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Slaughter
| | Posted on Saturday, December 31, 2005 - 10:23 am: | 
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I dunno - I'm kinda liking the points Terry made above.
Buell is putting their "race budget" into Club racing. To me it makes sense to put money into grassroots racing, where people are spending THEIR OWN MONEY to go racing.
Sure, if I had a salary of nearly $100K a year and had a staff to work on my bike(s) and only flew out to the races, I'd be a shill for (fill in the blank) motorcycle company - but that aint the case.
I'm just a normal schlub with a day job struggling to pay off medical and visa bills from the past 3 years of racing and it does my heart good to see Buell tossing MORE money in 2006 into racing in the "real world" - racing at the CLUB level.
It's not a huge investment but it can really make a difference. I'm already getting asked questions on the Willow Springs racing BBS by other racers looking at buying a beat-up XB from salvage and race-converting it.
I'm glad Buell is putting some $$ into AFM this coming season.
Question for Terry - how many Buells are there racing in AFM and what classes??? (just thinking) |
Slaughter
| | Posted on Saturday, December 31, 2005 - 11:15 am: |
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Oh and if the past 3-4 years of speculating on the various BBS's is any example well... let's not congratulate ourselves too early on much more than wishful thinking.
I "wish" Buell had a multiple-hundred-million dollar race budget like Honda does.
WISH in one hand S*** in the other and tell me which one fills up faster.
(Message edited by slaughter on December 31, 2005) |
Xbolt12
| | Posted on Saturday, December 31, 2005 - 07:11 pm: |
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Pretty funny Steve. It is good to see Buell adding contingency money to the pot. Maybe those Ulysses sales are upping the ante.
BTW if any of those guys on the WSMC are looking for a nice XB12R to race, mines for sale.... |
Buelldyno_guy
| | Posted on Sunday, January 01, 2006 - 11:30 pm: |
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We have not seen the details, so we are not too sure what classes they will support. We run in F4 it allows 1210-cc air cooled twins with 400-cc WC multi valve inline fours and 650-cc WC multi valve twins. A few times last year we ran in the top 5 on our small engined XB in the AFM Open Twin Class, but we were giving 25 to 30 HP away. I am building a 90 inch OT bike for a customer for this upcoming season, and we will returning F4 along with Mike Miller running a X1. There has been some talk of another, but we haven't been involved if it is so. We would love it if we could run both classes but that a lot of money and work. ... Terry |
Slaughter
| | Posted on Monday, January 02, 2006 - 09:38 pm: |
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Yeah... hear your pain on the money.
I live within 20 miles of Willow Springs so I don't pay travel and related expenses. If I try to stay comptetitive here at Willow springs I'll start running behind on spending if I'm not budgeting $1500 a month for everything. No matter what I do, it comes up to AT LEAST $1000 per month with no crashing - and still I'll end up hitting the VISA too often when the unexpected (yet predictable) things happen. I went through the expenses in 04 (05 doesn't count because of the huge medical) - and it was about $1300 a month for 4 race classes a month - plus one track day and one practice day... and that was marginal |
Kenb
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 03, 2006 - 10:24 am: |
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don't get me wrong i love the harley mill but buell should have teamed up with atk/cannondale for a modern mill. cannondale got the ball rolling and atk refined it into a package that's competitive with anything from japan/europe in the thumper category. http://www.atkusa.com |
Fullpower
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 03, 2006 - 01:17 pm: |
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what exactly does ATK have that is competitive? which track have you seen an ATK competing on? not bashing the brand, just want to know WHERE you saw one in competition? |
Kenb
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 03, 2006 - 02:27 pm: |
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here are a couple;
http://www.atkusa.com/documents/Press%20Release%202005%20Idaho%20City%20Motorcyc le%20Race.pdf
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/5/prweb125372.htm
http://www.off-road.com/atv/press/2004_12/atkgnc.html |
Xbolt12
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 04, 2006 - 10:10 pm: |
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Ummm, is that the same bike/engine that bankrupted Cannondale (the same one some silly magazines named Bike of the Year before it ever materialized). Maybe with a big enough budget Cannondale could have continued R & D and got the bugs out, but the problem was that they tried all new ways of doing things, which isn't always better.
As for ATK, it's good to see they are still around. Horst Leitner had some pretty great ideas in both mountain bikes and motorcycles and some are still around. However, even the frames were originally being built by C & J racing in Fallbrook, CA (ATK design)and the engines were Rotax, so it's not like they had a complete engine or bike to offer, just some new design ideas like the ATK chain torque eliminator, counter shaft disk brake, and link-less single side-shock. Even those revolutionary ideas had draw-backs in my opinion (I had a C & J ATK-style Suzuki 525 thumper built in 1985). For example the torque eliminator did kill squat on accelation, but squat is usefull on dirt bikes to lighten the front wheel over whoops and other obstacles. The linkless shock wasn't progressive enough with out special valving in my opinion (look how much time it's taken KTM to sort that out). The counter shaft disk ate pads because it was spinning so fast.
As for their new bike, it sure looks like all Cannondale design to me. Maybe they have worked the bugs out though. Also it's a single cylinder verticle fuel injected 450 with the throttle body in the front, so it doesn't seem to be anything that would complement Buell in any way in my opinion. |
Diablobrian
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 04, 2006 - 10:27 pm: |
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The semi-persistent rumors of buell using a rotax twin are probably without merit.
If there is to be a new motor it will probably be an in-house H-D design. Whether this is good or bad remains to be seen.
The real question is will the mothership invest in a new motor for the Buell.
According to Erik forget the v-rod motor. It is too a)long b)heavy c)wide for his concept of a motorcycle. |
Dana P.
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 04, 2006 - 10:30 pm: |
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Its not the mother ship who will invest it'll be Buell that will invest.The mothership will build it no less. |
Reepicheep
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 04, 2006 - 11:32 pm: |
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I was thinking about this today while I was riding my 9sx on a comfy Ohio January day...
The blast motor was basically half an XB motor, and was run for a while to work out the details before being "scaled up" to the XB.
The best analogy I can conceive at this point is that the Revolution motor in the V-Rod is basically an over-engineered (heavy and conservative) sport motor, and is being run for a while to work out the details before being "scaled up" to the XB-RR.
Except in this case, "scaling up" won't be doubling the number of cylinders and displacement, it will be lightening everying, making everything more aggressive, and pushing the envelope further. It will be an all new engine that follows the footprint and lessons learned from the Revo motor.
Or maybe not. Buell made some VERY cool reliability enhancements on the 06 motors. If they took the 12 motor, scaled it up to 1350, but did so with the shorter stroke of the 9, they might be able to match the performance of a tweaked out Revo motor with a lot less cost, a lot less complexity, and a lot cooler sound.
My 9 is already more power then I can fully utilize, unless I wanted to bang out 3rd gear wheelies. I don't, so I don't really care. |
Buelldyno_guy
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 04, 2006 - 11:50 pm: |
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I understand that the XB motor design was first and then the Blast came fron that. ... But what if we all could gain from what the Buell rrace Department learned last year. The Hal's bike had a new Buell head design with twin downdrafts and it made serious power. So will that be available to other teams this year? ... Terry
(Message edited by buelldyno_guy on January 04, 2006) |
Jkhawaii
| | Posted on Thursday, January 05, 2006 - 12:10 am: |
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I know that they probly can not go much larger in displacment
since the 12 already has a hard time keeping it's cool.
a short stroke larger bore engine would work well. along with raised runners on the intake and posibly a duel TB IR set up.
I would like to see Cotes rotory valve heads used if they made a new engine
somthing will probly happen in 09, I'm not sure if the XB meets the next level of emissions requirements |
Stou
| | Posted on Thursday, January 05, 2006 - 08:04 am: |
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I know that they probly can not go much larger in displacment
since the 12 already has a hard time keeping it's cool.
The real solution to get more power and be reliable is to liquid-cooled it.
I remember in the survey on buell.com, they asked lots of question about what we like and don't like. One of this question was about having a liquid-cooled engine.
It can be a good solution to many problem.... but do we want that? Not sure! |
650
| | Posted on Thursday, January 05, 2006 - 11:55 am: |
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I think someone has stated that the Coates valves don't seal very well which makes sense. I don't see the Buell team doing something terribly radical with the powerplant. They've stated numerous times that they prefer air cooling.
Realistically, as pointed out above, we may see better heads and intake. Downdraft and individual runners. Even that might be too far of a departure though. A flatter valve angle would be nice so we could get higher compressions easier without domed pistons. I'd love to keep it air cooled but get 3/4 valved heads and maybe even DOHC. |
Sarodude
| | Posted on Thursday, January 05, 2006 - 12:33 pm: |
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Not that they're disappointing to me - but my personal disappointment with the XB motors was keeping the bore limitations of the XL motors.
The 3.125" stroke with a factory stock 4" bore (3.8125" being a fairly large bore in XB / XL motors) would yield something slightly under 1300cc while being more rev friendly than the long stroke motors. To me, the (simplistic) thought of an XB9 (uh, 1000) motor making 30% more power ACROSS THE BOARD strictly via bore increase (to keep revability) is kinda exciting.
I'm sure for reasons of MASSIVE savings that kinda stuff wasn't an option since cases, jugs, heads, and the manufacturing line would have to change. I mean, if you're gonna re-engineer that much of the motor, why not the whole thing?
In any case, my fairly ho-hum 95 S2 is giving me tons of smiles with it's anemic stock powerplant! I don't really care!
-Saro |
Blake
| | Posted on Thursday, January 05, 2006 - 01:32 pm: |
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"the 12 already has a hard time keeping it's cool."
That is an inaccurate statement. |
M1combat
| | Posted on Thursday, January 05, 2006 - 02:10 pm: |
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Agreed... The 12 is plenty cooled.
I've been saying dual downdraft 1350 from the factory for two years. They'll do it  . |
Buell12hundo
| | Posted on Thursday, January 05, 2006 - 02:26 pm: |
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if they used lighter internals (titanium) and try to lighten up the rotating mass a little that could help a little |
650
| | Posted on Friday, January 06, 2006 - 12:44 am: |
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That would increase the cost of the bike greatly. I see the factory only making small revisions on the mill for a while. I'd guess they're going to stick with pushrods and 2 valves per cylinder. If we're lucky we might get the downdraft heads an dual intake runners.
Maybe if we all ask for a bore increase we might see it. |
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