Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Why has only one company successfully entered the MX market since 1985?

To my knowledge only one (1) company has successfully entered the motocross market since 1985 - the small Hillsdale, MI firm of Cobra Motorcycle Mfg. What did Cobra do? They brought innovation to a market the Big Four were ignoring. They met a need. They built good products - right here in the USA.

Once - in almost 30 years - has new blood successfully entered the motocross market. And they only did it in minibikes - 50cc-85cc. Ask yourself - is this really the best it can be? It's difficult to make a credible claim than an industry (any industry) is healthy and competitive when it's consisted entirely of the same five (really four) suppliers for more than 25 years. Are we really that naive? Or, like the Soma pills in Orwell's 1984, have we swallowed the company marketing sedative so long we no longer care to see reality?

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Sunday, March 16, 2008

Fairytales and Myths About Modern Racing

I just saw a boisterous rebuttal of an earlier article – The Long-term Effects of Production-based Racing – over on the TMSuzuki Yahoo! group. I can't post it here because I don't have permission but I hope the author will stop by and do it himself. The author takes great exception to my assertion that a current race-tuned 4-stroke is more complex and costly to maintain than a comparable two-stroke, and my assertion that the complexity and ongoing cost of the modern 4-stroke is not appealing to a significant portion of 30+, 40+, and 50+ riders.

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Sunday, March 9, 2008

Update on the "Cone-head" Helmet Liner

From Don Morgan, inventor of the cone-head motorcycle helmet liner technology, comes an e-mail update on this interesting approach to helmet safety. According to Don, the response to his appearance on "The New Inventors" (which named the cone-head 2007 Invention of the Year) has been huge, with interest from around the globe. A helmet using the technology will be released later this year into the Australian and NZ markets. He has signed a license agreement with an overseas helmet manufacturer which allows them to determine when and where helmets become available.

I hope Don's licensing agreement is not exclusive, or at least provides for limited exclusivity. It would be a shame to see this development get only limited testing and exposure due to a tie-up in licensing. For a bit more background on the technology see this transcript from an ABC-TV interview and Cone-head helmet not a bonehead idea in the Brisbane Times.

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Which Helmet Is Safest?

Looking at the new Bell Moto-8 got me to thinking again about the controversial issue of helmets. Mainly because the Moto-8 is at the higher end of the price range for motorcycle helmets, and there is really no objective way of determining if your money is truly buying you more protection. In a non-scientific survey of my friends in the riding community there’s more or less general agreement that a helmet which retails for $250 is at least 2x better than a $100 helmet, maybe as much as 5x better due to materials, workmanship, etc. But there is considerable disagreement on whether a $500 helmet is even 2x better than the $250 unit.

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Protective Gear From Indy - RC-Evolution, Shock Doctor, Moto-8

There were a handful of new safety products announced at Indy. I didn’t see them all but I did get a chance to see a couple of them up close and talk to the manufacturers. EVS Sports announced their RC-Evolution Race Collar, a less expensive competitor to the Leatt Brace. The RC-Evo is similar in design to their RC3 foam collar, but has much larger plastic support pieces and a molded helmet cradle similar to the Leatt. The pre-production prototype on display at the show was a little rough – it’s definitely not as nicely finished as a Leatt, but it retails for $200 less as well. It’s terrific to see more neck protection options coming on the market. We do not know nearly enough about the effectiveness of these devices and it can only help to get a broader range of ideas and price points into the market. For my money everyone on a dirt bike should wear some form of neck protection, but we don’t have enough data to say for sure what type of protection. Not everyone is willing to pay for a Leatt and I’m glad to see less expensive options beginning to appear.

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Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Getting Un-KREEMed

I have a very nice, low-hour 1974 Yamaha TY250 trials bike. I bought it last year and it's in good shape but has two issues I need to fix – it leaks oil from the bottom of the motor somewhere, and the fuel tank is full of crap that keeps clogging the petcock. We're going to have seven trials events within a 2-hour drive of the ATL this year so I want to get it ready to ride.

The problem with the fuel tank is two-fold:

1. it's full of rust that is sluffing off
2. the rust is underneath a very bad KREEM sealer job that has detached from the metal and is actually making things way worse.

After digging around for a few weeks trying to figure what to do with it I pretty much decided to just buy a Sammy Miller fiberglass tank/seat combo, as I need to replace my trail kit seat with a trials unit anyway. But those SM units are over $400 here in the US, and you still need to coat the inside of them with POR-15 or something to keep the alcohol in our gas away from the resin. Anyway...

That spending $500 thing made me go back and look at the original tank again and I finally found a phone number for KREEM Products Inc in Somis, CA. I gave them a call and the tech there told me that if I fill the tank with acetone or MEK the KREEM sealer will go back to liquid. Of course, MEK and acetone will also eat the paint off the tank. Sadly, the tank has a very nice, resto paint job that someone paid pretty good money for. And was one of the reasons I paid a little more than I should have for the bike. And there's no way I'm going to be able to get the crap out of the tank without messing it up. I don't think.

Still, I thought I'd post the tech info here, in case someone else needs to undo a really bad KREEM job in the future.