V4SS quality disaster

There is an article in Visordown about Skinner being banned from holding directorships for the next five years. Wonder what will happen with his employment now.

trident sam said:

There is an article in Visordown about Skinner being banned from holding directorships for the next five years. Wonder what will happen with his employment now.

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Covered in the latest Superbike article, 100% support but with no engineering input or quality responsibility. So confined to looks and asthetics

Fast Eddie said:

Are you saying the V4 provided the value riders were willing to pay for?

I think V4 owners with their £50k bikes in the shed with batteries disconnected and ‘do not ride’ instructions from Norton might disagree with that…!

I get your point really and I agree, the V4 did deliver that elusive ‘emotional quality’. But the lesson with the V4 (and perhaps the 961 too) is that the niceties of such emotional quality are only any good on products where basic functional quality is a given. 100%.

Its the cherry on the cake… but the actual cake still needs to be sound !

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But this was about Skinner having the ability to design a bike that would stir the soul of the rider....even though he doesn't ride. IMO the bike does that, it rides well. From an engineering angle, the shit has hit the fan most certainly....but to actually ride one (taking aside the cost etc as they never cost me a bean to ride), they have the same grin factor as rumbling past a bus stop full of blue rinse types, whilst riding a 961 Domiracer on open megas.
The cracked swing arm concern does knock me off kilter a touch though, as I know what speeds I did on those bikes....and no one will elaborate on the supposed findings.

When Aprilia launched the new V4s in 2010, FIVE engines blew up during the press launch rides due to conrod failures. And the original Honda VFs were a desaster (camchains) in the first place before the change to gear driven cams in the VFRs

Ducati v4's were setting on fire soon after release.
Imagine if you get a builder in to assess another builders work on your house....do you think he'd be glowing with praise, or would he try to rip it apart? I'm not saying the v4ss doesn't have issues, obviously it does, but those issues could at the very least be elaborated on. I dont know if the owners of those bikes have more info, given that TVS has effectively cost them money on their investment, but if not, they should imo. TVS say they've investigated these faults at a cost to them, whereas I just see it as they've carried out R&D for their gen2 model at a cost to the owners of gen1s.