Two wheels – nothing surrounds them apart from air and the passing scenery. Still, unpredictable roads and idiots galore are things that motorcyclists live with every day. Everybody who’s ever climbed aboard a motorcycle will vouch for the fact that riding over a surface allergic to the tyres’ grip is a terrifying experience. With half the gripping surfaces as compared to a car, a motorcycle on a slippery road can lead to catastrophic results. Not, however, if TVS has a say in the matter. They’ve roped in Continental to develop an Anti-lock Braking System (popularly known as ABS) for the Apache RTR 180, but it took much more than a spanner and some elbow grease.
This ABS system has been developed in Germany, but it was fine-tuned in India. For one, this thing is calibrated for Indian conditions and habits. Take, for example, the fact that the software has the ability to adjust braking pressure when one wheel encounters a pothole and the other’s firmly planted on tarmac. Or the fact that since the majority of Indians purely use the rear brake, the ABS system works around this habit by providing a higher threshold at the rear than the front. All of these factors contribute to the fact that the Continental engineers have had to make this ABS system very durable indeed. All of that sounds peachy, but I needed to put the system to the test. The chaps at TVS were so sure of their product that they made the WAPCO TVS proving ground available to us.
MORE ON PAGE 2>>
|
