CHATTER COMES AND goes in motorcycle racing, like headlice in the school playground. It is a technical disease, an engineering infestation that plays havoc with lap-times, can give riders blurred vision, and send engineers a bit crazy.
Some riders prefer to call it vibration, but, either way, it is a tiny thing: a few millimetres of high-frequency resonance between the tyres and the racetrack that can have huge consequences.
Chatter helped Valentino Rossi win the 2004 MotoGP title, his first with Yamaha, because Michelin's super-grippy 2004 rear slick caused Honda's RC211V to chatter like crazy.
"The new Michelin doesn't work so well with our bike; we're getting a lot of chatter, which we call "the jackhammer" in the US," said Honda's Colin Edwards at the time. Having chatter is like having syphilis; it's all you think about all day!'
And chatter played a part in Rossi losing the 2006 MotoGP crown, because that year's YZR-M1 chassis was too stiff.
'We were getting desperate, so we drilled holes in the frame and filled it full of expanding foam, the same stuff you use under the kitchen sink to stop rats getting in,' recalls Rossi's mechanic, Alex Briggs.
Nothing worked, so at Le Mans [one-third distance in the championship] we went back to the 2005 chassis. It was all done in great secrecy people were sent around Europe to collect 2005 bikes which were being used as show bikes.'
Chatter is all about harmonic resonances, frequencies, and oscillations-and it is a huge headache for riders and engineers because it can be so difficult to find the cause and so difficult to fix.
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Denne historien er fra September 2024-utgaven av Bike India.
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Tussle for Supremacy
Having watched the racing action from afar during the first two rounds of the Honda Idemitsu Talent Cup (HITC), we got a chance to take a closer look at the proceedings in round three. Here is how the weekend zoomed past
Multiple Winners
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The Title Fight Becomes More Intense
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Andrea lannone is a WSBK Winner
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Italian Domination
The weekend at Cremona saw the Italian, Danilo Petrucci, dominate his home race astride his Ducati
Bastianini Shines in Final-lap Thriller
Just like the previous race at Misano, this one also served up a thriller but for very different reasons. Here is how it unfolded
No Dearth of Drama
Marc Márquez had to wait for 1,043 days for his 60th MotoGP race victory, but his 61st race win only took another seven days
Kolli Hills on an NX 500
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For the Easy Life
Triumph India believe there is a market for a friendlier version of the Speed 400. Here is what you should know about that version, called the Speed T4
The Star Reborn
We finally got our hands on the new BSA Gold Star 650 and took it for a long spin. Here is our first impression