Quantal Cosworth Norton
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Rohan said:
See Post 1. :roll:
:roll: So do you expect a free Cosworth for asking the question ? :roll:
A google search on Quantel Norton and Cosworth Challenge turns up about 400,000 replies.
Some of those are probably hobots repostings, but we've about covered it ?
BTW, since the fire at the NMM, Cosworths probably became a rarer species ?
A google search on Quantel Norton and Cosworth Challenge turns up about 400,000 replies.
Some of those are probably hobots repostings, but we've about covered it ?
BTW, since the fire at the NMM, Cosworths probably became a rarer species ?
SteveA
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Let me see if I get the story right then....
Motorcycle manufacturer at the end of it's life cycle needs a basis for future sucess as a road bike. In light of the sucess of Cosworth DFVs, and the fortuitous fact that taking one quarter of its 8 cylinders, gives a 750 twin, a signature of their current products, they discuss a project to base a road motorcycle on this car race engine.
Since it is in any case race engine derived they further plan to race the bike to both develop and promote it. The make various decisions regarding management and technical direction that ignores the wealth of experience they have at their disposal, and they also underfund the project. The result is unsurprisingly compromised and ultimately unsucessful. And in any case as a motorcyle manufacturer they continue their death throws and finally get shafted by the government of the day (which, due to said mismanagement, may be more just than we would like to think!).
Some years later a wealthy individual, who has been frustrated by the wasted potential revisits the project with current technology, sufficient funding to achieve his aim of proving the value of the baseline, and fortuitously since the demise of F750 there has been revived interest in the racing of twin cylinder large capacity four stroke motorcyles, which provides an opportunity for competition without having to enter a long series of races in widely distributed countries.
The machine is developed and talented riders, nice blokes too, fortuitously no longer in great demand elswhere, are employed to race it. Over time the machine development and improvements and rider talent propel this machine to victory at the highest level available to it, Daytona BOTT. The team and riders are rightly revered for their achievements. Over time BOTT is no longer flavour of the month, although it carries on for enthusiasts, it no longer draws crouds, things move on, project closes. . Nice bit of history.
Is there something more too it other than some great pictures of a well developed race bike?
Thread over?
Motorcycle manufacturer at the end of it's life cycle needs a basis for future sucess as a road bike. In light of the sucess of Cosworth DFVs, and the fortuitous fact that taking one quarter of its 8 cylinders, gives a 750 twin, a signature of their current products, they discuss a project to base a road motorcycle on this car race engine.
Since it is in any case race engine derived they further plan to race the bike to both develop and promote it. The make various decisions regarding management and technical direction that ignores the wealth of experience they have at their disposal, and they also underfund the project. The result is unsurprisingly compromised and ultimately unsucessful. And in any case as a motorcyle manufacturer they continue their death throws and finally get shafted by the government of the day (which, due to said mismanagement, may be more just than we would like to think!).
Some years later a wealthy individual, who has been frustrated by the wasted potential revisits the project with current technology, sufficient funding to achieve his aim of proving the value of the baseline, and fortuitously since the demise of F750 there has been revived interest in the racing of twin cylinder large capacity four stroke motorcyles, which provides an opportunity for competition without having to enter a long series of races in widely distributed countries.
The machine is developed and talented riders, nice blokes too, fortuitously no longer in great demand elswhere, are employed to race it. Over time the machine development and improvements and rider talent propel this machine to victory at the highest level available to it, Daytona BOTT. The team and riders are rightly revered for their achievements. Over time BOTT is no longer flavour of the month, although it carries on for enthusiasts, it no longer draws crouds, things move on, project closes. . Nice bit of history.
Is there something more too it other than some great pictures of a well developed race bike?
Thread over?
What hasn't been explained at any level ( as usual in magazine articles and stories ?), is what was done, in detail, to fix the problems and make them GO.
And why this eluded the original development team ??
So, no, this thread is far from ended.
BTW, can I just buy a bolt-in Cosworth dohc watercooled engine unit for the old Commando, without the complication of that gearbox/swingarm pivot stuff all tacked on. ?
Or does the gearbox-in-unit stiffen up the engine cases to make everything stronger and more reliable...
And why this eluded the original development team ??
So, no, this thread is far from ended.
BTW, can I just buy a bolt-in Cosworth dohc watercooled engine unit for the old Commando, without the complication of that gearbox/swingarm pivot stuff all tacked on. ?
Or does the gearbox-in-unit stiffen up the engine cases to make everything stronger and more reliable...
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From COSWORTH The Search for Power . By Graem Robson .
For Paul Morgan who laterwent on to co-found the Ilmor raceing engine concern , it was no reward for all the work put in on test bed running and development.
The raceing engine was finally refined to produce at least 110 bhp at 10.500 rpm .
And so , for several years the Norton / JA engine dissapeared into limbo.
Then in July 1984 , an ex - road racer , and newly appointed Cosworth Director Bob Graves ,
whose Quantel company had joined Cosworths controlling company , UEI , was shown round the Northampton factory by Kieth Duckworth .
Bob spied a few dusty engines on a shelf and asked what they were, and leaned the sorry saga from the Chairman , who ended up by saying
" You're looking at the only engine we have ever built which has never won a race " .
Kieth was happy to get rid of a couple of engines , but wanted no more to do with this failed project. The story is that Graves then spent four years - and 100.000 pounds - to prove him wrong. In 1988 he made his point - not only did Roger Marshall win the Daytona ' Battle of the Twins ' on his Cosworth engined bike , The Cosworth - Norton engined bike , The Cosworth - Quantel , but the machine went on to win major events at Spa ( Belgium ) and Assen ( Holland ) later in the year . Then , as Kieth told me :
' After the Daytona win we had the chance of takeing more orders for this engine , but by that time Cosworth was far to big to be playing around with things like that ' .
For Paul Morgan who laterwent on to co-found the Ilmor raceing engine concern , it was no reward for all the work put in on test bed running and development.
The raceing engine was finally refined to produce at least 110 bhp at 10.500 rpm .
And so , for several years the Norton / JA engine dissapeared into limbo.
Then in July 1984 , an ex - road racer , and newly appointed Cosworth Director Bob Graves ,
whose Quantel company had joined Cosworths controlling company , UEI , was shown round the Northampton factory by Kieth Duckworth .
Bob spied a few dusty engines on a shelf and asked what they were, and leaned the sorry saga from the Chairman , who ended up by saying
" You're looking at the only engine we have ever built which has never won a race " .
Kieth was happy to get rid of a couple of engines , but wanted no more to do with this failed project. The story is that Graves then spent four years - and 100.000 pounds - to prove him wrong. In 1988 he made his point - not only did Roger Marshall win the Daytona ' Battle of the Twins ' on his Cosworth engined bike , The Cosworth - Norton engined bike , The Cosworth - Quantel , but the machine went on to win major events at Spa ( Belgium ) and Assen ( Holland ) later in the year . Then , as Kieth told me :
' After the Daytona win we had the chance of takeing more orders for this engine , but by that time Cosworth was far to big to be playing around with things like that ' .
Good find Matt. (Gee, you can write in English !)
What would be interesting is where that 100,000 quid was spent, and what they did to it.
Although details like that often remain on the secrets list.
110 hp, now that is getting to be some serious mumbo.
Another what-could-have-been....
What would be interesting is where that 100,000 quid was spent, and what they did to it.
Although details like that often remain on the secrets list.
110 hp, now that is getting to be some serious mumbo.
Another what-could-have-been....
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Rohan said:
It was copied. :mrgreen:
SteveA
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Rohan said:
On one hand the problem we have here is the misconception that an engine makes a race bike!
Part of the failure was clearly in giving the project of building the complete bike to a team that did not have the required experience and sympathy for racing a motorcycle....Williams was not involved...and others...
Nothing about this project carried over from the Commando, indeed why should it have done, however the basis of the JPN success when it had come was Williams' drive for low frontal area, aerodynamics, chassis design etc. Did they spend any time in the wind tunnel, it does not look like it, for the Cosworth they just took the same fairing and made it taller to accommodate the frame/engine....
Just look at the original Cosworth bike....it is too damn tall...it is too damn big...that engine/gearbox combination is too damn big...it was hampered by road bike needs...why is it always shown with an alternator for Pete's sake...balance shafts!.....why fuss about with outboard discs to ease wheel changes when you aren't going endurance racing (and yes at least once Croxford was off it and broke a disc!, I was there at Brands in late '75 when it happened for the first time, in public).
Blame Cosworth?, no not really, blame an extremely poor brief, insufficient funds and mismanagement in not forming a winning team to build the bike, all issues that could have been solved. But even then they were flying in the face of major trends trying to run a four stroke twin against projectiles like two stroke TZ750s
This is not to say that the development team were in any way stupid, but for comparison look at BSA's later OIF Lightnings and Thunderbolts, the design team employed were not motorcyclists, they were aicraft engineers who built a bike too tall for most BSA customers to ride!
Even in the '80s £100K was not a lot of money, Quantel still did it on the cheap compared to serious bike development, Norton had a fraction of that money in the race team....and Quantel was lucky enough to have a race class tailor made for the bike! and most of the bikes they were competing against were prepared in sheds like Gary Bryans......skilled and great people....but with something less than £100K as a budget.....it damn well should have won...
To win....right brief....right team...right funding...manage it well...and be lucky....
That is all fair enough.
But in its day it didn't have 110 hp.
Or reliability.
So it would still be interesting to know what they did to turn it around.
We can get hints by looking at the pics, obviously a lot was changed.
But was that for fashion, or the old stuff was no good....
But in its day it didn't have 110 hp.
Or reliability.
So it would still be interesting to know what they did to turn it around.
We can get hints by looking at the pics, obviously a lot was changed.
But was that for fashion, or the old stuff was no good....
SteveA
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Rohan said:
I am not sure we know just what power it did make in '75......take a look at this, when did it make '110' who knows
'25 Percent of a GP Engine
The old Commando wasn’t powerful enough, so Poore decided to buy time with specially tuned versions, while waiting for a design study from Cosworth, known for its racing automobile engines. The Cosworth-Norton JA engine - code-named “Challenge” - was a racing-plus-production design. The road JAB version was to develop 65 hp and the racing JAA “whatever we could get out of it,” recalled Keith Duckworth of Cosworth. The engine was designed to be part of the frame, but there were cooling problems and by the time the engine was tested and ready, Norton-Villiers-Triumph was in financial trouble. Cosworth built 30 JAA prototypes, the production bike was canceled and an underfunded racing program ended. In 1984, a couple of JAA engines were bought by Quantel, and four years later, the JAA engined Cosworth Quantel proved the worth of the design by winning at Daytona.
SPECIFICATIONS
Engine: 747cc (86×65mm) water-cooled Cosworth JAA 360-degree parallel-twin four stroke
Power Rating: “at least 110″ hp @ 10,500 rpm
Valves: twin overhead-camshafts driven by cogged belt
Fuel System: twin Amal carburetors (988, fuel injection)
Transmission: 5-speed, chain final drive
Suspension: telescopic forks (front); cantilever with monodamper under the engine (rear)
Brakes: twin discs (front); disc (rear)
Wheels: magnesium; 16 inch (front); 18 inch (rear)
Weight: 375 lb
Maximum Speed: 171 mph'
Lets accept that the chassis, braking, suspension, wheels and tyre development improved the lap time potential, but it is fair to say the developments were available to any other team preparing a bike for the '88 Daytona, so in reality they are quite neutral in assessing the machines performance potential against the potential of its opposition, with the obvious statement that with the available money they were able to buy the best components and spend more track time setting them up, and many other BOTT teams were (much) less well funded.
OK, so the original bike maybe didn't make 110bhp, however that was measured and however that measuremnt process changed over 15 years....
However, the original 3 litre DFV made 400hp in '68, and by '83, 15 years earlier that the '88 Daytona BOTT it made 520, better than 25% improvement....so adopting DFV advances straight from Cosworth was worth several hp alone....we can assume that there were more significant losses in the twin, but we have no numbers....
More dyno set up time and better ingnitions, fuel injection...all worth a few more %
I don't think it is such a mystery, in the 6 years from '73 to '79 the TZ750 typical of the F750 class the bike was originally designed to race in went from 90bhp to 120bhp......a 33% improvement, and before long 500cc TZs were bettering that!
Like I said before, I don't think it was because they did anything wrong or stupid, they just did not have the funding to do more.....
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SteveA said:
Doesn't that describe every win?
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Id tend do disagree with that ; Where are the Ear Plugs !
Megas are ' expansion Chambers . However with incandescent perforated tube ' baffles ' theres a tendancy toward ' afterburners '
which can greatly enhace scavenging & therefore intake charge velocity . This is discernable acoustically . When youve got it right .
Megas are ' expansion Chambers . However with incandescent perforated tube ' baffles ' theres a tendancy toward ' afterburners '
which can greatly enhace scavenging & therefore intake charge velocity . This is discernable acoustically . When youve got it right .
If AJS (also part of the AMC stable, remember) could get 45 hp out of their single cylinder 7R 350cc sohc racer, then 110 hp out of a dohc twin, decades later, isn't actually much of a progession. ?? Jack Williams where are you, we need you....
"discerable acoustically ".
I'll let someone else decipher that one, its not in my Swahili dictionary.....
"incandescent perforated tube ' baffles".
In race megaphones ? Incandescent ?? Now we are baffled.....
"discerable acoustically ".
I'll let someone else decipher that one, its not in my Swahili dictionary.....
"incandescent perforated tube ' baffles".
In race megaphones ? Incandescent ?? Now we are baffled.....
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How Unusual . try adding an ' n ' . Youd never make it at Bletchley Park .
SteveA
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Rohan said:
Rather more than quoting 2 Stroke history, it was my intent to show what happened to the bikes the Challenge was designed to compete with up to the end of the lifecycle of F750, I think there is a clear indication that even with 110bhp a heavier 4 stroke design would still not have competed with an agile (!) 120bhp 2 Stroke making more power....
The relevance is F750 was dominated by the TZ750 and its derivatives. The Yamaha factory funded their efforts sufficiently and put together teams with excellent riders, tuners and mechanics......Roberts and Carruthers to name but two...
You are seeking the reason why Norton could not get the Challenge to meet it's potential, but you don't seem to accept that funding and management was a significant issue, and I am also saying that, in context, even if they did it would not have been the world beater they sought....Roberts had the equipment, support and skill to beat anything they might have done....
The bike was later successful, but in a small pond...not a world championship.
The Quantel boys did good, but the Norton/Cosworth concept was never going to be an answer to winning F750 in the late '70s, and it wasn't....
Could have been a nice road bike if it had got that far, but I reckon from his comments Cosworth would not have been that pleased with that anyway.....
Chris
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Hi Steve
Its intresting to read all these posts about the Quantel.
BUT
The part of the history that is missing, is the work of a certain gental man called Mr Sutherland!!!
I dont think that Quantel could have moved the bike on, without the work that this gentleman did.
He brought the bike back to the public imagination. He did what I dreamed of doing.
The Cosworth brief from Norton was for a race engine & a road bike. As you said overheating problems, carbs not fuel injection? lack of money, plus the time it took to develop the engine, lead to a early end to the project.
The fact the the race bike did'nt match the Commando, that it was supposed to replace did not help.
Back in 81 I tried to find out more about the bike & got little help as it was considered such a dead loss.
BUT the concept was great. A Norton twin, that would, with funding have been far ahead of its time. It just needed a clean sheet of paper.
As to the outboard disc! it is still one of the things on the bike that I found facinating & I am sure has or will be re visited at some time.
Chris
Its intresting to read all these posts about the Quantel.
BUT
The part of the history that is missing, is the work of a certain gental man called Mr Sutherland!!!
I dont think that Quantel could have moved the bike on, without the work that this gentleman did.
He brought the bike back to the public imagination. He did what I dreamed of doing.
The Cosworth brief from Norton was for a race engine & a road bike. As you said overheating problems, carbs not fuel injection? lack of money, plus the time it took to develop the engine, lead to a early end to the project.
The fact the the race bike did'nt match the Commando, that it was supposed to replace did not help.
Back in 81 I tried to find out more about the bike & got little help as it was considered such a dead loss.
BUT the concept was great. A Norton twin, that would, with funding have been far ahead of its time. It just needed a clean sheet of paper.
As to the outboard disc! it is still one of the things on the bike that I found facinating & I am sure has or will be re visited at some time.
Chris
