Cycle World Podcast

Harley-Davidson's famous racing boss Dick O'Brien was looking in the 1960s to strike back at Triumph and its 500cc twins that were winning Daytona. With the help of star tuners Jerry Branch and Neil Keen, plus some clever work at the Caltech wind-tunnel, Harley came back with a race-winning flat-head 750 AND tested a strange prototype called the Midget that was even faster but is lost to history. Find out about the $60,000 Goodyear tires as Kevin Cameron and Mark Hoyer talk about this amazing story. Lead-spread image from Cycle World's feature on the "Mysterious Midget" by historian and author Don Emde, Issue 1, 2020.

It went from You Meet the Nicest People to You Meet World Champions on a Honda in a very short span of time. In 1959, Honda was selling scooters in the U.S. Ten years later it was the CB750--and Honda's GP racing effort in those intervening years drove this change. Technical Editor Kevin Cameron talks with Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer about Honda's meteoric rise in Grand Prix racing during the 1960s and the technical innovations and revolutions that drove this success. Also, why Honda quit GP racing in the late 1960s. Listen to find out!

MV Agusta four-stroke Grand Prix racers howling through their megaphone exhausts are legendary! Cycle World's Kevin Cameron and Mark Hoyer talk about MV from its first little modest little machine built in post-World War II Italy to world-dominating racing motorcycles that continued to compete into the 1970s. Sometimes slow to change and other times rapidly updating designs to stay competitive with upstart Honda's amazing multis of the 1960s, MV was a dominant force in GP racing until two-strokes took over in the world championship. Looking to buy? Get prequalified https://octane.co/flex/1?a=171

Rim brakes, under-engine exhausts, extreme frame geometry, Harley-Davidson engines—so much has happened with Erik Buell and the motorcycles he's made, from Buells and its closure by Harley-Davidson in 2009 to reborn EBR and its partnership with Hero Motorcycles only to close again. Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer talk about Erik Buell the AMA Expert road racer in the 1970s and his move to build his own two-stroke Formula 750 race bike to take on the mighty Yamaha TZ750 in the 1980s and all the way up to the present day. Buell is responsible for real innovations and ultimately built an American sportbike competitive with the world's best. Looking to buy? Get prequalified https://octane.co/flex/1?a=171

The remarkable evolution of slowing down: No brakes to rim brakes to drum brakes to discs, we convert the energy of movement into heat to slow down. But there is so much detail to discuss! Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer talk about braking in detail. Looking to buy? Get prequalified https://octane.co/flex/1?a=171