I'm partial to the Elf endurance racers, among older examples. Norman Hossack did some nifty stuff as well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GAU-8
Besides Bimota, and BMW, Yamaha had a "forkless" hub bike, in the early '90s. GTS1000 .
The biggest drawback from this style of steering, is that many riders can't "feel" what the front tire is doing. The feedback doesn't translate the same, as a direct linear feel from conventional forks. Of course that was many years ago. Maybe some of that has been changed, with the newer iterations.
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As far as I've heard or read, that difference in feeling has not changed. The last newer iteration I recall hearing about - and there does not seem to be many - was the Taylormade CARBON2 designed for Moto2 (note: not hub centered, but alternative front suspension setups are rare enough for me to feel comfortable lumping them all in together
). To my knowledge, it has been adopted by
zero teams and contested zero actual races in any category.
Having never ridden a setup like this, I wonder: is it an actual lack of information from the bike, or just the shortcoming of riders who've spent their entire lives learning to interpret conventional forks?