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The Delta Project!
What is it? A racebike? A show bike?
Neither! It's a never-ending development cycle! =8-) HAH!! Get it? "Cycle" ?
The Delta's job is to make the rider giddy. That largely sums it up. I built it for myself, it's full of trickery and technical doodads that keep me from getting into other hobbies like beer drinking or golf. Sometimes it's a drag racer. Sometimes's it's a HP shootout bike. Sometimes it's a road racer. Always- it's a testbed, a learning platform, a science project. I push my boundaries and test my theories with this two-wheeled rocket, I learn to make carbon fiber things, I play with engine design, I teach myself about datalogging. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don't. On we go.
I know a lot of guys build a project bike, get it done, and move on to other things. That's almost incomprehensible to me, but then again I'm only building bikes for my own enjoyment.
When I first got the RG, I already had an RD350. I had been modding and tinkering with that for years, making pipes, altering pipe lengths, porting (and ruining) cylinders, making lay-down shock mounts, changing carbs, reeds, adapting RD400 wheels and swingarm, antidive linkage, on and on. It was reasonably fast for an RD, but a bit short-fused and prone to seizing when run hard for an extended time. In short, it was a mad science experiment. Here's a pic of my mechanical antidive linkage, when the RD was painted in 'Can Am 500" colors- remember THAT bike? By the way, that antidive linkage worked GREAT.
I had read THE ARTICLE (Cycle magazine, 1985). I had drooled over the early snippets of information. The Gamma represented a kind of perfection I could never hope to achieve with the 350; I actually said, "I WILL NEVER CHANGE ANYTHING ON THIS BIKE".
Of course, we know how that turned out.
I was surrounded by literbikes. GSXR750s were my nemesis. My buddy bought an RD500LC, which, to my great distress, was exactly the same speed as my RG. I did what I had to do... ANY RACER WOULD HAVE DONE THE SAME!! hah!
Cycle magazine had run 11.37 at 120 mph with the RG500. Stunning! OK, I had been bracket racing my car for a while, and I had drag raced my RD350 before. The difference between "magazine speed" and "real life summer-in-Iowa" quarter mile times was something I already knew about. Still, I was dismayed to turn an 11.80 at 115 mph on the RG. And that was my best! There were plenty of 12+ second passes. My RD350 had run right at 13.0 and 100.x mph.
A bit of math showed that my 500 was producing about 67 rear wheel hp. 8-(
That had to change.
So, the tinkering started...
And it still hasn't ended! I may not have experience with hundreds of bikes. I don't have any interest in trying to reach some perfect state of tune, and leave it there. I do have a lifetime of experience, trying about everything you can image, with my RG.
The Delta has gone through so many completely different phases, it's like I have owned ten different RG500s. The bodywork, suspension, riding position, engine tune, components, paint scheme, etc etc etc have changed radically, over and over again. I can't get bored with it - it's never the same bike for two seasons in a row. If I want it to do something differently, I just modify it into something else. There is no "final version", I think I can admit that now. There's only the "latest version"!
It has been the most gratifying, maddening, interesting, rewarding bike I have ever owned. Riding it hard is like nothing else I have ever been on. Sure, other bikes are faster, or more comfy, or more torquey, or make better racebikes. But....
The engine character, the combination of light weight and high power, the "alive" feel of the bike... There is nothing like a hot-rod RG500. Yeah, I'm a bit melancholy that most of the current and surely next generation of riders will have no idea what this feels like. So it goes, eh? At any rate, here's what happened when some kid in Iowa got a 500GP replica streetbike...
I can be contacted at rg500delta@mac.com
This section is dedicated to my favorite frankenstein bike, my RG500 "Delta"
