Motorcycle engine

[Supermantfl]

I know this may seem horrid to those of you who love keeping the gt the way she is.

I have a friend that moves motorcycle (motorbike for the brits) motors.
he suggested that i drop a 2005 hyabusa powerplant in the gt... it's a 1300cc roughly 185hp motor. Small and moves the Busa over 200mph.

It seems crazy to me, but the super seven uses it nicely when they restore those.

[baronbors]

And you would want to do this because??????????????????

[yellaopelgt]

try this link Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show -- Disney-MGM Studios
I seen this on t.v and swore I heard them say the cars were opels too! It may have been wishful thinking on my part tho!! BTW the motors are from motorcycles as well. Get the 4 reverse gears part?? Thats so they can jump ramps in reverse as the cars are perfectrly balanced.Too cool!!
Joe

[anastosmotors]

I am not familiar with Motorcycle engine , but i believe Motorcycle engine have lots of HP and not Torque. Opel GT is more than 2000 lb and Motorcycle is around 1000 lb. So for cars you need engine with HP and Torque.

Pete

[jvandyke]

I came from the world of motorcycles, sold mine to finance the GT experiment. What about a Goldwing or Valkyrie powerplant? Lots of go in a small package, no?
Engine : 1520cc SOHC, liquid-cooled, 12-valve, opposed-6
Bore x stroke: 71 x 64mm
Carburetion : Six 28mm diaphragm-type CV

[George]

I saw that also and they did say the cars were opels

[Phoenix]

The beauty of all bikes is the fact that they weigh next to nothing. It really doesn't matter how much HP/TQ that they have.

I always say that all bikes are fast, just some are faster. The GSX1300R is a case in point.

[oldopelguy]

I've been looking at a bike motor for my own Locost project, and there are a couple concerns. The first is going to be the lack of reverse, the second is going to be heat, primarily from the exhaust. You can jet-hot a header, but it's going to cost you some HP over what the engine made in the bike.

As to the reverse, well the Locost guys usually use a reversing box made for the purpose and somewhat expensive. I would go a different way myself, to also help with the torque issue, and use the transmission from a big I/O boat. An old Paragon or Velvet Drive will allow you to add a reverse, couple up a driveshaft, handle the torcue without a whimper, and most of all you can get them with varying ammounts of gear reduction built in. (I'd shoot for 1.5-2.2 myself.) The bike motor is built to turn 10k plus (My Katana revs to 12000, and it's the low end bike) so you actually want it to be closer to 5k going down the highway.

Don't forget that there are turbo kits for the 'Busa as well, it's nothing to see 300hp out of them at the wheel.

[jvandyke]

Gold wings have reverse, although I think it's basically an electric motor turning the engine backward or some such nonsense, probably not enough umph to move a 2000lb car.

[Opel-GT]

this is not a new idea its been done before and seems to work quite well

Motorcycle engine powered cars, Motorcycle powered cars

Smar car with motorcycle's Suzuki GSX-R 1000 K5 engine - Google Video

Smart Diablo vs. Ferrari - Google Video

Smart

[Supermantfl]

just sounded like fun... the busa's 1300 put out like 175 horse but the torque is only like 101.9...


is that not plenty? it would sound amazing too if the right exhaust was added.

plus the redline is 11,000... how could that not be fun?

i'm not going to try this... just thought the idea sounded grand

[opelwasp]

If you want a redline of 11,000 then just put in a rotory And you get a reverse gear too.

[West Coast GT]

About ten years ago a guy in San Diego told me his son put a motorcycle engine in his Opel GT for autocrossing. Don't know whatever happened to it, but I heard it worked just fine.

[Supermantfl]

ya... she's pretty light... kinda like a super seven. and those do 150+ with a busa motor.

I was just curious.

it would screem and have plenty of power i should think... but no reverse would stink.

[DaBo]

hhhhmmmm

I got an old KZ1300 (inline 6 cyl) sitting out in the shed..........

[Burst]

Remember the Honda 600's from the EARLY 70's Before the CVCC Civic?
They used a fairly stock motorcycle looking air cooled Honda twin coupled to a fully non-syncro transmission. 10" tires if I remember correctly also.
A neighbor of mine had one back in the mid-80's.
Did real well on gas mileage, but was kind of a slug.

[jlthunder]

Originally Posted by Burst Remember the Honda 600's from the EARLY 70's Before the CVCC Civic? Did real well on gas mileage, but was kind of a slug.

Yup, they had 2 models. I believe they were $1500.00 and drive it out the door. I believe they were 2 cycle engines too. Attached is a photo, rather poor though. This was the "Accord" model.

[namba209]

JT, Honda didn't get in to 2-strokes untill they built the XR series bikes. The 600 was a 600cc twin 4-stroke. Had many a ride in those "skoshi cabs" during my war games years.

[jlthunder]

Thanks. I thought it had an oil reservoir for a 2 stroke engine, but I must be thinking of something else. I remember finding one in 1980 in a junk yard complete. I wanted it, but I had my eye on a '74 Capri. Needless to say, I ended up with a '72 Raylle(manta). That is where it all started
Now back to our regularly scheduled thread

[opelbits]

Originally Posted by DaBo hhhhmmmm I got an old KZ1300 (inline 6 cyl) sitting out in the shed..........

Wanna sell it? I have a friend who just recently moved to Wichita...

[madhatterpdc]

I am sure that this has been tossed around here before, but I'll toss my opinion here for fun.

Bike engined cars (or BEC) sound like a great idea. Believe me, a Busa powered Locost has been on my list for years. But you run into a lot of limitations real fast, low-end torque, reverse, and on-off clutch engagement will get you started (but we can also talk about exhaust routing, steering column routing, and the engine having to sit side-saddle to get the driveline to line up).

Each of these hurdles has been overcome with some extremely innovative ideas (shame the big three doesn't pay more attention to the "open-source" car building movement). Shorty gears and/or forced induction make the gutless launches moot.

For reverse, there are gearboxes available that include a reverse. One guy got quite a bit more creative and installed a set up that involved turning the motor off and engaging the starter motor with reverse polarity so that it spun backwards.

Clutch engagement is notoriously snappy. Overcome with some modifications to the various pivots and careful selection of clutch disc material.

"People buy horsepower, but they like torque"

You can definitely tell when someone that is talking about "torque" and "horsepower" doesn't understand the differences and the relationship between the two. Torque is a measure of force. That's it. How much mass can be moved. Horsepower is a calculated extrapolation of torque, that is used as an indicator of how quickly that same mass can be accelerated.

HP = (RPM x torque)/5,252

In other words you measure torque and you calculate horsepower. Since calculating HP's is related to engine RPM, we surmise that HP is an indicator of rate of change, or acceleration. I am doing a terrible job at condensing this explanation but I think that I am pretty close to making my point. So what does this have to do with installing a 1.3 litre Hayabusa motor into a classic Opel?

Most of the Opels that are available in North America (Rionart notwithstanding) have a weight of around 2,000 lbs. After you remove the original iron engine and transimission, and install the 'busa running gear, I am going to guess that you are somewhere around 1,800 pounds, that's about 10%, most of it over the front wheels. So the car is now lighter overall with a drastically improved F/R weight distribution in a GT, perhaps a bit rearward in a 1450 chassis. Now in terms of acceleration, torque is going to be the motivating factor, but the calculated horsepower will be the indicator of how quickly that torque can be applied.

For all that effort, I think an Opel is just beyond the upper weight limit of what would be fun. For all that effort, a Miata motor or a rotary motor would do much better.

Unless of course you were to take two Hayabusa motors and weld them together at the crankshaft.

Radical DVD - lo-res

[2 Fast 4 U]

Originally Posted by George I saw that also and they did say the cars were opels

Opel Corsa

[spdkilz02]

cars were definately opels, i have about 10 pics of them...i was there last week and saw the show. and no they dont do any jumps in reverse, they have a car that is completely backs so it looks like it is in reverse. but ill put up some of the pics when i have some more time.

[bigben]

I've been thinking 2-stroke in a car for quite a while. The lack of low end torque and short engine life are a couple of drawbacks. On the other hand, high end power and the extreme light weight are two extremely big plusses. I wonder how my Polaris XLT engine would do in a light car. It's 580cc bored .020 over so probably about a 600cc. With performance pipes it puts out around 130hp (at 9000 RPM) and I'd say it only weighs about 100 lbs! Now, how is that for power to weight ratio
You could even incorporate snowmobile variable clutches for the tranny. If you rob the secondary clutch and drive assembly off of a touring sled you'd even get reverse.

[namba209]

Ben, I'm kinda curious, how much do you think you'd have to slip the clutch just to get it moving? An Opel will weigh quite a bit more than a snowmobile. IDK if they use a multiple disk clutch pack, like the bikes do, but that would make the clutch live lnger.