From: | Eric Smith | e-mail: | kwmxla2@verizon.net |
Subject: | RE: RE: MORE INTERESTING HISTORY | Date: | Wed Oct 22 11:50:28 2014 |
Response to: | 5387 |
Old Erwin must have had a million great stories. Too bad that so many of the pioneers of motorcycling passed without the recognition they deserved. I guess you have to be in sports, or a crooked politician to be remembered. Excelsior used the Eclipse clutch, as did most every American manufacturer. Eclipse was a big company, and were eventually absorbed by Bendix. Eclipse also successfully sued Harley-Davidson for patent infringements on the release mechanism which was a 3 start acme screw. H-Ds redesign was quite a bit better than the design they "borrowed" from Eclipse. ----- ORIGINAL MESSAGE FOLLOWS ----- ----- ORIGINAL MESSAGE FOLLOWS ----- Erwin Weiss, chief engineer for Excelsior 1915 raced on the boards as well! What a long interesting life this dude had. The bit about "inventing ' the motorcycle clutch maybe challenged! Yup, I think the clutch thing is a misunderstanding of some sort. Harley had a clutch at least a year prior. Could be he designed the Excelsior clutch of the first Excelsior 3-speed. Rick |