Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

cladding its Michelin slicks and looking very definitely a racer-with-a-light - a bike self-proclaimed as an American MotoGP project by the slogan emblazoned on the fairing, alongside the string of Stars & Stripes stickers. Climbing aboard the MotoCzysz C I (with the single word "dream" inscribed on the front mudguard!), it's immediately apparent how slim the bike is. It still feels relatively long but pretty narrow, translating out on the track to a surprisingly flickable bike for a 1000cc four, once I got used to the feeling of sitting too far back in the wheelbase and started to move around on it with more confidence. Czysz says the riding ergos are the same as a Yamaha R6, not even an RI, and that the sense of being mispositioned is an optical illusion caused by the shape of the pointy-nose fairing and its screen. But still, I did feel rather far away from the front wheel, even if it turns out that, with a 54/46percent frontal weight bias, there s more I weight on the front end on the C I, both with and without the rider, than on an RI. Firing up the engine invited a wall of noise to issue from each bank of cylinders' separate two-into-one pipes, each ending in a gently tapered open megaphone. Blipping the throttle produced a twangy yet gruff exhaust note, a soprano version of Suzuki's GSV-R MotoGP racer, and it revealed the throttle is surprisingly heavy for a fuel-injected engine, a factor of using a Single cable to rotate all four butterflies, each with heavy return springs fitted - presumably to counter the suction of the free-breathing engine. Czysz says dedicated throttle bodies and a trick linkage are being made up for the second C I prototype presently under construction, which should fix that. Formula One fans should be able to guess what he's doing. The next surprise was how little vibration there is from the four-cylinder motor, either at lower revs or rasping up high - there's only a tiny bit through the footrests at higher rpm, which is hardly enough to comment on, because even that is less than a conventional in line four. The MotoCzysz engine feels really well balanced and very smooth, as well as quite muscular and torquey by fourcylinder IOOOcc superbike standards - though conversely it does feel as if there's lots of inertia inside the engine. It just didn't scoot up and down the rev band as quickly as I was expecting, even when I wrenched the stiff throttle hard open - you sense that there's a lot of weight being speeded up and slowed down each time you twist the wrist. Probably, the internal engine parts on this proof-ofconcept test bike have a lot of excess gyroscopic weight on them at this early stage of development, which will get pared off later on, though Czysz reckons the heavy alternator and clutch/primary drive are mostly to blame. And for sure the engine doesn't feel like it makes a whole lot of horsepower, yet. It runs to the present 12,SOO-rpm rev limiter quite happily but in rather leisurely fashion, and there's a wide spread of smoothly delivered linear power, which in spite of those crackling exhausts at this stage makes it seem more road bike than racer. Which is of course what baby is being brought up to become - and these are very early days in the C I's lifetime. The broad spread of power helps overcome the handicap of the C I's rather slow, vague-feeling gear-change action, 1. A unique front fork setup utilizes an Ohlins shock to control damping. Brakes are Brembo radial units. 2. Twin rear shocks do not require complicated linkage to get the job done. 3. Spacey instrument panel houses a 17,OOO-rpm tach sweep, though the current engine bumps the rev limiter at 12,500 rpm. 4. Rear view: The MotoCzysz looks slim, trim and ready to rock. though. SurpriSingly, there's no powershifter fitted (yet?), which I'd expect to be a must-have feature on the street version, let alone on a C I superbike racer. And the clutch slipped sporadically during my first session, though Mike and his dad managed to fix it for my second outing - turned out the slipper clutch, well, slipped too much and needed to be adjusted up. So, more work is needed on the engine to refine and power it up, but my Las Vegas ride certainly proved to my own satisfaction that the V-four power unit's innovative basic concept works just fine. And how about the chassis, with the engine stuck lengthways in that so-stiff carbon frame? Well, here it's hard to resist feeling that Michael Czysz has turned a new page in two-wheeled architecture, one that mainstream deSigners should scan closely. The MotoCzysz may well be the most neutral-handling bike I've ever ridden. It's like the motorcycle itself is a clean sheet of paper from which all adverse forces created by the engine operation have been completely expunged, leaving it to the team to start writing the book by dialing in the chassis geometry and suspension setup of its choice, unencumbered by external considerations such as crankshaft rotation and inertia. It's been understood for many years that the gyroscopic forces of a conventional transverse inline four-cylinder motor's crankshaft rotation have a direct adverse effect on a motorcycle's handling, making it difficult for the bike to roll, and so turn - and you need only look at the current conflict of opinion in MotoGP's pit lane to see that. Here, the two inline fours, from Kawasaki and Yamaha, each have the crankshaft rotating in a different direction to produce contrasting handling characteristics aimed at countering this gyroscopic force: The LXRR's runs forward; the World Champion YZF-M I's, backward. Without going into the different spinoff effects each of these results in - some good, some bad, in handling terms - what matters here is that there is an effect, which at the very least impacts on the way each bike behaves. Now climb aboard the MotoCzysz, where with the engine turned lengthways along the axis of the wheelbase, the gyroscopic force of the crank rotation is instead put to good use in countering time-wasting wheelies under acceleration and enhancing stability under braking by eliminating stoppies. And with the twin longitudinal crankshafts turning against each other, there's zero torque reaction to upset the handling, for example, on a Single-crank V-twin Mota Guzzi. So, blip the C I's throttle at rest in pit lane, and there's absolutely no sign of the bike rock 'n' rolling to one side beneath you, jiving away like the BMW Boxer I used to race most certainly did. This makes for a perfectly balanced engine package out on the racetrack, allowing you to exploit the neutral handling advantages of the lengthways engine layout to the max. So, in real terms, what this means is that although the MotoCzysz feels a little tall and top-heavy dynamically, it steers into turns very easily and controllably, flicking from side to side in a chicane almost as fast as the Aprilia RSV2S0; that's the machine Czysz says he was aiming to emulate when creating the bike. Yet, even though it's high, it handles bumps well on the gas without shaking its head, in spite of the relatively steep 22.S-degree fork rake, and with the reduced amount of power presently on tap, it did hook up well out of turns cranked over. Thanks to the way Czysz has made lemonade out of the lemon, by turning the preViously negative gyroscopic engine forces to work instead in your favor and using them to resist weight transfer when it matters, the C I doesn't squat unduly exiting a turn on the power, if at all. It just hooks up the rear Michelin and drives. Nor does it want to wheelie out of slow turns, an increasing issue with the most recent MotoGP bikes I've been lucky enough to ride - though the jury's out on how well the C I will behave with an extra SO bhp or so on tap. One thing's already for sure, though: It stops very well and doesn't back in to the turn on the brakes slowing from high speed at the end of the straight, again presumably because of the gyroscopic engine forces. But where the MotoCzysz really scored was the way CYCLE NEWS. MAY 11, 2005 47

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