| Author | Message | ||
     Hughlysses |
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| Jaimec |
Be interesting to see what that "Super Tourer" looks like. Early images on their website showed a VERY inelegant, adventure-type bike which makes it a non-starter for me. | ||
| Hughlysses |
Yea, it sure looks like it'll be an "1190AX". Hopefully it'll be more attractive than that low resolution render suggests. An 1190AX was originally touted by EBR following the pattern established with the XB at Buell, but later comments by people with EBR stated that the AX would be an all-new, lighter, more off-road focused bike, with a different engine which would be a few years down the road. Unless the new Buell gets VERY successful, I don't see that ever happening. | ||
| 46champ |
If this is something I may like and want to buy. How does one go about the purchase and most importantly where does it get serviced? At 67 I have enough time for one more bike | ||
| 99cyclone |
When is this pawn shop from Michigan going to realize they aren't a motorcycle company?  I LOVE my EBR. These schmucks had nothing to do with it and are a disgrace to the Buell name. | ||
| Jaimec |
Not me. I wish him the best of luck. I want to see another American motorcycle company succeed by NOT building over-priced, retro-styled pieces of garage jewelry. | ||
| Hughlysses |
I don't get the hate for the current Buell guys. They could have easily sold everything they acquired for scrap which would have probably been the wise move financially. As long as they keep building motorcycles, that's a source of parts for us riding EBR's. No, their team is currently not in the same ballpark as EBR or Buell was in their heyday, but maybe they'll build a viable motorcycle brand given time and be able to hire that kind of talent in the future. | ||
| 89rs1200 |
I agree. Just hope the SuperTourer is as beautiful a machine as the S3T. Such a sad story of Erik Buell betrayed by Harley-Davidson and later Hero. Neither understood the company nor the vision. At retirement in a year, you will find me on the road, touring on my S3T across the USA, and possibly, just once, Isle of Man during race week. | ||
| Mnscrounger |
I'm with Jamiec. I will root for the success of ANY company that makes it's products in America, and provides jobs on this side of the world. Erik is an engineering icon in my book, and by all accounts from people who worked there a very inspiring leader. It's unfortunate that Bill Melvin couldn't retain his talents, but HD/Buell Motorcycles employed a lot more engineers and designers than just Erik. Every interview he's done that I have seen, or read, he graciously credits that team for the success of the brand. The new iteration of Buell Motorcycles is just a smaller scaled business model of the relaunched iteration of Indian. That brand has changed owners nine times according to Wikipedia. Nobody seems to be bothered by that, they're just glad it's back to provide a choice in American made cruisers. To Hugh's point, Bill Melvin invested a few million dollars to relaunch an ambiguous brand, and niche volume product. That makes him the most committed Buell fan of all in my opinion. | ||
| Stevel |
I wish Bill Melvin success....I really do, but I will not entertain buying a new one until be fixes the known design faults with the engine and he cannot because of the cost. Even with the most optimistic sales projections, it would not be financially viable. So, as far as I am concerned, Bill is just another very successful scrap man. | ||
| Jaimec |
"Known design faults?" 'Splain, please? | ||
| Hughlysses |
I imagine Steve is referring to the problems apparently caused by the open deck cylinder design. I think this is chiefly on bikes that are raced or ridden HARD. One group of owners tried to head this off by installing cast iron sleeves in the stock cylinders. I think it was successful, but a good many owners got bilked out of their money for sleeved cylinders that never got delivered. Jens and NCCR seem to have come up with an easier fix by installing a series of metal slugs between the cylinder wall and the water jacket (see their site for details) and I’ll bet theirs could easily be incorporated in the production process. | ||
| Stevel |
Jaimec, I'm afraid the design faults are far more than just the cylinder stability issue. Not only the cylinder design, but the head casting design is terrible. Lazy oversized ports, lack of adequate port velocity resulting in poor flame propagation, insufficient valve guide length, too small of a valve spring pocket and a few more and only a new casting will fix these. Camshaft timing is way too long, insufficient oil pump volume and much more. Jens has made several efforts to help, but only new casting desgns will suffice. Most of these errors I think were caused by HD forced changes. I'm pretty sure Rotax originally did it better. I further think Erik and at least some of his staff were aware of these shortcomings, but without adequate funding, there was no way they could have been fixed. I have written up these issues in more complete detail in several other threads in the archives. | ||
| Jaimec |
From what Hugh implied, it's only an issue if you plan on competing with it on the track and that normal, day-to-day use probably shouldn't stress the design too much? In any event, the show-stopper for me is the complete lack of a dealership network. There are people out there who LOVE working on their own machines and tinkering with them at every opportunity. I'm not one of them. My mechanical skills stop at "Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey." | ||
| Buellgeek |
Steve L- Can you please point the others on this forum to your more detailed explanations in the other threads. I find the the statement of lazy, over sized ports causing an inadequacy of velocity to be without merit. In fact, 185bhp from a 73 cubic inch v-twin equates to 2.53 horsepower/cubic inch. The origin of the engine design by Rotax having been for a late 2007 release. AS A STREET BIKE! The last update having been done sometime between 2011-2013 which was to make a streetbike more competitive as a race bike. Remember, you don't ride your race bike and you don't race your ride bike. Are there valid compromises? Sure, ALL engines have compromises. How many other engines have "open deck" configurations? Many. How many other manufacturers have entrusted Rotax for their design consultation and/or production? Aprilla, BMW and KTM to name a few major players. Have you even ridden an EBR 1190? It is F'ing AMAZING!!! Are you aware of the torque curve being flatter than the mid-western plains of America? The horsepower number is 185 ONLY because as a streetbike it was held to 11k RPM. From peak torque to peak rpm the loss is around 12 foot pounds. | ||
| Stevel |
Buellgeek, Take the time to do the research. Read my many posts on the subject in the archives. | ||
| Rsh |
Milking the 1190 for all its worth. If Erik was involved it might be palatable, as it is, not so much | ||
| Buellgeek |
Hi Steve L- I have taken the time to read your posts. You make some statements that cause me to ask for clarification. If you don't mind entertaining my curiosity. You claim to have determined the camshaft timing events with a cylinder head on a workbench and the degree wheel on the cam? Am I correct? If so, how exactly can you determine valve timing events without the head on the engine, the degree wheel attached to the crankshaft and TDC of the piston determined? I easily understand that one can identify the cams as you did with the head on the bench but not the timing events in relation to the crankshaft. Also, if the valve guide is too short for 10mm of valve lift how is it going to work for your suggested 14mm of lift? Which by the way is a phenomenal 40% greater than stock. And you intend to actuate the valve to that lift with less duration. You do realize the base circle on a motorcycle camshaft is already pretty gosh darn small? How is this imaginary cam design going to achieve stability within the confines of the stock cylinder head? You also call out the impossibility of a "pent roof" combustion chamber having no ability to create swirl. Let's just suppose the designers at EBR understood that and therefore attempted to create some with the staggered intake valve opening. If the burning of the fuel is so inefficient as you claim due to the 8.5 to 1 dynamic compression ratio explain to me how exactly are the hydrocarbon output #'s so far below the allowed emissions standards. Furthermore, in defense of the EBR product that originated in 2006-2007 I offer the following. The use of a finger follower, the use of a one piece crankshaft with plain bearing connecting rods. Both of which the 2021 Suzuki 450F did NOT have. Lastly, I would rather have the Mahle piston over CP any day. Mahle also offers 2618 alloy as well as forged billet pistons. But I highly doubt the RX/SX has the forged billet option due to cost. | ||
| Icantdrive55 |
Hmmm. Buell--without Eric Buell--is back. With the world's fastest touring bike and the world's fastest dirt bike selling for $20K? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me a third time? I don't think so... | ||
| Stevel |
Joe, I would rather ignore your post, but in deference to your effort for taking the time searching through the archives, I will answer your questions. Please note that the cams are indexed by keys and drive gears with TDC witness marks to allow alignment to the crankshaft when assembling the engine, so it is easy to establish crank relationship to the recorded valve acceleration curve. Please also note that it is impossible to adjust this cam/crank relationship without a special adjustable drive gear not present on the standard engine. It is that relationship that would have to be done on the assembled engine. Please also note that the gear was made for EBR by Andrews and Andrews will not sell you that gear. The base circle on the camshaft is actually quite large. There is plenty of room to reduce it. The bigger issue is the valve spring space, it is way to small. My solution involves boring the spring pocket out slightly to accommodate Beehive springs wound with oval wire. (which I already have). I also need more spring length and pressure to accommodate the faster valve acceleration rates I need because of the higher lift and shorter duration. You may also note that my proposed solution will not work without longer valves as well. The real mystery, at least to me is the amount of material I can remove from this area before hitting the water jacket. I won't know that till I trash a head casting or two! 4 or 5 valve heads are locked into the pent roof head design which totally eliminates the availability of a squish area in the head. The possibility exists to use the piston for a squish area AKA diesel designs, but that would add unacceptable piston weight. That leaves us the entire surface of the piston as the space to spread the flame front. That becomes a huge problem for thermal efficiency. The principle that we are trying to satisfy here is that fuel not on fire before the piston starts its downward travel during the power stroke will tend to go out the exhaust port as unburned hydrocarbons. Add to this dilemma a partial throttle vacuum where the space between fuel particles becomes large and the flame propagation rate goes downhill pretty fast. Now the engineering band-aid of choice to help this issue is turbulence. Turbulence is our friend. Swirl is a form of turbulence, tumble is another. Swirl is generated by canted intake ports typically on a two stroke engine. It will not be generated by slightly phased opening and closing of the intake valves. That is unadulterated BS. Tumble is the common choice of creating turbulence on a four stroke engine. The two most effective methods of tumble creation is intake air velocity and longer strokes of the piston, as compression is the major source of tumble.Now, when we start looking at the intake ports we quickly realize that they do not contain a venturi. No venturi, large diameter ports, 61 mm throttle body and we have no velocity, hence no tumble, hence piss poor turbulence. (lazy ports) As far as passing emissions testing, I don't think it could. I have no idea how this engine ever got by the authorities. Stand behind one of these at idle and smell the exhaust. Show me a Buell with this engine that exceeds 30 miles per gallon. They don't. I cannot imagine this engine ever passing the emissions tests without cheating. Try driving 30 mph through a city street on a hot sunny day and then tell us again what a wonderful design this engine is. This engine was not designed by EBR or even HD. The Helicon engine was designed under an HD contract by Rotax. Rotax is one of world's most renown best professional ICE engineering companies. I am relatively certain their original design was infinitely better. They would not have made the really stupid errors in the released product. HD on the other hand sells lifestyle and they are not known for exemplary engineering. I truly think these errors are due to HD interference in an otherwise great engine. I am struggling to answer your last statements. You have made statements that are so incorrect they are indefensible. They only show your lack of understanding of the subject. i don't wish to be rude, but if you wish to argue an engineering point, you should be using engineering principles not advertising hype. I will answer a bit of your remaining statements. ICE engineering is more than 100 yrs. old. Internal Combustion Engines have undergone thousands of design iterations over this time. It is safe to say that everything has been done before and most likely many times as well.It is also safe to say that the value of one element's design over another should be a separate discussion, which I am very happy to participate in, but you had better do your homework first. I am also certain that EBR, HD, Rotax or Suzuki were not the first to employ the individual part designs they elected to use in their products. What led them to do what they did was engineering considerations. Every engine design is a careful selection of compromises. We can also discuss those if you do your homework first. Lastly, there is no such thing as a forged billet. Even the word billet is abuse and not really descriptive. AL2618 was developed by Rolls Royce during WWII for their aero engines and has been a very popular choice for pistons because of two properties, their ability to cool due to its copper content and its ability to retain its strength at elevated temperatures beyond 300 C. This is why it has been chosen so often in high duty cycle applications, but it also has a downside. It has a relatively high coefficient of expansion (COE), so more running clearance has to be used to compensate. Much more common in limited duty applications is the use of a Eutectic aluminum alloy (AL4xxx). These alloys are silicon based and have a low COE allowing less running clearance and better emissions. A common alloy in use is AL4032. Both AL2618 and AL2618 can be forged, but generally the Eutectic alloy pistons are cast for cost reasons. The downside of Eutectic alloys is that they quickly lose strength over 300 C. The original Helicon pistons are AL4032. My last subject is the difference between a forged product and a "Billet" product of the same material. There is no comparison in strength. A billet is simply a chuck of material. It can an extruded bar or a cast block. The word billet is amateur shit and nobody in the metal trade uses it because it is not descriptive. A forging is created by a very special die that force the material into a near final shape when at a plastic temperature and in doing so, the crystal grains of the material is forced to orient itself in the direction of force that the piston will be subjected to when in use. This allows less material to be used and hence be lighter in weight than either a cast or billet product at the same strength. The takeaway here is that there is no comparison. Custom pistons from CP and many other companies in the USA only offer billet pistons, because they do not own the correct forging dies for the optimum shapes required by motorcycles. These dies are very expensive and their cost can only be amortized with minimum orders of thousands. Europe is the best area to find the best motorcycle pistons. Specifically Italy, Austria and Germany. I suspect great designs may be available in Japan, but I have not been able to find any Japanese sources. Now this response has taken considerable effort on my part. I will be happy to answer other engineering questions, but only if you ask reasonable questions, do your homework first and refrain from making stupid questions based on advertising hype and old wives tales. | ||
| Crusty |
Wow! the Helicon engine is obviously a piece of poorly designed crap. That's why Danny Eslick won so many races with it. As a street bike or a "Super Tourer" it will probably do just fine, however. | ||
| Hughlysses |
I just scanned Steve’s post above (I need to be on a desktop to read something that detailed, but I will respond to this:
I have a 2017 EBR 1190SX with a non-stock 44-tooth rear sprocket (stock is 42 tooth). I’ve never gotten less than 35 MPG on a tank of fuel and I typically get around 40 MPG. Now I’m sure I’m a fairly sedate rider compared to many, but neither am I “hyper-miling” like Froggy. | ||
| Stevel |
Jump right out there Crusty and buy a new 1190 from the scrap man for 20K. Show us your Buell faith. Perhaps Danny Eslick should have been riding when EBR showed their ass in WSB. EBR had their ass handed to them on a silver platter in WSB. They had last place locked during their competitive campaign. I believe they suffered so many engine failures they ran out of spare parts and engines muliple times. (Message edited by steve-l on March 05, 2022) | ||
| Hughlysses |
A little more on-topic, the new Baja DR Dune Racer:  185 HP dirt bike- what could go wrong? | ||
| 89rs1200 |
Is Steve a troll? Yes, my S3s use the old Sportster motor but, all my S3, with race exhaust and K&N air filters, get consistently 58MPG on the highway. I get this by carefully jetting the carburetor. My own questioning of riders on all sort of motorcycles indicates nearly all, which can easily run on the highway, get 45 MPG highway mileage. Heck even my RS1200 gets 50 MPG! So, is Steve just a troll? It seams to me that Steve's claim that the 1190: gets only 30 MPG, is a POS, is inefficient, has been greatly modified by EBR away from good engineering, is just outrageous! How can any of Steve's statements be correct for an 1190cc size engine which produces 185HP? | ||
| Hughlysses |
They just posted a short video of the new 1190 Supertouring model to Instagram. Here’s a screenshot from that video.  My first impression is the luggage, seat, foot controls and handlebars look good. The windshield looks pretty clunky, but I can imagine it’s functional. The headlights look like one of the aftermarket units they sell for Buell XB’s. I’ll be interested to read a ride report. | ||
| Rsh |
Unfortunately, I don't see the latest line up being much of a sales success. Everything is based on old tech that really didn't sell all that well when it was fresh and now costs even more As far as a 1190 dirt bike, I've seen videos of a Suzuki GSXR1000 dirt bike, the guy that rides it has some skills. If you have silly money to spend and wanted something unique that would be it. | ||
| Jaimec |
After hiring engineers, they need to hire some designers. That "Super Tourer" is FUGLY!! | ||
| Lew360 |
What Jaimec said. Not paying the kind of money they they are going to ask for that Crap. | ||
| Court |
Someone help me here . . . I have been, as have Erik and everyone else over associated with "The Real Buell" . . . kind of out of the loop. Isn't that the 10 or 12 year old Helicon motor ? Engineered and built by the bankruptcy brothers? I probably need to learn more . . . on the surface it seems like a bad joke. |
