The Four Wheel Harley
Being a senior Hog member, I find things harder to do now, or not practical or a damn site harder than it used to be. As a keen motorcyclist my first thought turned to the motorbike to see if I could make it more suitable for my age group. Motorbikes are designed for the young now, by being heavier, bigger, faster etc. and not orientated towards the capabilities of people in my generation. With this in mind I have designed a bike just for us.
First of all, we all know the safety of four wheels. We all drive cars. The benefits of having four wheels on a motorcycle is tremendous. Two wheels at the front and two wheels on the back approximately 10 inches apart (no metrics for us). Sounds silly, but think about it. How often have you parked your bike, only to forget to push out your side stand before getting off, only to hear your pride and joy falling to the ground. It is embarrassing when it happens and more so if you can't pick it up by yourself. This of course would not happen with a four wheel motorbike. If you get a flat tyre you can still ride to the next workshop to get it fixed. Four wheel or shall we call it multiwheel, just to go with the sign of the times, will give you better braking, wet weather handling as well as acceleration (not important for us seniors) by giving us more contact area. I have plenty of contact area you might think, but I am not referring to the area where your bum touches the seat, but where your tyre touches the road. With four wheel motorbikes or 4WMB for short, a lot of new terminology will appear, like flat cornering. No I don't mean on flat tyres, but by keeping the wheels flat on the ground by shifting your weight to the side and keeping your bike upright, just like Mick Doohan does. Who the heck is Mick Doohan you ask yourselves. Is he a hog member? I shall answer this one in my future stories, but in the meantime you just have to live in agony. Flat cornering looks good, will keep you fit and if your passenger is keen enough can join in to get the extra speed through the turn. The normal cornering style is known as hang two. Who has heard of something like this before. We all did. Surfers do it, skateboarders do it, why not us? Hang two cornering is just like cornering on a normal bike, by banking into the turn. As the bike leans the two wheels on the outside will automatically lift off the deck. This is frightening at first but nothing to worry about. It will certainly open the eyes of other motorists and earn their respect and perhaps a bit of jealousy. Everybody knows Australia is a big country with many different road conditions. Say you would make a trip to the Kakadu National Park. You would probably start off on bitumen road, then gravel road and then you will end up on dirt tracks. Just imagine after hours and hours riding through bulldust and sand it starts to rain (it happened to me) and you start slipping and sliding around eventually losing control and crashing your Harley. This is 4WMB country. Before your trip you remove one front and one rear tyre and replace them with knobby tyres. Now you've still got good traction at high speeds on bitumen roads and the grip of off road tyres on dirt. Of course other tyre combinations are possible. Let's assume that you live in Melbourne, where you have four seasons in one day. You don't have to go overboard and put four different tyres on your bike. But you can pick a good choice of dry and wet weather tyres. Your tyre dealer can help make you make the right choice. Safety has finally come to motorcycles. I have patented this design and hope to hear from HD soon. Hey! I made get rich after all.
In Earnest
Ernie