Motorcycle makers have put a lot of work into killing bad vibrations
Yamaha’s TD1-B was heavy. Kevin Cameron surmises this is due to its engine vibration—thicker materials resist cracking. (Jay McNally/Cycle World Archives/)This story was originally featured on Cycle World.As I’ve been assembling my 1965 Yamaha TD1-B I’ve been impressed again and again by how heavy its parts are. My conclusion is that this weight was dictated by its engine vibration. Control when cracking appears by varying the wall thickness of frame tubes. Ah, thick is best!Weight and vibration are connected in other ways too. When Honda built its 1997 1,100cc Super Blackbird, it decided to give it secondary balancers. Why on that model and not, for example, on the CB900F—also a transverse inline-four—of the early 1980s? At least part of the answer has to be that those massive earlier engines were so heavy that the shaking forces of their madly back-and-forthing pistons could hardly move them.Honda’s late-‘90s speed demon, the CBR1100XX...