56.99. Vol.13 No.1 . Display Until Sep,25

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Bici I indnica Pr''ototype Story by Hamish Cooper Photos by Phil Aynsley

Engineers and designers are always pushing the envelope of reality, sometimes ending up with crazy ideas. Remember the various hub-center-steering prototypes of the l9B0s? These days, we have self-balancing- motorcycle designs being promoted by ,.1 BMW and Honda.

The motorcycling world hasn't gone mad. It's always been like this, and our trvo-wheeled history is Iittered wilh prototypes, some suc- cessful, some not. It's a pattern you can d.rle right back to the sream-powered cycle designs of the 1860s One fascinating prototype that never made il- inlo producl ion is MV Aqusld's

set to unlock the future, with advanced - ;

and high camshafts with very short ,r,*.,1

Today, we take electric-start-oniy ;',,ri,, .i, for granted and the high-cam, short- ::;.*!, pushrod design long ago reappedred : -.- in BMW's all-new oilhead boxer lwin engine ol 1993. I +

But things were very different back 1 in the early I950s Theworld was final- Iy shaking off the devastation of Worid War ll and motorcycles were getting bigger in capacity and more sophis- ticated. From Harley-Davidson's new road-burning overhead-valve Sportster to Moto Cuzzi's fiendishiy complicated V8 500cc Grand Prix racer, the motorcycle world was lumping with big, new ideas MV's 3008 had potential, but only a pro- totype was made as factory management con- sidered the production costs too great It disap peared for 50 years, and then emerged in an amazing postscript.

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The 3008's overall styling was similar to MV's Tourismo Rapido, but the 3008 had a unique frame and Earles fork front end (below and facing page).

The bike ln the mid- 1950s, MV Agusta was alive with innovation. lts first 500cc Grand Prix title was just around the corner and Gilera Rondine in the 1930s. One of the the ltalian manufacturer was challenging most powerful motorcycles of its era, the for titles in the smaller classes when the Rondine developed nearly 90 horsepow- factory displayed the MV 300 Bicilindrica er and set the 1937 world speed record at the I955 Milan Motorcycle Show. Eaglne: 294.8cc airbore and stroke, 8:l More recently, Gianini had worked designed to compete with the Cilera compression ratiq 2trrp @ &00&pm with Moto Guzzi to create its inline Carburetlon: Two 8300, but looking back, it seems MV 20mrn Dell'Orto 4-cylinder rival to Gilera and MV in 1952, Transmlsslon: 4-speed chain flnal drive had taken a gun to a knife fight. Gilera which was raced until 1954. The engine had been Electrl$: 6v, coil and breaker points distributor on a roll since taking the ignition was mounted longitudinally and origi- 500cc world title in 1952 with its double Frame/wheelbase: Pressed steel ddual down- nally fitted with rudimentary fuel iniec- overhead cam inline four. Late that year tube steel cradle/52in (1,320mm) tion. However, shaft drive and an overly it had debuted what it described as a Suspension: Earles fork front, twin shocla rear complex design blighted its potential for (l80mm) sporting twin, the 305cc Gilera B300. Brakes: 7.lin SLS drum front and rear GP race success. Sure, the 8300 had its cylinders inclined Tlres: 3 x 19in front, 3.5 x 19in rear Nevertheless, Gianini weight (dry): 3fi8lb (1a0ks) was still the forward a rakish l0 degrees, but the rest Fuel capaclty: 4.8qal (l8lt0 go-to man for new designs, and Count of the specification was fairly mundane. Agusta came knocking. The result was a Unit construction of engine and gearbox technically stunning engine, especially was a big step forward, but the engine was a low-compression, compared to the rather mundane Gilera 8300. Unit construc- single-cam, two-valve-per-cylinder workhorse that wasn't with- tion of the engine and 4-speed gearbox formed a solid basis, out issues. but after that things got decidedly different. Owners of early 8300s complained of overheating englnes Unlike most parallel twins of the time, the MV 300B's cylin- and main bearing failures. Improvements were made and the ders were separate castings, set far apart to encourage air flow model lasted until 1964, but it wasn't a world beater. to achieve the best cooling. Sandwiched between them was a Nevertheless, MV recognized that Cilera was weaning Italian central tower of gears driving the valve actuation. riders away from single-cylinder motorcycles, so it decided The electric starter was bolted to the rear of the transmission, to bring in a big gun and mount a challenge That big gun and to keep the engine as narrow as possible the clutch was was Carlo Gianini, the man who had designed the 4-cylinder driven from a gear cut into the crankshaft, and the generator, distributor and oil pump were all driven by shaft and helical Too much bike gears. The generator was horizontally mounted in front of the Sadly, Carlo Gianini's feat of engineering was a dead end crankcase, its shaft driven by a jackshaft off the crank. The dis- for MV Only the prototype was built, as Count Agusta realized tributor was vertically mounted behind the cylinders, taking its it would have been way too expensive to put into production drive from the same lackshaft that drove the generator. In the and sell as an affordable road bike. same line as the distributor, a shaft ran down to the oil pump "The MV300B contains design elements unusual but not mounted at the bottom of the sump. Oil was kept in the crank- unheard of at the time," says Ian "Gowie" Gowanloch, founder case, rather than in a separate oil tank. of international parts business ltal-Spares. "[ owned a Gilera All this was fairly innovative, but perhaps the most fasci- 8300 when I was living in Italy. It was without doubt one of nating feature was the valve the most inelegant pieces of actuation mechanism. Cam design I have ever seen. That drive was via two large gears, the MV 3008 was conceived one above the other and as competition seems incred- driven from a gear on the ible; they are opposite ends of crankshaft between the cyl- the spectrum. inders. The top gear featured "The MV 3008 is different a single cam lobe on either from normal everywhere you side, against which lever fol- look. It is also immediately lowers operated short valve obvious why the basic ele- actuating pushrods that ments have not been cop- were parallel in one plane to ied. Very little of the exercise the valves, set at a 90-degree is simple and cost effective, included angle rn the hemi- either to manufacture or spherical cylinder head com- assemble." bustion chamber. The push- Technically, it left Gilera's rods were very short and twin in the shade, but its therefore light and strong. ultimate failure was its over- All this may sound quite design. It was simply too revolutionary, but elements much technology; too com- of this design had already Carburetion on the 3008 was via twin 20mm Dell'Ortos. The plicated to tool up for a ded- been seen in radial aircraft vertical distributor was driven off a jaclshaft on the cranlshaft. icated production Iine and engines. A vaguely similar too difficult for non-special- system had also appeared on the Parilla 175 in 1957. ist mechanics to maintain. And so the prototype was pushed The twin was well received by show attendees. MV claimed aside and forgotten. its power output was around 20 horsepower, some 7 horse- However, development of a racing version was started. This power more than its Gilera rival. It also looked like it had iust also was ahead of its time, with a tubular triangulated space come off the race track. Tkin carburetors, cylinders inclined frame inspired by contemporary Fl car Grand Prix chassis 45 degrees forward, beautiful swooping exhausts and gener- design. It was another brave attempt, but MV decided it would ous radial fins in the heads screamed performance. Even the be uncompetitive when compared with the company's exist- Earles forks had been developed specifically for this model. ing racers, and while MV would eventually go on to produce

www.MotorcycleClassics.com l7 Rockerarm boxes on the forward-inclined parallel twin make it look like it has double overhead camshafts; it doesn,t.

twin-cylinder road models in the 1960s and 1970s, they were hardest job: rebuilding the MV 3008, which had come into his nothing like the 3008. ownership, and getting it running. It was soon discovered that the engine had no internals, and Back to the future in fact appeared to never have had any! No matter, in 2013 he The man known simply as Mr. Elli is universally recognized handed the project over to Ginetto Clerici. Soon Enrico Sironi, as a savior of MV history and the visionary who brought most director of the MV museum at Cascina Costa, was involved, of it back to life again. Ubaldo Elli died last year, but he, and a long paper chase uncovered drawings of the engine. American Robert Iannucci (of Team Obsolete) and Britain's Suddenly, it seemed possible that the missing pieces could John Surtees were the main buyers of MV heritage when the be manufactured. famous race shop was sold off in the 1980s. They were, and in a testament to the craftsmanship and Mr. Elli spent the next few decades turning his collection enthusiasm of Italy's motorcycle manufacturing industry, the into a running museum that toured the world, often with 3008 is finally running. What man has made, man can make some of the original racers in the saddle He also took on the again. :i,.i,::.

Dead ends and false starts: BsA, Harley and lndian BSAs dead end: ln the U.K., Harley designed a winner, then Hendee Special, by 191 5 it had already BSA's industry-leading designers Bert forgot about it: When Harley-Davidson been taken off the option list, a victim Hopwood and Doug Hele developed finally decided to build its overhead- of the limitations of the battery tech- the innovative MCl 250cc prototype in valve Sportster in the I950s, it dug out nology of the day; the batteries were 1954. lts double overhead cam, hori- a pre-war prototype test mule. Based on exhausted after a dozen or so starts zontally mounted single-cylinder design a flathead 45, it had logged more than and the charging system couldn't keep featured bevel-gear-driven camshafts and 4,000 miles of road testing in 1939. them up. lt wasn't until the early 1960s four radial valves. lntended as the poten- Electric dreams: lndian invented that Japanese motorcycle manufacturers tial basis for a family of sophisticated rac- the first electric starter for a motorcycle would bring the electric starter to market ing and road models, it was stillborn. back in I914. Available on that year's on their early small-capacity models.

indi;n'off;ieA''ift"iii;i"Aieiiifi6rt;r';n ; mo6m in $14 (teft). BSA's ctever 4-vatve overhead cam singte (above).

IA MtrTnRfyfLE [LASgtfg September/october 201t