PIP HIGHAM
Be loud and proud, says our Pip!
Have you ever heard a small, single cylinder two-stroke with a completely open pipe? I mean nowt at all to get in the way of a cacophony that rivals just about anything on the planet for sheer aural GBH. But take two or perhaps three cylinders and secure a set of proper expansion chambers and stinger silencers and you have the recipe for a wonderful, almost musical exhaust note. I realise this is well trodden territory betwixt these covers and other similarly wonderful sounds are also available, from very diverse sources. The design brief for the CBX1000 included an edict from the top floor that the finished creation should sound akin to a gas turbine and full of menace; they nailed that one for sure! Honda’s six-cylinder prowess originally saw the light of day back in 1964, the sound of the 3RC164 is still one that will stand up the neck hair of any self-respecting petrol-head to this day, if it doesn’t, you might need to check for a pulse. Sliding down a couple of gears and then winding it on is guaranteed to get the best grin to noise ratio out of any bike, a memorable case in point was a VMAX that we helped to tune for a pal. We did the full Dynojet trip on the carbs and a bit of careful head work and then topped it all off with a full competition Kerker pipe. I can’t explain why but the Max’s exhaust note morphed into a noise that I had only ever heard coming from an exceptionally fit small block Chevrolet V8! I can only assume that a combination of firing order, crank orientation and a bad dose of attitude released the inner beast. I can still remember my old man waxing celestially about the tune his pre-war Scott Flying Squirrel made. He’d gurn and growl and end up making a noise half way between a mangy moggy and a huge pre-historic electric motor picking up speed. Now I’ve never had a Scott (Squirrel Volante or otherwise) but I do have fond memories of a couple of my charges that made lovely noises, among these are several four-cylinder Suzukis, GS1000S, GSX1100S and the odd Kat for good measure but the best noise, I mean ‘The One’ was my first GS750. I spent many hours carb fiddling and the little GS was in exceptionally rude health with a completely baffle free four-into-one and zero leak down thanks to a near perfect valve job, mint low mileage bores with similar pistons and rings. At idle it gave little away but as the revs rose, at around four and a half the magic started: 70/30 30/70 valve timing allows a wonderful transition from Doctor Jekyll to ‘Oh my gosh the scenery’s going backwards!’ And the rush continued until the little red needle passed the 140 mark, yup, 40 years on and the numbers are still pretty respectable and the noise, well that was somethin’ else. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I was still riding the 750 around where I lived. The temptation to crack the throttle open, just a touch, on a warm evening under the motorway bridges on the A6 was hard to resist. Regressing even further my old Rickman Triumph made a very pleasant, if somewhat agricultural racket, thanks mainly to the fact that, (surprise, surprise) it had a high level two-into-one Siamesed pipe with a vestigial muffler (ha) with less baffling than I have hair (ha again.) As per usual I had spent an inordinate amount of time on valves and seats and carburation. I’d fitted a rather large Spanish Amal, 36mm if my memory serves me right, everybody said it wouldn’t work, guess what, no prizes. The Ricker weighed just short of 300lb and had a 750cc ARE conversion, I have seldom seen a simpler device, or ridden one that was as much fun. But there’s a place for complex and brutal here too. If you have a few seconds to spare this afternoon, put down CMM, just for a sec mind, and fire up Youtube, type in Chris Hampson and sit back for a minute. Chris’s turbo Suzuki, complete with three stages of nitrous oxide to supplement 300-odd horses courtesy of a turbo assisted 1260cc GSX makes a stunning noise but the howling Goodyear as it struggles to connect with the Santa Pod launch pad, well, it’s summat else.