Any of you crazy kids ever thought, tried, wondered about a m/c engined bug, heaps being used in all sorts of cars now, wondered if anyone has tried and succeeded or failed???
Thought a Goldwing 1500 flat 6 would fit nice, must be heaps of these in the USA sitting around doing nothing.
Cheers for your thoughts.

You would have to use one that made a similar rev range.

It's been hashed over and there are a few interesting attempts out there. The main things to think about are:

1. Motorcycle engines put out lots of power, but are not designed to put out that sort of power continuously. If you're doing it for giggles and you don't mind a 500 mile rebuild time a motorcycle engine may be for you.

2. Most of the successful motorcycle engine transplants are into very light vehicles. A VW is on the high end of the weight range.

3. Gearing is an issue. Do you use the MC gearbox or try to link it to a VW gearbox?

4. Most motorcycle powerbands are very narrow. You may need more gears than you have to keep it on the pipe.

Hi

I went to Yamaha HQ last night for trade evening with my work.

The bike motors make pretty impressive hp, we were able to examine a R1 motor 998cc (182 PS at 12,500 rpm, and a torque output of 115.5 Nm at 10,000 rpm with natural aspiration.) pulled completely apart, very impressive but I'm not sure how long one would last powering a comparatively heavy car like a Beetle, a Smart car maybe. The big end journals were only about 25-30 mm and the con rods were just a little too big to put on your key ring

They also make a bike called a V Max, 1679cc V4 engine 147.2 kW (200 bhp at 9000 rpm, and torque output of 166.8 Nm@ 6500 rpm. This bike does 9 second 1/4s from the showroom and a special version was built in Japan with 280 PS, still naturally aspirated.

These look like impressive numbers, but look at the torque figures, the new VW Polo 1.4 makes 130 Nm@4200

Steve

The big motorcycle engines are mostly fine pieces of engineering. A few years ago I fitted a Suzuki Hayabusa 1300cc engine to my son's PRB clubman,a very light car. Apart from some big and small hurdles, the result was a very fast little car - 1m 2.3s at Wakefield Park!
One major problem is a lack of reverse gear. This was overcome by fitting a (very expensive) Quaife reverse box in front of the tailshaft. Interestingly, this gave an exiting 6 speeds - backwards!

Cheers, Greg

Hi

I read somewhere that to get a reverse gear with a bike engined car you fit starter motor and ring gear on the sprocket, you just engage the starter when you want to go backwards.

Steve

That's not a bad option, if there is enough room down there. Or you could do what they do on the Aussie Legends - fit what looks like a windscreen wiper motor & a big gear wheel near a rear brake rotor!

Cheers, Greg

Here's a Golf with a Hayabusa engine...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xdks-j3yt0&NR=1 

hth

I really don't know why someone hasn't done it over here. There are hundreds of lotus7 replicas with bike engines in the UK. These cars are the same weight as a SWB buggy. Fireblade and busa engines seem to be the faves in the UK. There's also a busa powered KE20 corolla rally car in NZ. It's an absolute weapon. If I don't build a rally car for the kids, I'll build some sort of khanaspecial and it may well have a bike motor. These engine/trans setups make for an easy midmount conversion. A buggy with one would handle a lot better than with an aircooled motor too.

This is a graph comparing an older Hayabusa motor (the newer ones are about 50cc bigger and make more power) with a stock type 4 VW motor. You need to compare rear wheel power like I have. I have also shown a curve for a Hayabusa that is geared down twice as much, so it will be revving twice as high as the rpm on the chart, but you can still see that for a given gear it will be able to reach a higher speed than the VW motor (even with the lower gearing). The bikes are geared to do over 300kph, you would only need to gear the car to do 200kph.

This would be heavier than a beetle -

Here's a better vid of the Golf;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUH8S5wvK0M&feature=related

As for the original post, I would go with the gold wing motor. The shaft drive set-up will make life more difficult for the conversion and won't be as efficient when done. The Gold wing motor also isn't very performance oriented.

On the street you can't use full throttle in the car for very longer either. The motorcycle engine won't be working that much harder in the car if your cruising around. The VW beetle originally had a 25HP engine, so the 150HP+ bike engines won't be working that hard to move them around.

There are plenty of bikes that get flogged at full throttle at track days regularly and it doesn't seriously effect their life.

I had a play with some numbers. A stock Suzuki Hayabusa will do the following speeds in each gear;
1 - 136
2 - 184
3 - 234
4 - 278
5 - 314
6 - 342kph

Obviously that is very tall gearing. In a car I'd gear it down so the top speed is only 230kph instead of 342kph. This would give the following speeds in each gear.

1 - 92
2 - 124
3 - 157
4 - 187
5 - 211
6 - 230kph

If you put it in a stripped out VW you could easily get the weight of the car, fuel and driver to 800kg or less. This would give the following performance figures;
0-100kph = 4.5s
1/4mile ET = 12.5s
1/4 speed = 175kph

So from those performance figures you can see that it won't be working very hard to drive the car around at a normal pace.

I edited my post above with some more info to show what I mean. Moving the car isn't that much hard work.

A Hayabusa doing 200+kph on the autobarn (they sit on even higher speeds than that happily) will be working harder than it would pushing a bug at 100kph. Bikes cruising at high speed wear the rear tyre out quite quickly, the engine really doesn't care that much.

Bikes are made to cruise at higher rpm, it doesn't cause them any issues. Mine cruises at 5,000rpm at 100kph.

Why does anyone want to fit another type of engine in a VW ? Is it to get HP or reliability ? In my book the ideal would be a big HP VW engine that was RELIABLE!!!! They are light, and fit neatly in the space provided. There are plenty of big HP VW engines about, and plenty of reliable ones, however to get a combination of the two needs a good engine builder (fairly hard to find), and money (even harder to find)!

Motorcycle engines, particularly big ones, are great..............in motorcycles!!!!!!!

Cheers, Greg

A lot if I lived in Germany.

Trust me, the bike engines are plenty tough. There are a lot of turbo kits for Hayabusa's. Getting 280HP is relatively easy. There was a guy in NSW that had a Suzuki Hayabusa turbo that kicked out 500-600HP on the dyno. He's ride it to the drag strip, do 8 second quarter mile runs (fighting traction and wheelstands most of the way) and then ride it home again. They are very tough motors, moving a VW around isn't that difficult for a 1300cc motor.

What would better than a Hayabusa?....... 2 Hayabusas. There is someone - in Sth. Africa I think - who is building V8 engines using 2 Hayabusa engines! Big capacity, big HP! WOW.

Cheers, Greg

Radical in the UK make the Hayabusa V8's

http://thekneeslider.com/archives/2007/07/05/hayabusa-v8-grows-up-28-liter-455bhp/

http://thekneeslider.com/archives/2008/10/28/bad-dog-215-cubic-inch-v-twin/ 

Here's a bike engine that'll move a car!

http://www.bosshoss.com/view_bike.asp?x=BHC3LS3SS 

Quote:

Originally posted by GeorgeL Here's a bike engine that'll move a car! http://www.bosshoss.com/view_bike.asp?x=BHC3LS3SS

Trust the mechanical engineer!


He knows wat hes doing, cause his opinion is professionally qualified!!