Cc-1520: Fill & Download for Free

Question: “Why don’t you see motorcycles broken down on the side of the road like other vehicles?”I have owned and ridden motorcycles since the 1960’s. I currently own and ride both a 1520 cc 6-cylinder and a 650 cc V-Twin.There are several reasons why you do not, today, see motorcycles broken down on the side of the road. Before the advent of the Ford Model T, which offered four-wheel transportation, affordable by the working man, for the price of a motorcycle, you probably would have seen motorcycles broken down at the side of the road. They were sold as transportation to young working men.However, today motorcycles are relatively rare in the mix of wheeled transportation. There were in 2015 263,500,000 cars registered in the United States. In the same year there were only 8,410,255 registered motorcycles. The chance of you seeing a motorcycle, running or broken down, on the side of the road, is only 3% of your chance of seeing a car. The possibility of seeing one broken down on the side of the road is reduced to a much smaller proportion.More than that, motorcycles are generally used as toys, taken out for pleasure on lovely days by people who enjoy riding them and have the leisure to do so. Cars and trucks are driven in all sorts of weather by people who need them for their jobs or use them to commute to work or need to take them to the mall or grocery store for shopping. Cars are used for transportation. Motorcycles are ordinarily used for pleasure. Thus, although motorcycles make up about 3% of the vehicles registered in the United States, I doubt that they are used for 0.1% of the driven miles. I own four cars and two motorcycles. I use my cars on a daily basis. I ride my motorcycles only on perfect days for pleasure.Many registered motorcycles are barely driven at all. Harley-Davidson dealers sell trailers. Harley riders are notorious for trailering, rather than riding, their motorcycles to events and then riding back and forth on the streets in front of the club events before putting their bikes back on the trailers for the return trip home. For a lot of motorcycle buyers, their bikes are fashion statements, not transportation. Those bikes are barely driven. You not only do not see them broken down on the roads. You do not see them at all…well, except on trailers.Look at the odometers of parked motorcycles. You will very rarely find one registering anything near high mileage.Many motorcycles have only 2 cylinders, some have 4, a small percentage have 6. In some parts of the world, single cylinder motorcycles, up to a displacement of 660 cc, are common. A car can still be driven even when it has been badly maintained and is in bad condition. It will run, but it is likely to break down. A motorcycle, especially a motorcycle which has only one or two cylinders, can generally not be driven if it is in poor condition. It will be taken to the shop for service and repaired before a breakdown occurs. You will not see it broken down at the side of the road because it will be taken to a shop long before that can happen.Moreover (with the exception of those middle aged men whose marriages have failed and who buy motorcycles as status symbols) most motorcyclists know something about machinery. Unlike the majority of car owners, motorcyclists are capable of servicing and repairing their vehicles. Thus, motorcycles are generally better maintained and serviced than cars. And, if a motorcycle does break down, unlike a car owner, the motorcyclists actually know what to do with the tool kit that came with the bike.

Question: “Why are motorcycle engines usually a lot louder than much bigger/powerful car engines?”There are a number of interrelated reasons why ordinarily, but not always, motorcycle engines sound louder than bigger car engines.First, the fact that car engines are bigger in itself makes them quieter. The physical displacement of most car engines starts where motorcycles top out. Motorcycles range from less than 100 cc to about 1,800 cc. (World wide few bike engines are above 1,000 cc, with the majority being in the 125 to 650 cc range.) Contrast that with automobile engines which today have a minimum displacement of about 1,600 cc and a maximum around 7,200. Thus, to obtain the power they need, motorcycle engines operate at a much higher rpm range..more crankshaft revolutions cylinder firings and and valve openings and exhaust pulses…generating more noise for a given rate of acceleration or travel. In general traffic I change gears on my motorcycles around 3,000 rpm. Many motorcycles have their red line at or above 10k rpm. In contrast, my 5.3 liter V-8 GMC Sierra shifts and cruises below 2,000 rpm. Those necessary higher engine speeds produce more noise.Aside from old Volkswagens and Porsches, car engines are water cooled, while most motor cycles are air cooled. Water cooling wraps the engine in an insulating enclosure of metal and liquid that dampens the combustion and mechanical sounds of the components. Air cooled motorcycle engines lack this sound insulating water jacket.Weight, although a consideration, is much less important for automobile engine design than it is for motorcycles where the engine makes up an extremely high proportion of the total weight of the motorcycle. The greater mass of car engines by itself absorbs and deadens sound. Moreover, whereas motorcycle engines are invariably made out of light alloys, a lot of car engines have iron blocks. And iron is a very good sound absorber.Whereas the engines of motorcycles are out in the open and fully exposed, on many cars, even if you open the hood, you cannot see the engine! With the hood closed the engine is encapsulated not only in metal but insulating material that is purposely designed to mask engine sounds. Cars have the space to incorporate intake silencers and large multi-component mufflers and LOTS of sound deadening material. Size, weight, and cooling requirements prevent such sealed insulated engine compartments for motorcycles.The dimensions if a motorcycle make it sound louder than the engine would sound in an equivalent car. Because of the close proximity of the engine to the exhaust on a motorcycle you always hear both the mechanical sounds of the engine and the exhaust pulses at the same time. That is never the case for cars. Take the case of a notably loud car such as my son’s Viper V-10. Standing near the front of the car one hears the sound of the big engine. If one walks around to the back where one hears the exhaust (and note that because of the car’s length you do have to walk) you hear a distinctly different and separate sound. That separation makes the sounds (plural) produced by a car seem less loud than the combined engine and exhaust sounds you always hear from a motorcycle.Turbo chargers are today commonly used on cars, but are impractical on motorcycles. Those turbochargers tend to muffle and strangle engine exhaust notes. This reduction in engine sounds is sometimes so extreme that companies such as BMW have been reduced to playing a digital recording of engine sounds through their cars’ audio systems to let the driver hear something that at least resembles an actual engine. On motorcycles the engine sound you get is what you hear, it is very real…and it is necessarily louder.In the past hot rodders could easily and cheaply replace their car’s stock exhaust system with louder after market glass packs or install cut-outs or lake pipes; and doing so would increase the car’s performance. Changes in laws and regulations and the increased complexity and expense of modern exhaust systems make such modifications much less popular. Moreover, the efficiency of the stock OEM exhaust systems is so good that making the change seldom, if ever, results in measurable horsepower gains. Thus, most cars will have their stock quiet mufflers and exhaust systems. Not so with motorcycles. Changing the pipes for louder ones is a relatively inexpensive and very simple bolt-off bolt-on operation. Doing that seldom increases the performance of a motorcycle. Most often it does just the opposite. But it does make the bike louder. And this is desirable for a certain class of attention seeking boy-racers or old white man cos-play bikers. Thus, you are much more likely to hear a motorcycle whose muffler has been changed simply to make it louder than you are to encounter a car on which that has been done.Nevertheless, motorcycles do not have to be noisy. For example I will give you my cruiser, a 1520 cc F-6 Valkyrie.This motorcycle can cruise at slightly above 130 mph, but its engine is as quiet as that of a car. Why? It is powered by a water cooled 1.5 liter perfectly balanced opposed 6-cylinder. For all practical purposes that is a car engine.

Question: “Why are so many motorcycles sold without a centerstand?”Center stands were once common on motorcycles. In the late 1960’s my first bike, a 200 cc, 2-cycle, 5-speed Suzuki X-5, had only a center stand.Many bikes had that configuration. But there were two problems:The narrow 2-point plus a slight amount of weight on the front tire stance was not as secure as the three-point support offered by a side stand that supports bike on the stand and two wheels and tires. Because of this some ferry operators began requiring that motorcycles had to be supported by a center stand on a crossing.The side stand is much more stable and, unlike a center stand, does not require a perfectly flat and level parking place.Even on a relatively light bike like the Suzuki X-5 which had a dry weight of 268 pounds it took a bit of strength to pull and rock the bike onto its stand. I could do it easily. But my wife, who loved riding the bike, was too tired after a day of riding to get it up onto the stand and would park below my apartment and hope to get my attention in the pre-mobile phone era or she would have to enlist the aid of some helpful passing male who was attracted to motorcycle chicks.On my current cruiser, a 1520 cc, 6-cylinder, 800 pound ValkyrieI have both an OEM side stand and a Kuryakin center stand. Putting that bike on its center stand takes skill and is an effort! You have to firmly grasp and pull upon the left grip with your left hand. simultaneously you must pull up with strength on a rail under the pillion seat and step down hard with your right foot puttting all your weight on a pedal attached to the center stand. Not only does this take effort, but if you do it wrong there is a risk of dropping the bike.As motorcycles became heavier center stands for normal use, for other than maintenance, became impractical.Nevertheless, for a real biker who has a full set of wrenches and a shop manual and the intelligence and experience to know how to use both of them, a center stand is extremely useful. For any form of service and adjustment that does not require getting out the chassis adapters and the hydraulic lift, having the bike in a vertical position on a center stand makes service possible and convenient.I would always have both on my bikes.