Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

NVES AldanaAnd The EIf avid Aldana had ridden iust about every kind of racing motorcycle made in the 1970s and early '80s, but nothing pre- pared him for the sight of most outra- geous, unique and innovative road-racinS machine of its time - the EIf Honda. "The first time I saw it, I thought there was no way that thing could get around a racetrack," Aldana remem- bers of the Formula One inspired endurance racer, "Wrthout its fairinS the bike looked pretty bizarre. Wlere the seat would normally be there was an oil tank. And the exhaust pipes ran up over the top ofthe engine, rather than undemeath like mo6t bikes. Little did I know then, that a year later, I would be riding the thing." The 1970 and '80s were marked by a great deal of inno/ation in motorcycle design. A group of ex-Renault Formula One car designers thought they could improve on the tried-and-true frame and suspension designs of racing motorcycles. Headed by Andre de Conanze, they came up with a prototype in 1979. The oil company EIf sponsored the project, and that's how the bike was named. At first they utilized a Yamaha T2750 racing motor, but when Honda engineers were sent to FFance to inspect the work of Cortanze a deal was struck to use Honda l000cc inline four-cylinder motors. Using an offshoot of hub-center steering, the Elf was made with several design, goals in mind. Arnong them was to lower the center of gravity, incorporate natural anti-dive braking, reduce weight by eliminating the frame completely, lower air drag and make the bike eary to The FIM World Endurance Series of the 1980s was a proving ground for many designs, and that's where the Elf Honda was first used in competition. The year before he carne to the Elf Honda team, Aldana rode for the factor/ Honda World Endurance team in l98l with Mike Baldwin. The duo won the pres- tigious Suzuka Eight Hour together. Plagued by numer- ous mechanical problems, Baldwin and Aldana were often the fastest team in the series, but took victory only at Suzuka. At the end of the year Honda brought Baldwin back to America where he began a four-)€ar reign atop the AMA Formula One road-racing cla5s, Aldana, mean- while, was looking for a ride when the call from Elf Honda arrirred. "l wan't sure I wanted to ride the thing, so I told drcm I wanted $50O0 per race," Aldana rememberc. '14/e were going back and forth with telegram messages and they were talkinS francs and I was alking dollars. Anyway, I kept asking for more, and finally, they sent a message over saying, 'C'mon, we're offering you 10,000 American dollars per race!' Uke an idiot, I'd got the con- version wrong, so I immediately sent a telegram back sayinS that I would do it. I must have been putting the decimal point in the wrong place or somethinS. That was pretty good money in those days. Maybe Kenny lRoberts] was gefting more, but I doubt too many other people were making that much." Aldana was soon in Europe to test the revolutionary Elf. The bike dripped of high technology and was stun- ning to look at. Painted a midnight blue with red and white highlights, the Elf was completely encased in an aerodynamic shell from top to bottom, front to rear. Hardly anythinS was exposed. Underneath, it featured the unique front-steering hub, a single-sided rear swingarm, and the engine was an integral part of the chassis - all groundbreaking technology at the time. The Elf was low and long. Perhaps the sleekest racing motorcycle eYer built. "My first test on the bike was in Austria," Aldana recalls. "Just sitting on the bike for the first time was strange. lt didn't have triple clamps. lt iust had a shaft coming through the top where triple clamps would nor- mally be, with a couple of stubby handles welded to the side of this shaft. They were really narrow - designed that way to keep a slim fairing profile and to keep your hands out of the wind. "l was apprehensive at first. lt didn't come with any instructions," Aldana laughs. "lt wasn't very comfortable to ride. My thumbs would pinch under the handlebars when you turned it full lock. That's how tight even/thing was. I pulled out of the pits and hit the brakes to make sure they worked, and then I turned left and .i8ht a few times to see how it handled. It didn't dive under braking at all. lt was real twitchy. almost too quick turning. But once on the track and up to speed, it allcame together. lt had its quirks, but really, it felt pretty much like a regular motorcycle once you got going." The biggest difference Aldana noticed between the Elf and a regular race bike was that it was nearly impos- sible to highside. The six-gallon tank was mounted under the engine giving it an extremely low weight distribution. "You'd get it sideways out of a turn, which it did a lot since it only had three inches of suspension travel early on, but it was real slow to retum because of tfie low cen- ter of gravity," Aldana said. "You could stay on the gas even when it was sideways, and the thing would iust come back to center real slow." The Elf was also way ahead of its time in the use of carbon liber. lt was used liberally $roughout the bike, including the brakes. "These brakes were huge," Aldana recalls. "l mean right off of an Fl car- You would touch the brakes and it would slow, then all ofa sudden - a split second really - the heat would com€ in, and pulling in the lever lightly with two fingers felt like you were on the brakes hard with four flngers. I mean, it would iust stop that motorcycle in next to nothing. I never felt more powerful brakes until I rode Mick Doohan's Honda GP bike years later." The slick aerodynamic packaSe of the Elf, combined with the powerful HRC Honda l000cc motor, made the bike a rocketship on the straight. 'At Paul Ricard, lwas the fastest at 183 mph," Aldana says proudly. ''lt was definitely fast, but then we found a maior design flaw in high-speed corners, The thing was so aerodynamic, when you'd lean it over in fast turns it actually acted as a wing and started to lift off the ground. It was crazy. You had to compensate by sticking your knee out even lurther to try to not lean so far over." ln two years Aldana helped develop the bike to the point that it got even faster, but every time they would shave a second off the lap times, a new issue would crop up. The engineers finally 8ot the bike to where it could lean deep in fast turns, but then the front swingarm began dragging the ground, "lt would actually lift the front wheel off the ground," Aldana said with emphasis. Also, when it rained, water would get to the carbs from cooling vents on the side. Aldana found he could ride wirh his knees tight against the vents to seal out the water and keep it running, "Guys these days are prima donnas," Aldana says. "lf everything isn't per{ect, they won't ride. Back then, we had two hours on the bike, and you had to improvise and come up with ways to make the thing work, even when it didn't want to." ln wvo years on the Elf Honda, Aldana and his team- mates never won an Fll'4 Endurance event. A fifth was its best placing, but they proved the revolutionary design could be made to go fast. The Elf chassis concept wzrs tried with little success on Ron Haslam's GP bike in the mid- 1980s before being relegated to the history book. Honda bor"rght the rights to some of the best design features of the Elf. most notably the single-sided swingarm, which showed up on the production Honda RC30 a few years later. "l'm glad I had the chance to ride and help develop the Elf," Aldana says. "lt was a revolutionary motorcycle, maybe a liftle too far ahead of its time. To this day peo- ple still ask me what it was like to ride that thing." Cl{ I08 MAY IO,2006 . CYCLE NEWS 8Y LAnw [AwtENc: _-a / I I /, '\ I ? llodDll o I --r- t \.-

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