Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Warren Willing: and the packaging. It wasn't an engine, and then we built a t's the type of project that every engineer both dreams of and fears. A clean-sheet motorcycle design, utilizing the chas is around it. We knew where we wanted to put the most advanced technology and the best people in their bits as a total package and tnen work the compromises of fields, with a very generous budget and a very passionate engine design and packaging and mechanical layout to amieve that. The objective is to improve comer speeds, parboss. That was the burden and gift that Warren Willing was ticularly in turning in, and to improve straight-line speed given when he was told, about 10 months ago, by Kenny through better acceleration and reduced frontal area." That meant puttirig the radiator under the seat to Roberts to seriously begin work on what would seven and a half months later become the Modenas KR3 three-cylin- improve aerodynamics on the KR3. Willing has kept a keen eye on the competition and knows the four-eylinders have der, two-stroke Grand Prix machine. As Willing and Robert both point out, no one person is entirely responsi- gotten onto a treadmill to nowhere. ble for the design, but it's been Willing who's had. the greatest responsibility in turning theory into reality. It wasn't something that the 44-year-old Australian came up with on the spur of the moment. Ever since a serious accident ended his racing career in 1979, Willing has been involved in race management and engineering, joining Team Marlboro Roberts Yamaha in 1988. He's had designs in his head and on scraps of paper, and at the end of 1992 he proposed an engine concept to Roberts. That was when the FIM mandated new weight requirements for four-cylinder motorcycles whicn penalized them and rewarded twins and triples. "[ had a basic layout which 1 wanted to work with, whicll isn't quite what we've got here, but the concept is the same," Willing says in a deep, yet soft Australian monotone. "Kenny talked with some people and laid an engine out like this. [s that gOing to work, balance-wise? The first response is 'Wow, that's a strange idea. I don't think so.' And then, sort of 'l think it's going to be like this' and the next thing is 'Let me do some sums On it.' And we found out that it should work. "It was an odd configuration. This one is not that different. It's basically a twin-cylinder boxer with an extra cylinder on the side. Originally 1 was thinking of a 180degree boxer arranged, and what we've ended up with is a bent boxer for other considerations." Once Roberts told WilliJ.'g to proceed with the project, on May 1, 1996, Willing began working with TWR Engines, one of the companies under the Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR) umbrella. Walkinshaw's people had been looking to get involved in motorcycles and this was a perfect fit. "Basically, we started working with the design engi. neers and the design draftsman at TWR:' Willing said. "So it's a matter of working through the design process. It's just a matter of putting up the details arowld the concept. 1f we can make the engine like this, can you physically bolt the thing together and get the integrity in the crankcase?' So they had to look at it in more detail. Last count there were something like 800 or 900 draWings. "There are several drawings for every piece in the engine. With most things, if it's a casting, you start with a casting drawing. Then there's an initial machining drawing and a final machining drawing and all the processes we've got to deal with which are done after that. General- One of Roberts' crew chiefs, Warren Willing, is the man ly, the Jonger lead time items are the steel items, crank- most responsible for designing the Modenas KR3. The shafts. Just for longer manufacturing time, more details, Australian is a former racer and team manager. all the treatments." Willing spends a great deal of time at Walkinshaw's "The four-cylinders have got a huge radiator because of facility in Leafield, about 20 minutes from their shop in Banbury. That's where the engines are assembled and where it's mounted," he said. "And because of where it's that's where the dyno is. The engine first ran as a complete mOWlted it's very inefficient. So it has to be big to do its job. unit on Decenlber 14, though Bud Aksland had been doing The engine puts out a lot of power which dictates that the development work at his single-cylinder test facility in bike has to be strong and heavy and the tires have to be big Manteca, California, Smce October. The frame, which was to handle that power. You lose a lot in the ability to turn the also farmed out to a local fabricator, arrived in October. bike in every time there's a step up in rear tire size. That's The first prototype was fired up as a complete entity late in one of the things that's happened over the last few years. You increase the power, you increase the tire size and you January. ''It was nice to see it start up as a motorcycle:' Willing directly lose the same time in turning in that you picked up said. "We'd had an engine a few weeks before that. On the in accelerating out of the COrner. So the lap time stays the dyno you get the power outputs and things, but you don't same, but in different parts of the circuit you're doing things slower and faster. get a feel for what the actual engine feels like. When you ."The three-cylinder seemed the best compromise. To get put it in a bike and you can hang onto the throttle, you can the twin-cylinder competitive with the four means developget an initial feel for how it is." They ran it on an airport runway, first with Roberts, ing new technology for the pistons. We're not in a position then with his riders, Kenny Roberts Jr. and Jean-Michel to do that (the current FIM regulations give threes a 33Bayle. Junior did wheelies, Bayle created inlaginary chi- pound weight advantage over the fours). One of the things canes to test the handling. Whether it's on target or not is that 15 kilos is a significant advantage when you're ridwon't be decided until they take it, and another prototype, ing around for 45 minutes. But to do that you've got to to Malaysia for a week's testing. The target the team was downsize a lot of things." aiming for was simple, "It Slarted with a machine that we thought was needed with a 500 Grand Prix bike to improve lap times and to get it to go forward:' Willing explained. "A lighter, smaller package. And to achieve that the integration is in choosing an engine design that will allow you to do things with the cooling system I The Modenas .lCR3 is tiny, ",I most as small as a 250, though about five kilos (11 pounds) above the F1M minimum ofJ 15 kilos (253 pounds) for triples. . "The bike is well overengineered:' Willing says, adding that this is as heavy as the bike will ever be. "We certainly tried to design it with reliability in mind because you can't learn anything if it keeps breaking. fm sure we're going to have breakages. fm sure there are going to be things that we haven't anticipated. It should be built quite-strong and then we can work back from there. [t's the way to engineer things, rather than engineer it as light as possible and have things break and learn. At ti,e end of the day you've got to go racing." And you have to race against the Japanese factories. Current speculation puts the output of a factory NSRSOO Honda at around 200 bhp. The first numbers on the KR3 put the number at around 150, with Willing expecting the number to ream 165 by the time they start testing. And there's more in it. "We set targets for what we wanted to initially start with and we're pretty happy that we've achieved those targets with an initial cylinder ""angement," Willing said. "We know that there's a lot more potential left in there. One of the ways of comparing engine to engine is brake mean effe<;tive pressure (bmep). The current technology of the high-performance engines are around 200 psi bmep. We set targets that are quite conservative but still should make us competitive as the initial target. We've got that on a single cylinder. We've still got a little bit of detailing to update it with the three-cylinder, but the potential's there. But we've still got 10 or 20 percent margin below the perfonnance level that we're getting out of the existing cylinder. It has that development area. If we were only putting out 150 bhp and we were on the same bmep, then we'd panic. But we looked at all that and we knew that with the conservative targets, if we could achieve them it would still be competitive." Willing estimates the factory Honda NSR500V twin makes about 140 hp with very high bmep figures. "So there's not.a great deal of margin left in there," Willing said. ':So what you've got to do is rev the engine to get the horsepower up and that's the problem they've got and that's what they're trying to overcome." Power-to-weight ratio is often used as a performance benchmark, but Willing says those numbers are deceiving. There are other factors to take into account. "Power-tn-weight ratio determines acceleration up to a point:' Willing said. "What you've got to look at is total resistance, whim is a combination of rolling resistance and drag, air resistance. The acceleration is determined by the excess of power you have to attain a certain speed. rt may take 50 hp to do 200 kph (about 124 mph). But what determines acceleration from 200 to 205 or at any point, is the excess of power over what's required to do that speed. It brings in the aerodynamics and power-tn-weight ratio. It's all factored in to get ti,e overall performance. If you can reduce the drag in the front area you can still have a heavier power-tn-weight ratio, but still accelerate faster at higher speed than a bike that had a better power-to-weight ratio, if it had a high running resistance." Those concerns are yet to be addressed. What Willing has benefited from in this project is the freedom to get things done. For some time Roberts has been frustrated by the amount of time it took Yamaha to react to problems. "They can't just react to what you want:' Willing says. "They've got to look at it in the overall context. Whereas the decision making on development is going to be a fairly close-knit group that can make that decision as to when it can be implemented and do that." For example, Willing said the team looked at different teclmologies in crankshaft seals. When they didn't perform as expected, they were ableto design and have a new seal manufactured in 21 days. 'Whereas normal lead time for having a seal made is 12 weeks for the tooling and then another 90 days to put it into production. There's a lot of talented small firms and we end,!!d up using those people:' Willing says of the racing industry around Banbury. Given the nearly impossible deadline, some in the project have said that they would have liked another . year's development. Despite only spending 18 days in the past 10 months at his home in Australia, Willing 'doesn't agree. "The work expands to meet the time that's available:' he explains. "And by setting a deadline of April 13 (the date of the season-opening Malaysia GPl you've got to go racing. That's the focus of everyone's attention. If you had an extra year you probably wouldn't be that much further along. You've got to set a deadline and go for it. That's what racing's about." the man with the Ian

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