| Author | Message | ||
     Xlcr |
First, the big four history is coming up. I'm putting it together in Word first, it's easier to work with, and I'll be wanting to save it anyway. I'm being held back a bit by the fact I have a lot of end of the season yard work to do before the weather turns. We've already had our first snow storm, power was off for 15 hours, and I had to pack two truck loads of tree branches out of the yard. I should be able to get it up this evening, though. Harley's first attempt was in fact an outboard motor! They were working with a fellow named Ole Evinrude. But in the end Evinrude carried the outboard motor project forward and Harley and the Davidsons chose to produce a motorcycle instead. I don't think Harley ever built their own bicycles. I think they outsourced them just to give their dealers something more to sell.I'm pretty sure they were built by the Butler Brothers out of Chicago. And finally, yes, the original Sturgis did have a belt primary, and yes, it was unreliable and quickly discontinued. A double or triple row chain simply works better in that application and there is no advantage in using a belt, as you can enclose it and keep it lubed and clean. I believe belt primaries are simply a chopper fashion item. | ||
| Oldog |
Sorry you got pummled with snow, I caught cold and am staying in today trying to shake it its 68F outside, boo..... | ||
| Grndskpr |
will still be able to take cheap shots from the peanut gallery to keep us entertained. So tell me more about Thor, i know a person whos been looking for one for a while. I would love to find one but doubt i could find the parts to fix it let me know R | ||
| Cochise |
No! It should be: You're a good man. This mistake is one of my major pet peeves Mine is.. Yeah is pronounced Yah. "yea" is pronounced yay. I also don't like ending a sentence with a preposition, because a preposition is not something to end a sentence with. | ||
| Blake |
Great stuff XLCR. Please keep it coming. Just one comment. On the V-Twin being American like apple pie... Personally, I look at it more as being an icon representative of America due to its incredibly long and diverse history and incredible success/popularity, not because I ever thought the first ever V-Twin engine was invented here. And really for me it is the 45o air-cooled, pushrod, long stroking, big V-Twin that is American as apple pie to me.  | ||
| Buell_less |
Blake sed: How about the one-sided swingarm? That's easy, the original BMW GS in the early '80s. Do scooters count? I think Vespas had 'em in the 60s, and there's a highly entertaining story, possibly true, that when Ducati put the SSSA on the 916, they were visited by Honda/ELF. When told that Ducati owed money to Honda/ELF for their "patented" SSSA, the Ducati guy pointed outside to an early-60s Moto Guzzi scooter equipped with a SSSA strikingly similar to the Honda/ELF and Ducati SSSAs. In patent fights, "prior art" counts; if someone else did it before your patent, you can't extort, er, extract payment for it. Honda/ELF went away with no money and the sound of the Ducati rep's laughter in their ears. | ||
| Rocketman |
And interestingly Honda / Elf worked hard on the hub centre steered idea with little success. Then Bimota revitalized it with Ducati power sometime later, with little success too. Rocket | ||
| Choptop |
Yamaha had a center hub steering too. (Message edited by Choptop on October 15, 2005) | ||
| Choptop |
Here's an article on on it... http://eindiancompanies.com/pdf/hubcenter.pdf two words... Ner Car. | ||
| Xlcr |
Thor was an brand name of the Aurora Automatic Machinery Co., which got its start by contracting to build engines for Indian in its early days. They went on to make the Thor motorcycle and to sell engines to several other early American companies. They started production in 1903, and expired in 1916. | ||
| Xlcr |
Part I First a few corrections from the other thread. I’ve discovered that Honda made a small batch of 98cc two-strokes before they settled into their long tradition of four-stroke design. They wouldn’t build them again until the Elsinore motocrossers of the early ‘70s. Also, the German alternate front suspension designs of the period were all trailing link designs, not leading link. I must have been thinking of a Harley springer when I wrote that. But I think to keep this from getting too long I should pick and choose a little here. I doubt if anyone will be interested in the arcane details of ‘50s models that were never sold here. More important is where they came from. The first influence on the Japanese was Harley-Davidson. Harley sent an employee named Alfred Rich Child over to Japan in 1924 to negotiate an import agreement. This was successful, and after several years of importing they went farther and allowed him to arrange to sent Harley tooling over and actually build Harleys in Japan. This was arranged in 1929. All went well until 1936, when Child had a falling out with the mother ship over their desire to sell to the Japanese the rights and tooling to build the new Knucklehead model. The Japanese saw the bikes mostly as haulers, most were used as three wheeler or sidecar rigs, and they saw no need for the expense and complication of changing over from the flathead models. This got worse as the US and Japan drifted closer to war, and finally Harley was advised to sell out and leave, and they did so. The company was renamed Rikuo (King of the Road) and continued in production, building bikes for the Japanese Army during the war. After the war Rikuo failed to move forward. While it’s virtual twin, the Harley WL, was developed into first the K model and then the Sportster, the Rikuo remained unchanged, and was quickly driven under by the new Japanese motorcycle companies. What is now known as the big four all appeared in the late ‘40s or early ‘50s, building small bikes and mo-peds in response to the need for cheap transportation in a country that was bombed out and had a shattered economy. I think the most important thing to establish here is that, though British, Italian, and American influences were present, the Japanese were more than anything influenced by the German companies, especially DKW and NSU, respectively the leading two-stroke and four-stroke builders in Germany. After the war DKW found itself on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, and some of the staff fled to the west to start a new DKW factory. Others remained behind and renamed the old works MZ. The pre-war DKW 125 two-stroke was probably the single most important two-stroke ever designed. It became the inspiration for most of the following Japanese designs for many years after. Harley and BSA were given the blueprints as spoils of war and quickly produced their copies as the Harley Hummer and the BSA Bantam. Suzuki’s copy followed soon after, and the first Yamaha and Kawasaki singles were little different. Both DKW and MZ were active in racing after the war and it was an MZ engineer that developed the expansion chamber. Before then two-stroke timing had been a compromise between scavenging all of the exhaust gasses at the price of sucking out half the intake charge with them before the piston could cover the port, or saving the intake charge at the costing of leaving a lot of dirty exhaust gasses behind. The expansion chamber’s ‘back pulse’ design did a fine job of first pulling out the exhaust gasses and then pushing the intake charge back in long enough for the piston to close the port. I believe Suzuki actually hired the guy that invented it and brought him to Japan. This allowed two-strokes to make equal or better power than the four-strokes for the first time. SO...three of the big four decided on two-strokes as their main product line, while Honda alone decided to pursue four-stroke technology. As I mentioned elseware, Honda’s biggest influence was NSU, and especially the Max series. These were fascinating bikes, well worth Googling a look at. The upside to all this was their adoption of German style electrical systems and up to date oil tight engines. This stood them in very good stead when they started to export to the US and Europe. I doubt if they would have done so well had they decided to emulate British or Italian electrics instead. The downside was their decision to follow the Germans’ infatuation with pressed steel frames and weird alternate front suspension designs. This eventually led to such hideous bikes as the early ‘60s Honda Dreams. Even now I’m still not sure what to think of pressed steel frames. The Germans started on these in the ‘30s, and at one time or other various German companies claimed they were stronger, lighter, and cheaper to make than tube frame designs. In the real world, German bikes of the era tended to be heavier and more expensive than their British and Italian competitors. But there are too many other possible variables to draw firm conclusions from this. I tend to think the Germans have a habit of engineering for engineering’s sake, and make things more complicated than they need to be. I find it hard to believe there was ever any real advantage over tube designs. When the Japanese first began to export it didn’t matter, because their early step-throughs and commuter bikes were selling more on convenience than looks anyway. But when they started to enter the sporting bike field things changed. Americans were used to the traditional appearance of the British bikes, and had little previous exposure to German designs. They saw the pressed steel bikes as ugly, and the trailing link forks looked strange and didn’t really provide enough travel. So the Japanese adapted. The pressed steel did not disappear, but they learned to use telescopic forks and rounded fenders, and the pressed parts were hidden under tanks, seats, and side covers, while tubing often appeared instead in exposed areas. In this fashion pressed steel backbones lingered on into the ‘70s. Having learned this lesson the Japanese had early success with sporting 250cc and 350cc vertical twins like the Honda 250 and 305 Hawks, the Suzuki X6 Hustler, the Kawasaki Avenger, and Yamaha’s long running series of two-stroke racing and street twins. At this point the British were apparently not worried. They should have been. I seem to remember reading a quote somewhere of a British executive saying something stupid like, “Why should we worry about the Japanese? They don’t build big bikes, they are just bringing more people into the sport that will eventually trade up to one of our models”. Profiles in blind idiocy there! On the other hand, there is every evidence that Harley’s management was considerably more aware, and more concerned, about growing Japanese sales. They took two major steps in the ‘60s that probably saved them. One was the introduction of electric start. The Japanese adopted electric start very quickly in the ‘60s, and it was an idea far overdue. The Brits just didn’t seem to see the need, but the Japanese realized that lack of electric start was probably the single most daunting thing about motorcycle ownership to many would-be buyers. Harley saw this too, and engineered strong systems for both of its main models before the decade was out. The other step was to sell itself to AMF. Harley realized that their tooling was worn out, their designs dated, and their cupboard was bare. They needed a massive infusion of money to compete with the oncoming Japanese deluge, and AMF had it. Whatever people might think about AMF, they saved Harley. And the bigger bikes weren’t long in coming. The first was the Honda CB450 DOHC twin in 1965. It was fast and sophisticated for its day, but had some flaws. It made as much power as the Brit 650s, but was heavy, down on torque, had a clunky gearbox, and rather questionable styling. Some thought the gas tank would have looked better if they had put it on backwards. In 1967 they fixed the gear box and styling and it did much better. This was followed by the Kawasaki 650 twin. Unlike the rest of their line-up, it was a four-stroke. In fact, it really wasn’t a Kawasaki at all. It was a close copy of the ‘50s BSA A7 pre-unit pushrod twin originally designed and built by the Meguro company, an early Japanese builder that was taken over by an expanding Kawasaki. The Meguro 650 was then chosen as a suitable model for the US market. It wasn’t. By that time BSA had moved on to the unit A10 model, and the Kawasaki already looked old when it was introduced. Another early effort was the Suzuki 500 Titan. This was a nice bike, with good power for the day, classic looks, and decent reliability for a two-stroke. But the deluge of high-powered superbikes that followed soon after shoved it off into the wings, and it is little remembered now in spite of a long production run. The final big Japanese bike before the superbike era was the Yamaha XS650 twin. Again a four-stroke, it was, like the Kawasaki, the product of another company, in this case, Showa. I read this a long time ago, and I don’t recall where, but in spite of its current connection to Honda, Showa was once a wholly independent firm with its own bike designs, and in some way I can’t remember the details of, when they abandoned building bikes their design for a 650 twin ended up at Yamaha. Unlike the Kawasaki, the XS was a huge success, and would go on to be the best-selling bike in the US some 11 years after its introduction, in 1979. It combined a modern, clean-sheet engine design with vaguely generic styling that didn’t look like any particular British bike while still invoking that classic British roadster look. The handling was inferior to the Brits, but electric start, reliable electrics and oil-tight engines made up for it to many buyers. This concludes part I. Part two will follow starting in the magic year of 1969, the beginning of what we called at the time The Superbike Era. | ||
| Rocketman |
Last time around when Bimota were about to hit the wall the Tesi hadn't sold anywhere near as well as they anticipated so said the press at the time. In an attempt to stay afloat Bimota put together a naked bike, the Vyrus I think they called it, and it too was hub centre steered as it used most of the Tesi left over parts that Bimota still had. Bimota did hit the wall but were brought back to life under new ownership and as far as I'm aware they still make a hub centre steered naked bike. I've seen it in the flesh too and it looks bloody fabulous but the guy selling it said it rode bloody awful. When I questioned that, it being a Bimota and all, his reply was something like "well Ron Haslam, Honda and Elf couldn't make hub centre steering work properly and nor could Bimota". I think the issue is in race trim the front tyre contact / wear is / was problematic under such extremes which might well be the same for a high performance sport Bimota. The Yamaha GTS as I understand it was a great bike and loved by many of its owners but on the other hand others were put off because they simply couldn't get along with the no dive in the suspension. Having never ridden one but always wanted too I'd relish the chance to find out for myself. Used ones still command a high price over here. I might be wrong but I'm thinking it was a French outfit who in recent years turned a GTS into a naked Streetfighter - and it looked awesome. Rocket | ||
| S2pengy |
Don't forget multi valve heads... Early teens HD and Indian board trackers.. And overhead bevel drives Thor and American Excelsior teens board trackers.. Pammy to answer your question no I already knew it..... | ||
| Buell_less |
I demo-rode a GTS when they were new and found it a fascinating ride. While I'm sure the anti-dive effect was there, I didn't notice it because other aspects of the running gear were more obvious. Example: Running the bike through a lumpy corner is almost anti-climactic. You don't get bounced around, you don't feel the big whacks the suspension is taking. The bike just sails through, no fuss, no muss. The front end isn't numb, not at all; you can easily tell what the front tire is doing. It's just that the bike is doing the work, not you. The biggest problem with the GTS was that, IMHO, it didn't look radical enough. To most people, it looked like a regular sportbike with a Jay Leno chin, different enough to be jarring but not radical enough to look 21st Centuryish and thus super-modern. (Message edited by buell_less on October 15, 2005) | ||
| Rocketman |
Well I found the French thing. Look no further than Lazereth  Lazereth are based in Anecy where there's a fantastic Harley dealership. Yes I've been there a couple of times and it's a nice part of the world too. Should I have known Lazereth were there I'd have looked them up too. Check out their website. I mean look at this for a creation. V6 Mazda 1800cc motor in a Streetfighter....  or this which you might find familiar seeing as something looking very similar was featured on BadWeB only a week or so ago................. conveniently named Wild Star????  and  Sorry to put this in the History thread XL but let's say this is modern history. Thanks for your great efforts all the same. Very enjoyable read. Keep it coming and I'll try to shut up! Rocket | ||
| Rocketman |
Sorry me bad. LAZARETH Check'em out. Rocket | ||
| Ceejay |
Excellent...I do need another six pack!!! As I've stated before this board rocks... | ||
| Choptop |
a note on stamped steel frames.... coming from someone that has actually owned and RIDDEN bikes of the era and of the various designs.... the difference is negligible. you are dealing with pretty low horsepower machines that have suspensions and handling of REAL low quality, even restored to top spec. I defy anyone on a blind test to tell the difference between a stamped steel frame and a tube frame, at ANY pace.... street, track, parade. | ||
| Jon |
Rumplstilsken | ||
| Jon |
Did I win anything? | ||
| Xlcr |
Gosh, I find this extremely hard to believe, but I have to agree with Chop on something. There was no real advantage or disadvantage either way. I believe they disappeared mostly because people didn't like the way they looked. | ||
| Xlcr |
Part II In 1969 the Superbike Era began.....or at least, that’s how we saw it at the time. Cycle magazine called it, “The year all the big guns went off at once”. That year they published the famous ‘Magnificent Seven’ comparo, the first issue I ever bought, and one I still remember like it was yesterday. That year Honda introduced the 750 Four, Kawasaki came out with the brutal Mach III, and the Brits belatedly weighted in with their Triumph and BSA 750 triples. Norton had completely redesigned its frame to come up with the new rubber-mounted Commando 750. The Sportster and the Suzuki Titan were also in that test, but it was soon apparent that the Titan was in over its head. By the end of the test, it was clear that, even though the Japanese bikes didn’t in fact win the performance categories, a new era was upon us. In fact, the Norton, the Triumph, and the BSA were the quickest and fastest bikes in the test, but it didn’t matter. Rubber mounting the shaky Norton was a great idea, and resulted in a smooth, good handling and attractive roadster, but one that still leaked oil, shed parts, and had flickering lights and flaky electrics. The triples were fast, but the ‘ray gun’ styling was terrible, and the bikes appeared with four-speed boxes and drum brakes, which made them seem immediately dated compared to the Honda. The screaming Kawasaki Mach III 500 two-stroke triple hung right in there with the Brit bikes, but it was a pop bottle rocket, a flash in the pan, with terrible vibration, a short life between overhauls, and dubious handling. The Honda performed about the same as the ancient Harley Ironhead Sporty, faster than only the Titan, but that made no difference. Because the Honda Four was the new benchmark in motorcycling. It had it all. A GP inspired OHC transverse four engine, a front disc brake, an electric starter, a five speed box, reliable electrics, minimal vibration for its day, and tasteful if conservative styling. Without actually breaking any new technological ground, it seemed like it was ten years newer than any of the other bikes in the test. As I’ve said before, it’s all a matter of perception, and the world perceived the Honda Four as motorcycling’s future, and so it was. The others could only scramble to catch up. The Brits slept for too long in the ‘60s, and when they did react it was too little, and too late. The ugly triples languished in the showrooms, and after a good start, Norton sales trickled off. They frantically tried to recover, the triples were restyled in the classic mold and given disc brakes and five speed boxes, the Norton got more displacement and electric starting, but it wasn’t nearly enough. They still drooled gas and dripped oil and required almost constant maintenance, while the Honda was the first big bike that was actually a practical purchase for someone who wasn’t a mechanic. For long periods it was possible to just add gas and ride it, an almost unheard of concept in the big bike world. And in those days before the onset of specialization it was a one-size-fits-all motorcycle, a sport bike, a commuter, a touring bike, whatever you wanted it to be, a jack of all trades in a way that’s rare in today’s market. Harley reacted by restyling the Sportster, adding a disc brake, and boring it out to a full 1000cc, but its day as the king of the stoplight wars was over forever. Harley feared its sales would decline too, and decided on a more drastic step. In 1971 Harley introduced the Super Glide, the first cruiser. Sales were sluggish at first, but that would change over the years, and the SG would be only the beginning of a long line of successful cruisers that would save the company from the fate of the British. Ah yes, the British! By 1975, it was pretty much over for them. The Meridian Worker’s Co-op would carry on until 1983, cranking out small numbers of Bonnevilles, and a ghost of Norton would remain even longer, building odd rotary bikes for the English police and reviving a bit of their old glory with rotary racing victories in the ‘90s. But that did little to offset their almost complete collapse. Kawasaki also saw that they were well short of the mark, and after a fling with an even bigger and hairier Mach IV 750 two-stroke triple, a bike that amplified the Mach III’s faults as much as it amplified its performance, they decided to follow and improve upon Honda’s lead with the awesome Z1, a bike that soon became the performance king of the ‘70s. The Z1 was just everything the Honda was, and more. More displacement, more HP, more camshafts (DOHC) and more attitude. While the Honda was conservative, the Kawasaki was screaming “look at me”. It wasn’t perfect. The frame was a bit rubbery, and the bike was known to go into violent tank-slappers if pushed too hard. One of them did it to a friend of mine on a freeway off ramp and almost killed him. This was improved with reinforcement around the steering head in later models. The bike also had a high-pitched vibration that would put your hands to sleep. At the time it was considered pretty smooth, but ride one now from a modern perspective and you will wonder how they thought that. At this point we enter into an odd period. After all the frantic activity of the early ‘70s, things seemed to just slow down in the street bike world. There was a lot of dirt activity. The Yamaha DT-1 started a new era in Japanese dirt bikes, within a few years they were competitive with the well established Euro brands, and everyone, even Honda, hell, even Harley, came out with two-stroke motocrossers. Kawasaki was allowed to hold on to its performance title for many years without a serious challenge from the other Japanese firms. Honda seemed distracted by its efforts to become a world-wide presence in the automotive world, while Yamaha and Suzuki had carved out a large part of the off-road pie and seemed disinclined to mount a serious assault on the street bike market. Yamaha did make a feeble effort with the TX750 four-stroke twin. This should have been a good bike. As far as I know, it was the first bike ever with counter-balancers. But the counter-balancers were chain-driven, the primary was chain-driven, the cams were chain-driven, even the electric starter was chain-driven, and the tensioner design used on all of these chains was flawed. It sounded like a threshing machine, and didn’t run for very long before the chains started breaking. After settling the warranty claims, Yamaha dropped the bike before the model year was over. Suzuki came out with a new line of triples, topped by a water-cooled two-stroke 750 triple. Kawasaki’s hairy triples had given this type of engine a bad name for vibration and unreliability, and Suzuki seemed to be going out of its way with the GT750 ‘Water Buffalo’ (nickname only) to prove that two-stokes could be reliable and practical. They succeeded admirably, the Water Buffalo was not just a reliable ride for a two-stroke, it was reliable period. There were several of them still running around here until just a few years ago. In spite of hard to find parts and minimal maintenance, some of them lasted for over 25 years! They weren’t pretty, and the handling was nothing special, but Suzuki certainly proved their point........Too bad no one cared. The one big story of the mid-seventies was the Honda Gold Wing. Everyone expected Honda to come out with a bike that would challenge the Z1, but when the Gold Wing arrived, it bewildered everyone. It was a heavy, shaft drive, water-cooled design that was obviously not a sport bike or a Z1 beater. The reason people scratched their heads is because Honda had realized something that most had not. Harley Electra-Glides were still selling. They were still selling because they had evolved with the American highway system, and were uniquely tailored to it. Honda saw that there was a real market in the US for large, heavy, long distance touring bikes that could do long days on the Interstate in comfort. It would take them five years to realize something that Harley already knew, heavy touring riders preferred their bikes to come fully equipped. Once they realized that, Honda and Harley settled down to a domination of the heavy touring market that has continued to this day. I suppose people will expect me to mention the Suzuki RE5 rotary. OK, I mentioned it. What a pile. Anything else I said would be redundant. Meanwhile, the Z1 didn’t have it all its own way. The Italians built bikes like the Laverda Triple and the Ducati 900SS that offered better handling and almost the straight line speed. Harley thought the Sportster was doomed after the Z1 arrived, and planned to sell it only until the sales dropped off before they discontinued the model. The odd thing is, that never happened. Sportster sales continued to rise throughout the decade, and Harley finally decided to keep it in production. At the end of the decade things were getting lively again. Yamaha came out with the XS 750 triple with shaft drive, and followed with the blazing XS1100, also a shafty, and faster than the Z1. Suzuki lost interest in two-strokes and rotaries, (thank goodness!) and came out with an excellent new batch of four-stroke fours, including a 750 and a very fast 1000. And Honda shot the moon with its awesome looking 1000 Six, the wildest Japanese bike ever, though not the first six. Benelli beat it by several years. What brought this on? Mostly the sudden fade of the dirt and small bike markets. On the surface, everything looked fine, but it wasn’t. Off-road riding was in trouble, with land closure and regulations appearing everywhere, and dirt sales took a steep slide. Also, mysteriously, starter bikes stopped selling, which meant, if anyone had been paying attention, that new riders were no longer starting. Yamaha and Suzuki realized that the only game left in town was big street bikes, and it was time to get serious about them. And the rest of the world discovered cruisers. Wayne Moulton over at Kawasaki styled the Z1 LTD, Yamaha came out with its Specials, and Harley replied with its hugely popular Low Rider and had a record year with over 50,000 sales in 1979. So did everyone else. Yamaha sold so many specials that year, with the old XS650 Special leading the charge, that they out sold Honda for the only time in history, in spite of a bunch of new Honda models, including the GL500 v-twins and new DOHC fours. And the new Suzukis finally made the company a real presence on the street. But in 1980 sales merely treaded water, and the next year they started to slide........... So concludes Part II. Next will be Part III, the Great Slump of the ‘80s. | ||
| Ray_maines |
This eventually led to such hideous bikes as the early ‘60s Honda Dreams. Sir: You owe me an apology! And as to the "Your vs. You're" thing:  | ||
| Xlcr |
Sorry, but one man's meat is another man's poison. Somehow I just couldn't get behind the Dreams, and I had several friends and relatives that owned them. | ||
| Oldog |
Rocket: the bottom picture, whos power plant is in that and what is it? Edit: never mind, cant read french pretty exotic these are European Choppers? Way Cool... Xlcr Interesting point about the suzi rotories soo stunning I forgot about them untill you mentioned them... (Message edited by oldog on October 16, 2005) | ||
| Rocketman |
Ol' that's a VF800 Honda power plant and it is not a European chopper. It's a French Streetfighter  Rocket | ||
| Newfie_buell |
HEY, How about Yamaha's whole two stroke era!!!!! Got any info on those!!! | ||
| Jima4media |
XLCR, Good stuff! I like the whole motorcycle industry history condensed into a few short posts. The answer to the first V-Twin manufacturer in 1903 is NSU. This company went by Neckarsulm Strickmaschinen Union (Neckarsulm Knitting-machine Union), a name that described their business accurately enough, but is quite a mouthful for the non-Germanic. Hence, they eventually adopted the initials NSU. Some trivia questions - WHO made the first motorcycle? I obviously don't like your 1898 answer. Who was the first to put fuel in the frame? Who was the first to put oil in the frame? Who was the first to use a perimeter brake? Who made the first V-4 motorcycle? Who made the first 5 cylinder bike? Who are the builders of 6 cylinder bikes? Who made the V-8s? Who made the first mono-shock rear suspension? Why did dustbin fairings come to an end? Did Craig Vetter have anything to do with Buell motorcycles? (Message edited by jima4media on October 16, 2005) | ||
| Diablobrian |
Looks to me like lazereth is making money producing other companies prototypes. I saw the B-king and the Honda NAS in there. They even sell the single sided front as a kit for 10,000 euros. it's a great idea, but it could be seen as copyright infringement. I don't know how french law deals with such things as intellectual property. I'd say they are skating on thin ice though. | ||
| Choptop |
first motorcycle? Diamler.. if I recall correctly. 1886? I'll have to look it up |
