A PACT Between Friends
Intro by Andrew Campo | Words by Walt Siegl | Photos by Ben Giese
Intro by Andrew Campo:
Joy is an intense momentary experience of positive emotion. A feeling that inspires confidence and the desire to return for more.
How do tangible things create intangible joy? Through the embodiment of good design is the obvious answer. Design is so much more than just the idea of personal expression. Good design is bigger than the people who execute it and when achieved can be very rewarding. This was the ideology at the core of a PACT formed when Walt Siegl, artist and craftsman of WSM Motorcycles, and Mike Mayberry, industrial designer and co-founder of Ronin Motorworks, joined forces on a special project in effort to explore their collective interest in electric motorcycles by way of a limited series of purpose-built bikes.
It was January 2019, and the plan was to unveil the completed motorcycle at the Electric Revolution Exhibition curated by Paul d’Orléans on April 6, 2019, at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. From my perspective, three months is roughly what we have to produce each volume of META, and for the most part it is usually gone in the blink of an eye. Designing and re-engineering a motorcycle from the ground up, manufacturing parts, and assembling it all within that same time window is hard to comprehend. It seems like an impossible task, and the fact that they pulled it off in such spectacular fashion was extremely impressive.
Following the completion of the project, I was given the opportunity to ride and personally experience the joy they set out after. Simply put, I feel blessed to be one of a handful of people to throw a leg over the PACT and honored at the opportunity to learn from two incredibly talented minds. After getting an inside look into the project, I felt strongly that I wanted to share this with our audience, and so I asked Walt to give our readers a little insight into the process. It’s with great pleasure that we share his recollection of this special project.
Words by Walt Siegl:
The PACT is an agreement I made with my friend Mike Mayberry. An agreement between a motorcycle builder (myself) and an industrial designer (Mike) to work together and create something that was bigger than either of us as individuals. It represents the power of a friendship, and of collaboration. It also represents a pact with the future.
Mike and I have had many conversations over the past few years about the state of and the direction of the transportation industry. That, of course, included the push for electric motorcycles, mainly by small, new brands. Both of us have long voiced interest in electric motorcycles. At the time, there was nothing on the market that either of us would have loved to own, so we decided that we just needed to build our own. Mike already owned several electric bikes that I had the chance to ride when I visited his Denver workshop. I was so impressed by the sensation that I decided my next design challenge was going to be an electric bike. I had already been thinking about building something smaller, something that represents the future, something with two wheels that many people have access to, even without a motorcycle license; maybe a moped or a scooter, something relatively affordable.
Even before I road-tested Mike’s electric bikes, I had been interested in the e-motorcycle challenge: to create a machine that is devoid of all the familiar components that make up a combustion engine motorcycle. A lot of companies were (and still are) trying to compete with gasoline-powered bikes through design and performance output. By simply adopting the key design elements of gas-powered bikes – like fuel tanks, air induction systems, fake engines, etc. – they end up being dishonest products. The other end of the design spectrum are bikes that dismiss ergonomics and geometries that are foundational for safety, rider confidence, and rider enjoyment, as if they can start with a blank canvas because they have gone electric. So many factors have to come into play on a motorcycle for it to work right. When the right boxes are checked on a motorcycle, when you get on it, it just comes together. All the design and engineering decisions come into focus, and it becomes a beautiful experience.
We wanted to build a light, focused, urban bike with enough power, but with as little overall weight and size as possible. What we had in mind, which has always been my mantra, was to use as few components as possible, and keep those components as honest as possible. That thinking makes for a machine that is easy to use, easier to maintain, and visually uncluttered and light. The key to a good-functioning package, which automatically makes it visually cohesive, is that the design of each element has to be honest and purposeful. We wanted to design a modern machine that is visually understood as e-powered, but also pure in its form. We both agreed the Alta Redshift platform was the most successful product on the dirt bike market through its high build quality and performance levels. Alta went out of business before they had the chance to build a bike with geometries for the street and track. Mike and I agreed on building around the Alta platform, as we both felt it got as close as possible to our mission:
We wanted to build a bike that spoke to us and was a beautiful experience to own and ride.
I started by sketching the principal gestalt of the bike in pencil, and then sharing that design with Mike. Since we both were busy during workdays, we spent countless hours in the evenings and weekends sharing sketches – mine on paper, his on an iPad. The key design decision that we made early on was to fully embrace the battery pack as the power source for the bike instead of trying to hide or cover it. We wanted to celebrate the essentials of the electric motorcycle, much in the same way many brands have celebrated their gas engines. Mike and I agreed that our design aesthetic would resist the impulse to create novelty by designing something that was honest, user-friendly and durable, while using as few components as possible.
There is no misunderstanding of what this machine has been designed for: pure business.
The show was only three months away, and we didn’t even have a bike yet, but we had a solid idea at this point – and there’s nothing like a deadline to get you motivated. Every day counted now, and we had to stay focused.
After countless emails, and texts sharing sketches and ideas, we sat down in front of Mike’s computer over a weekend to try to digitally capture what we had crafted on paper. We needed to create an initial computer model to work with, but we quickly discovered that our sketches didn’t work in 3D space as well as we had hoped. It’s one thing to draw cool profile views of bikes, but it’s something very different to resolve a design thoroughly from all perspectives in 3D space. It wasn’t long before we had completely scrapped our initial sketches and found ourselves with pencil and paper again. We had designed largely around the beautiful forged aluminum front frame of the Alta but were quickly coming to the realization that its geometry and proportions were ill-suited for our vision of a nimble street machine. The frame and fork geometry had to meet our performance requirements, and the only solution was a new front frame.
With new sketches in hand, Mike went to work on building a complete computer model of the bike in Solidworks. He scanned the Alta transmission and battery, and we then proceeded to design a whole new bike around those parts. My experience in road racing taught me frame geometry, and I drew on that as we settled on rake, trail and wheelbase numbers for this bike. It had to handle light and neutral, and it had to perform. Very little of the original Alta remained at this point. After deciding to design our own front frame, we were left with only the central motor housing, and the battery pack from the Alta donor. We would have to design and build the new carbon fiber subframe, carbon seat, seat foam, carbon bodywork and fenders. We would also have to machine new billet triple trees, wheels, and a new 3-piece swing arm that helped us achieve the geometries and handling that we were after. We knew the trellis frame had to be designed and built first so that we could mockup the bike on two wheels as we moved through refining the bodywork – a chicken-and-egg scenario. We needed the frame to visualize the bodywork in real space, but the bodywork affected the lines of the frame. We had no choice but to commit to a design before the final decisions were made on the bodywork and suspension.
Mike’s shop is in Denver and mine is in New Hampshire, so that meant nearly all work was being done separately from each other. Mike would post updates of the model every few days, and I would download them for review or as needed for tooling and fabrication. One of the advantages of working digitally is that we didn’t have to be in the same shop to be collaborating. Mike sent images of the design several times a day. We would discuss and critique together. Mike could post a 3D file of the final trellis frame design, and Aran Johnson, my lead tech at the time, could be building the jig for it in my shop that same day. In some cases, 3D-printed parts were used as weld fixtures, as well. Aran was pivotal in finding mechanical as well as electrical solutions that expedited the completion of the first PACT.
Forms designed purely in digital space can sometimes be misleading, so we spent some time making preliminary bodywork out of cardboard and foam before we made the final decision on the trellis covers. Some of the components were 3D-printed at Mike’s shop, then sent to me to check fitment or to be installed as production parts. Only then could we start machining the urethane mold plugs for all the carbon parts back at Mike’s workshop in Denver. Once completed, the mold plugs were shipped to California to be turned into molds, and then into finished carbon fiber parts. We had decided early on that we didn’t want to use traditional woven carbon fiber cloth and had instead designed the subframe and body work around a newer process called forged carbon fiber. This process has advantages over traditional carbon composite that allows for better optimization of weight, structure and stiffness. It also looks really trick.
Mike had the disadvantage of not having the prototype in front of him and so was not immediately convinced that everything we came up with together would come together. There were some hiccups with the finish of the prototype that were not of our doing, and we were both not 100% happy with it (as is so often the case with prototypes), but once bike number one was completed, we both were thrilled with the product. The first time Mike got to see the prototype was at the opening night of the show in L.A. Now, a year and a half later, we both still agree that it’s our favorite bike to own and ride.
Since the Petersen show, I have built a second bike and have three more in process. The plan was always to build eight bikes, one for each of us and six more to be sold. This was a very personal project. It filled a void that we saw in the e-bike industry, and it served our personal needs. I think so highly of Mike: his moral compass, his intellect, his complexity without bullshit, his kindness and sense of honor. For all these reasons, collaborating with him was simply a great and rewarding experience. Our individual strengths as designers and builders clicked in all the right places.
Taking what we learned creating the PACT, I want next to use the flexibility I have as a small company to develop an e-bike that serves the needs of as many people as possible – people of all ages. I also want to use this platform as a reminder that two-wheeled transportation makes absolute economic and environmental sense, and is tremendously fun. E-bikes are so much less intimidating than fossil-fueled power bikes. They’re not less fun because they are electrical. Quite the contrary! Every time I ride one of my e-bikes, I’m met with smiles and positive curiosity by people of all ages. There’s an inclusivity about them. To me, e-bikes offer a new kind of freedom, accessible to many.
