Table of contents

• History of motorcycle tuning Tuners have never had it harder
• Basic or long-term tuning
• Aluminum is replacing steel – and everything becomes easier
• Italics from the 90s
• The optical tuning
• It’s never been easier for tuners today

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Sports & scene

History of motorcycle tuning

History of motorcycle tuning
Tuners have never had it harder

Content of

About 50 years ago, motorcycle tuning began to emancipate itself from the pure racing scene and spread it among normal motorcyclists. PS tells the little story of tuning.

Ralf Schneider

05/20/2014

The term tuning originally comes from music and describes the tuning of an instrument, such as setting the correct string tension of a guitar or the correct length of the tube for a flute. No example can better illustrate the connection between votes and voting than an story told by Phil Read from his time as a Yamaha factory rider. The development of compressor-less racing two-stroke engines was still in its infancy in the 1960s, and the engine builders asked their colleagues in the instrumentation department for help with tuning the exhaust system of the 250-cc four-cylinder engine. The instrument makers got down to the math, and when the dimensions of the elbows, cones and counter cones matched the timing, you could literally hear it – the engine system suddenly developed a very characteristic sound that had not been set when it was out of tune. And so much power that the 250cc Yamaha was suddenly good for lap times and race averages that were even enough for top places in the 500cc.

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In contrast to many racing drivers who still do not reveal their recipes to this day, Read in his book “The Real Story” also grants some glimpse into the repertoire of mechanical tuning measures of the 1960s and 1970s. They went as far as folded pieces of cardboard that he wedged under the hairpin valve springs of his 350 Norton Manx during the TT 1961 in order to tighten them. This prevented the valves from lifting off the cams at high speeds on the long straights of the TT course and being knocked crookedly by the piston. Previously, his tuner Bill Lacey had installed the soft springs to minimize internal performance losses, but apparently overshot the target.

Basic or long-term tuning

The two examples exhaust and pieces of cardboard also represent two different areas of tuning, namely basic or long-term tuning and short-term tuning. The basic tuning ensures that a motorcycle meets certain basic requirements – the steering axis is at the right angle in the longitudinal direction and vertically in the transverse direction, the swing arm is horizontal, the wheels are in one track as possible, everything is and turns as easily as possible, and so on . This also includes what was always most interesting for fans, amateur and professional racing drivers and the tuning experts themselves: developing, selling and installing optimized parts.

The short-term tuning takes care of the optimization in the here and now, tunes a motorcycle to the current route and the currently prevailing weather. To this day, this is the area around which the most secret is kept and which is therefore reserved for comparatively few specialists.

Buy tuning parts at markt.motorradonline.de

Yamaha

When the aluminum frames worked in series in the 1980s, the tuning shifted mainly to the dampers.

In the 70s and 80s, the frame and chassis were the main objects of the refinement ambitions. A personality like Hideo “Pops” Yoshimura, who mainly dealt with engine tuning, is an exception in this respect. If you read contemporary tests of tuning machines, it is noticeable that although every supplier of a special frame had also installed a revised engine, the testers were often only moderately enthusiastic about its quality. The engines annoyed with bottom-nothing-top-everything characteristics, consumed gasoline like an Ami V8 and broke down more than once. The harmony of all components, which is essential for successful tuning, was seldom achieved. “Because they don’t know what they are doing,” commented Roland Eckert, who throughout his life as a tuner strived for finely balanced total works of art, the excesses of the scene.

The chassis alone usually work better. Highly specialized manufacturers such as Rickman and Harris had emerged from the world’s leading British racing car and frame builder scene; they provided the adequate framework for the powerful engines from Japan. Optimized in geometry and rigidity, lighter, but above all more precisely machined than the Japanese standard frames, they have become a must-have for committed sports riders. And although the exception among chassis builders, Fritz Walter Egli, is a Swiss man, he too was inspired by English motorcycle culture – he built the first of his famous central tube frames in 1966/67 for Vincent 1000 V engines. Later he preferred to use the Kawasaki 900 and 1000 series engines. The principle of its construction, reduced to the bare essentials, which could be modified for many different engine concepts, found many imitators, including Rau and Moko. But they never came close to the importance of their role model.

Bimota

Massimo Tamburini started his motorcycle career with a frame.

The recently deceased Massimo Tamburini, who contributed the “ta” to the brand name Bimota, also began his career as a frame builder. After the wobbling chassis of his Honda CB 750 brought him to the top in the fastest left turn on the old Misano route, he designed a space frame for the CB 750 engine, which he named after the heating company Bimota, which he co-founded. Ten copies of the HB1, the first Honda Bimota, were built, and this small series heralded the transformation of the heating manufacturer into a manufacturer of the finest heating appliances. Incidentally, in those early days, Bimota reasonably used standard engines and air filter boxes, albeit with special exhaust systems.

The last motorcycle Massimo Tamburini developed for Bimota was the HB3 with the engine of the 1100 Bol d’Or, which appeared in 1983. At around the same time, the Spanish chassis specialist Antonio Cobas was working on behalf of Yamaha on the development of the so-called Deltabox frame, which made its debut in 1983 in the OW 70 factory 500 series machine. This first aluminum bridge frame is so important because it also changed the tuning industry in an era that was so rich in change. After a phase of experimentation with aluminum as the frame material, with which at first only the conventional tubular steel frame was built, a material-appropriate processing of the light metal in the form of large-area profiles that were welded to light but extremely stable, box-shaped structures was found.

Aluminum is replacing steel – and everything becomes easier

archive

A hand-welded aluminum frame.

Not all of these frames worked right away, but the design principle gave the manufacturers a means to utilize the increasing engine power with the help of stable structures. The frame builders broke away large parts of their main field of business; Even for discerning and well-heeled customers, chassis were optimized from the 1990s mainly through fork and strut tuning. Ohlins, White Power and Technoflex, to name a few, got big business with it.

It was the technical regulations of the Superbike and Supersport World Championships that gave engine tuning a powerful impetus in the 1990s. Top-class racing based on series motorcycles, transferred to the national level, democratized technology suitable for racing to a degree like never before. The motorcycle manufacturers who wanted to be successful in superbike and supersport races had to create the right basis for this. Little by little, they offered motorcycles at affordable prices that already had the mechanical stability as well as lubrication and cooling systems with reserves for considerable increases in performance ex works.

Detailed rules governed which parts had to remain in series and which could be changed, and they provided orientation. Racing parts kits and the associated manuals ensured that basic tuning recipes were widely used right through to amateur sports. It has never been easier to offer serious engine tuning on a broad basis; This is probably one of the reasons why this trend was accompanied by a number of prominent exhaust manufacturers such as Skorpion, later Akrapovich, Termignoni or Arrow, who significantly improved their systems in terms of processing and function compared to earlier times.

Italics from the 90s

In the mid-1990s, strange things appeared in the manufacturers’ racing kits, such as electronic control units with different ignition timing curves or EPROMs in which so-called mappings were stored. That confronted those interested in tuning with unusual circumstances. First of all, the ignition boxes or EPROMs cost a lot of money, and not every product was based on a solid knowledge of the subject.

The boxes from reputable manufacturers usually contained several ignition curves for this purpose, but normal mortals received no information about how different curves should be activated and which one was suitable for what. “There is a specialist in Belgium who charges 200 marks per activated ignition curve. You have to find out for yourself which of the 18 stored ones fits your engine. ”At that time the author was confronted with such information when tuning his Supersport Honda and declined with thanks. After all, there was the threat of completely shooting down a control unit in the event of manipulation.

Help came from a box from the American manufacturer Dynojet, which tuning activists had previously known as a manufacturer of roller test benches and a supplier of carburetor nozzle sets. The Dynojet box copied the curve of the HRC ignition box and kindly released another 200 revolutions more. But what says much more for this story: The jet jugglers were about to familiarize themselves with the highly complex mixture preparation electronics of modern motorcycles.

The optical tuning

The Power Commander in all its versions is a product of these years of development work and an example of how engine tuning has become electronic. Today, in top-class racing, electronics specialists are in demand who can provide a separate map for each cylinder at each point on a course, controlled by GPS, combined with differently working engine brakes, traction control, fuel-saving and rain modes, if they are needed.

In the 1990s, another branch of the finishing trade that is still important today, optical tuning, intensified. It started as a lightweight construction trend with the spread of carbon fiber laminates for the weight-optimized manufacture of cladding and bench bumps. Because you wanted to show what you had, the carbon-under-clearcoat fashion dominated for a while. She developed a general desire for noble surfaces and artistic paintwork. As a material for safety-relevant parts such as wheels or brakes, carbon turned out to be too expensive and too sensitive for further distribution.

It’s never been easier for tuners today

Today, more and more motorcycles are coming onto the market that offer everything from anti-lock braking to integral braking systems, traction controls, adjustable engine characteristics to semi-active chassis and – not to forget – 200 hp as standard equipment that previously could only be achieved with great effort.

A BMW HP 4 or Ducati Panigale offer the first and second tuning stages ex works. It’s never been easier for a tuner today. There is a great risk that tuning will become a mere replacement of parts according to the scheme F. Wheels from Marchesini, brakes from Brembo, exhaust from Akrapovich, Power Commander from Dynojet, suspension elements from Ohlins, the latest slick from Michelin or Dunlop, a little carbon here, a little titanium there, and you have an extremely expensive tuning machine. But whether it harmonizes as well with its driver as a perfectly tuned instrument is doubtful.

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