My wife loves Thrift Stores, she is always bring home books she thinks I’ll like. When she showed me “The Encyclopedia of Motorcycles” I was not impressed by the cover photo.

When I bought Lindemann Engineering from Jim, RIP, I understood that I was gaining good will. I knew that there were thousands of LE stickers on bikes all over the place and that people would be calling me because of that.

This is just another example.

If you are making set up changes to your bike or riding changes to yourself without an on board lap timer you’re practicing religion not science.

Why did I change the title of my last post? After thinking about it more I came to the conclusion that it’s better to race than to not. There are a lot of reasons for a company to race and just as many, maybe more for them to not.

We need all the racers we can get and the factories too.

I agree that the only way to have good racing is to have many teams that have a real chance to win. But as a purist I also want the top level to be unrestricted. The world is not bound by my fantasies. It’s bound by economic realities.

How well is racing trickle down working right now? You can buy an electronics package that does more than the best systems of just a few years ago for a lot less and it comes with a really good motorcycle. Do we want more of that? More factories racing = more of that.

Heck, I’m not racing as fast a bike as I want to be as often as I want to be at the level I want to be racing at. I’ve changed my mind. I’m looking forward to seeing Suzuki racing again this weekend with Ducati, Honda and Yamaha. Next year Aprilia will join the mix. Maybe they will knock over some windmills.

Check out what MG has to say about this at: http://motorbikeroadracing.blogspot.com/

I was not kidding when I said you can have any color spring you want.

My Oct 6th blog post titled “It’s time for Ducati to have some pride” said that Suzuki would come back into Moto GP racing in the big boys class. Well, Suzuki will race as a wild card this weekend at Valenciana but they will do so in the Factory Open class.

I understand the logic behind this but I strongly disagree with the choice. Better to take your lumps like Don Quixote than to play stick ball in the majors. Many people think the success of the moon program was getting to the moon and back, I think the lasting lesson was doing it in full view of everyone. Warts, and all.

Ducati’s special treatment is poisoning the well.

MG has another good post up over at http://motorbikeroadracing.blogspot.com/p/words.html. Time for a little explaining about self adjusting suspension:

Suspension speed is how fast the forks and shock move up and down. A corner first compresses the suspension slowly, then lets it rebounds slowly. Hard braking compresses it at a medium speed. Bumps move it fast. This has little to do with bike speed.

The clickers on most forks and shocks adjust the low speed part of the damping. Some have a high speed compression adjuster.

Until there is enough force in the oil to open the shim stack all the oil goes through a bleed that can be adjusted by moving something to change the size of the hole. A high speed adjuster works by preloading a shim stack different amounts. The shim stack uses flexible shims of different thickness and diameters to control oil flow at all speeds.

Moving the low speed adjuster does next to nothing for bumps because the oil is moving too fast to use the bleed passage. It does effect where you are in the suspension’s travel and that can help with bumps. Pre loading the shim stack makes the low speed part of the stack stronger or weaker and mostly effects how it feels in corners.

So you have a passive system that self adjusts for the different loads and speeds. Now add a system to adjust the low speed part of this while you ride.
You are still stuck with the spring rate and damping curve they think will work for the most people. My work is secure. This system will make the bike handle better for believers because they will coast less.

As to ABS, I’m really happy the driver behind me has it. I race because it’s difficult and getting into turns is the most difficult part. I don’t care if the rule allow you to have ABS, I will beat you or not beat you without ABS. Don’t turn my racing into a video game.

Do you have a Zero Electric bike? Not happy with the suspension? The 2015’s will have Showa and that is good but I have no problem making the older stuff work too.

Miller: I raced a factory Superbike for a second time even after I learned at the first race how bad the team/bike were, so I understand that Miller has to take the chance when he gets it. If he does well next season it will be because he learns to calm down, not just after he gets what he wants but mostly when things are not going his way. The key thing he has to understand is the first thing every new parent learns overnight, it’s not only about you.

Rossi: Many of you and my friend MG over at http://motorbikeroadracing.blogspot.com/ said Rossi was washed up. What do you have to say now?

MM: One of the commentators for MotoGP.com told how MM delayed the start of a press confess on Saturday so he could see the end of a support race. Then when he saw the winner of the race in the press room he went over to shake his hand and congratulate him. The guy is fast and nice. He is so fast that when you take second to him you feel like you won. Truly, Yamaha is not being hurt this year taking 2nd and 3rd overall.

Fans: Ayrton Senna deliberately crashed into another driver at the start of a race taking them both out thereby guarantying that Senna would be world F1 champ that year. The fans loved him, no penalty was given. Until the paying fans stop hoping a hockey game will break out at the track, we will have riders who think it’s ok to win at any cost.

When you compress your suspension oil is displaced from one place to another. When your suspension extends it moves back to where it was. We control the oil movement and thereby the handling.

The piston and shim stack are on the end of the shaft that is displacing the oil. They are surrounded by oil. The piston moves at nearly the same moment as the shaft so there is no measurable delay between movement and damping here.

But the reservoir is not right next to the piston. Because fluids, mostly, can’t be compressed, does the reservoir do it’s thing at the same moment as the piston? Because the oil has mass it can’t move as fast as light so the speed has to be slower than light. What speed does this signal travel at? Hint, fast enough that you can’t feel any delay.

There is also the flex in the body of the shock, hose, seals and everything else in the system.

Hysteresis is the totality of all this and the left over effects of whatever the system was doing just before whatever it’s doing now.

This is true for forks too.