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Page 1 ONLINE AUGUST 29, 2007 MOTOR CYCLE NEWS 29 www.motorcyclenews.com See Trevor Franklin in action on the 1125R at Laguna Seca, only on our website motorcyclenews.com/1125Rtest > EXCLUSIVE VIDEO Trial and errors Demands for Buell to produce a bike with its famed race-like handling and more power should be satisfied with the new Rotax-powered 1125R. That s what Buell reckons, but MCN s Trevor Franklin isn t so sure Pictures by Double Red WORLD FIRST TEST BUELL 1125R trevor.franklin@emap.com AGUNA Seca Raceway, California has the distinction of being the battle ground for America s only round of MotoGP. Up and down elevations along this 2.238-mile track make any trackside photographer or spectator blow like a bull at a gate. Throw in the legendary twisting and fast downhill Corkscrew section and Laguna Seca becomes a tough test for any race bike, let alone a production road bike like Buell s new 1125R. Except, as is explained to us in the pre-ride briefing room, the dozen or so Buells currently lined up ready for track action aren t production bikes. They looked glossy, immaculate and finished as we walked past first thing this morning, but are apparently all pre-production bikes. Pre-production is a term usually heard when a new model has small unfinished details but will be sorted by the time the bikes arrive on the shop floor one such L detail on some of the 1125Rs are the very untidy welds on their underslung exhausts. Another time pre-production will be whispered is when a bike has a problem that has so far eluded a cure and is so noticeable it s all the rider can focus on and talk about. So yes, the term preproduction can be considered as a cop-out by a manufacturer, but in the presence of motorcycling journalists from near and far, it s like a piece of steak thrown to a pack of hungry sled dogs. On an unknown track and bike, it d be easy to lump some handling problems on the rider and the machine s road-biased components not quite in tune with track riding. Buell, though, is on the ball and each bike s suspension has been set up beforehand. All this guinea pig has to do is match my weight to that given on each bike s key fob. Fine, except muggins here weighs closer to 15 stones without leathers and the only bikes not grabbed have settings for 1213.5-stone saplings. Race tracks aren t the best places to figure the highs or lows of an engine s torque delivery. Nine out of ten riders will be revving the head bolts off a bike in an attempt to get maximum power to the rear tyre. But the one warm-up lap tells a lot about this Rotax 72 V-twin lump. Pulling out of the pits on to the long circuit entry road there s a slight hesitancy in the fuelling. First thoughts say it s possibly over-rich fuelling, the end effect of the cold start system. It soon passes as the revs build and gears slot easily into place. With Pireli Diablo Corsa III tyres up to temperature, lean angles start to climb. It s behaving like a sports bike most of the time But I m not comfortable. Not with the seating position there s ample space to move around, even though footpegs are set high and bars are forward placed but with the general feel of the bike under me. The single Showa rear shock is soft and not giving any sort of feedback. Indeed it s fairly squished with Franklin bulk, leading to the front sitting high on acceleration and moving around like a rogue shopping trolley. Brake hard, as you d expect to on a track, and the front end collapses. Ease off the brakes and the front end springs up, forcing the bike to run wide and understeer as I tip in. It s the same experience if running deep into a turn with the brakes on. Through the turn on a neutral throttle, the front end wanders over the bumps and many track imperfections. The set-up spoils my first crack at Laguna, making it hard to enjoy the heat, dry surface, sticky tyres and the bike itself. Next time out, I bag a heavier-rated bike (13.5-15 stone). Much better. The stiffer rear shock (more preload and damping) is the key to a world of feel. So are the forks, strangely with less preload but much more damping. Until, that is, the eight-piston reverse-mounted caliper grips the rim-mounted disc. There s enough stopping power to rubbish the Showa forks compression damping and spring rate and cause the rear tyre to lose contact with tarmac. An extra dab of rear brake helps the bike squat and track the turns when running in deep on the front brake. Additional touches of front rebound and compression damping make Laguna the magical place I hoped for. OK, so the bike s sitting high enough to lose some of its quick steering and agility, but at least it s now behaving like a proper sports bike for most of the time. From 8000rpm to the 10,500 redline, the 1125R s three balancer shafts struggle to contain the motor s rapid heartbeat. The bar ends start to give the same feel as having a tin of marbles poured on to palms. At a more sedate pace, the engine shows itself to be a gutsy lump. Low to midrange drive is a flat chunk of forceful, deceptive torque you wonder where the power is, but arrive at corners on Page 2 ROAD TEST From previous page that plateau of torque a lot quicker than your brain registers. Braking markers roll in to view quicker than expected, to force rapid downshifts. The 1125R s airassisted slipper clutch comes into its own here, slipping just enough not to let the big twin s engine braking unsettle the rear end (and in turn the suspect front). The greater the engine revs the greater the amount of slip but it pays not to take the piss or the engine will simply over-rev with a mechanical clatter and a large bill. Drive is instant on the gas and with lean angles that are getting close to peg down, I m glad those Pirellis come as standard and the belt drive is up to the job of dealing with the claimed 146bhp. Motorcycles don t have to be pretty to do the job they were designed to do the Buell has a Monkfish s looks and you ll either hate it or grow to like it, like me. Not even patriotic American onlookers could get to grips straight away with the widemouthed upper fairing. But they hadn t had the pleasure of its aerodynamics. In the sanitised but exciting confines of a track it s always difficult to pick up on every fault (assuming they re there in the first place) but a perfect environment to wax lyrical on a bike s merits of handling and top-end engine characteristics. After over 175 road miles a fuelling/ignition anomaly was confirmed. Between 3500-500rpm there s a stutter/surge while trying to maintain a steady throttle or when cracking the two throttle butterflies wide open. Not all the launch bikes were the same: some worse, some not so bad. But it is a pain regardless and in this day and age shouldn t be there when you consider V-twin bottom end punch is more important on the road than all-out high-rpm power. The last bike I rode with the same affliction was Aprilia s 30 MOTOR CYCLE NEWS AUGUST 29, 2007 It doesn t light a fire in our pants... not yet, anyway Pirelli Diablo Corsa III rubber on the pre-production bikes is more than up to the job IN DETAIL EXPERT We know there are issues in certain areas, but we re not hiding behind a rock ERIK BUELL, BUELL CHAIRMAN FORMER motocross racer and strong short-circuit rider Erik Buell, 57, is the man behind Buell and is now chairman and chief technical officer of the company. In 2008, Erik and Buell will celebrate 25 years of bike production and each bike produced will feature a signed top yoke plaque inscribed with his signature. If there s a question to ask about Buell, he s the man to answer it. So listen to what the man said MCN: Why change to liquid cooling and move away from Harley-Davidson when it already had the 1250cc Revolution Night Rod motor? EB: Existing customers and prospective customers wanted more power and Buell knew it wasn t going to be possible with the existing air-cooled engines. We spent three years putting the 1125R project together, but right at the start we knew Harley-Davidson didn t have time to develop an engine specifically for our project. It took Harley-Davidson and Porsche time to come up with its water-cooled engine. MCN: Why Rotax of Austria and not someone like Suzuki? EB: Like Buell, Rotax is a small company with lots of experience and with very similar working beliefs. Buell needed a modern, powerful and reliable V-twin engine and Rotax could deliver just that. Importantly it could deliver an engine to our specification while installing design ideas and excellence from its own development ideas and experience. MCN: What about the way the bike is at the moment? EB: Testing like this is always going to be tough for a bike and that means tough times for Buell. We know there are issues in certain areas but we re not hiding behind a rock. We re a small team but a passionate team and one that doesn t stand still. We don t wait for something to be signed off by an unseen man; if there s a problem we get it sorted. MCN: How would you sum up the 1125R? EB: Exactly as we designed it: a bike to be enjoyed by everyone. An experienced rider can make use of its sporting capability, while younger, less experienced riders can make use of its easy-to-ride nature. MCN: Any plans to go 1125R racing? EB: Aw, heck. Sure we d love to go racing, but we ain t got the budget to do that. It s something we d love to do, but we haven t had time to develop the idea or bike any further. Buell has always prided itself on good customer and race support, so it ll always help anyone out who goes this route. Page 3 ONLINE Torquey engine and air-assisted slipper clutch are two of the bike s highlights latest Rotax-powered RSV Mille it needed an updated fuel/ignition map to cure it. Once again the front forks become a debating point. The heavier-rated bikes are wrist breaking, hard-to-turn objects, while the softer options are easier to steer but deliver the feel of a concrete glove and knock the edge off the braking. No matter how many times the tool kit was brought into play, a decent front end setup proved elusive. The mirror/indicator columns shake too much over rough services and vibrate at the upper rev ceiling. While the clock brightness can be altered, the idiot lights are impossible to see in bright daylight. And although I dig Buell s play on mass centralisation with the underslung exhaust, some of them looked to have been knocked out in a hurry by a visually impaired, physically challenged person in a shed. BUELL S 1125R has the hallmarks of being a great road and track day bike: Showa multi-adjustable suspension, a lunging great V-twin motor, stiff frame and 25 years of development experience behind it. But for various reasons it hasn t all come together to light a fire in our pants. Not yet anyway. The front suspension AUGUST 29, 2007 MOTOR CYCLE NEWS 31 There are hundreds of bike reviews on our www.motorcyclenews.com website from supermotos to cruisers motorcyclenews.com/bikereviews aggro is apparently down to the wrong rate of spring being installed too strong to allow the forks to use the damping system correctly and Showa not being able to deliver the correct springs in time. And I m not sure if the compression and rebound adjustment is balanced or fine enough, regardless of spring. The fuelling/ignition issue Buell knew about and were downloading every scrap of info from the tested bikes ECU systems to its Wisconsin base to sort an answer. Answers will also be looked for: the swingarm getting scuffed from boot heel attack; the rider s right foot getting boiled by exhaust heat; warning lights that can t be seen; and the strong smell of petrol at standstill with a hot engine (possible routing problem of internal pipes within the frame which serves as the fuel tank). The more I think about it, the more I m certain Buell has got caught with its development pants pulled down the bike simply wasn t ready for the launch. On paper and from a long way off, the Buell looks bloody fun and good value at 8495, certainly good enough and cheap enough to make Europe s V-twin manufacturers cough in surprise. But, like Spain, the 1125R won t be good enough until it s finished. > MORE BIKES ONLINE TECHWATCH Kevin Ash explains why Buell uses its unique wheel and brake system and what its benefits are VERDICT S Buell s eight-piston front caliper bucks the current trend direction changes more than usual. But Erik Buell says his wheel and brake are not only lighter, they also produce a smaller gyro effect. The problem with the 1125R is that more braking force is needed than with the less powerful Firebolts and Lightnings, and fitting a second rimmounted disc would certainly add too much weight. An alternative would be to increase the width of the existing disc, ie making the swept area wider by reducing the inside diameter. But this would add significant weight, as the disc is so much bigger already than a conventional one. So instead, to gain swept SPECS BUELL 1125R Cost: 8495 Power(claimed): 146bhp Torque (claimed): 82ftlb In shops: Late November 2007 Colours: Black Info: Buell , 0870-9049-984 Fuel:21.2 Fuel: 21.2 litres Rake: 21 Trail: 83.8mm Seat height: 775mm Wheelbase: 1387mm Dry weight: 170kg Engine: Liquid-cooled 1125cc (103 x 67.5mm) 8 valve dohc fourstroke 72 V-twin. Six gears. Fuel injection with 2 x 61mm throttle bodies. Belt final drive. Chassis: Aluminium beam frame. 47mm USD forks, adjustable for preload, rebound and compression damping. Single rear shock, adjustable for preload, rebound and compression damping. Brakes: 375mm inside-out rim-mounted floating front disc with eight-piston caliper. 240mm rear disc with twopiston caliper. Tyres: Pirelli Diablo Diabl Corsa III, 120/70 x 17 front, 180/55 x 17 rear. TECHNICAL SPEC No matter which part you look at, it s all modern technology. Six bulbs in headlight could light up the LAX runway. You can t see the warning lights in daylight. The 61mm intakes are large enough to swallow two Cox s Orange Pippins. Rear shock bolts directly to frame and swingarm O, while other manufacturers pulled back from the six-piston front brake caliper trend and reverted to four-piston set-ups with radial attachment, now Buell has gone the other way and fitted an eight-piston caliper to the front of the new 1125R. The Buell is fundamentally different, of course, and unique in having a rim-mounted disc. This has some advantages over hubmounted ones, the most important of which is shortening the load path under braking. On a conventional wheel, the force of the caliper squeezing the disc and slowing it down passes through to the centre of the wheel where the disc is mounted, then out through the spokes to the rim, then the tyre to where it s being forced around by the road surface pushing against it. On a Buell, the braking force travels more directly from the caliper and disc straight to the wheel rim and tyre, bypassing the wheel s spokes and hub. This is a considerable force which they no longer need to deal with, so as a consequence they don t need to be anywhere near as strong. When you view a Buell wheel from the side, the spokes look impossibly thin. In turn, this means the wheel can be much lighter a weight loss where it s most useful, on the unsprung side of the suspension. It does look as if the extra mass of the larger disc concentrated on the outside of the wheel might increase the gyroscopic force compared with other designs, and therefore resist Buell says his wheel/brake is lighter with a smaller gyro effect area and up the friction available the caliper has been made longer, and to maintain an even pressure on what is now a very long brake pad, there are four pistons in a row along each pad. In theory, cooling could be an issue as this will generate a lot of heat and the disc is at least partially shielded from the airflow by the wheel rim. The big question is, if the rim-mounted disc really is better, why don t other manufacturers use it? Partly this will be because it s easier to use what you know. And if the advantage is only small, then the incentive to go this route is not strong either |
