Loose Lines: The Great Pursuit [Issue 60, August 1995]

It's getting like I'm becoming frightened to walk into W.H. Smiths. No sooner have one batch of new motorcycle magazines gone bust than another’s launched on an unsuspecting motorcycling public. It’s all very amusing if you can keep on finding the money to pay for these inevitably glossy and weighty journals (and I get letters from readers apologizing for not being able to afford to buy every issue of the reasonably priced UMG).

Some of them are awful, others close to being brilliant (at least in the first issue). Quite where the shadowy figures behind them get the dosh for their launches (almost invariably the advertising is given away for free) I wouldn't like to say (not wanting to be beaten to death).

EMAP, meanwhile, carries on selling incredible numbers of Performance Bike, Bike, Classic Bike and, of course, MCN. God knows what would be going down if sales of new bikes reached 250000 units as in the not so distant past. This plethora of magazines draws readers away from the UMG, unfortunately, as they tend to focus on narrow segments of the market until they realise there ain't enough people about to meet their high production costs and consequent unrealistic break even points. By the time they’ve blown a stack of dosh the UMG has lost another few hundred readers. Dire straights, too many magazines chasing too few readers.

Magazine publishing has always drawn its fair share of maniacs, deviants and plain out of it weirdos - if I were to reveal the rumours that actually reach the UMG, via disgruntled contacts in the industry, so far-fetched would they seem that the reader would immediately conclude an overdose of stimulants on my part (although in reality my only kicks, these days, are Oriental girls, motorcycles and the UMG, though not necessarily in that order). Anyway, I’m still here, still in business, completely ignored by the motorcycle trade (a deliberate policy on my part, journos who end up as press relation officers for motorcycle companies make me want to throw up).

I know there are dedicated dealers out there who've given their whole life to the game, but they seem left between a rock and a hard place, as the motorcycle and insurance companies continue to ruin the whole experience - the former with overpriced designs that only have a marginal appeal, the latter with silly policy prices (if you're over thirty and can take some early seventies relic then classic insurance is relatively cheap and mileage limits can easily be avoided by fiddling with the mileometer - no, only joking).

I've always looked at insurance as a necessary evil, worth about fifty quid for third party fire & theft on the understanding that in any accident I had no intention of claiming even if it wasn’t my fault. Breakers provide cheap parts and if I’m in the mood I actually like wielding the spanners and hammer. Plus, I couldn't give a shit about keeping a bike stock. This is a trend seen in the number of GSXR750/1100’s that’ve had all the silly plastic pulled off and proper bars fitted, producing a machine far better than Suzuki's version, the GSX1100G, which proved such a flop that nearly new ones can be bought for bargain prices.

The Japanese turn out these weird overweight machines, at great design cost, under the delusion that no-one’s going to notice their heft, and consequential destruction of consumables and fuel that would leave even artic drivers stammering in wonder. For instance, Yamaha's 900 Diversion, following on the from the 600's success (though they should really have stripped the plastic off the FZR600 and added proper handlebars), neglected to note that one of the smaller Diversion’s charms was its reasonable mass - the new 900 weighing more than the old XJ900 it replaces. Yamaha make brilliant engines and frames in other models, although lacking the ultimate finesse that Honda has recently shown, so what the hell can one make of that? The glossies reckon its six grand price is a bargain - pass the sick bucket, please.

I know, I know, I’ve moaned about this before but as it doesn’t have much effect I may as well carry on (stubborn being my middle name). Even weirder than crazed publishers or the machinations of the marketing people who come up with such odd demands that bear no relationship to reality, is the way the various elements in an engine’s design affect fuel consumption.

The way that they interact seems entirely random and beyond the ken of motorcycle designers - bore and stroke, piston mass, combustion shape, valve angle and size, valve and ignition timing, camshaft lobe size and shape, number of cylinders, maximum revs, power and torque development, length of ports, exhaust size, carb type and size... you get the picture.

Even computer simulations can only give a vague approximation of reality, and with thousands, maybe millions of permutations, the designer has to wade in with a loose approximation, based on past and rival designs, to find a realistic starting point. Not that fuel efficiency is high on their minds.

The sensible thing to do would be to look at those machines that have particularly good fuel economy. That’s when everything begins to make no sense whatsoever. Why, for instance, should a GSXR250RR, a machine with a red line at 17000rpm, that when screamed along the motorway, giving off a divine howl, managed to turn in 70mpg? What for instance does it have in common with a sixties CB450 twin which does a similar trick, albeit with half the revs and cylinders? Or a fifties Ariel 350 single, with god knows how many miles on its clock, that still does 80 to 90mpg, despite a carb design so ancient it should be a museum piece? Or one of those old Ducati singles with an engine so vibratory it must surely have buzzed the carb apart, but still matched the Ariel.

The Ariel was as long stroke as you could get and would fall apart if you did more than 6000 revs, the Honda and Suzuki were short strokers with precise control of their valves, like the Desmo Duke, although the Suzuki had four instead of the others two valves per cylinder. The poor old Ariel had pushrod controlled valves that must’ve given the vaguest of accuracy but you have to wonder what would happen if the same engine was fitted with a modern con-rod and piston (as in light) plus proper valve gear with the same timing.

Not that frictional losses make any sense in this, something like the GSXR, with its multitude of components and use of excessive revs leads to massive frictional forces, although they probably make everything so light, so minimal in mass, that normal engineering rules don't apply...

Neither do aerodynamics play much part, though they should. Even modem plastic replicas, once the rider's aboard, have little more to offer than the old naked machines, although their illusions of protection (if the rider can make the necessary contortions) allow them to belt along at incredible speeds, the rider would have more interesting sensations riding a naked machine at 90mph. When the rain comes both get soaked through.

Actually, increasingly, my interest in motorcycles is in the 125cc sector, an engine size, in four stroke single form, that when added to an advanced chassis (there being hardly any progress in this area in the past 30 years in the commuter sector) that pays heed to aerodynamic reality should deliver total rider protection, 80mph, 200mpg and 25000 mile services (oil changes apart) - a hi-tech consumer product that can safely be sold in Dixons or Halfords without the usual massive mark-ups in the motorcycle trade. That’s a long way off, although the bike exists in my computer. Some day!

Bill Fowler