Comments on: Hartley Enterprises H2 Busa engine

By: Tom J Allen

Tom J Allen — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:11:40 +0000

Back in the mid ’70s I was a Kawasaki dealer & the Z1 900cc motorcycle had just come out. It had ball bearing mains & needle bearing rods. I bought a lay down chassis from Sandy Kosman in S.F. Cal. very light. It had a custom turbo setup running 27 psi boost with a freon charged intercooler. It broke a lot of top end, clutch parts, but you put that kind of setup in a heavy street bike & you would be lucky for it to last 10 seconds. Just buy some F1 motors from people that know how to build them & they might last 300 miles. You all don’t understand the stresses involved. Hell if you can’t be happy with a proper 2.6L Honda K motor with a Rotrex or a turbo in an Atom 3 you need to give up on cars & just smoke dope. Maybe if you get high enough you will think that you are driving your abortion V8 pos. You will save a lot of money & be a lot happier, or Just put a Top Fuel motor in it. 7000+ hp, but sadly it only lasts a little over 4 seconds. It requires a total OH before the next run & if you don’t set everything exactly correct, it will meltdown before 4 seconds, It might only cost $100,000 to OH it. Pull your head out. You all are playing with cars. Use a good reliable car motor/tranny, or always be blown up/broke down. I’ll take the smoke dope & save a lot of money & frustration. Call me when your V8 can make ten laps wfo.

By: shaun

shaun — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:37:47 +0000

could you americans stop talking and get on with the job- complete the h2 motor and ignore the negative comments.

By: BAM*F

B*A*M*F — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 01:51:01 +0000

Nicolas:

The difference between the Japanese sub 660cc “K” cars and sport bikes is that most Kei class cars have turbos and they are legally limited in power output. The turbo helps them make the maximum legal power output with a healthy torque curve. Most motorcycle engines sacrifice that to make high RPM horsepower. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it’s well suited to a motorcycle. However, in a car, it means really revving the hell out of your engine just to drive normally in everyday traffic. To paraphrase what one of the higher-ups at at Mercedes said a few years ago, “Americans buy horsepower, but they love torque.”

By: nicolas

nicolas — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:12:20 +0000

I don’t know if it’s a good car example, specifically for US references and customs … but here is an example of a car that has driven happy people during 40+ years with a flat twin 600cc engine :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_2CV

and as they say in the article, a smart and simple engineering made them reliable : “test engines were run at full speed for 1000 hours at a time, equivalent to driving 50,000 miles at full throttle”

OK nowadays this car would fail all the safety and emissions tests. But it has been first engineered just before the 2nd world war, since then technology has improved. The Smart car shows that you can have a tiny yet safe vehicle.

The first versions of the Smart had a 600cc 3 cylinder, I think, and in Japan they have a lot of 600cc small vehicles. Not even talking about the busa-engined Smart cars seen here on the Kneeslider (look on the top right of the screen)

So ok, a motorcycle derivative powerplant will not do well to move a heavy metal “muscle car” or a soccermom SUV, but they have a good potential in well engineered (sub-)subcompact vehicles.

By: PaulN

PaulN — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:10:31 +0000

Maybe I’m missing the point, but how can you increase the weight of a vehicle by 75%, even if it’s over the period of three decades? Is that progress?

OK, increased weight means increased momentum, and if you also increase ridigity, then you have a better chance in a collision. I understand that, but we are still talking about a HUGE increase in mass! Never mind what that does to the poor tires and suspensions.

Also, sound deadening has come a long way in that time span, no? I remember putting Dynamat in my car 20 years ago, and marvelling at the reduced road noise. While this doesn’t apply to motorcycles, it’s still appropriate for portions of this topic.