shock

Speaking to a guy at donnington ,he had the rights and was building New Heskeiths, We chated a while and discused the failings of the early heskeths,
As none of you know,the bike was designed to have a shaft drive..BMW at that time where sueing Kawaski for patent rights..so heskith dropped the shafty idea...Point i am making here is...my Hesketh vibed badly because hesketh had not placed a cush drive in the primary...then i thought...hold on a moment...wheres the cush is a commando primary? Most modern bikes have a clutch shock...doe's a commando not need one?

john robert bould said:

Speaking to a guy at donnington ,he had the rights and was building New Heskeiths, We chated a while and discused the failings of the early heskeths,
As none of you know,the bike was designed to have a shaft drive..BMW at that time where sueing Kawaski for patent rights..so heskith dropped the shafty idea...Point i am making here is...my Hesketh vibed badly because hesketh had not placed a cush drive in the primary...then i thought...hold on a moment...wheres the cush is a commando primary? Most modern bikes have a clutch shock...doe's a commando not need one?

Click to expand...

You only need one shock in a transmission, Commando has it it the rear wheel...that'll do

So do many Japanese bikes of the period and to date....

My problem is that the Rickman didn't have one in the rear wheel....OK for Triumphs....

best answer to this would be a crank mounted shock absorber, not a spring as many 50s to 70s Brits used, but a rubber one....

But a clutch centre one would do....

Commanod eventually put the cush in the rear hub. Seems to me the least possible cost was involved
as it would be difficul to call it successful. I guess the thought of a different hub casting gave the
bean counters nightmares. Not difficult, after all look at Madass's offering. Just would cost them
money.

The early Commandos were not fitted with any kind a shock absorbing cush.

As a result of this oversight the factory was hit with a raft of gearbox failures.

Heinz Kegler told me that when he was employed with the US east coast importer, Joe Berliner, the first batches of Commandos had two major problems with the first being breaking frames and the second being breaking gearboxes. Not many frames broke and it was alarming enough to recall all the bikes in their shipping crates and to fix the frames at the factory prior to shipping new bikes out.

Heinz said that at first the factory told Joe Berliner to weld a cross piece in the frame under the tank and to take the gearboxes out and simply replace the broken gears.

He said that he and the other service people refused to take on those jobs and insisted the bikes be crated up and shipped back to England to have the work done there.

Heinz said that it was he who made the recommendation to the factory to fit the rear wheel with the rubber cushions to solve the gearbox problem, and it was a very successful fix as the warranty claims dropped sharply soon thereafter.

In addition, the gearbox problem was attributed to the US market which seemed to have bikes sold to over enthusiastic young buyers who were more interested to brutal all out jack rabbit starts versus the English and European continent riders who were not so taken with quarter mile times and had more respect for distance events like the Isle of Man and more touring orientations. Those damn Americans once again changed the course of history, and as a result made the factor make Commandoes even better bikes.

The closer to the engine in the drivetrain, the better, as there's less torque against the cush if it's in the primary drive. Case in point; my Interstate has an odd, almost rumbling vibration around 70 mph. I was starting to get pretty concerned being unable to identify it until the late evening sun threw a shadow that showed the chain to be flailing up and down at a fevered pitch. Neither my 650 Yamamaha, 70 BSA B50MX, nor the 750 Triple do this, and they all have solid mounted rear sprockets. I think the rear hub cush introduces a spring into the final drive system that allows crazy harmonics to set in that would normally be squelched by an inflexible sprocket mount, or would live at frequencies much higher than what we see.

Nathan