We are a service, performance, and repair motorcycle shop. We specialize in American V-Twins. we have our own in house dyno and H-D certified techs
We are a local motorcycle shop that wants to be your go to motorcycle store for absolutely everything. We have our own in house DynoJet Dyno. We are also a parts vendor for all major parts companies and several other parts manufacturers. We have H-D certified techs that have both worked in Harley shops and non-Harley owned shops running both parts departments and service departments. Combining that knowledge together to make the best service shop and the best experience for the customer and their motorcycle.
Welcome to the first part of these are fundamental dimensions that define how a motorcycle behaves and handles on the road. By the end of t So let's get started. So we'll start with the most simple frame, the hardtail. Now a hardtail is a motorcycle with no rear suspension and t Start with the basics. You'll usually find all of these parameters on the website in the chassis or dimension specifications. So let's first consider the wheelbase. Now t It is simply the distance between the base of the wheels. So we take that is because as you can see we also take note of the rear and front wheel radius. Now if the wheels are not the same diameter, w So how does t Well let's take a simple comparison between a cruiser or chopper style bike that typically have a longer wheelbase compared to a street or sports bike, well firstly with a longer wheelbase you'll expect of a wider turning circle, making the benefits of the longer wheelbase then comes in the straight line stability, even at Now when we think of stability here, we're also considering how the motorcycle responds to external forces or b Now I t So taking a closer look at the front end, we usually have an offset from the steering axis to the forks, and t And you'll even see a rearward offset, especially in the case of choppers. And t So now when we consider the offset along with the rake angle and the wheel radius, we directly affect the last of the parameters, w So next we'll consider rake angle. T Now with a larger or shallower rake angle, we're going to have a much more stable motorcycle, especially in regards to straight line stability. What that means is any disturbances or external inputs are going to have less effect on the motorcycle. The downside of t And we can see evidence of t So if we take chopper or a cruiser for example, they may have a very large shallow rake angle. But to counter that, they typically have quite long handlebars as well. And what that does is it gives the rider some extra leverage to apply more torque into the steering axis. And then for sports, street and adventure touring bikes, we usually have a steeper rake angle. And t And in some cases they can even be too responsive or unstable. And that's why there are a lot of steering dampeners on the market. Now common everyday example of how rake angle affects stability is to t All of the wheels are basically on a vertical axis and they all just vibrate and rattle So trail is the measurement between where the steering axis intersects the ground, back to the centre of the front wheel contact patch. We can see that t And bear in mind t When riding we'll experience dive and squat for example, w And as a result, all of t Now So between the different types, we'll see how these values are manipulated and tuned for the particular desired performance. So for the sports bike rake and wheel base should be short for agility. And with a standard wheel size, the trail value can then be increased then with the offset. For a cruiser or chopper, it's And then what would you expect for adventure bikes and tourists? Well especially for adventure bikes, these can often have larger wheels, meaning that you can ac Now the kind of characteristics of t Now I've mentioned that we are simplifying t So if we look at Hardtail, we can see we simply have a triangle. And with that triangle, we have one variable length. Now in order for t So we can easily solve t So taking it from a hardtail to a direct mounted rear suspension frame, we see that we now have a swing arm to consider. And with that we have an RSU with the upper and lower mounting point. And importantly is where the RSU connects to the frame and the swing arm as well. The amount of travel at the rear wheel will be different to what we actually see in the RSU. So for a direct mounted rear suspension, we can see we've made it a little bit more complicated with a few more triangles to calculate. More complicated would then be the addition of the rocker linkage. But even then we can see that we can always break the motorcycle down into triangles. So to simplify t And as we had to and complicate the chassis with an RSU and rocker linkage, we end up with a geometry project on wheels. Hence in the next part, we'll start breaking down the motorcycle frame into triangles and building a calculator. And if that interests you, then please subscribe and follow along.
