Classic Motorcycle Race Engines

Author: Kevin Cameron, ISBN: 9781844259946

Expert technical analysis of the world's great power units.

Racing motorcycle engines are the product of evolution in understanding, in design, and in materials and processes. Engineers, with and without formal degrees, have worked to draw more fuel/ air mixture into cylinders, to burn that mixture more quickly and at the highest possible pressure, and to simultaneously prevent the abnormal variety of combustion known as detonation. Careful work and measurement has gone into the process of determining and reducing friction, cutting unnecessary loss of combustion heat to piston and cylinder head, and reducing misalignments resulting from the flexing of parts. In our own era we have seen the drive to make super-power at very high revolutions take engine rpm to 20,000.

People are drawn to this work by the emotional power of machines, by their ability to multiply our own limited strength, speed, and endurance.
Riders, engineers, and crew chiefs have collaborated to civilize the rough, spikey power of highly tuned engines, making it controllable by human abilities. In years gone by, this was done directly, by physical adjustments to cam and ignition timing, and to intake and exhaust systems. Those methods continue in use today, but are supplemented by the use of electronic sensors and controls. The engine tuner of even twenty years ago monitored combustion by 'reading' spark plugs. Today, spark plugs are hardly ever removed, and adjustments take place by laptop computer.

Every racing motorcycle engine has a place in this evolution. In this book Kevin Cameron tells some of their fascinating stories and interrelationships.

Synopis

This authoritative book, elegantly written by the foremost expert on the subject, provides in-depth analysis of more than 50 classic motorcycle race engines
spanning eight decades. Packed with technical detail, this is an absorbing insight into the design and technology employed by manufacturers over the years in the search for race-winning performance.

About the Author

Kevin Cameron is the technical editor of Cycle World and began writing for its predecessor, Cycle, in 1973, but he never intended to be a writer. To hasten recovery from higher education, he began building and tuning racing motorcycles in 1964, becoming a two-stroke partisan with a 250cc Yamaha TD1-B as that revolution gathered strength. He describes writing for Cycle as 'an accident' - an experiment by an editor who wanted an insider's view on the fast-developing American 750cc racing scene. Then, as two-strokes waned in the 1980s - and his family waxed - Cameron's keyboard ultimately replaced his toolbox. Cameron's strength as a technical journalist lies in his ability to present apparently complex physics or engineering matters in
simple terms of familiar phenomena and everyday experience.