Paging Bear (and the Guzzi-isti)

ogden says...

My boss has a Tesi, I quite like it.

 

I quite like them myself, however I've always liked the unusual stuff
(affording them however, that's another discussion).

JL

 

There's a guy on aus.moto who for a while used to have "the only person
ever to be wrong on usenet" as his sig line...

Most people hate admitting they're wrong.

Me, I'd just like to be right occasionally

JL
(the same guy accused me of misquoting him after cutting and pasting his
words out of google, so even someone willing to admit it can get
pigheaded I guess)

 

Champ says...

Sorry, could you type that gain in bold caps please.

 

Ahh sorry, yes and you did write FF rather than FFE, -> feet forward vs
funny front end. Yeah he did both. More of an evangelist for alternate
ways of building chassis and m/c's than any one particular part of it
afaict . Pretty good conventional frame builder as well I understand.

I seem to recall reading that they ditched the hydraulics but not sure.
Press on them was fairly thin on the ground around here.

Yeah the feet forward bikes do seem to take a bit of adjustment,
although I can't actually see how they're that much different to a
chopped harley really, but then they're pigs to ride as well.

Heh ! I'll get by.

JL

 

Indeed. I long ago concluded that if you are shown to be wrong, or have
posted something that's been proved to be complete bollocks or
fabrication, or misguided, then the best thing to do is fess up and
everyone moves on.

If you desperately try and obfuscate, change threads, use stupid
semantics to try and prove your point, and so on, then all you do is
make yourself look more of a fool, a liar, a clown, or whatever. As you
say, most people hate to do this, and every ng has its share of them.
Stick around, and you'll find one or two here ;-))

One time out of ten would do me ;-))

 

Er, you're confusing FF (Feet Forward) with FFE (Funny Front Ends) here.

There are plenty of FF bikes around these days - big scooters and the
like. If you think about it, then an FF riding position pretty much
dictates that the bike has to have a scooter configuration.

 

Oops. Must read all of thread next time.

They did. I sw the Tesi when it was launched at whichever bike show it
was. Milan or Cologne - probably Milan, as it was Italian. Later models
indeed had mechanical linkages to the steering rather than hydraulic.

I also remember watching it race at the Bol - one of its problems was
that it used a Ducati engine and so wasn't ideally suited to endurance
racing, IYSWIM.

 

I remember watching the Elf Honda FFE bikes race at the Bol in the early
to mid-1980s. They were amazing - easily the fastest things on the track
but hampered by the 900cc air-cooled engine which was never the most
reliable lump Honda produced, and which produced a lot of heat and
couldn't shed it fast enough from under that bodywork.

I also remember writing something like this: "The more I look at this
bike, the more I think that this is the future - that this is the sort
of thing we'll be riding in 20 years' time. Engines will be water-cooled
and hidden under bodywork, because they're cheaper to make if you don't
have to style them and the bodywork will help cut down the noise. cars,
I believe, have done it this way for some time."

Every now and again, like every other leap year, you get something so
spot on, so right, that you're ridiculously proud of it, and sin of
pride or not, I'm still proud of that.

 

Err yup, what was that bit about admitting you're wrong ? Some sort
of usenet law I suspect. I read what I expected to read rather than what
was written, mea culpa.

I guess, although there's been a few a bit different - ever see the
alligator ?


http://www.allamericanracers.com/alligator/alligator_home.html


JL

 

Ahhh I always wondered why they weren't as successful as lap times
indicated they should have been. So given a decent engine we could all
have been riding hub centre steered fully faired bikes around now, and
scoffing at those primitive telescopic forks they used to use in the old
days...

JL

 

Undoubtably true, but if the Elf was flogging the pants off everything
in the early 80's would the development dollars have gone into
telescopics ? Or would the money have gone into hub centre and we'd
never have known how good telescopic can be*. I suspect that if it had
won consistently instead of erratically, everyone would have jumped on
board.

JL
*(going by your moniker I assume you can remember 70's spaghetti forks
to go with the spaghetti frames)

 

Whatever you do with telescopic suspension, it's *never* going to be as
good as a hub-centre wishbone system simply because of the change in
steering angle as the forks compress.

Telescopic forks are definitely lighter and cheaper to make, and a damn
sight cheaper to replace if you hit something, but in terms of
engineering purity aren't as good.

But yes, I think telescopic forks have progressed to the point where the
extra improvement given by the alternatives simply isn't worth it.

 

35 grand? Even in depreciated dollars, he's having a laugh.

And it's as ugly as a hatful of monkeys' arseholes.

 

All the classic FFs had the classic motorcycle layout, with the engine
between the rider's legs. The Quasars and the Voyagers had Reliant engines
mated to a Guzzi gearbox.

http://www.hightech.clara.net/

 

Yes, true, but I was thinking more of an empty space in front of the
rider rather than where the engine was placed.

I rode a VT500-powered FF once. It was surprisingly good.

 

I'd love a Voyager. Although the Tmax conversion looks pretty good too.

 

You're right, of course - I s'pose the classic scooter config has trhe
engine at the back. Tricky with big (say 750cc and up) engines, I
reckon.

All the modern production FFs are scooters, which is what had my mind on
those lines.

 

I don't think any of the big (500cc+) scoots have their engine on the
swingarm. Blez is your man for this.

YM you can get your feet forward on modern scooters, but they're too tall in
the saddle to be a true FF.

 

I didn't say "on the swingarm". I said "on the back". But yer right, I
really don't know enough about them to comment, and life is too short to
spend it staring at the arse end of scooters.

Something like that.