Author: CROSS TRAINING ENDURO SKILLS
21513View
6m 40sLenght
428Rating

From http://www.crosstrainingenduro.com It's back to the future for motorbikes. We've come a long way from the first motorbikes in the 1880s, and I've always been fascinated by the what the future holds for dirt bikes. A few years back I speculated about how a trials bike could be adapted for adventure riding. Or pared back to an even smaller more basic design. Then the cross training channel offered incredible innovations for future dirt bikes, that met with either an incredible lack of response, or class action law suits. Hollywood has some half arsed guesses on what dirt bikes of the future look like. But they are usually mutated road motorbikes that would be useless for dirt riding, or just look like an old clunker with the fenders missing. Occasionally you'll see some educated guesses about future dirt bikes like these, which assume things like two wheel drive, air suspension, airless or TUbliss wheels, electric or hydrogen engines or some kind of bicycle hybrid. So much for future dirt bikes or enduro motorbikes of the future... what sort of innovations currently exist? Bike surfing? Easy peasy. Everyone thought two strokes were going extinct, but extreme enduro has brought them back from the dead. Beta has started oil injection recently, and word is a few manufacturers will be fuel injecting their two strokes soon. Surprisingly Honda has filed a patent, when they are doing fuck all to update their dirt bikes in any other respect. For some years we've had autoclutches from Rekluse, and Clake is currently working on a fully electronic autoclutch that will bypass the issues of current autoclutches. Some love autoclutches, some hate them. I suspect we'll see more of these on dirt bikes in the future. Electric motorbikes are doing quite well, but still lack the power to weight ratio combined with a good range to match conventional engines yet. Some of the electric trials bikes, like this EM 5.7 I reviewed, are getting very close to their noisy cousins. An electric future is on the horizon, at least for those of us who don't need the howl of an engine to get our rocks off. Things like electronic throttle, traction contol and anti-skid braking already exist on some road bikes but aren't commercially available on dirt bikes yet. Bosch Stability control is taking all of this further by using various sensors to detect when you are in trouble then modulating the power and braking to suit. And of course many debate whether all of these systems would useful for dirt riding... and if so, is it too much like cheating. Cristini has the two wheel drive dirt bike which aims to provide extra traction. When the rear wheel starts to spin, the front wheel drive engages until the rear is all good again. Sounds very cool! So what is next? MotoGP motorbikes now use an incredible array of sensors and computerized gizmos for traction control, launch control, engine braking, power delivery. Whether these eventally end up on dirt bikes is anyone's guess. Yamaha is working on a four wheeled tilting bike, I kind of hope we never see a dirt bike version of this. I suspect it would look more like this when it hit the market. :( Likewise with the Ryno one wheeler. Probably good if you like wheelies but I could see a few issues when dirt riding. How about a motorbike that can't fall over? The Motorrad Vision Next 100 has self-balancing wheels designed to stand upright even at a complete stop, although I'm sure I could make it crash easily. Nonetheless, a bike that wants to stay upright could be very cool in the dirt. No doubt you've heard of cars that now drive themselves... is it only a matter of time before similar technology reads the terrain ahead and adjusts your suspension and engine characteristics to handle the bumps ahead? Sound crazy? Well technology keeps increasing at a rate that makes miracles an everyday occurrence. And all of those hoverbikes in Star Wars suddenly don't seem to be so impossible anymore. And what happens after that for future dirt bikes? Cold fusion and you an run your dirt bike for months on a banana peel? Nanobots that rebuild and reshape your knobbies during and after every ride? Fembot girlfriends? Or just let your robot ride your bike for you? Most futurologists agree it's only a matter of time before artificial intelligence overtakes human intelligence. And of course once our dirt bikes or future motocross bikes are more intelligent than us, they'll start riding us. For dumb shmucks like me, it's already happening unfortunately. But until Skynet takes over and those robots seek consensual intimacy with us, there could be a golden age of awesome dirt bikes. Hasta la vista, baby. MUSIC Title: Mitchell Claxton - Fire Vortex iTunes Download Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/monstercat-013-awakening/id658005859 Listen on Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/3WMELssaZMsFbItfy1XnRe Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA7_Td0Mxgk