The Kneeslider

Doers Builders and Positive People

Ford Flathead motorcycle

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If you've been around a while you may remember the Honest Charley ads in Hot Rod magazine and other car mags back in the sixties. Back then, they were one of the premier speed parts suppliers. These days, "Honest Charley hisself" as they used to say has passed on but the name and trademark was purchased by Coker Tire and they continue the tradition of old time speed. They … [Read more...]

700 Horsepower Hayabusa

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Getting huge horsepower from a motorcycle engine is always an interesting blend of good old engine building, forced induction and a little black magic. The DynoJet Horsepower Challenge has just produced some totally insane results. Hank Booth of Great Falls, Montana put his 1999 Suzuki Hayabusa on the dyno and turned out 701.32 horsepower! There were others in the 400 and 500hp … [Read more...]

Motorcycle engine parts

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After yesterday's post on the round engine I was thinking about how different it was from the engines we have in our bikes today. I reread this month's article in Cycle World by Kevin Cameron where he talks a lot about the g forces on pistons in today's engines at high rpm. The round engine has almost none of these forces since the speed may vary but the acceleration and … [Read more...]

The Round Engine

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The Round Engine is a new engine design being developed by VGT Technologies, Inc. in Alberta, Canada. This is not a normal rotary but instead is called a toroidal, with two continuously rotating pistons, an external combustion chamber and a rotating timing disc. The displacement and compression can be altered during operation by an engine management system. It's hard to … [Read more...]

Thunder Star 1200 Diesel by Star Twin

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Stop the presses! er... stop the keyboards, I love this! Star Twin, a company over in Holland, has designed and built the Thunder Star 1200 TDI Sportbike. This is a 1200cc, three cylinder turbocharged direct injection diesel. They started with a 3 cylinder diesel engine from the VW Lupo, redesigned numerous parts using SolidWorks 3D computer modeling software, created patterns … [Read more...]