Traction and Acceleration

Jan 25, 2010
Rating

What's the ground?
by: Tim HIckox

Hey,

First: You understand the problems and advantages of the Big Bang quite well. But the variables are confusing. First, not everybody responds the same way to the same conditions. Also, the four-stroke does not have an advantage under all conditions - sometimes the two-stroke has an advantage. So much depends on ground and tires.

Testing on icy ground in Colorado, I showed the guys that running the two-stroke in a higher gear gave it about the same traction as the four-stroke. If the race rules didn't give the four-strokes such a displacement advantage, the two-strokes would have much more power and so they could pull higher gears and turn the engine slower. But as it has been recently, the two-strokes have to run flat out to make the same power as the four-strokes, and it is under these (contrived) conditions that the two-stroke is at a disadvantage. Let a 250 run against a 250 - which is what the rules should be returning to - and it will be the four-stroke that has to be run at peak revs to keep up with the two-stroke, and then it will very seldom have any traction advantage, and it will much more often be at a disadvantage.

But the beauty of the traction control system that I described is that it continually varies the amount of power that goes to the wheel, and therefore puts the maximum to the ground - regardless of the conditions.

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Jan 25, 2010
Rating

Submitted by: Tim HIckox

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Comment
Hey, First: You understand the problems and advantages of the Big Bang quite well. But the variables are confusing. First, not everybody responds the same way to the same conditions. Also, the four-stroke does not have an advantage under all conditions - sometimes the two-stroke has an advantage. So much depends on ground and tires. Testing on icy ground in Colorado, I showed the guys that running the two-stroke in a higher gear gave it about the same traction as the four-stroke. If the race rules didn't give the four-strokes such a displacement advantage, the two-strokes would have much more power and so they could pull higher gears and turn the engine slower. But as it has been recently, the two-strokes have to run flat out to make the same power as the four-strokes, and it is under these (contrived) conditions that the two-stroke is at a disadvantage. Let a 250 run against a 250 - which is what the rules should be returning to - and it will be the four-stroke that has to be run at peak revs to keep up with the two-stroke, and then it will very seldom have any traction advantage, and it will much more often be at a disadvantage. But the beauty of the traction control system that I described is that it continually varies the amount of power that goes to the wheel, and therefore puts the maximum to the ground - regardless of the conditions.

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