Tiltingmotorworks's Blog

Sturgis 2011

tiltingmotorworks — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 15:15:00 +0000

Just completed a 3200 mile ride in 9 days. The bike is riding great and the response at Sturgis was incredible. I started the trip in Reno where I had shipped the bike to show some potential partners. I then headed east through Utah to Sturgis and hit Yellowstone on my way back to Seattle. The only maintenance required was a new rear tire and plugs in Sturgis and a few quarts of oil. It was an awesome ride and I am more convinced than ever that there is a great market for the Tilting Motor Works front end.

Bonneville Salt Flats

Big Skies in Wyoming

Crazy Horse was quite amazing

Typical response whenever I would park the bike

Mount Rushmore

There were no rooms available at any reasonable rates around Sturgis so I camped out with a great group of bikes at Rush No More campground about 8 miles out of Sturgis.

Bike camping at its best

Great response at the Kuryakyn booth at Sturgis

I took an afternoon off to ride the beautiful Black Hills and I now know why they hold the rally in Sturgis. I was able to ride Needles and grind a little metal off of my floorboards. A great road not to be missed!

Deadwood

Tilting Motor Works on Main in Sturgis

Positive response at Kuryakyn booth at Black Hills Harley shop in Rapid City

The Full Throttle Saloon advertises itself as the worlds largest biker bar. Ted Nugent was playing that night.

I tell my wife that you can meet some of the nicest people at biker bars

Heading home climbing Bear Tooth Pass on Highway 212 just northeast of Yellowstone to almost 11,000 feet

Typical Bear Tooth Pass corner

This is about 15 miles of Bear Tooth Pass. I can't rave about this road enough. If you consider yourself a motorcyclist then this road MUST go on your bucketlist to ride!

Yellowstone

Americade 2011

tiltingmotorworks — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 15:06:17 +0000

I just got back from a successful showing of the tilting three wheeler at the Americade 2011 rally in St. George, New York. The show ran from January 6th through the 11th and the bike drew a tremendous crowd every day. I had the bike at the Kuryakyn booth. The guys from Kuryakyn had adding some new handgrips, front and rear turn signals as well as upgraded my Dash panel. They did a really nice job! All of the folks at Kuryakyn were great to work with and we had a great week.

Bike in Kuryakyn booth

Bob showing the bike tilted over

I went to a “Breakfast with Fred” which was put on by Fred Rau, columnist for Motorcycle Consumer News where I spoke to the group about my bike after finding out they had discussed it the previous day. After the breakfast, a group of interested riders came out to see the bike and I rode it around the parking lot to demo the leaning ability. Ken Condon, author of many books and writer of the Proficient Motorcycling column for Motorcycle Consumer News, also came out to take a look at the bike.

Fred Rau (in hat) and Ken Condon (in riding pants) looking at TMW

After a long day of showing the bike I decided to take it for a ride. I pulled over on mainstreet for a minute and there was instantly a crowd looking at the bike.

Main Street in Lake George

This picture is a typical scene of the insterest in the bike for 5 days straight from 9 in the morning to 6 at night.

Lots of interested riders

Tom Rudd came over to talk to some people when a left the bike for a moment to get a drink as it was 95 degrees out.

Tom Rudd, President of Kuryakyn with TMW

Loading up the bike at the end of the show

Tilting Motor Works LA Tour 2011

tiltingmotorworks — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 18:53:10 +0000

I just got back from my LA Tour that took me 3300 miles over 11 days. It was a great trip! I went solo without any support vehicle and had no problems. The purpose of the trip was a couple of things. I was invited to a seminar put on by Tony Foale, I wanted to visit with Arnie Ackerman of Motorsport Aftermarket Group and I wanted to see my Uncle for his 90th birthday. Mike Lowell was a tremendous help getting the bike set up to go. The hydraulic tilt locking and leveling system is working great. We finally got the bodywork installed and I received very favorable feedback on it. I started the trip in a torential downpour and didn’t see any dry roads until California.

: Mike Lowell putting the finishing touches on the bodywork

The first stop I made was to visit with Tom Blackburn to see his TBX3 tilting three wheeler. It really is an impressive machine. It is a free to caster unit where he controls the tilt and the wheels follow along. Tom did all the design and machine work for the unit. He and his lovely wife put me up for the night. I had to pass over Scott Mountain to get to their place and saw my first snow of the trip. The ride to Tom’s was great as he lives in a beautiful part of Northern California.


: Snow at the top of Scott Mountain at 5400 feet
: Tom Blackburn’s TBX3
: Tom Blackburn after riding TMW’s tilting three wheeler

I then headed over to the coast down Highway 1 through San Francisco having to route over to 101 in Salinas as Highway 1 was closed due to some slides.

: California Coast

My next stop was at the Rock Store just north of LA to visit with Kaming Ko who is a former AMA motorcycle racer. Jay Leno sometimes hangs out here on Sundays but was not there the day I was.

: Sunday at the Rock Store

Next stop was to Race Tech where Tony Foale, the author of Motorcycle Handling and Chassis Design was putting on a two day seminar on motorcycle design. We had exchanged emails over the last several years as he was interested in what I was doing and he had invited me to come to the seminar. I was fortunate to have him ride my bike on the second day of seminar.

: Tony Foale getting ready to ride TMW

: Tony Foale riding TMW

: Tony Foale’s comment after riding the TMW;”I really think you have done one hell of a job!”

: Tony Foale and Race Tech founder Paul Thede discussing the restoration of one of Tony’s bikes

While in California I stayed with my cousin Ann and her husband Charlie. I also had the opportunity to visit with my Uncle Scott and Aunt Mary. My Uncle Scott was celebrating his 90th birthday. He is still quite sharp. They both still live in their own home and my Uncle still drives. He is a retired surgeon and quite an inspiration. Aunt Mary wanted to go for a ride and at 88 she is the oldest passenger I have ever had. She was concerned that I was going to fall over while going around the corners so she kept leaning the opposite way.

: Uncle Scott and Aunt Mary ready for a ride

The next day after the seminar, I met Arnie Ackerman who is the Chairman of the Board of Motorsport Aftermarket Group which is the compampany that owns Vance & Hines, Kuryakyn, Performance Machine, Progressive Shocks etc. Last month Arnie had flown up here to Seattle and to see and ride the Harley prototype. Arnie and I met at the offices of Motorcycle Consumer News where we chatted with the Editor-in-Chief Dave Searle and Managing Editor Scott Rousseau. Dave and Scott are big supportors of what I am doing and I thanked them for the full page article they did on Tilting Motor Works in their January 2011 issue. We also had an interesting discussion about Dave’s recent test ride on the new BMW K1600 GT as well as the recent purchase of Indian by Polaris.

Arnie and I then went to visit with David Shirley who is the President of Progressive Suspension and Mark Finnie who is the President of Performance Machine. They are all very interested in what I have developed and I hope to be working with them in the future. The next step with MAG is that I am shipping the bike to Kuryakyn in Wisconsin and then they are going to ship the bike on their truck to Lake George New York for the Americade rally June 7-11 where it will be in the Kuryakyn booth. They are interested to see potential customer interest.

Next on my LA trip, I headed to the Sacramento area where I wanted to meet with Norman Hossack who is the inventor of BMW’s Duo Lever front suspension. Norman gets credit for the design from BMW but no royalites since BMW released their product a year after Norman’s patents expired. I spent a wonderful couple of hours with Norman and he showed me some of his files on the different designs he had done. There was a particularily interesting single sided fork with his suspension system that he had developed for the British military. Norman and his lovely wife had me for dinner and then I was on my way to Reno.

: Norman Hossack’s comment; “I’m impressed. You have done a fine job.”

The ride home was quite an adventure. After leaving Norman’s I was headed to Reno over highway 80 where I was going to meet the next day a gentleman who was very interested in buying one of my bikes and we were also going to visit with the folks at the motorcycle accessory company Paughco who had found out about my design and wanted to ride it. As I started to head up Donner Pass it was getting dark and raining. No problem I thought. Then I started watching the altimeter on my GPS and I was gaining some serious altitude. About 5400 feet I called it quits and turned around as it was starting to snow and the pass climbed to 7300 feet. I found a lodge to spend the night in hopes the weather would improve. It didn’t. The next day the ski areas were bragging that they had 4 inches of new snow and more on the way. The snow level was at 6500 feet and I decided to just head for home.

: Another beautiful day for a ride!

On the way out of Sacramento I visited a trike dealer in Lincoln called Freedom Rides. The owner Mario Balderas was very interested in carrying the Tilting Motor Works conversion. I see Tilting Motor Works setting up dealers such as Freedom Rides all accross the US.

: Freedom Rides in Lincoln California

From Lincoln I did a straight run up I-5 to get home in time for a wonderful Easter dinner with my family. It was a great trip and the bike perform beautifully! I am looking forward to the next step of bring this into production. Stay tuned!

Trip Home

tiltingmotorworks — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 22:39:00 +0000

A quick thanks to my cousin Anne and her husband Charlie who very graciously put me up for several days while I was in LA

Biker Anne with the Harley

I left LA on a saturday and headed North on some roads that were recommended to me by Dave Searle. What absolutely increadible roads! The trip down to LA was mostly on I-5 which I do not really like and for the return trip, I was determined to have some fun and hit some back twisty roads.

Bike at the beach

The Cold Spring Tavern made a great stop for lunch. Very biker friendly and great Tri-tip sandwiches.

Cold Spring Tavern

The second day on the road took me from Morro Bay up past San Francisco. Highway 1 from Morro Bay up to Monteray is not to be missed.

California Coast

Going through San Fransico was slow and miserable. The roads are horrible and the traffic was stop and go. I had a quick chat with a San Francisco motorcycle cop at a stop light who really liked my bike.

Golden Gate Bridge

My next stop I had was at Brammo http://www.brammo.com/home/ in Ashland Oregon. Brammo makes a very cool electric motorcycle that they are starting to sell through Best Buy. I had exchanged info with their president Craig Bramscher and he invited me to stop by when I was coming through. They have a very impressive shop

Craig Bramsher with TMW Harley and Enertia

Craig took the Harley out for a quick spin and I got to ride on the absolutely quiet Enertia. What a great experience! I also went out for a ride with Aaron Bland who is their head mechanical engineer. He came back with a great big smile on his face.

I was ready to head home at this time and the weather was turning wet and cold. Outside of Crater Lake I went up a pass that still had major amounts of snow and I experience my first equipment failure. Not of the bike but my heated Gerbing right glove gave up the ghost and I had a pretty numb throttle hand.

Cold and wet outside of Crater Lake Oregon

The rest of the ride home was pretty uneventful. 10 days and 3,443 miles and not a single failure! It was a very successful trip!

I want to thank Mike Lowell who has been a big supporter and friend whom without the Harley would have never come together. Mike has been there every step of the way in doing all of my CAD drawings and machining parts!

Mike and the Road King

And last I would like to thank my wonderful wife, Cathy, who has been riding with me for the last 25 years. She has been very supportive and encouraging over the last five years. I started with an idea and now have been able to ride my dream almost 3500 miles.

Cathy, my favorite Biker Babe

Industrial Design Research Visit

tiltingmotorworks — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 21:28:41 +0000

After my lunch with the guys from Motorcycle Consumer News I headed over to Industrial Design Research to visit with David Stollery who was the designer of both the Trihawk (briefly sold by Harley Davidson) and the Fire Aero. Dave has long been involved with the design of reverse trikes and was very interested in my tilting three wheeler. Dave now has a great business manufacturing lifeguard towers. He has also resurected the molds of the Fire Aero and is updating them. He is in the middle of building a new model and hopes to have it done soon. He was very encouraging of my project and a real pleasure to meet.

DAvid Stollery with TMW Harley

David Stollery with New Fire Aero body

New Fire Aero Tail

New Fire Aero frame with tail

Visiting with Motorcycle Consumer News

tiltingmotorworks — Wed, 26 May 2010 05:06:54 +0000

Glynn Kerr who help designed my front end also writes a regular column for Motorcycle Consumer News put me in touch with David Searle who is the editor. David was interested in seeing the bike when I was in LA. We met up Thursday morning and we ended up in a large parking lot of a closed water park to do some testing. I told him I was interested in doing some 60mph – 0 mph brake testing and he said he had the gear but no rider and I volunteered for duty. The set up the radar gun and I proceed on the first of about a dozen runs. The best I reached was 122 ft which is about on par what a professional racer can get on a stock Harley. I assure you that I could not get close to that on a stock bike with one wheel. I feel there is more stopping power available, I just lack the cojones. Dave was there with Scott Rousseau who is the managing editor. Both of them took the bike out for a spin. The thought it was pretty close to motorcycle handling but thought it could use a bit more adjustment to be just right. They were very supportive of my efforts. After the testing, we went out for lunch where Dave interviewed me for an article they are going to run!

Dave Searle test riding Tilting Motor Works Harley

Dave Searle and Scott Rousseau with Tilting Motor Works Harley

Works Performance

tiltingmotorworks — Wed, 26 May 2010 04:39:32 +0000

One of my main reasons for heading down to LA was to visit with the folks at Works Perfance who have been very helpful with the shocks for my new front end. I have been working with Pierre Vaillancourt who has been a great help in teaching me about shock design. I was also able to meet and work with his unlce Gilles Vaillancourt who is an AMA Hall of Fame member who is called a “pioneer in modern motorcycle supension development”. I was thrilled to meet him and impressed that he took the time to work with me and Pierre on some fine tuning of my shocks. We changed out the springs and adjusted the rebound rate. Pierre must have ridden the bike and made adjustments a half a dozen times before he felt it was right.

Pierre Vaillancourt on another test run

Gilles and Pierre Vaillancourt working on Tilting Motor Works three wheeler

San Jose Future Cars – Future Transportation

tiltingmotorworks — Wed, 26 May 2010 04:25:12 +0000

The main event for my visit to San Jose was to visit with Ron Huch who was the former president of Sparrow which built a reverse trike single passenger electric vehicle in early 2000′s with Corbin. Ron had invited me to show my bike at the Western Automotive Journalist meeting on “Future Cars – Future Transportation. I met a lot of interested people. One of the featured speakers at the event was Doug Fehan who is in charge of GM’s Corvette racing program who thought my three wheeler was “Very cool”. He asked a lot of very interesting questions and seemed to really understand what I had done.

Ron Huch and me with Sparrow

Visit with Glynn Kerr

tiltingmotorworks — Sat, 22 May 2010 14:40:00 +0000

Before I made it to San Jose, I was able to visit with Glynn Kerr who has a company called Motovisions and has done the design work for my new front end. It was great to meet with Glynn and let him ride my three wheeler. I had put on 500 miles on my way to his home and then go out for another ride. It was worth it because he let me take out his Ducati. Afterwards I went out for a nice dinner with Glynn and his wife. This trip has been great to connect with people who have helped me on this project that I have not had the opportunity to meet.

Glynn on Harley

Bob on Ducati (notice the big smile) Fun Bike!

Glynn's 1951 Jaguar Mark VGlynn's Harley Design

All the Way to San Jose

tiltingmotorworks — Tue, 18 May 2010 14:22:42 +0000

I am now over 1100 miles into my trip and I spent a night with Bob Sanders who is in the process of starting his own three wheeler company Mizer Motor Works www.mizermw.com to build scooter style three wheelers with the two wheels in the back. He is interested in possibly adapting my front end for scooters. Very interesting to talk with him and about seven other people that are working with him.

Bob Sanders (on right) with friends

But I am getting ahead of my self. My first stop on saturday was to visit with Judy LaPlum(sp?) who runs a website called Motorcycle Travel America http://motorcycletravelamerica.com/ . She is very interested in three wheelers and want to try mine out. I talked with Judy for a while and then took her for a short ride. She was very impressed and wants to get a Road King Version when it is available. She also let me take her Brammo Enertia for a quick spin. Very quiet and very responsive. A lot of fun.

My next stop was to see an Engineering Professor at Oregon State named Dave Ullman. Dave developed the BikeE recumbant bike and was interested in seeing my design. Dave is also in the process of building a canard airplane in his garage that should be in the air by the end of the summer. Dave was interested in seeing if my front end could be adapted to a bicycle design.

Next stop for the evening took me to visit Ron Lyon in Springfield, OR. He has followed Tilting Motor Works for a while and was very interested in what I had done. He took the three wheeler for a ride and I followed behind in his custom German made Boom trike powered by a 2000cc volkswagen engine. We took the Harley to a truck scaled and measured it with the front end at 825 pounds. We went back to his home and looked up the stock specs which show the Road King at 775 pounds. So it looks like my front end adds about 50 poounds. Ron would really like to get my front end on a Honda Goldwing! After our ride I enjoyed a nice dinner with Ron and his wife and they graciously put me up for the night.

Ron Lyons at truck scale

Me on Ron Lyon's Boom trike