niiiiice board tracker video

[Robb Zimdars]

I'm SO glad I went for the upgraded speaker system when I bought this computer ... this is a delight to both the eye and ear. Crank'er up and enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfEZyCccKTs&feature=related

Robb Z

[d bauer]

blue flames is a good touch!
mad.danB

[Kerr, Matthew]

Super cool vid, but I'm among the cycling neophyte douchbags that have no idea why there are holes in the cylinder heads. Strap some marshmallow knee sliders on and have a toasty snack mid race?

Can someone shed some light on that?

Thanks,

Matthew
71CB500

[Moped Graham]

I thought i posted this to the list a couple weeks ago, maybe not, i
put it on my blog http://outofcontrolmopeds.blogspot.com. It was on
the 'corpses from hell' http://corpsesfromhell.blogspot.com/ blog
awhile back.

I spent a good while puzzling over those holes. The only thing i could
think would be to open up the stock-ish castings for more exhaust
flow... although any sort of scavenging would go right out the
window.. of course i'm pretty sure in 1919 they didn't know much about
that. Maybe to keep the valve stems cooler? I know around this time
they were having problems with valve and spring breakage due to the
large valves used... the original reason for 4 valve heads...

This really is about the most amazing motor vid i've seen in awhile, i
think i'm going to put on the headphones and watch it again. Gives me
a 'lil moboner every time!

G


On Jan 26, 7:58 am, "Kerr, Matthew" <Matthew.K...@zastudios.com>
wrote:

[Stevo]

Now that is cool!
Stevo

[Mark Flintrop]

I spoke about this with a friend of mine, Tom Fickau, owner of Fickau Prototypes. He owns original factory blueprints for many of the former motorcycle companies that were around the first half of the century, and he reproduces parts to spec for Excelsior-Henderson, HD, Indian, Cyclone, Flying Merkel etc and even worked on some of Jay Leno's toys... If its from the 1940s then its already too new for Tom.   Tom's answer was simple, "They'd try anything back then. Any kind of porting to increase flow. They'd drill holes anywhere just to see what it did to the way the engine ran or if they'd get more power out of it. If it worked they'd run it." --- On Wed, 1/26/11, Moped Graham <motz...@gmail.com> wrote:

-- =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MilVinMoto - Milwaukee Vintage Motorcyclists" group. To post to this group, send email to MilVi...@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to MilVinMoto-...@googlegroups.com Visit this group at  http://groups.google.com/group/MilVinMoto `/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`/`

[Graham Motzing]

Another thing i thought about later while watching this- the heads are probably a stock casting modified for 4 valves, they probably tried to make the fewest changes to the pattern as possible.

the way it is cast, the flow from the second exhaust valve would have to exit through the chamber for the first exhaust valve. probably a lot easier to just drill holes in it than to re-work an entire fitting for another exhaust pipe. I'm reading a book right now that talks about how a lot of scientific principles were discovered by analyzing engineering accomplishments, and a lot of engineering principles were discovered by trial-and-error... one of the most amazing things about the 'board track era' was that ideas like bevel drive cams and 4-valves per cylinder were being discovered long before the mechanical design principles that justified them were in place. It serves as one of the most significant examples of how racing directly leads to innovation and improvement of production designs- something we seem to be forgetting in this day and age.

while we're talking vintage MOPEDS (had to get that one in), and sharing links... for those of you who havent seen this yet, it is definitely worth a few hours of reading. http://www.flashbackfab.com/pages/excel00.html A guy in the pacific NW (his whole website is amazing and awesome) builds a bevel-drive excelsior boardtracker basically from scratch. He doesn't go into the history much, but these motors were developed at the end of the teens, the owner of schwinn/excelsior had a young protegee- a engineer/racer who he thought of as a son- the guy wrecked this bike and died, the owner of the company ordered all of them destroyed and excelsior got out of racing. So there are no living examples, only a few crummy pictures from one side.  I learned so much about the process of casting and machining castings just from looking at these pictures, and every time i look at it, it inspires me to get back to the workshop and work harder.

Graham

[Mike Mastrangelo]

Holy crap! If that is not motivational, nothing is. That’s almost the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. I’m going in the garage.