PB mixed issue sampler - updated Jul18
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JEREMY<br />
McWILLIAMS<br />
‘ Pulling the front brake at full lean<br />
in the wet takes getting used to’<br />
These panniers may or<br />
may not be full of concrete<br />
Jezza with RC390 R&D<br />
colleagues Thomas Kuttruf<br />
and Wolfgang Welber<br />
I HAVE WHAT SOME bike nuts regard as the<br />
ultimate day job: testing the 1290 Super Duke<br />
R, Super Duke GT, 1190/1290 Adventure and<br />
now the new 790 range. I work with the R&D<br />
team and project leaders at KTM who are<br />
tasked with developing the road bike range<br />
and Customer Racing department where we<br />
develop road bikes, like the RC390, for racing.<br />
Yes, there is a lot of pressure to get it right but<br />
there’s plenty of job satisfaction if the bikes<br />
are well received by the press and owners.<br />
The R&D department does an outstanding<br />
job; every aspect of a bike is evaluated. They<br />
can replicate real road riding on test benches<br />
in their new facility. The department has<br />
grown from about 40 people when I started<br />
to more than 500, with many smaller<br />
departments within it dedicated to data<br />
recording, brakes and wheels, chassis, motor,<br />
electronics, suspension...<br />
Test riders evaluate everything – tyres,<br />
traction control and ABS, chassis, suspension,<br />
handling and brake performance, ergonomics<br />
– usually at different proving grounds<br />
through Europe. We work with the team to<br />
improve the bikes before they’re approved for<br />
production. Tyres, for instance, have to pass<br />
stringent testing in all conditions at every<br />
lean angle on road, track, wet and dry<br />
handling courses. How they perform at tip-in,<br />
how much effort is required, how they react<br />
to rider input, do they have self-steering<br />
tendencies or any lift up under brake and<br />
acceleration? Where one tyre might outperform<br />
another in the dry it won’t make the<br />
final list if it doesn’t perform in all conditions.<br />
The bikes go through a severe shakedown.<br />
KTM know how stiff a chassis needs to be,<br />
and they know how stiff every other chassis<br />
on the market is, but this doesn’t mean if you<br />
make one with same lateral and torsional<br />
stiffness it will react identically to a<br />
competitor’s. We start with something the<br />
team know will be in the ballpark then<br />
change it according to test feedback and data.<br />
Street bikes probably have as much data<br />
acquisition hanging off them as a MotoGP<br />
bike. It takes the engineers days to get<br />
through all the data from a test.<br />
When we started with the 1290 Super<br />
Duke we had about four WP technicians over<br />
the test cycle. We’d have forks and shocks in<br />
different lengths, damping and spring rates,<br />
and we’d ride up to the top of the roughest<br />
roads and mountains in Spain. I’d be<br />
hammering the bikes over those<br />
roads, then back to normal<br />
road riding, motorways, city<br />
centres then back to the<br />
proving ground with dry,<br />
wet, rough and dynamic<br />
handling tracks in one<br />
facility. Then do all the<br />
tests again until we had<br />
covered every angle.<br />
Every time you ride<br />
a bike in a new<br />
environment something else shows up. We’d<br />
ride two-up with concrete in the tank bags<br />
then go to the track and deck the footpegs out<br />
to find the best suspension settings. The<br />
toughest test isn’t opening the throttle to<br />
maximum while dragging your toes on a<br />
soaking wet track to test traction control – it’s<br />
testing lean angle ABS. Squeezing the front<br />
brake to maximum pressure at maximum<br />
lean angle on a wet track takes a bit of getting<br />
used to. We worked with Bosch at their<br />
facilities in Germany and Japan to perfect the<br />
TC and ABS. KTM were the first company to<br />
come up with the idea for lean angle-sensitive<br />
ABS, and I had the pleasure of testing the<br />
early systems. When they first asked me to be<br />
the guinea pig it was a relief to find it worked<br />
first time and just needed minor adjustments.<br />
The test is to see if the bike can hold a line<br />
without crashing with full brake pressure –<br />
you need to squeeze the brake to about 50 bar<br />
pressure. We use no more than 15 bar for an<br />
emergency stop...<br />
Chassis stiffness is complicated, but the<br />
boffins in the design department know where<br />
it needs to be. We have been testing a stiffer<br />
chassis lately for one of the bikes as we<br />
noticed that when we used super-soft slicks<br />
on a track there was room to improve. Flex is<br />
good – we need some at full lean angle to<br />
aleviate chatter. It is easy to produce a chassis<br />
that is too stiff; at maximum lean you feel<br />
every ripple in the surface and the bike is not<br />
pleasant to ride. To find the best solution we<br />
had to beef up one of the current frames to<br />
make it stiffer. We went back and forth a few<br />
times before making a change; the test is<br />
rigorous and it has to work with road tyres in<br />
normal conditions and on the race track.<br />
Every rider in the department, including the<br />
project leaders, then tests the bike, then the<br />
test chassis is measured and a new chassis is<br />
designed to the same lateral and torsional<br />
stiffnesses. And then we repeat the test...<br />
It’s not all high-action;<br />
there’s a fair amount of<br />
sitting around involved...<br />
When<br />
your 9-to-5<br />
involves pushing new<br />
bikes to – and beyond –<br />
the limits of traction, this is<br />
sometimes how your day<br />
ends. Followed by a lengthy sit<br />
down with your boss to<br />
explain the demise of their<br />
priceless pre-production<br />
performance<br />
motorcycle.<br />
WHO IS JEREMY McWILLIAMS?<br />
Ex-250 and 500 GP racer Jezza is also a KTM<br />
development rider, road racer and occasional film star...<br />
KTM<br />
We’ll twat anyone who<br />
questions McWilliams’<br />
commitment<br />
MARCH 2018 | PERFORMANCEBIKES.CO.UK 21