| History of Invention |
Assembly" was applied for in July 2003 Patent number: US 6,918,467 B2 was issued on July, 19 2005 Like almost everybody else on the planet I rode bicycles as a child. I was also lucky enough to have a motorcycle at the age of seven, a Suzuki TM75. And like most people I never really gave any thought as to how bikes work, I just rode them. However, in April of 2000 at the tender age of 31 I purchased my first sport bike and that apathy soon changed into obsession . The second day that I had my ‘96 Honda F3 I went for a ride with two other guys. When we stopped for gas the guy that was riding behind me said that it looked like I was struggling and asked if I knew about counter steering. He gave me the standard explanation, turn the bars in the opposite direction that you want to go. Sure thing I thought, and after I crash we can go snipe hunting. In hindsight it amazes me that it is even possible to ride a motorcycle without that knowledge. When we went back on the road I pulled on the bars a little and sure enough he was right. I had to know why this was. Few things have ever sparked interest in my mind as intensely as that did and it set fate in motion. I literally obsessed on it for the next year and a half. I started by reading books and searching online but the information that I was getting did not make sense to me. I thought about it every waking moment until I had developed an entire theory which I called "Dynamic Equilibrium" and had copyrighted in 2001. At that time I had not yet tried to solve the problem of speed related steering resistance but the data that led to Reverse Rotating Rotors is in that theory. I made many distinctions in "Dynamic Equilibrium" from traditional theory. With out trying to explain the entire theory I came to the conclusion that if the gyroscopic precession of the front wheel were canceled out then a motorcycle’ s steering effort would not increase with speed. All motorcycles are harder to turn the faster they go and it makes no sense that we just accept this as though it must be. In a racing or aggressive riding situation it is not uncommon for a rider to exert in excess of 100 ft. lbs. of torque on the bars in order to change lean angle. Imagine if that sort of effort were necessary to turn a car. It would not be called stability, it would be called deadly. In August of 2005 I hired a prototyping company to build a proof of concept. |