Motorcycle Sport & Leisure

Every so often, we are given stories that we're simply not able to squeeze into the magazine. This month, it's all the background to our great MV Agusta story, the team behind the machine...

Words: Alan Cathcart - Photos: Alex Photo

 

MV AGUSTA F4 R312

1. TECHNICAL: Andrea the Architect
2. RACING: Just a Matter of Time

Andrea the Architect

If Massimo Tamburini is justly feted as the Michelangelo of motorcycling, creator of a succession of two-wheeled works of art which restored first Ducati, then MV Agusta, to the summit of technological style, then MV’s youthful chief engineer Andrea Goggi is his architect - the man who created the biking equivalent of the actual building housing the Sistine Chapel, on which Tamburini can draw his masterpieces of design.

For Goggi is the man charged with ongoing development of the F4 family’s radial-valve, fuel-injected four-cylinder engine with offset chain drive to the twin overhead camshafts, having supervised its development ever since 1995, three years before it was launched in 750cc form. That’s when he took over as head of the MV Agusta R&D department, after several seasons as a senior race engineer in the Cagiva 500cc GP team, in its GP-winning days with John Kocinski. Who better to detail the changes to the F4 motor incorporated in the R312?

“The project began last July,” says Andrea, “because although our existing F4 1000R model was already very competitive in Superstock racing, where we beat the Japanese bikes to win several races in the FIM World Cup run as a World Superbike support class, we knew they were planning many changes in the next two years, and we wanted to increase performance of the standard streetbike to a level they would have to work hard to match. Because our target was more power and so more revs, the big improvements are all in the cylinder head, and the starting point was to try to fit some titanium intake valves at reasonable cost. It’s important to emphasise this is an evoluzione of the standard F4, not a limited edition special version, and we were bound by the price ceiling on eligibility for the Superstock World Cup, which is 20,000 euro before tax. But we made a good deal with Del West in the USA to get the valves, since we already had a satisfactory experience working with them on the CC, which uses their inlet and exhaust valves, both in titanium. It all came from that.” 

Armed with this deal, Goggi’s R&D team, which now numbers no less than 85 engineers covering both MV Agusta and Husqvarna development, set to work to improve the performance numbers of the stock 16-valve F4 1000R engine, starting with larger yet lighter titanium inlet valves replacing the previous steel ones, which were held over from the original 750cc version of the F4 motor. Though increased in diameter from 29mm to 30mm and fitted with reinforced dual springs, these are almost half the weight of the smaller steel ones, each scaling 17.8 grammes compared to 30 grammes, and matched to the same 25mm steel exhaust valves, set at the same two-degree radial angles to one another, rather than parallel.

The geometry of the R312 combustion chamber is unchanged, says Andrea, though intake porting is subtly different to accomodate the bigger valves. Operating these are new camshafts offering more lift, up from 9.2 mm to a hefty 10.3 mm on the intake, and 9.0 mm on the exhaust, increased from 8.5 mm. These are serious numbers for a four-cylinder motorcycle engine, especially one that’s now Euro 3 compliant, thanks to the lambda probe and secondary air system now fitted, still with a single catalyst in the 4-1-2-4 stainless exhaust system with its trademark ‘Tamburini organ’ array of exit pipes under the seat. Combined with the extra duration of the new cam profiles, the titanium valves and extra lift have achieved the goal of more revs and extra power with the help of the new Magneti Marelli 5SM engine management ECU, which has been completely remapped to take full advantage of the cylinder head revisions and for Euro 3 compliance. The rev limiter on the 998cc engine, still with the same 76 x 55 mm dimensions as before, has been raised 500 revs to 13,500 rpm, with peak power of 183 bhp at the crank now delivered at 12,400 rpm, 9 bhp up on the 174 bhp at 11,800 rpm of the previous F4 1000R, while torque is unchanged, with Nm 115 produced at 10,000 rpm – quite an achievement while still meeting the harsh Euro 3 norms.

Feeding the bigger intake valves are larger throttle bodies, up from 46mm to 48mm in diameter and fitted with 10mm shorter intake trumpets for extra top end punch. Each still carries a single injector mounted just under the butterfly, rather than the top spray location of a serious Superbike contender like the 999 Ducati - so there’s even more performance to come there, if necessary. “Going to twin injectors is the ultimate level of development we can squeeze out of this engine,” says Goggi, “and we’ve already been working on such a system for some time. But one problem in fitting them to this bike is cost, and anyway, while I’m sure when we come to produce the factory Superbike racer, this will have twin injectors, we don’t need them yet.” Worth noting that the need to hold down costs to an affordable level for this volume production model also vetoed the use of the Tamburini variable-length intake system employed on the CC and since copied by Yamaha on the 16-valve R1 – though it’s probable that MV Agusta’s 2008 World Superbike contender will also feature this, too.

The remainder of the F4 engine is unchanged on the R312, with the Mahle cylinder block with Nikasil-coated chrome bores containing the same ART forged three-ring pistons made in Japan and delivering a high 13.1:1 compression, in spite of which they’ve proved super-reliable. “In all the thousands of dyno runs and track tests we made, I only ever saw one broken piston, which is incredible,” says Goggi. MV have continued to resist the temptation - and expense - of using titanium conrods, in favour of beautifully made forged steel rods made by Bertolina, just 5 km. from MV’s Varese factory, mounted to an unchanged lightweight crank which is the same massive 1.05 kg. lighter than the original F4 750 one, with smaller webs. “Our steel conrods are almost as light in alternating mass as titanium ones, so we don’t see the need for those in street form,” says Andrea. Also retained unchanged is the entire transmission with competition-style six-speed cassette gearbox - great for Superbike racing, where quick internal ratio changes are a must. The wet clutch is still a conventional multiplate design, though, because instead of the mechanical slipper clutch now commonplace on sportbikes, MV Agusta retains the same real-world version of the EBS/Electronic Braking System commonplace on MotoGP bikes, which it was the first streetbike manufacturer to adopt. This is controlled by the Marelli ECU, which monitors rpm, the rate of decrease of engine speed, and throttle opening - but not (yet?) the gear selected - to open the valves on no.2 cylinder under reverse load engine braking, permitting a controlled amount of variable freewheel depending on the modulation of the airflow through a solenoid air valve connected to that cylinder’s inlet manifold, below the throttle butterfly.

“This system was developed by us together with Marelli,” says Goggi. “because with our very high compression ratio, we were suffering a lot from rear wheel chatter under braking, so it was clear we needed to do something to stop this. We began first of all to develop a normal slipper clutch, but it was very heavy, and after completing the Le Mans 24 Hours race, we checked the wear on the plates, and were not very happy with what we found. So we started thinking about an electronic solution, to reproduce the same feeling as a two-stroke in mid-corner, without needing to keep the throttle just a little bit open or use a high idle speed to stop the wheel chattering under reverse torque. We developed such a system with Marelli, and the first time we fitted it was for the Spa 24 Hours, when we were two seconds faster than anyone else in the rain, where engine braking is so important. Obviously, this meant it worked very well as a racing concept, so then we had to refine it for the street, and now we are very happy with it - I think it’s a very effective feature, and the fact that nobody else has it on their street bike is also something to be proud of, which gives us a bit more than the opposition.”

Chassis and running gear is likewise unchanged on the 312, with the familiar modular steel trellis spaceframe bolted to cast aluminium swingarm pivot plates, fitted with fully adjustable 50mm Marzocchi upside down forks. The cast aluminium single-sided Tamburini trademark swingarm features the same Sachs shock with separate high and low-speed damping adjustment, and the forged aluminium Y-spoke Brembo wheels carry the same company’s 320mm discs up front, gripped by radial four-pad calipers with a radial master cylinder, while at the rear there’s the same 210mm disc with four-pot caliper. Wheelbase remains unchanged at 1408 mm, and dry weight at 192 kg., with the extra weight of the Euro 3 hardware cancelled out by the magnesium cam covers now adopted on the motor. This is still heavier than its Japanese rivals, though – right, Andrea? “But the difference is we just weigh it without water, oil or gas,” protests Goggi. “That means it still has battery acid and suspension fluid and the rest – it’s an honest real world figure, and the new Yamaha R1 is not so much heavier than us. Anyway, you have only to look at Superstock race results to see how competitive we are in terms of a true power to weight ratio, once all the bullshit with pretend weights is over.”

OK – so how did the bike get its name? Did it really clock 312 kph in testing in the hands of MV tester Fabrizio Latini? “It’s funny, but nobody was expecting such a high speed until the first time we went to Nardo,“ says Goggi. “We thought for sure we’d have some extra acceleration, but with 9 bhp more, not a lot of extra speed beyond the official 303 kph speed for the F4 Mille back in the days when you had to have a declared top speed for EU homologation, which you don’t any more. But right from the first, the performance was amazing- it was too fast! So now the funny thing is that while you read on the documents it’s homologated at 303 kph, the bike can actually go a lot faster – indeed, we timed it at 312 kph at Nardo in completely stock form, ready for the street. In fact, what was really amazing was that our testers went out together with both the CC and the 312, and while the 1079cc CC had more acceleration because of the longer stroke, the big surprise was that the 312 was not so much slower. So – yes, it really is that fast.”

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Just a Matter of Time

Although it hasn’t competed officially in World Championship racing for exactly thirty years, MV Agusta is still Europe’s most historic and successful racing marque, winner of 75 World titles, 270 Grand Prix victories, and no less than 3,027 race wins in the 28-year period from its GP debut with a 125cc two-stroke in 1948, to the day the music died in October 1976, when its glorious-sounding red-and-silver 350cc and 500cc bikes raced for the very last time. But it’s an open secret it’s just a matter of time before the historic Italian trophy marque makes its return to racing at the highest level, with the likely appearance in the 2008 World Superbike Championship of a factory team run by four times world champion Carl Fogarty who, ironically, won the first two of those titles riding for Ducati at a time when the Castiglioni family still owned that company.

This year, though, the focus for hyper-tifoso Claudio Castiglioni will be to first win the FIM Superstock World Cup run alongside the World Superbike Championship with the F4 312 – a campaign which got off to a disappointing start in the first round at Donington Park when MV’s lead rider Andrea Baldovini got centre-punched off his bike by an errant Yamaha while in the lead of the race, with victory sewn up on the run to the chequered flag. But at the same time, MV Agusta is dipping a toe in the Superbike category this year by running a two-rider team in the AMA series under the management of Eraldo Ferracci, twice winner of the World Superbike title with Doug Polen and Ducati 15 years ago during the Castiglioni era. However, MV’s chief engineer Andrea Goggi insists that the bikes which Luca Scassa and Matt Lynn are racing in the USA this year are very close to the R312 streetbike.

“Honestly speaking, we did almost nothing to the bike – just put a number on it!” he says. “The testing for the AMA series started in November, so we had no time to do much. The engine is a Superstock motor with a little more compression ratio. This year we made something like 35 or 40 Superstock versions of the R312 for racing, which have blueprinted engines, and these are the bikes Ferracci has, only for Superbike racing we have fully polished inlet ports, and special polishing of the combustion chamber plus titanium conrods are coming and we’re testing them for the Superbike. Mainly, we’re trying to develop the electronics, and the ECU is not a Marelli, because we chose to have a different supplier for racing called Microtec, who are based a few km from our Varese factory, and some customers have already bought it for the Italian Superbikes championship, and also BSB in Britain. We’re developing traction control and hope to use it in the Barber round in Alabama in one month’s time, and we’re still working to get a good fuel injection setting. But the starting point is very good and we have plenty of room for increasing power and performance, as well as revs – at the moment the racebikes run to 13,500 rpm, same as the standard bike, but we can go as high as 15,000 rpm on this engine, and with the radial valves it’s good to rev hard. Next step is to increase the compression ratio a little more, then put lighter pistons and those titanium conrods. Only, the standard of race gasoline in the USA is very bad, so it is difficult to find a good setup.”

Presumably with the projected move into World Superbike in 2008, Goggi and his guys must be working on a more extreme race version of the F4 R312? “Yes, we are,” declares Andrea, “and the prototype 2008 Superbike will be ready in July for testing. It’s possible it’ll have twin injectors, but that depends on how many bikes we have to produce for homologation – they’re talking about changing the numbers if the 1200cc twins are admitted. If it’s kept at 150 bikes for a small manufacturer like us, then it’s easy to do, but if it’s more this may be a problem and we’d have to keep the standard throttle body. Let’s see – but I think we can certainly be competitive with this new bike, and by May I think you will see Ferracci’s team start to perform at a high level in the USA, once they have the fuel injection mapped properly for the American race gas, and the chassis set up right for the Dunlop tyres which they only just switched to using. Wait and see!”

Speaking of those 1200cc twins, how does an engineer like Goggi view their possible introduction into the Superbike class? “We’ll see. My personal opinion is that they won’t get a lot more power from the bigger engine, mainly torque – and too much torque can also not be so good. This is why the four-cylinder motor like ours is not such a bad engine, because you have just the right amount of torque, and not too much. On control tyres like in World Superbike, this can maybe become a problem – for sure, the engine management electronics and especially traction control are going to be more and more important.  So we’ll see - but I don’t think that 1200cc twins are going to immediately become dominant, and we look forward to preventing that happening ourselves!”

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