Remember the jaw-dropping French motorcycle prototype Geco we mentioned in late January? Yes, THAT shape-shifting beast powered by an Yamaha R1 engine loaded in a sci-fi frame which actually changes shape through turns, under braking and when throttling hard and which brings the homokinetics concept closer to the street level. If I was French I’d have said “Moi, je suis un espion”, but since English is the official autoevolution language… here we go with exclusive, never-seen-before spy videos of the bike on the road.
The location these videos were shot remains secret, but the date is quite recent. Suffice to say that Eric “Pepe”Offenstadt has made solid progress with the Geco, and the bike was road-tested on the public roads, and it looked quite awesome while at it. Still with more tweaking and developing ahead, the Geco is however making a steady progress.
And we’ve finally figured out better what’s going the third shock absorber for. It looks like replicating the FRIC systems which can be found in Formula 1 cars. FRIC stands for Front to Rear Inter-Connected suspension, a system which keeps a car’s wheels as level as possible during acceleration, braking and through turns, and which improves the road stance dramatically.
Since the original FRIC systems were electronically-controlled and the FIA banned electronics from this field, the new systems rely on inertia alone, while the hydraulic system acts like a braking balancer between the left and right side, and front and back, respectively.
With the two-wheeled architecture of a bike, things are much simpler, and seemingly, much more effective, as Pepe’s team say that the behavior of the bike will be improved by up to 32% when it comes to controlling both wheelie and stoppie effects, and this adds to the stability of the bike, allowing a more stable road stance.
In fact, everything adds to the whole homokinetics concept: constant velocity of both wheels in any section of the road, under any sort of forces which may affect stability. In fact, this is the very essence of the Geco project, adding a new dimension to motorcycle stability and tire performance. We’re still hiding in the bushes, waiting to spot more of the Geco.
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