| Author | Message | ||
     Blake |
Court, who is the NYC HD guy, and which two prognostic elements above are truly inciteful? You frreegin tease! | ||
| S2carl |
I'm guessin' S1, cuz the header is over the frame. Also gots the old style swingarm. | ||
| Matty |
I'm sure that's airtech bodywork on an S1 and the fat guy on the right looks to be Mr. Jeff B. Do I win? I hope Willy G. and Mr. B realize that's a very profitable setup! | ||
| Tripper |
Let's see if we can put an end to this air-cooled ••••. Here's why: #1 - At the recent dealer meeting a full court press (no, not His High-ness) was put on all HD dealers to sign up for Buell distributorships. For those that signed up during this meeting they were promised all the quantities of 2002 Blasts and "Air-Twins" they would ever want. End of statement. Wanna read between the lines? I suppose you could infer that the new bike will be very limited in availability, and only offered to existing dealerships as a thank you for being part of the original family. Oh yes, and it is a Twin with cooling method something other than air. #2 - A recent dealer tool catalog was distributed with a floor jack that "Fits all Air-Twins". There's that word again. So where does this lead us to? A TWIN, NOT air cooled is coming for 2002. Question, do the Blast cases appear to have provision for any cooling method other than air? (please tell me no, please, please, please.) I'm still hoping for an Aprilia slaying, no excuses SPORTING bad-••• MOFO. I have NO idea what the engine configuration will be, other than a twin, and probably very un-evolutionary. Anybody got their hands on those pictures yet? | ||
| José_Quiñones |
Reading Court's posts is like trying to figure out "what the meaning of is is" Like a Wendy's burger.....there's gonna have to be some meat, but it'll also require an attractive shiny wrapper and some coupons in the bag Does this mean 100hp/400lbs (meat), a fairing (shiny wrapper) and a 3 year/unlimited mile standard warranty (coupons in the bag)? | ||
| José_Quiñones |
Tripper, From the 7/17/00 Erik Buell interview in gazette9 READ the whole interview! g9:Did you consider water-cooling the Blast engine? Yeah. Absolutely. We considered it. But at the core physics level, it doesn't make as much sense. Because when you want to get rid of heat...the bigger the difference in temperature between two things, the faster the transfer of heat. Say you've got an engine that's gonna run at 180 degrees Centigrade, and you're running 100 degree water, you only have an 80 degree "delta t" (difference in temp) to get rid of heat. So you're gonna have to circulate tons of water past it to get that transition. Then when you've got that water heated up, now you take it out, you stick it in a radiator, and you expose it to 25 degree air. Again you don't have any delta t. Well if you run that 25 degree air right past your 180 degree cylinder, you're gonna get rid of more heat. You know, during WW II they were building a lot of tank engines. They had battles going on in the desert. And they had water-cooling versus air-cooling back then. And they dropped all water-cooleds. Because you cannot get rid of the heat. They all went to air-cooled engines - the U.S., the Germans, everybody. An air-cooled engine gets rid of heat better when the temperature's high - a lot better. It's actually why the Volkswagen...became such a successful product - that, and the Citroen 2CV. That was air-cooled. That was the first car to cross the Sahara Desert - cause it was air-cooled! Nothing had ever been able to make it before. Now, like you ran into, probably your timing's a little off or something like that, you get detonation. It's not an air-cooled situation, it's a matter of the timing's wrong. But you'd probably get that in your water-cooled and just wouldn't've heard it because of the water jacket.... The only thing we can't compete with as well is sound deadening - but man, from every other standpoint there's an advantage. So we really couldn't find a reason to make it water-cooled. Everything said, make it air-cooled. Now, maybe under optimum situations, you design an engine for racing, to work at a certain temperature, to get the peak efficiency out of it, yeah...but for all-around-use engines? Air-cooleds are wonderful. __________________________________________________ According to the original Review in Cycle World, the Blast has a piston cooling oil jet shooting oil under the pistons. And to further stir the pot, that fixed fitting between the oil pump and the oil filter looks like a CONVENIENT place to stick an oil cooler.  So #1: It will be air/oil cooled. #2: AMAsuperbike.com apparently has pictures of it. | ||
| José_Quiñones |
Court, Man, I guess no one is bothering to check out Buell.com, otherwise it would have been easy to answer your question about who that guy is in the picture of the faired Buell above: From left, Bill Davidson, Tom Todd, Willie G. Davidson and Harley-Davidson CEO Jeff Bleustein look over Todd's Best in class Buell. This was the first year that Buell had it's own category in the HD Ride-In show. I guess that's a pretty good indication of how bad it is, nobody here is looking at it! Actually, the Dealer Locator is actually amazing, and extremely useful. They just need to whip the news and BRAG section up to shape. | ||
| Jim_M |
OK, so the new engine may not be air cooled...so how about oil cooled? Not a leap into the H2O world yet (save that for the races and race repilas that are sure to follow Buell/HD new racing efforts) | ||
| Tripper |
Jose: Re: #1 - Sqirting oil on the underside of the pistons will not help in achieving ever tightening sound regulations. This technique (ala 1989 Suzuki 1100) only allows you to get a little more power from a stressed engine, it is still very much an air cooled engine. I predict a full blown water cooled motor, 988CC, suitable for an AMA superbike platform that can finish a race. Re: #2 - Somebody has a friend at one of the publications that received these photos of the 2002 Buell. Share them! Want to start a thread predicting what HD is thinking for FIM Formula 1 racing when the rules allow 4 strokes? HD going head to head with Honda's V-5? The stomach turns. | ||
| Chibueller |
I'll put my money down right now on a AMA superbike Buell that's water cooled, faired, and 988cc. But I'll buy only after its in production for 1 year min and it must be competative on the track (and not in the Buell stepchild class). | ||
| Jim_M |
I would say that the Superbike (and the replicas that follow in it's wake) effort will be a separate track for Buell apart from the air/oil cooled effort. I would like to think that Erik will stay the course on streetable bikes. Harley/Buell in the Formula 1? Only if they are serious, please, only if they are serious. | ||
| Hans |
José wrote: "Actually, the Dealer Locator is actually amazing" MMMmmmm: Results: in Netherlands Sorry, no dealers matched your search criteria Search Again Sorry, no dealers matched your search criteria Amazing it is. Hans | ||
| Chibueller |
The last 2 issues of Fuel reinforce the efforts that Erik placed into racing bikes. The first Fuell tells us that Erik was first a racer and second an engineer. I hope that attitude will come on stronger than the current corporate strategy of just selling bikes to the mass market. At least in some sense, I hope that the HD racing effort is taken up seriously by Buell. I also agree with Brian (•••••), in that I see Buell attracting mostly HD cruiser riders and then seeing many of those folks jump to japanese sportbikes because they want performance. •••••'s arguement is that a significant proportion of Buell buyers are performance seekers. They were initially HD cruiser riders who were less of the crome and shine and more of the HP pushing group. These buyers see a Buell as a performance upgrade to the HD platform. These buyers don't initially see sportbikes as a purchase option until they are already on a Buell. Then they realize that other bikes put out something more which Buell doesn't. These buyers are a loss to the Buell market but only because Buell doesn't offer a competative machine yet. | ||
| José_Quiñones |
Buell Lurker, Tell the Buell web people to talk to the HD web people (two cubicles over?) because the HD dealer locator properly lists the dealers in the Netherlands Netherlands HD Dealers Thanks for pointing that out Hans. | ||
| Blake |
I'm thinking "Air-Twin" is in deference to the new HD/Porsche "Liquid-Twin" cruiser engine, not anything in the Buell line. I agree with Erik's air versus water cooling discussion; I'd add that the one advantage of water cooling is that it allows the engine designer to put the coolant exactly where it is most needed. C'mon Court... ya tease. |
