MOTORCYCLE TRADER 79
Y
ou might get a bit taken aback
if you call Brad Black, aka Brad
the Bike Boy, to book a service.
These days, he’s concentrating
on Ducatis and there’s
something like a two- to three-month
wait. The reason is (and I know this
from personal experience) he’s really
good at what he does.
He’s a one-man band in a tiny workshop
in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne and
has been located there since he struck out
on his own 11 years ago.
It’s a funny situation for a bloke who
was once told that he was too smart to
be a mechanic and that he should go to
university. In the end, he did both.
YEARN TO LEARN
“When I was a teenager, I wanted to be in
the Air Force as a pilot,” Brad explains.
“Then I wanted to be a
mechanic and I did work
experience at Moorabbin
Airport, and did work
experience at the local car
dealership the next year.”
Heeding the ‘go to uni’
advice, he undertook
a four-year degree in
mechanical engineering,
admitting that at that
stage he still had no clear
idea of where he wanted
to end up. However, one
thing the course did was
hatch what turned out to
be a lifelong interest in computer-based
engine systems – kind of handy in a day
where motorcycles are ruled by ECUs and
fuel injection.
That came about when he was casting
around for a topic for his final-year major
project. “I was playing around with an
idea for a fourth-year project, which
was using reed valves for four-strokes. It
was just something that interested me,
and I found a couple of SAE [Society of
Automotive Engineers] papers on it, when
I was at RMIT.
“But by the time I got into it I
discovered a lot of the work had
already been done and it wasn’t really
a worthwhile thing. Certainly these
days, with variable valve timing,
it’s redundant. Reed valves were an
analogue way of closing the valves early
- it had some benefits but wasn’t worth
pursuing as a project.
“I was thinking at one point about
whether we could do an electronic valve
actuation project, with solenoids. That’s
a project that’s been tried a few times but
overall I don’t think it’s as worthwhile as
it initially sounds.”
So what did he do? “It was called
Computer Modelling of Dual-Fuelled
Natural Gas Vehicles. It came about
because one of the professors was a good
mate of a guy at Melbourne Uni, who was
working with the Gas & Fuel company,
which was running a fleet of trucks on
dual-fuel diesel/natural gas.
“One aspect of the project kind of
fell apart when we discovered the
people setting the vehicles up on the
dyno weren’t working on the basis
we expected. However, there was a
modelling system we could set up that
was interesting and a complete U-turn
onwhatwe expected.”
Welcome to academia- it’s often the case with
senior and post-grad
projects that the topic
takes some wild twists
and turns. In any case, the
experience of thinking
about and working with
these systems paid off.
“When I started working
on Ducatis, they were
mostly fuel injected. The
systems were basic at that
stage and have become
more complicated – I
think more complicated
than they need to be.
“The current ECUs use a lot of torque-
based maps, where most of the ones I
play with are still throttle angle and
RPM. I think the torque-based units from
about 2015 are probably better from a
manufacturing point of view.
“I really enjoy that aspect of the work.
I reflash ECUs for people and modify
them where needed – turning
immobilisers off, making them open
loop, turning lambda sensors off. It’s not
as complicated as people think.”
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
As for motorcycles, that started when
Brad was a kid and has been part of his
life ever since. “My first bike was an
LT100 Yamaha. I was 12 and it was in
well-crashed condition. Then I bought
a KDX175 that was much more efficient
at tearing up the paddocks, which Dad
didn’t like. It got traded for a Suzuki 100SHEDMASTERS
Brad^ the^ Bike^ Bo