March 2014 - the bowtie6 blog

The V12 powered, 1967 Honda RA300 F1 car – spectacular, don’t you think?

Check out the exhaust headers, isn’t that a work of art? Somehow, I do believe that even though my Honda S2000 only has one-quarter of the cylinders, there is some of the RA-300’s DNA in it somewhere. After all, up until just a few years ago the S2000’s F20C engine was the most powerful normally aspirated engine per liter of displacement available.

It is sad that modern Honda Motors is so far removed from their rich heritage of F1 racing as shown in the image above. Unfortunately all Honda makes these days are mini-vans and economy boxes.

Than again… You never know…

The planets are slowly aligning themselves again over at McLaren. First, Ron Dennis has made a much-needed return to re-organize the F1 Team. Second, Honda is making a return to F1 in 2015 supplying engines to the McLarn F1 Team.

So, today on what would have been the eve of Ayrton Senna da Silva’s 54th birthday one can’t feel but optimistic that indeed the glory of yesteryear might return. With some luck, who knows… Maybe some of that glorious magic of the MP4/4 or MP4/5 might return. Maybe from that Honda might start making real cars again, like the S2000 and NSX.

Finally, check out these videos. They speak for themselves!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKQfcaYJyXk

The North American Handmade Bicycle Show 2014 (HAHBS) takes place in Charlotte NC this weekend. Being I am a cycling aficionado, I could not let the opportunity pass to visit the show. In past years, I’ve seen only pictures of the different hand made bikes in the pages of cycling magazines. So I made the trip today to the Charlotte Convention Center to check the event out.

I was NOT disappointed. I had a chance to see some really nice bikes, paint jobs and some very interesting ideas.

Rather than show picture and a bunch of text, let me just post a few comments and then you can check out the gallery of some of the most interesting bikes!

There were many manufacturers with wood bikes. The frames were all wood and while not exactly my cup of tea, they are nevertheless amazing. I must say I have never ridden a wood bike before, so who knows… If I were to try one out I might like it.
Same for bamboo. There were quite a few bamboo and hybrid bamboo bikes. They were all equally amazing.
There was a vendor there that had a technique to take a mold in plaster of your feet. He then would use that as a mold to create a hand-made carbon fiber shoe! The shoes were pricey but looked awesome. The manufacturer said he obtained his knowledge from making custom ice skates. These shoes were amazing.
There was one manufacturer that made a carbon bike with a honeycomb open air weave of carbon. Most unusual. I have seen pictures of a dude in Europe that made something similar but this was over the top.
Several bikes had alternate power supplies – electric motors that is.
Tandems. Many tandems. In all kinds of materials. Interesting that many had belt drives instead of chains. Incidentally, my cousin Bob has been using a belt drive on his Seven tandem for many years now with very successful results.
Pay close attention towards the end of the gallery – there is a red bike with some really intricate details. The builder is from Japan and the bike had a $20,000 price tag. Certainly very artistic and the details had many, many hours’ worth of work written all over them.

An so, here is a full gallery of the photos I took today. Yes, some of the pics are not exactly great since I took them with my iPhone. But you get the idea…