review

Scottoiler eSystem Installation on a BMW F 800 GS

Scottoiler Installation on a BMW F 800 GS

Ducati GT1000 Loose Fuel Tank Problem Fixed

Using a Thread File to Repair Threads

How to Install Pazzo Adjustable Motorcycle Levers

Electronic Motorcycle Cruise Control and Installation

wBW Video: Cleaning and Polishing Chrome Wheels With Noxon and S100 Polishing Soap

Installing Ducati GT1000 saddlebags

wBW Special Report: How Motorcycle Helmet Visors Are Made

Ducati GT1000 Fuel Line Recall Fix and Fuel Filter Replacement is a relatively easy project.

Motorcycle Tools page has links to our tool reviews and other interesting items

Installing a Throttlemeister Cruise Control

Information on the Ducati GT1000 and Sportclassics fuel pump and fuel line problems

Removing a plastic fuel tank on a Triumph Tiger. These tips are applicable to most any motorcycle.

Installing a Talon Motorcycle Alarm; includes information on adding a custom LED indicator light.

Make your own custom aluminum dashboard. Includes instructions and CAD drawings for download.

Motofx garage door opener opens your garage door when the high beams are flashed.

These valve caps are real metal with rubber gaskets! Sweet – and very inexpensive. Also information on where to find a metric thread pitch gauge

Here are some tips, gleaned from various email lists, on making repairs to ABS bags.

Here’s how to make a small, lightweight air pump that can fit in your tankbag for less than $10.00!

Cleaning aluminum engine cases tips and tricks.

Interesting drawings from 1931 of an old “T” flathead side valve engine illustrating the four stroke engine cycle.

The post Motorcycle Maintenance and Repair Articles appeared first on webBikeWorld.