World's only twin jet-engine bike drives onto eBay A motorbike powered by a pair of pulsejets popped up for auction on eBay this week. Custom created by jet engine fan Bob maddox as an exclusive model for a wealthy customer, the intention was to build a two-wheeler that could exceed 200mph, biking blog Kneeslider notes. Twin-jet engine Harley Davidson That well-heeled …
Only 200miles/hour? I know a certain NZer (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412080/) that would have scoffed at such a low speed for such a drive system.
Of course, this also falls under the "loud pipes save lives" philosophy so many foolish bikers have (NOTE: foolish bikers != all bikers). Fire this puppy up, and watch as all the other drilled out drag pipe owners' penises whither and retract fully.
I'm sure this bike would make you intensely popular at Sturgis....
Well, I thought (like so many others) that loud pipes would have to make them a little more noticeable. That was until I almost ran into into a loud pipes motorcycle when I was changing lanes, and I realized WHY they don't work. The sound from the pipes was really loud, and of course at those low frequencies is omnidirectional, so it threw me off on WHERE they actually were. I thought they were on my left in the blind spot (I'd seen them over on my left previously). Turns out they were now on the right hand (although in the blind spot gunning for a darwin). Saw them just in time.
Unless you face the pipes to the front of the motorbike (which would mess up the point of EXHAUST), and pick higher frequency directional sounds, that "loud pipes" argument just doesn't hold water.
Back to the article - This is a cool jet-bike suitable for a straight track, as has been observed. No way in hades it would meet street legal emissions standards in most anywhere.
Did you check your blind-spots before or after starting your manoeuvre? It reads like you moved and then checked, which would place you totally in the wrong. The fact that you said you thought they were still on the left also implies you had failed to do a full check before starting to change lanes.
The rider should have been driving defensively (i.e. trying to predict that you would move without doing proper checks) but they were not "gunning for a [Darwin]". You were gunning for a "driving without due care".
Given modern car design, one could have anything in one's right-side blind-spot from a motorcycle to an artic. So one MUST check BEFORE ANY* change in road position.
*There are few exceptions that can be justified.
Uhh, yeah I checked prior to moving, and I was actually tracking the motorcycle prior to starting to change. Motorcycles are hard to see though, and I lost him as he should've been in the drivers side blind spot, not the passenger side blind spot. I still saw them prior going over, but the acoustic signature of where they were was the same as if they were where they were EXPECTED to be based on they're last course/heading prior to their relatively sudden course change, the type only a motorcycle can do. When there is a loud motorcycle near the car, you just know they are somewhere. If I'd changed lanes and hit him, I agree it would've been my fault. That's why I DOUBLE checked the blind spot as I started moving over. Most drivers aren't that careful and just would have run them down. Motorcycles need to behave like any other vehicle - in a predictable manner. Most do, but there are a lot of idiots that don't making a bad name for motorcyclists everywhere.
Anyway, now that I've defended myself... :) The point was that the pipes not only don't help on safety, but actually accomplish the opposite.
The fellow you are describing must not have been very experienced. Never ride in blind spots. End of story. If you must, then exceed the speed limit to get out front so that you are clearly visible. There are a lot of other rules that need to be followed to assure that you are less surprising, and more likely to survive. Being in the right means jack shit for a biker. Among the rules:
>at a stoplight watch the rearview mirrors and keep it in gear in case someone misses the fact that >the light is red AND there is a bike there. (saved my life one time)
never ride in blind spots or next to cars if possible
>when the light turns green then look twice in both directions before entering the intersection.
@multipharious
I salute you sir. A lot of your wisdom holds up for any vehicle. Oddly enough I narrowly escaped getting rear ended by a drunk at a stop sign last week because I was paying attention and stomped on the accelerator to get out of the way rather than a normal slow start. With 175,000+ miles, you clearly ride defensively, and not offensively. No way to get to 175,000 miles on a motorcycle without being sensible. :) Most of my buds were forced to give up their motorcycles after their first crash post wedding.
I think it gets summed up so:
For motorcycles and bicycles: Behave like a car.
For cars, motorcycles and bicycles: Behave predictably.
Yes sir. Good eyes need to be in the back of your head, be it car, bike, motorcycle, or on foot. Glad you were looking!
My close call was a young girl in a Suburban talking on her cell phone. I was watching my mirrors as usual. When it became obvious that the monstrous grill right behind me was not slowing, I darted my head left and right, popped the clutch, ran the red light, and so did she - closing fast. It's a miracle neither of us got hit but cross traffic was light. On the other side of the intersection I pulled alongside her (more by letting her pass since she was really moving), and she looked at me with some surprise as I gawked at her through my open visor...she was completely confused as to what I was on about. The phone never left her ear. She still did not even know that she had run the red light. The expression on her face said that as loud as a billboard.
I still don't blame her, she didn't mean to do it. I was able to avoid the situation, and in the end something NOT happening is the goal.
Stay safe out there! Rubber side down and out of the ditches.
200 MPH isn't all that much, a few production bikes can do it and many more would if they similarly sacrificed handling, and gearing wasn't mated more with racing needs than top speed.
Heck, throw a polycarb bubble around a $4K used sport bike in place of the fairing and put a taller gear on it, use premium oil, rings and raise the RPM governor and you'd be pretty close to 200MPH while still being street legal. You might have reliability issues but this DIY jet cycle may not last too many thousands of miles either.
"You are going to need some pretty impressive ear defenders for that baby." Probably just new eardrums! The original Argus pulsejets used on the V1s were not just incredibly noisy, but also had a very destructive blast wave due to the relatively low frequency of the pulses. The Nazis were desperate to make cheap aircraft using the Argus pulsejets to give an even cheaper option to the Heinkel HE 162 Slamander, but the continual blasting of the pulsejets actually had a destructive effect on wooden-framed and -skinned aircraft like the Messerschmitt 328! Something that can literally blast wood apart just by being run in close proximity is not going to be good for your health!
Jay Leno told a story about his turbo jet helicopter engine powered bike. At a stop light, a car driver kept creeping up his tailpipe as Jay was trying to maintain a space between them. When the light turned green and he pulled away, he noticed the car had a slightly melted front fender.
:: Fast in a straight line. ::
That's 'cause us Yanks are generaly straight-forward. Leave it the Euros and others to think all curvy-twisty. ;-)
:: ...be a hell of a way to arrive at the Pearly Gates though. ::
Arriving at the Pearly Gates on a bike from Hell? Yeah - that's the way to go out in style!
I missed the "design" word ... I was thinking along the lines of "My only chopper is based on a Honda CB750", with the original CB750 being the core of the bike.
Mine's a CB750F (RC04) that I picked up in a junkyard. She was totaled in a wreck, barreling into Fixation Rock on Hwy35 (between Hwy9 and Page Mill Road) at about 95 miles per hour. The driver died instantly. Amazingly, the cases & block/heads were OK. In 1983, I rebuilt her as an old-school hard-tail, with a springer front-end. The chrome bits are chrome, the frame is black, the rest of the paint is BRG, the aluminum is electrolytically oxidized appropriately, and the rims are spokers, with modernish disk brakes (after an upgrade in 1997). All wires & plumbing are hidden in the frame, and she has no bodywork except the fuel tank and light fairings.
She's the most beautiful thing I've ever produced, other than my daughter[1]. Her name is "Gracie", and is the only one of our bikes that my wife will ride pillion on. I've logged nearly 100,000 miles on her (with and without the Wife).The Wife has logged about 15,000 on her own.
[1] By several orders of magnitude ... If you have daughter(s), you grok ;-)
Nah the frame wasn't even based on a 29 Harley frame. It was simply styled after one. And TBH it looks like many frames from that period. I don't understand quite why the builders had to specifically name a 29 Harley frame when they could have mentioned loads of manufacturers' frames from at least 10 years either side of that date.
So the whole thing is using 1920s front forks, 20BC back wheel (no suspension at all), nothing much in the way of brakes, no fairing or any other attempts at aero, and old-school spoked wheels.
Can't imagine why it's one of a kind, and the buyer pulled out. Perhaps bcos getting this up to any kind of speed would be a particularly dangerously stupid idea...?
I know drag bikes that have hit that sort of speed without a fairing, but that's for a very very short time and those things have bum stops so all the load isn't on your arms. The thing that's really missing on this bike is a bum stop. Firstly imagine the initial acceleration, then imagine the aerodynamic drag on your body and all of that load would have to be taken on your arms. You'd slide off onto that unprotected back wheel long before you hit 200mph.
It's a show bike I doubt the owners ever intended it to be used in anger. They probably wouldn't even want to fire up the engines for frear of bluing the chrome.
A sad waste.
Due to the fact that pulse jets run extremely hot (see the video link sent above) and the fact that there is no blue on that metal, I think it's safe to assume this puppy has never been fired up.
Which begs the second question: Do you need to wear one of those shiny silver thermo suits to ride it?
I see no evidence in the ebay sale (which has, incidentally been withdrawn) that this thing has ever even run, let alone at 200mph. Looks like it's purely a show bike.
Anyhoo 200mph has been exceeded with internal combustion power. So that seems pretty lame for a jet bike, let alone a twin jet bike.
As for the claim that it's the only twin jet engined bike in the world, that's a pretty big claim. I know I've seen twin jet engined bikes before. I'm pretty sure the Ballistic Eagle has two jet engines and that is a real competition bike that gets used in anger rather than just being polished.
200mph, skinny tyres, crap brakes an no chute. Presumably that's a one time deal - you do 200mph you die. Those tyres don't look like they're rated to anything even close to 200mph. Actually it's fully rigid so 200mph would probably be a pretty terminal experience on anything with more bumps than the average billiard table.
And like so many custom bikes it wears a Harley badge even though it wasn't manufactured by them and contains very few of their parts. Why do they do that? I knew a man who built a bike with a Harris frame and an engine that was Kawasaki based, but contained hardly a single Kawasaki appart from the cases yet the only badge he put on it was a Kawasaki badge on the tank.
As you can probably tell I absolutely detest show vehicles. It's a vehicle so go should always take precedence over show.
It's been run to 70mph? Oh well that proves it is capable of 200mph and would be safe at that speed.
One more time: With rigid suspension and skinny tyres it would slap itself into oblivion long before it got to 200mph. And that's if the rider could actually stay on it with no aerodynamics and no bum stop. Unless it's been tested to 200mph you can't go round saying it will do 200mph, just on the basis that it has enough thrust (theoretically) to do 200mph. There's a hell of a lot more to attaining a top speed than having the power to do so.
Just watched the video with sound for the first time. That thing really is lame isn't it? The builder expects 100 to 120mph terminal for a quarter mile? Well the Ballistic Eagle mentioned has exceeded 200mph terminal for a quarter mile. 120mph terminal for a quarter mile was achievable on a production sports bike about thirty years ago. Gievn that jet bikes tend to be pretty slow off the line and make up the time by being extremely fast towards the end of the quarter they need a really high terminal speed to post a good time. As such I doubt the ET for this thing would be as fast as a modern 600cc road bike.
Sooo, it's not particularly fast and it's not pretty. Why would anybody spend that sort of money on it?
Let's say you have the better half and two kids, and you need to trade in your pulse-jet Harley, you could always go for a slightly more mundane mode of travel, like a VW Beetle.....
A Jet powered VW beetle. http://www.ronpatrickstuff.com/
(Flame - as in out of the back of such jet powered monsters....)
Every city banker should be issued with one of these for the commute from their Devon mansion to the hastily erected bullseye on the side of their city office. BRA-A-A-A-P* >SPLAT< PFS!
*Official spelling of pulse jet sound effect. Akin to a challenger tank firing its main weapon 300 times per second, if you can imagine such a thing.
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