Noticed a short piece in Motorcyclist about a Triumph flat tracker being prepared for the 2005 season by Doug Horner of VMC Frames. A twin from the Thruxton is bored and stroked to 988cc then gets the full engine mod treatment, reworked head, lightened crank, etc. The flat track scene used to be a Harley dominated series (with Rotax power) and it would be neat if this new bike … [Read more...]
Motorcycle car hybrids
Wasn't planning on turning this into a car blog but I have to mention one more company using Hayabusa engines since they seem to have quite a business building street legal cars and kits. The comany is Z Cars over in England and they have some of the coolest conversions, putting bike engines into a Mini, a Lotus and some other cars, most notably, the Ultima, where they use two … [Read more...]
Hayabusa 3 wheeler
Since we've been talking about Hayabusa engines, I ran across this Hayabusa with a sort of, well... , growth out back. It's a wheelie bar on steroids or something. I'm not sure what the reason behind it is but it's interesting, not your average 3 wheeler. … [Read more...]
More motorcycle powered cars
A couple of weeks ago I was talking about what I called the "universal engine" concept, where I said you can put almost any engine into any vehicle if it has the proper power characteristics. I'm not sure "motorcycle engines" or "car engines" really exist. Yesterday I pointed to the SR8, a racecar with a modified Hayabusa engine and today I found the T-Rex three wheeler, … [Read more...]
Hayabusa V8 engine
Radical Extreme Sports Cars started building race cars powered by superbike engines back in 1996. They began using Suzuki engines and it looks like they have been fairly successful. Their latest creation, the SR8, goes a step farther. Instead of just dropping in a complete engine, they built a V8 by grafting two Hayabusa engines together. So far the figures are 372hp and the … [Read more...]
Carbon fiber motorcycle frames
A few days ago, I noticed Revolution Speed and Custom introduced their new carbon fiber chopper frames. No pictures were available then but they just put up a few. Although there is a lot of carbon fiber available for fenders and chain guards and other non-structural pieces, I don't remember seeing any other company promoting an entire frame so this may be the first. Some … [Read more...]