Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

h is son to the Italian kart title, and a runner-up slo t in th e World Championshi p . Ine v it ably, wi th hi s fa the r alongside as mana ger and adv iser, Morbid ell i Ju nior moved up to car ra cing while still in his teens, winning the Italian F-3 title and ea rni ng a prestig iou s contract as F-1 test d river for Ferrari. Gianni Morbidelli mad e his Formula 1 Grand Prix debut in 1990, and is currentl y d rivin g for the British Arrows tea m which is sponsored by the Japa nese Footwork courier delivery company. There are many who believe that he will shortly become the first Italian driver in half a decade to race for the works Ferrari factory team for a full GP season. Though he still goes to most of the GP car races, Giancarlo Morbidelli evidently feels that his son 's future career is out of his hands, leaving him free to return to his own interest s -pred orni nantly on two wheels. Which isn't to conclud e that he' s sa t around idly for the past decade since pulling out of bike racing . Among th e many Morbidelli projects, alongside the foundation of what may be the finest and most extensive private motorcycle museum in Europe - which naturally contains the en tire stable of blue and white wo rks racers which bore his name over the years in the hands of riders like Parlotti, Nieto , Pileri, Bianchi, Lazzarini, Lega, Ross i, Grassetti, Ekerold , Lucchin elli, Agostini, Dieter Braun and even on one occasion, a certain Cha s Mortimer. Some of the motorcycles deserve a sp eci al mention. Lik e the 22cc reedva lve two-stroke engine prod ucing 5 bhp and delivering over 200 miles per gallon whose ultra-li ght weight and compa ct dimen sions all ow s it to be attached to any moped or cycle frame. Morbidelli designed it eight years ago be cause h e wa s tired of the crude devices he used to zip around the factory on. He thought he could do better himself, and proved it by selling the entire project to Enfield India, a company which has produced 20,000 replicas annually in the five years since the deal was signed. Only the prototype now remains in a comer of Ciancarlo's extensive restoration shop, where two men are employed full-time on renovating new additions to his bike collection - the prize of which is a 1956 four-cylinder works Gilera 500 and the unique fourcylind er 125cc works Ducati prototype "liberated " from Russia. Then there's the belt-driven overhead-cam conversion to Mrs. M's twincylinder Fiat Panda 30, which Giancarlo foun d so gutless when revving the balls , off it to climb the hill to their beautifully-restored 18th century villa overlooking Pesaro, that he promptly went and designed and built his own replacement for the pushrod valve gear. He then sold the result to an Italian conversion company who now market it as a kit to e nd o w the humb le Panda with 30% more power . Or the first Morb idelli car engine, a 2-litre V-six reed-valve watercooled two-stroke designed in 1983 for Formula 2 car racin g with a Dall ara chassis; sadly, its development was aborted with the death of the F2 class, but Ferrari was sufficiently impressed with the results to build their own twostroke V-six motor, which met a similar fate. Then there are his current projects, which include a 30cc four-stroke engine with rotary-valve induction on the Cross principle, capable of being fitted to an y bicycle; or the semi-automatic "desmodromic" !:¥!irbox he designed for the Minardi F-1 team when his son was racing for them . And then, just because he got bored on holiday, you (Left) The V-elght is installed lengthways In the chassis of the Roadster, and features shaft drive. (Below) The V-elght uses a WeberlMarelll engine management system with electronIc fuel Injecllon. understand, there's the V-eight motorcycle. Is this gu y an achiever, or what? Given Morbid elli's racing heritage, you might naturally have assumed that the first road bike to bear his name would be a repli-racer, a sort of twowheeled Lamborghini or Ferrari. Nothing of the kind, because, of course, Giancarlo Morbidelli is anything but predictable. "My racing da ys are -over," he says decisively, "and I d idn't want to build a street bike that would be more at home o n a race track. Instead, I wanted to develop a co m pletely unique tourin g motorcycle, w ith a voluntary 100 bhp power limit, ye t w ith sporti ng flair . It had not only to be full of innovation and high tech engineering solutions, but use the best components and suppliers possible. Basically, I wanted to build the best road bike in the world, that the owner will be able to enjoy riding without feeling he must be an expert road racer. It will only be built in very limited quantities, at a high price (expected to be 100 million lire - $85,000) which will reflect its prestige and excellence. And I already have enough people who share my concept of the ideal mo torcycle to have committed firm orders without even knowing when we shall be able to start production - probably sometime in 1995, but only when I'm satisfied with the performance and final specification." Okay, Giancarlo - but why do it? "I love motorcycles, I like making things, and I wanted to demonstrate that here in our woodworking machine factory we have the ability to produce the most sophisticated yet mo st practical road bike bu ilt anywhere in the w o r ld today." All right, I'll buy that - but own up: isn't the real reason for building a Veight motorcycle the buzz of doing something wild, making a crazy bike just for the hell of it? I'll never know the a ns wer, because jus t th en th e phone rang. "Sorry, sorry - I have to go and sell a man a furniture machine." And Giancarlo Morbidelli hopped into his XJ-12 Jaguar - which, naturally, he 'd modified to give increa sed performance and improved handling - and was gone. But The Man is back: Morbidelli lives again! THE MACHINE: V-8 - TWO -WHEELED HIGH-TECH Launched in prototype form in May this year, the Morbidelli V-eight motorcycle is very different from the rotaryvalve two-stroke GP racers which won millionaire Italian industrialist Giancar10 Morbidelli six World Championships in a decade. But then he sacrificed his own two-wheeled racing activities in favor of sup porting his son Gianni's rise as a driver through the ranks of car racing to his present pinnacle as a Formula 1 points scorer with the FootworkArrows team. Though responsible for the overall conception of the world's first production V-eight motorcycle, Morbidelli engaged the services of two men and a famous car styling house to take care of the details. Design of the engine, which achieves Morbidelli's stated aim of producing a small-scale Cosworth DFV m otor, was entrusted to Ing. Giorgio Valentine, a former Osca, Abarth and Alfa Romeo designer who currently serves as a consultant for Porsche. It was his first-ever motorcycle design, but balanci ng his lack of two-wheeled background is chassis designer and project coordinator Edmondo Rossi, a former top GP two-stroke race engineer. And perhaps most controversially - to clothe the finished project in accordance with Morbidelli's stated aim of providing a , touring rid ing po si tion, with weather p rotection supplied by a tall screen and half fairing while permitting the engine to act as a focal point of the styling, he chose Pininfarina, a legendary name in aut omotive design, who again had never previously worked on a motorcycle design. You might say after looking at the prototype that it shows... Like the DFV, the Morbidelli engine is a 9Q-degree, four-camshaft, 32-valve V-eight, installed lengthways in the cha ssis - though underneath the rider, in stead of behind the driver! - with a two-plate in-line clutch and shaft final drive. The single-plane crank, fuelinjec ted 847cc engine's 55 x 44.6 mm d imensions were carefully chosen to reduce the wheelbase by obtaining a compact engine build, without sacrific- ing the inbuilt performance potential: "Mr. Morbidelli will only co ns id e r delivering the bike with a 100 bhp power output," says Edi Rossi, "and so far I haven't persuaded him to let us run the engine on the dyno with open exhausts and reprogrammed fuel injection to see what the ma ximum power could be! But for sure it should be well over 160 bhp." The first customer with access to an ECU programmer will doubtless be the one to confirm that! At the moment, however, the engine has been tuned to deliver 100 bhp at the drive shaft at 11,000 rpm, running on 11:1 compression and w ith maximum torque of 7.5 kg / m d eli vered at 7500 rpm. The five main bearing crankshaft has lBO-degree throws, with a toothed belt drive to the tw in o verhead camshafts per cylinder bank, and the four valves per cylinder (21mm inlets; 17mm exhausts) set at a total included angle of is degrees to each other. A speciaIIy-developed Weber/ Marelli engine management system is employed, with el ectronic fu el injectio n us ing eight 25mm throttle bodies sitting atop the engine in best DFV manner: between the cylinder vee. They are capable of being programmed to suit the preference of each customer -, but always observing the 100 bhp power ceiling! A single water radiator sits above the engine, rather than in front of it, in order to give maximum exposure to the undeniably handsome, and surprisingly compact, engine: many four-cylinder bike engines look more cumbersome. A fivespeed gearbox is bolted on to the back of the magnesium crankcases, with shaft final drive confirming the Morbidelli 850 V-eights' touring aspirations. The exhaust system is an 8-into-1 design

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