Oddball engines and prototypes

[guyhockley]

Hell no - those things are lethal. made for ex servicemen who'd survived the war and were fearless....
Derry Preston - Cobb's one finished up with a full house motocross engine in it. Mad....

Every race meeting I go to now, there's a couple of the Niken's parked for the use of officials. Yamaha here are pushing them as an alternative "normal" - to what end I don't yet know.
Ugly bloody things.

Enjoy the MRI, Guy. The iodine base dye is almost as good as the original one used in angiograms. That gave an instant hot flush allover.

I used to have a 210 National kart (built by one of Wobbly's former employers). I had a Montesa engine to go in it for the 250 class. The former 9e Villiers based motor was bought by some one to go in an Invacar. My previous experience with them made me decline any further involvement in that project...
The bike shop I worked in in the 70s was just up the road from a college for young disabled people. Although the Invacar set-up was normally a Formula 1 style arrive and drive deal, occasionally they would turn up at our door with problems. First time it happened, Kevin, the older mechanic, "generously" let me have the "pleasure". At one point we had a test drive with me as a passenger (not easy!). My reaction to that was "if you weren't an invalid when they gave you one of those, you bloody well soon would be!"
Few years later I was working on an industrial estate and there was a unit with a load of the little blue horrors outside. As far as I could see they now had a flat twin foul stroke with CVT that looked very similar to a dump truck engine.

[guyhockley]

Not really, I was talking about two wheels up front, the back end (the leaning bit) effectively still being a motorcycle and the front (in effect), being a car. The Carver concept (arguably more similar to the little Honda Gyro), never actually took off to become the complete answer - it has been around for a while now!

The recumbent bicycle people differentiate trikes as Delta - 2 wheels at the back, or Tadpole - 2 wheels at the front.
I guess most people know that the Reliant 3 wheelers could be driven on a bike licence because they were under a certain weight, well, one of the three wheel motorbikes -
can't remember which, and don't care, anyway - comes in 2 versions. The only difference is 5mm for the front track width. "Wide" for car licence, "narrow" for bikers (trikers?).

[guyhockley]

Lot of people on here who've had their magnetic fields aligned! Thanks, fellas. How come headphones work inside a big magnet? :-) Don't think I'm getting an internal paint job, Grumph, got a third degree about the pin in my other ankle which seemed to be my consultant's main concern.
PS. My foot/ankle specialist is called Louise Skipp! Nominative determinism?

[Frits Overmars]

I was talking about two wheels up front, the back end (the leaning bit) effectively still being a motorcycle and the front (in effect), being a car.

Something like this Wil?

Maybe a nice Greeves Invacar instead?

Hell no - those things are lethal. made for ex servicemen who'd survived the war and were fearless....

My mistake; I always thought they were for ex-servicemen who were legless.
An uncle of mine used to drive something similar. When he was visiting us, my brothers and I would push his means of transport out of sight and then try to roll it.
It was quite stable really.

one of the three wheel motorbikes - can't remember which, and don't care, anyway - comes in 2 versions. The only difference is 5mm for the front track width. "Wide" for car licence, "narrow" for bikers (trikers?).

That would be the Piaggio 250 and the Piaggio 400. I tried the latter, and though I would not be found dead riding one on a daily basis, it was good fun in the wet.

[guyhockley]

Here's an article about an earlier iteration of the Evinrude powered Volvo... or not!

[WilDun]

Something like this Wil?


My mistake; I always thought they were for ex-servicemen who were legless.
An uncle of mine used to drive something similar. When he was visiting us, my brothers and I would push his means of transport out of sight and then try to roll it.
It was quite stable really.

That would be the Piaggio 250 and the Piaggio 400. I tried the latter, and though I would not be found dead riding one on a daily basis, it was good fun in the wet.

I would be quite happy to be seen on any of these things! but I must never allow myself to try them (for the reasons given a few posts back) - and I must never allow myself to be "legless" either (for the same reason).
I'm not even safe on an exercycle, I crashed mine when the pin holding up the seat came out, it did a "wheelie" and dumped me off the back! - luckily I escaped injury.

Nevertheless I find the tilting vechicles extremely interesting - unfortunately it is less difficult to make the "Delta" version look presentable than the "tadpole" version.
As I said though, in the tadpole version, are tilting wheels up front really necessary? just so long as the rear "motorcycle" section leans? whereas, in the delta version a tilting wheel (read front section C/W with rider) would be very necessary to get away from the nasty tricycle tendency to tip under braking, when going into a corner.

And yes Frits, something like that would keep me happy (not so sure about the tube work, but somewhere to begin). - A few years back (under duress) I became a mobility scooter fanatic and I have been dreaming about producing a super modified version ever since (and there's a lot of scope there with those unimaginative heaps of crap!).

Believe it or not, someone from a certain Northern European country (not yours) has been importing and trying to sell them here with a price tag approaching 30,000 NZ dollars!! ....... (theiving b******s!), these being aimed no doubt at the families of rich pensioners who are feeling guilty about incarcerating their oldies!

[Mental Trousers]

Any of you guys following Alex @ 2Stroke Stuffing's latest go at building the ultimate 2 stroke? He's on here somewhere but I can't remember his username.

Youtube playlist

[tjbw]

Any of you guys following Alex @ 2Stroke Stuffing's latest go at building the ultimate 2 stroke? He's on here somewhere but I can't remember his username.

Youtube playlist

adegnas ??

[Mental Trousers]

adegnas ??

No such user

[guyhockley]

https://www.kiwibiker.co.nz/forums/m.../44265-adegnes

[tjbw]

No such user

https://www.kiwibiker.co.nz/forums/m.../44265-adegnes

[Mental Trousers]

https://www.kiwibiker.co.nz/forums/m.../44265-adegnes

Yeah that's him.

[guyhockley]

I would like to have my recollection confirmed re: the Nessie front end. ... is it entirely based on the original DiFazio suspension and hub centre steering?
BTW, Nessie sure looked Messy!

Just found these on https://twitter.com/stevencordall
Ex MCN staffer's Twitter feed, snippets of gossip and pictures from "back in the day"

[Michael Moore]

On the late Kawasaki Nessie M&T used a spherical bearing in the hub instead of the kingpin with taper roller bearings as standard for Difazio. Here's Difazio's 1968 patent document

http://www.eurospares.com/graphics/D...GB1274441A.pdf

cheers,
Michael

[husaberg]

Just found these on https://twitter.com/stevencordall
Ex MCN staffer's Twitter feed, snippets of gossip and pictures from "back in the day"

That last pic of Nessie ,does the swingarnm have a rather large kink in it?Does that version have a co-axial gearbox sprocket