New How A Motorbike Companionship You Lot Likely Don't Know Changed The Two Stroke World, Or, Escaping The Fe Drape Amongst Mz Tech (Thanks Tony!)

Fifty 5 years agone Suzuki won its starting fourth dimension Blue Planet entitle amongst the rinkiest-dinkiest fiddling 50cc Grand Prix wheel that Ernst Degner rode to the initiatory 50cc entitle inwards Oct 1962. It made 8 horsepower together with was skillful for 90mph.

It's success was every bit much a historic instant for the sport every bit it was for Suzuki, because this was also the starting fourth dimension Blue Planet entitle won past times a two-stroke, which would larn on to utterly dominate GP racing, that afterwards 1975 non a unmarried Blue Planet entitle was won past times a four-stroke until the rules were changed together with the MotoGP era began inwards 2001.

After all, Yamaha, Suzuki, together with Kawasaki legends would never conduct maintain happened if it wasn’t for the two-stroke’s domination inwards GPs.

It all started amongst a genius East High German engineer called Walter Kaaden who did ground-breaking endure on the two-stroke at the struggling MZ factory.

As a direct result, Suzuki together with the other Japanese factories solely built winning two-strokes afterwards Suzuki paid star MZ passenger Degner a king’s ransom to defect from East to West together with sell Kaaden’s hard-earned secrets.


During WW2 Kaaden worked at Hitler’s hush-hush weapons base of operations inwards Peenemunde where the so-called Vengeance Weapons – the V-1 together with V-2 – were developed. After the state of war he started tuning together with racing fiddling MZ two-strokes.  Eventually MZ turned upwards at the Nurburgring for its GP debut inwards a scruffy fiddling van containing a duet of medieval-looking 125 race bikes.

What the to a greater extent than smartly attired westerners didn’t know was that Kaaden had used the knowhow he gained at Peenemunde to transform the MZ into a existent threat to the all-conquering four-strokes.

By uniting iii telephone substitution technologies for the starting fourth dimension time – the expansion chamber, the disc valve together with the boost port – the MZ 125 became the world’s starting fourth dimension unremarkably aspirated engine to brand 200 horsepower per litre.

Despite the paucity of its resources, MZ fought Honda for the 125 Blue Planet entitle throughout the summertime of 1961 – Degner aboard the single-cylinder MZ, Aussie Tom Phillis on Honda’s four-stroke twin.

During the summertime of ’61 Degner sneaked away from his Stasi minders to conduct maintain hush-hush meetings amongst Suzuki personnel.

Company president Shunzo Suzuki realised the solely means he was going to foreclose his fellowship from becoming a paddock joke was past times getting jibe of Kaaden’s top-secret formula. Degner was their man; he wanted out of East Federal Republic of Federal Republic of Germany together with he had just what Suzuki wanted.

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 bargain was struck – Degner would assist Suzuki construct competitive two-strokes together with thus he would ride them.
Degner had to spirit himself together with his household unit of measurement into the west, but, when he raced abroad his household unit of measurement had to rest inwards East Germany, to brand certain he ever came home.

Degner devised a novel innovation amongst his West High German sidekick Paul Petry, who bought a Lincoln amongst a hush-hush compartment within the trunk.

During the weekend of the Swedish GP Petry drugged Degner’s children, placed them inwards the Lincoln’s boot, thus drugged Gerda Degner who climbed inwards amongst them.

Petry drove the machine through the border, together with Degner made his escape past times getting a Suzuki staffer to drive him together with a steal total of vital MZ engine parts together with drawings into Denmark.

Degner travelled to Nihon where he spent vi months toiling inwards Suzuki’s race subdivision – an engineer’s paradise compared to MZ’s rotten fiddling workshop.

His original chore was to assist practise a novel 125 that had to brand at to the lowest degree 22 horsepower if he was to have his £10,000 vantage (£200,000 inwards today’s money) together with he succeeded inwards making a mirror-image re-create of the MZ unmarried amongst 24 horsepower, together with the flavor was a triumph for Suzuki.

The fiddling fifty scored Suzuki’s first-ever World Championship quest at Barcelona inwards May 1962, thus won the company’s starting fourth dimension World Championship race at the Isle of Man, where Degner averaged a dizzying 71mph – faster than the factory’s 125 had managed merely 2 years earlier.

Once Kaaden’s genie was out the bottle an extraordinary race developed betwixt two-stroke together with four-stroke. In an attempt to endure on the Suzuki together with Yamaha two-strokes at bay Honda built fabulous multi-cylinder four-strokes that were capable of sky-high engine speeds.

Honda’s twin-cylinder fifty together with five-cylinder 125 both revved beyond 20,000rpm which gave them power-per-litre outputs of over 270bhp.

Suzuki together with Yamaha responded amongst two-stroke multis capable of similarly outrageous performance. Yamaha built 125 together with 250 V4s piece Suzuki built a 150mph 250 square-four.


The Kawasaki KR250 together with 350 that won viii Blue Planet titles was a direct rip-off of the MZ 250 that Kaaden had created inwards 1969: same tandem twin layout, same bore together with stroke, same porting arrangement, same geared-together crankshafts. Likewise Suzuki’s RG500 square-four that took Barry Sheene to the 1976 together with 1977 500 Blue Planet titles.


Kaaden forgave Degner for betraying him together with was philosophical almost how the Japanese used his life’s endure to construct an manufacture that helped brand the solid soil a global economical power.

“Every fourth dimension you lot construct something good, someone steals it,” he said a few years before his decease inwards 1997. “I conduct maintain to convey it. I cannot alter it.”

Abridged from the article past times Matt Oxley
http://www.motorcyclenews.com/news/2012/december/de1712-the-ernst-degner-story/ 

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