Motoczysz C1

[Steve85]

Anyone following this?

The documentary was on HD Theater (Birth of a Racer) . It's a fresh blank page design of an American Superbike. I missed the first half but they were talking about how thin the bike was and how easy to shift the weight in turns.

Something about two cranks spinning in opposite directions to counteract the inertia??? It's a 3 cam motor with the intake ports squeezed between the cams for a straight shot. A couple test riders were amazed saying they had to almost re-learn to ride in some aspects.

It's a great engineering and entrepreneurial story as well. All new thinking and constantly on the edge of bankruptcy.

Might be worth looking into your "local listings for a replay". I think it's Discovery Channel documentary, HDTHR picks up a lot of different stuff.

Link...
http://www.motoczysz.com/main.php?area=home

It sounds badass too...

[CaptainHenreh]

I've been hoping to catch the "Birth of a Racer" somewhere, but I do not feel like paying extra for the HD channels.

I'm sure andrew or someone will chime in about what's right and wrong about it, but it's a seriously neat bike.

The counter-rotating crankshaft thingiebobber is an attempt to cancel out "right hand rule" gyroscopic force, since the engine is mounted North/South. In an east-west engine, gyro-forces just make you do a wheelie, and everyone loves wheelies. (I exaggerate a little) But in a north south, it will lean the bike, and since that's how a bike turns, that's bad.

Some companies that mount n/s have tried to mitigate it by a counter-rotating balance shaft or counter-rotating the transmission or any number of things in an attempt to cancel the force. But it all works so-so, especially when you can just mount it east-west and essentially ignore the force altogether.

I think the engine development is a dead end for MotoCzysz, but the suspension tech is pretty neat.

In short, I think Michael Czysz would like to be John Britten, but he's not.

[G.Irish]

RJ downloaded it and we watched on our TV a couple of weeks ago, I don't know if he still has it. I thought it was very good, a must see if you're into bikes.

I actually think a lot of their concepts have merit, the problem is that when you are going into uncharted territory on multiple fronts you are multiplying the problems you're going to run into immensely. If it were me running the company I would've chosen one area like the trick suspension they're designing or just the engine to focus on. If I could get that to work well then I would tackle something else.

There's a reason that race teams try to test as few variables at a time as possible.

If they succeed it will be quite an accomplishment. They bit off a enormous chunk of work and they're a couple of years behind where they said they were going to be when I first heard about the idea. I was at Laguna in 2005 when they ran it on track for the first time in public and here we are 3 years later and no street bikes yet.

[BLINGMW]

Czysz?

I'd like to buy a vowel?

[mrbaggio]

HAHAHA


Sometimes "Y"???

[Steve85]

Czysz?

I'd like to buy a vowel?

The bike is $100K so a vowel should only run you about $5K.

[.RJ]

I still have the show, I'll see what I can do about sharing it - it was a really neat piece.

[HAULN-SS]

yousendit.com lets you upload pretty big files for share for 7 days, if you need a site. not sure what their limit on size is, but i think its pretty big

[G.Irish]

Come to our house bearing beer and frankincense and you shall be rewarded with viewing privileges.

[.RJ]

Come to our house bearing PBR

:thumbup:

[PGK]

In short, I think Michael Czysz would like to be John Britten, but he's not.

Bingo.

Britten started with simple, known concepts and tried to simplify them, his bike was in a lot of ways a distillation of a motorcycle. Czysz started with simple, known concepts and decided he would do them differently, just because. The motor is retarded. Counter-rotating cranks aren't anything new, but his implementation is backwards. People have done intakes between cams before, but it has largely been abandoned due to packaging concerns. Intake tracts are big, cams are big, and a narrow included valve angle is ideal. Putting the intake between the cams ruins any ability you have to keep the valve angle shallow. On top of that, the strange interaction of the cylinders and cylinder head of his engine led him to abandon using a head gasket and instead cast the cylinders as part of the head, leading to immense difficulty machining and assembling. It's neat, but flawed. And it requires a 90 degree drive to spin the chain, which robs power.

His front suspension is pretty neat, albeit complex.

One of the hangups in the documentary that amused me was the difficulty they had making the swingarm. It cracked due to heat expansion during welding, which struck me as such a no-brainer when you're dealing with so many aluminum panels being welded together in a three-dimensional structure. There is a reason that most swingarms are constructed of cast and extruded pieces.

Overall, I would call it an interesting sideshow and an evolutionary dead-end. It's good that we have people willing to challenge the status quo and go out on a limb, but that doesn't mean that they are right or the status quo is wrong. Motorcycling is awash with convention, but unless that convention can be proven wrong, it still remains the best solution for the problem at this time. Czysz has not proven convention wrong.

[Steve85]

Thanks all...

I think I learned as much about general bike engineering here as I did from the documentary. I never knew there were gyro forces from the engine that effected handling.

So it is actually more difficult to lean the bike one way versus the other? or at least noticeable?

I loooked up Britten and I see what you guys mean. What a shame..very untimely passing for him to say the least. I don't see any attempt to carry on the legacy though.

That's interesting on the valve angle. When I turned it on it is about where they were talking about the intake runners through the cams meant a straight shot. The big valve angle defeats the purpose. One of the biggest improvements from the Gen 1&2 Chevy to the LS series is the nearly 10 degree reduction in valve angle.

I also like that we have people willing to push the envelope like him and I can't help but kind of root for some success for him.

[CaptainHenreh]

I also like that we have people willing to push the envelope like him and I can't help but kind of root for some success for him.

Hey me too! I'd love to see his bikes on the road. I heard a guy on a "10 best motorcycles of all time" special say something to the effect of "There's never been a guy to spin a wrench on a motorcycle who didn't think he could build a better one." And that is pretty much true. But few bother to try and far, far fewer actually get anywhere with it.

Still, it'd be cool to see this bike actually go somewhere...or at least license some of the technology to someone for legitimacy.

[.RJ]

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It's been a long road since the Laguna MotoGP race in 2005, where Michael Czysz did parade laps on his new bike, an American flag flapping behind him while thousands cheered. Laguna was the coming out party for MotoCzysz's new C1 990, a radical machine he built with clean sheet engineering philosophies towards suspension adjustability, chassis geometry, and engine positioning. Czysz hoped that the C1 would eventually race in MotoGP; that hasn't happened, due to a large number of obvious factors. You've also got to have incredibly deep pockets to race MotoGP, far beyond the wherewithal of an angel-funded startup from Portland, Oregon.

3 years on, MotoCzysz is facing greater challenges than ever. They've satisfied initial investors, completing a bike which transitioned drawing board concepts into reality. But to keep going, and produce customer machines on even a limited scale, MotoCzsyz is going to need significant new investment. Attracting investment in the current economic climate is incredibly difficult for anyone, let alone a small company developing outside-the-box motorcycle racing technology. Will Michael Czsyz be able to obtain the funding necessary for his vision to survive?

The C1 990 itself includes fascinating technology that seems to deliver on Cyzsz's promise of improved handling and adjustability vs. a traditional racebike configuration. While there's been plenty of support for the MotoCyzsz project in the media, and from various racing luminaries, there are those who remain skeptical. Some people feel that Czysz is "solving problems that aren't there", or burning cash on a pet project that will go nowhere. Soup hooked up with Michael Czysz in Portimao, Portugal, at the final 2008 World Superbike races for an illuminating, hardcore interview where we asked the tough questions. Here's part one:


Q What are you doing here at a World Superbike round in Portugal, hanging out with Alan Cathcart?

A Alan was on the bike two weeks ago.

Q October 18?

A Around that time. And we had been having - we had fewer tests this summer than we planned. Fortunately, we had been doing a lot of serious work in between the tests. At this point, we kind of know quite a bit about the bike, and we can work on those areas that we want to focus on, which has been mainly engine development on the engine dyno. So. We had made a pretty good improvement. It proofed out well in the test. Alan got quite excited. We got quite excited. And one thing led to another, and he dropped me a couple emails, and then I took some of his contacts and contacted some people, and before you know it the thing just blew up. This is the kind of thing I was hoping that would happen six months ago, a year ago or two years ago. The connections just started coming together, and the deal, it just all worked out. So I came with an open-ended ticket, and now we'll probably hit my sixth country in this two-week time, and it's too early to say, but it really looks positive. I mean, really positive. This is the time of year to talk to people about what's coming up - not necessarily for next year, but for the following year. But they're already thinking about that. And we've got a certain amount of credibility now amongst them, and we have a certain amount of, at least, we have nothing to be too excited about, but at least amongst all the bikes, we still have the bike that looks like it could be the most innovative. And what does that mean? Does that mean it's going to be good or bad? Well? It could be good.

Q The conversations you're having right now, there must be a number of different fronts. Obviously a startup is always looking for investment. If you were to choose the most likely option for you to pursue, would it be trying to get new investors, or trying to license the technology, or trying to actually build a bike that well-heeled track enthusiasts can purchase and take out on the track themselves? Is it any of the above?

A I'm definitely here on several different fronts, but I would say just the overall dream deal would be that we would find a company that would like to have us help them develop a race bike for potentially race in the United States, that if that technology proved good, could trickle back up to a higher level, a factory level, and then ultimately we would be setting some of the potential - I don't want to say direction, but some of the - maybe we'd do some of the skunk works, kind of innovation, early work, on new ideas. And if those pan out - because we can do it at a lot less than a large company can. If it pans out that in fact could find its way maybe ultimately onto streetbikes, and then the big piece to this is if that was to go on and be successful for maybe a year or two, then there might be - we might have then developed a partnership, a relationship with somebody, that would say, "This has been great. This has been successful. Now let's go ahead and expand our brand," or "Let's go ahead and make an investment in you for your brand, as us owners or something, to get the C1 to finally get into production."

Q How tied are you to the powerplant being part of the package? Let's say, if somebody like Bimota, just to pull a name out of the air, said to you, "I think so much of your technology's interesting." Obviously one of the reasons that the bike handles well is because of the way that you have the motor in the chassis.

A Yeah.

Q So how much of what you guys do could potentially have an impact on very limited production, high-end motorcycles, and maybe partnering with some other companies?

A What I thought you were going to say is how tied are we to the engine, meaning, "would we take someone else's engine and put it in the bike?" And the answer to that, which unfortunately you didn't ask [laughing], would be, we wouldn't be very interested, because we think one of the reasons the bike does handle -

Q Is because of the way the powerplant's laid out in the chassis?

A Which you've kind of already identified. As far as that, we have actually, I think, still understood some lateral flex issues, to the point of - I mean, it does take a while to be in this business. It takes a while to get the relationships, enough comfort with somebody to tell you stuff. Confidentially. So I feel like really over the last six months, some of the relationships I've had casually over ten years have really started to cement. I do know where a lot of these swingarms and things are coming from, and what kind of testing's being done, and who's the actual engineers, and what their test cells look like, and we're actually right there in the thick of those guys. I mean, we're as leading-edge on some of those lateral suspension as anybody. So those kind of areas can kind of plug and play. We can take a bike and we can use - first of all, we'd like to do some other things, similar to our bike, to theirs, but if we were just talking about swingarms and some other areas that I don't actually want to say, but there are some things that are plug and play. And that's kind of allowing us to have these first initial talks. If I had to just go around today and say, "Hey, I've got this bike, would you like to invest in it?" It's kind of like, that's pretty much the answer would be "No," from everybody. But I can say, "I've got this thing right now that you guys can have on your bike in 45 days if you can send me a bike," those are raising a lot of eyebrows. And it looks like we're going to be getting some bikes to do some work on.

Q And obviously, the reason I asked the question is because I thought if you did get that kind of business, that might be the kind of thing that would help spur further investment -

A Exactly.

Q - and enable to continue with the grander vision of being able to build a machine that's completely you guys.

A Yeah. You're 100% right. And maybe I was a little bit too myopic at the beginning stages, which, needless to say, you have to be focused. The focus has been on still only 20% on the bike, 80% on the fundraising. It has been the most unsatisfying, confidence-degrading, experience you can ever go through. And I would love to replace - I would do anything to replace that 80% of that work and make it a little bit more efficient. So these kind of talks are at least allowing us to come up with maybe some other ways, instead of me just calling to try to raise revenue, to actually make revenue. I kind of turned this corner about 60 days ago. I said, "If I was to spend as much time as I spent raising money, I could have actually just made it."

Q So, are you going a traditional route to venture capitalists and investment bankers, or are you trying to get angel investors? I assume you're trying anything, but would it still be considered to be in the A round of your funding, or the B round?

A We're definitely B round. I think we've closed our A round. We clearly took the money that was originally given to us to build bikes. We built bikes. In that sense, from those investors, they're quite satisfied. They're quite happy. They wanted a bike that was good. We have a bike that's good. But those investors were never the ones that were going to carry us through a B and a C and a D. So what they said was, "Here's the money. Make the bike. And go get the B round." And that's been very tough to find. And tougher by the day. We have mainly used high net worth individuals. Only recently have I been talking to investment bank type or VCs. And the burden of work to hear "No" has increased by tenfold. At least, you call a guy and you have a couple dinners with him and a couple of days, and you hear, "No." You go through the VC round, and -

Q Three-four months, and all this due diligence...

A Ugh.

Q And they don't get it the whole time...

A The efficiency has just gone worse since - I can't believe I'm going to do anything with poorer results than I have been doing. Take more time and more effort and come out with less. It doesn't feel right. So that's when I decided I've got to come up with a little more diversification, find out what our assets are, take our assets and just start building a relationship with somebody in the industry.

Q To turn the clock back, it's not quite 20 years, but let's say 15, to John Britten building the Britten V1000. Different time. The guy did it mostly himself, with some friends, I guess, in his garage; went out and just improved it from racing. Do you think that because of the level of sophistication in technology with things like traction control and fuel injection and stuff, that that time has passed? That you need a tremendous amount of capital to build a competitive machine? Or not?

A Yeah, you know - I couldn't be happier to do this, even if it all comes to naught, and be sometimes mentioned in similar sentences with guys like that. So that in itself, that's somewhat satisfying. But there's also been the flip side. "Oh, you have more money, you're not in a garage. John Britten was in a garage." Look. I know a bit about John's history, and talking to people and stuff: he had more money than I did. I mean, his father was well set-up. Well, we started in a garage, too, but the goal was to get out of the garage. I'm sure Britten at one point also had a goal of getting out of the garage. So attaining that goal shouldn't be a black mark. It should, "Oh, good. You took a baby step. What's your next baby step? What's your next?" I mean, we're not here just to build a - using friends. That process is tough. And the - it's okay when he built 10 bikes, or if your goal is to build 10 bikes, and each one is to be different. We go through different specifications every time we do it. But we're organized in such a way that once that specification is accepted, it's frozen. We have all the documentation, the drawings, the models, the specifications, everything required to duplicate it exactly the same way time and time again. So this kind of just random, using knee mills and welding application, then great. Now you've got something. What do you have? How are you ever going to duplicate it again?

Q Yeah, it's home-brew, pretty much.

A So we have taken the approach that someday we're going to be building thousands of these. And so we have drawers and drawers and drawers of 2,000 drawings, with reams and binders of specifications and test results and - I mean, we're trying to be organized. Which you really need to be organized when you do engineering, because you need to make sure in fact you did make an advancement. So to answer your question a little bit more specifically [pause], it - there - absolutely every year, we get in - every year, we're delayed getting into business. It's getting more complicated. It's getting more difficult. Now, there might be small cyclical things, where they say, "Hey, no traction control," here or there. But those are going to trickle into streetbikes. It's going to be standard. ABS is going to trickle into streetbikes. Automatic transmissions. All that stuff. So five or six years ago, you're riding the bikes that if you had tire warmers and some sprockets, you were kind of cool. But now, we've got multiple maps that we're running simultaneously that you sort through. We've got this electronic hydraulic slipper clutch, the most advanced, no doubt, in the paddock. That's another level. It just keeps getting more complicated. Which is unfortunate.

Q From an intellectual property standpoint, if you're creating all this stuff and submitting patents on it, you're building up a patent portfolio that then increases the value of the company. So it's unfortunate, but then it's also potentially raising the value of MotoCyzsz, if you get the patents.

A That's our asset. That's our asset. Right now, we are - you hit the only - you're the first person ever to use the words IP to me. And if I showed you our business plan, it shows the hierarchy of our company, and it says "IP -> Sales & Marketing -> Manufacturing." And all the other previous manufacturers put manufacturing first. So Indian had $120 million worth of manufacturing ability and not a bike worth building. So I'd rather have a bike worth building, and then scramble to try and figure out how to get it built. So all of our focus - and that helps on a daily basis, or at least a monthly basis, when I get two bills, or two orders to request to buy something, we're going to probably buy something that's going to help us further the IP more than something to fabricate. Because we're an IP shop. We'll have to, we'll outsource the fabrication for another month until we can afford it. We're not outsourcing the IP. And this is really paying off, I can just tell you, just from this trip. I mean, it's been building, but I'm really seeing the payoff from this trip, that we have actual product, being a small group in America, that has things that large manufacturers want to talk about. And if it was just the ability for us to machine something better, weld something better, I don't think I'd be drawn into these meetings like I have been.

Q Certainly, when the Discovery HD program came out about you guys, it stirred a whole new round of people wondering what was up. What do you say to folks who say that you're answering questions that maybe don't need to be answered? Because there are guys who have gone before you, like James Parker, all of these guys with alternative front suspensions, who have fought some of those battles, and it just seems like we're stuck with telescopic forks and chain-driven motorcycles. BMW coming into Superbike this year, what did they do? They junked the Telelever and the hassock front end that they had. There's no shaft drive. There's no servo brakes. Essentially, what they did is they built a German GSX-R 1000. How, in this particular time, with the investment climate, and seeing a major manufacturer like BMW, with all those resources, do it the same old way - how do you respond to folks who ask why you're tilting at windmills?

A Yeah. Those are two terms I've heard a lot. "Solving problems that nobody's asking," and "tilting at windmills." BMW can take their approach that they did, because they in fact are big enough. We aren't. We could never take the approach of just going after a Japanese bike and thinking that we're going to out-maneuver them, out-develop them, move ahead of them. It's impossible. The only way we can do it is through innovation. And I do, absolutely, in my heart, believe that is in fact the way to develop and evolve. I would rather be Steve Jobs at Apple type of company than a Bill Gates at Microsoft type of company. There's just no doubt in my mind. I mean, here was a company left for dead, and 90% of the market - and 100% of the young kids want iPods, not MP3 players. And the iPhone - there was pre-iPhones, and there was post-iPhones. So it can happen. We see it time and time again. We were just eating at a small restaurant. We had a great wine last night from probably a local vineyard. And I don't know how many people in the vineyard, but I'm sure it was a small number of people that made a great wine. You don't have to be this huge company. So it's still possible for small groups to be led into areas. As far as the first question, solving questions that nobody's asking: those people, frankly, aren't riding fast bikes. Period. They just don't recognize, they don't realize, what's out there, and what the problems are that people are having. And we're also at a fortunate period where I really did look back over the last ten or so years of racing, and try to determine what the issues were then, what the issues are now, and try to just trend where the issues are going to be in the future. Because I'm trying to design a company that's not going to make a bike super-competitive tomorrow or next year, and then be slightly outdated in the second and the third year. Because then you've already missed the window. I'm trying to develop a company that maybe we come into our own in five and ten years, just about the time we've got all the money, all the manufacturing capabilities, it's all come together. And in that period of time between now and then, RPMs will increase, so crankshafts will add more resistance to the roll of the motorcycle, and lean angles will increase. Those are guaranteed. And so rolling the bike's going to be even more important. And as top speed increases, as you see, the transitions are more important. So I really - all I can say is that people that don't think these are questions, they just simply aren't to the level.

To be continued ...

[CaptainHenreh]

Translation:

Our dumb ass engine still sucks and everyone knows it but I've got a huge hardon for it so I don't care. VC is drying up, so we're scaling back everything trying to out-live the current economic downtrend.

[PGK]

tl;dr

who still cares about this guy? I thought he had dried up already.

[PGK]

So, he talks a bit about MotoCycz being an 'Intellectual Property' company, and I think the interviewer touched a little upon licensing some of the Motocycz technology to other manufacturers, and Czycz talked a little about acting as a skunkworks R+D company for other bike manufacturers.

Licensing technology worked out really well for Norman Hossack. oh wait, BMW waited for his patent to expire and then stole the technology. Big companies don't license technology from small companies or individuals. They work around the patent, or do without the technology.

I can't really imagine a company like Honda or Ducati outsourcing R+D. Cutting edge technology means a lot in the motorcycle industry, as a result all of the major manufacturers maintain their own R+D departments specifically to think up new stuff or new ways to implement stuff before anyone else does, and to bring it to market before anyone else does.

Czycz said that most of their assets are in their patent portfolio. To me, that doesn't seem terribly wise. They need ways to implement these patents, otherwise they're just pieces of paper waiting to expire.

Also, before the recession, we had a glut of niche motorcycle manufacturers. I include MotoCzycz with that group, even though they have yet to make a single motorcycle for sale. It'll be interesting to see how many survive the next two years, and what becomes of Czycz.