I was at the 24hour of LeMans in 1987 when the NR was competing on the track. The riders were Malcolm Campbell, Ken Nemoto and Gilbert Roy. I still love the music of these engines!
The Japanese have provided some of the best sounds in my life. Great to see how they appreciate such things by clapping politely at the sound of an engine.
@@wannabecarguy they wanted to make a V8 4-stroke to compete against the 2 strokes but the rules limited cylinders to 4 cylinders; Honda wanted to show that 4 strokes were better than 2 strokes. The oval pistons were just merging pairs of cylinders of a V8 so that technically it only had 4 cylinders.
@@NonFlyiingDutchman That's not quite how the NR came about. Honda wanted to build a 4-stroke to compete against the 500cc 2-strokes, yes, but HRC always wanted to do things differently, hence the NS500 V3, the single crank NSR500 V4, and more recently the RC211V V5, so chose the 4T V4 as their desired configuration. They discovered the IN/EX valve area of the V4 wasn't large enough to move enough air, and couldn't just increase the size of the bores to fit larger valves (for numerous reasons, including how heavy the valves would be), and so that's why they chose a short stroke and oval piston, so they could effectively double the valve area and maintain a ralatively small/light piston & valves. It was never decided to be an "oval V8" from conception, it's just how it turned out, and the "V8" part was always attributed to it by journalists. As with many prototypes, when it worked it was amazing, but was a massive engineering nightmare, and failed almost every time it was run. However, the perseverance and knowledge gained by all those failures ended up with Honda becomming unparalled in "vee technology" for the next 40 years. Only now are the likes of Ducati and Aprilia even just coming close to Honda's capabilities.
側面のl「GIL KEN MAL]がめっちゃカッコいいです💛 リアルタイムでライダーズクラブ読んでました。楕円ピストンとは関係ないトラブルでリタイアになりましたが、良く解ってない雑誌が「これだから楕円ピストンは欠陥品なんだ」といった記事に悔しい思いをしていたのが懐かしいです。 当時は動画の様なエンジンスターターが無かったのでメカニックの方は必死で車を押していましたが、便利な世の中になったのだと思います。
It sounds like a f1 car i like v4 engines in Southern Africa i see them all in VFR 400 and the VFR 1000 and the VFR 800 so keep up the good work honda!!
Honda has produced some true legendary motorcycles, it blows my mind that they don't reintroduce them again. I own a mind condition 5th Generation VFR Interceptor, no matter where I go with it, it grabs more attention than any new bike. I would love a newly produced lighter version sports version of the VFR, come on Honda, get with the program!!!
I had a 5th gen til last year. I don't think I ever saw ir 'grab' anyones attention. They do not stand out amongst the crowd. Do you liive in North Korea by chance?
@@ekspatriat North Korea hahaha so funny. Anyways, perhaps if you had kept it in mint condition, tuned it, did a few modification to it and actually rode with people instead of by your self in Bum Fuck Egypt!!!
I can only imagine, but since the oval cylinder is essentially 2 circular cross section cylinders with a mid section joining them, and since those 2 also share a combustion chamber that the firing order would have both of those cylinders firing at the same time. Which would in theory make it not sound too different from a V4. With the single muffler it might change that a bit, but it does sound a lot like the RC213V which is a V4 so stands to reason I suppose.
Well, I see that the NR is still living up to its reputation of unreliability. It took them nearly 3 minutes to start it. I couldn't imagine trying to start this thing by myself. They called it "Not Ready" for a reason.
