VIBRATION - deciding too much; and living with it.

[quietguy_imp]

"Sekiya:
On the hardware side, phased valve timing gives the engine its characteristic feel around the 3,000 rpm range. How did you create the engine's personality?

Minami:
Basically, straight-four engines run smooth as long as all four pistons move the same way. My initial thoughts were, to give the engine a deep rumble, we'd have to change the movement a bit.
We ended up shifting the valve timing of cylinders 1 and 2, compared to cylinders 3 and 4, and by continuing to change the gap, found the right combustion out-of-sync feel."

"Korogi:
At around 3,000 rpm, the four-cylinder engine vibrates strongly like a two-cylinder engine, and has a solid rev feel through the chain to the rear tire, giving a strong sense of traction, and finally a purposeful sound.
'Deep rumble' expresses the feel, through the five senses, of an air-cooled four-cylinder engine."

"Sugiura:
Of all the ideas we had for the engine's 'character,' we went ahead with phased valve timing. The engine is based on the CB1300 Super Four, and in the initial prototyping stages, we took its engine and simply modified it to be air-cooled. We had the prototype tested by a number of people, and the majority told us that it didn't feel like an air-cooled engine, that it felt the same as the 1300SF."

"Fukanaga:
I think the bike is as good as it is, because we had people in the factory see, ride, and understand the level of the engine's potential and 'feel' that we wanted.
Once the factory understood us, they started giving us ideas on how to improve the quality of the mass-produced model. This was what happened for the 2014 model."

Jeez there's some touchy people out there!

All he asked was "i wonder what the engine would be like if they hadn't designed some character into it" and all of a sudden he's being burned at the stake for blasphemy!

Let's face it, the bike is an oddball - instead of being designed to meet a demand in the market which would lead to a profitable line of sales, it seems to have been designed almost as an indulgence to one man's ideal of a superbike from his youth with the gnarly bits knocked off.

We saw, we test rode, we shared the indulgence.

I still smile when I imagine the conversation where the engine designers were told:
"Yes we KNOW that you can make this engine as smooth as a baby's bottom, but......."

You know, I have serious doubts about these "conversations" with the design team. It's straight out of Honda PR. I think the concept of the CB1100 was knocked out on a Friday evening after a few stress levelling bottles of Saki, translated to a drawing on the back of a paper napkin during a recovery session on Saturday morning and was in production on Monday. Tuesday #1 rolled off the production line and there was a vibration. "What to do, what to do?" "I've got it! Let's call it CHARACTER, The Boss will buy that". All fixed.


Cheers

(Sorry to repeat myself)

You've got my vote...