| Author | Message | ||
     Sparky |
Credit: The following info is condensed from Shorai Blog. Shorai's Shawn Higbee does testing and development riding on the radically innovative Taylormade Racing prototype Moto2 GP bike. Brief details: All carbon fiber chassis A-arm fork design with inverted telescopic forks Air channel for cooling through chassis Rear mounted radiator Light weight is one of the design goals with the bike so a tiny Shorai battery is used. More info on the TaylorMade Moto 2 Bike: motorcyclistonline.com racing_news. Who does this quote by Mr. Taylor remind you of? I like this guy. Read more: motorcyclistonline.com racing_news Video by Paul Taylor about bike: | ||
| 46champ |
Just curious the Motorcycleist article was from may of 2011. What have they been doing for 2 years and how old is the video? | ||
| Slaughter |
They had been working a LOT on re-working chassis response and suspension. They got invited to England a few weeks back for a invitational event of some sort. It's a cool design but Moto2 is a tough road. It's designed for Moto2 but that series needs similar level of support as any other multi-national series. If you had a single team to campaign, you'd need a few millions of Euros/Dollars to barely be able to consider entering. Taylor is a very cool dude - and by the way, JUST became a US citizen. | ||
| Jaimec |
I'm wondering when we'll get to see the Bimota chassis on the grid... | ||
| Trojan |
Moto 2 is such a competitive and close fought class that all of the teams are very conservative in what they want in terms of designs and techncial aspects of their bikes. That is why we don't see the Vyrus hub centre steered bike or the Bimota in world class Moto2 (although they race in Italian Moto2). FTR designed a chassis for the first season of Moto2 that had a new design of hollow headstock that allowed more air to pass through. It was proven in the wind tunnel but no teams wanted it, simply because they only wanted what they knew already worked on track. Since then little has changed, with only small design increments along the way. Just look at how teams switch chassis at the end of each season, with everyone gravitating to the bike that won the series the year before (the exception to the rule was Marquez on the Suter of course) Taylor Made will struggle to find a team willing to experinemt with their chassis, and will probably eventually run into teh same problems that everyone else trying to run carbon chassis has done (it is hardly a new idea after all). Carbon chassis have no flex, which you would think is a good thing but isn't. All manufacturers now build into their bikes a certain amount of flex. carbon is very stiff compared to aluminium so it is much harder to achieve the handling goal they want with a CF chassis (ask Ducati!). | ||
| Slaughter |
Actually, Taylor designed that chassis to exactly mimic the CBR600 in lateral stiffness. They did a cool presentation at work including their test setup. There are a number of folks who tried and failed to field chassis with too much stiffness. Taylor is no longer optimistic... he's on to other things but it IS a cool machine to see in person. | ||
| Trojan |
Taylor designed that chassis to exactly mimic the CBR600 in lateral stiffness But even the latest CBR600 will be behind Moto2 chassis technology, or everyone would just race CBR600's and be a lot cheaper.....but that would just be supersport racing. There are lots of 'exciting' new chassis that pop up from time to time (MotoCysz motoGP bike?) but unless they actually enter the fray and prove themselves in competition they remain just unproven bright ideas. | ||
| Blake |
Like others before in professional racing, Cysz had the rug pulled from under him by idiotic rules changes imposed by the greedy factory players, mainly Honda. Not that I think he'd have been competitive. Just saying. The Honda desired switch to 800cc was one of the dumbest decisions ever made by the MotoGP folks. Right behind that is the CRT class, a complete and utter farce. Near to that the rule preventing rookies from riding for factory teams. MotoGP has become a joke. | ||
| Trojan |
Like others before in professional racing, Cysz had the rug pulled from under him by idiotic rules changes imposed by the greedy factory players, mainly Honda It is easy to blame Honda for rule changes (I do it all the time!) but once the rules are in place it is up to the manufacturers to step up and make a bike to fit the rules in place. Motocysz was a strange concept to start with and although it gained him a lot of publicity I really don't think it would ever have been a competitive motorcycle under any rule structure. The fact that the rules changed just gave them a convenient excuse to bail out without having to race. CRT may be less than ideal but it has managed to make MotoGP more interesting by increasing grid sizes (at the expense of effectively having two separate classes racing together). However what it has done is allow smaller teams to get into MotoGP that would never have the opportunty otherwise. Some of these teams will certainly remain in MotoGP once the factories start to sell/lease their engine or bike packages, and it may even tempt Aprilia back into the fold. Both of which can only be viewed as a success for CRT at a time when without them the class would have pretty much collapsed. MotoGP went through a dark period with 800cc and the transition back to where we are now, but with the prospect of 28 bikes on the grid next year (If Suzuki decide to play ball) and exciting new riders coming into the class it can only get better  Meanwhile, if MotoCysz, Taylor Made, Bimota, Harris or Vyrus (other chassis builders are of course available) want to enter Moto2 there is really nothing stopping them except themselves. | ||
| Xb1125r |
i guess the big difference is that HONDA has plenty of money and they can resign anything since they already have a budget set aside for development, unlike guys like Motocysz that does not have that kind of money to be reinventing the bike. | ||
| Trojan |
I don't think Motocysz had the budget to actually build AND race their still born MotoGp bike in the first place, but it was great publicity for them. However Moto2 is a different barrel of cod altogether. Engines are fixed so chassis manufactueres know what they have to do to design a chassis. FTR and Kalex are actually pretty small companies but managed to supply a large proportion of the Moto2 grid. PBM use a chassis for their CRT bike made by another small British company specifically for their small team, and housing a ART (Aprilia) CRT engine. It can be done  |
