The Kneeslider

Doers Builders and Positive People

Ian Drysdale’s Spectacular Drysdale 1000 V8

By

Images removed due to legal dispute in Australia Putting a V8 engine in a motorcycle is easy, just build a bike big enough, like a Boss Hoss, and you can wrap it around anything, though as one recent home build, the Simca V8 shows, with a bit more thought and finesse, the results are a lot more pleasing. On the other hand, Ian Drysdale, the Australian engineering wizard, … [Read more...]

Homebuilt Simca V8 Powered Cafe Racer by Malcolm Oastler

By

When you're an ex technical director for the BAR Formula One team and then a chief engineer for the Jaguar racing team plus designer of numerous race cars, what do you do when you retire? Well, if you're Malcolm Oastler, you head back home to Australia and build a V8 powered cafe racer that looks extremely tidy and sounds like a old street rod. Malcolm started with a 2351 … [Read more...]

Norcroft Royal Enfield V-Twin Project Lives Again

By

In the very first year of The Kneeslider, way back in November of 2004, I wrote a short post about a V-Twin called the Norcroft. Like the Carberry and the the Musket, the Norcroft is based on a new bottom end designed to mount the top ends of a Royal Enfield single. Although it was built and running at that time, it seemed to disappear over the years and I heard no more about … [Read more...]

A Gallery of Persistence Shows the Musket Project Moving Forward

By

After everything we've already said about the Musket project, turning a 500cc Royal Enfield single cylinder engine into a 1000cc V-Twin, the most impressive takeaway from it all has been the dogged persistence of Aniket Vardhan. Over the years, he's taken an idea from napkin sketch to running motorcycle, and now, he's taking it to the next stage, having completed the initial … [Read more...]

First Customer Musket V-Twin Build Getting Started

By

The first customer Musket V-Twin build is about to begin. Aniket has an almost new Royal Enfield 500ES from a collector and builder in Massachusetts who is having his bike converted. Though Aniket has been working on the Musket project for years, (the first time we saw it was in April of 2009) and knows every bit of it intimately, this first actual customer conversion will … [Read more...]

Suzuki VX800 Gets a Snowmobile Power Transplant

By

Every now and then, someone starts thinking a motorcycle and a snowmobile should get together, you know, big 2 stroke power stuffed into a motorcycle frame, just because it's the right thing to do. Of course, if you're a fabricator and machinist by trade, you can do a lot more than think about it, you can just do it. Brent Soper had a Suzuki VX800 and his wife, Tammy, … [Read more...]