Category Archives: VINTAGE-Cars/Motorcycles
48-Cylinder Kawasaki Motorcycle
Designed by motorcycling madman Simon Whitlock, the bike is built from a series of 48 engines pulled from Kawasaki S1/KH250 (Triple) motorcycles. Each 88cc cylinder from the original bike has been joined together to form six banks of eight blocks each, with every inline-eight functioning as its own complete engine (with its own crankshaft), tied together with gears. It uses six Jaguar E-Type distributors, a BMW transmission and a 75cc pony motor under the seat for starting the whole thing up.
Can you imagine pulling up your three-wheeled scooter next to this thing? You’ll probably feel so low you’ll want to hide under a rock for the rest of your life. Check out the video below to watch the 48-cylinder Kawasaki in action.
1922 Peugeot Grand Prix Racer
Claimed power: 27hp @ 5,000rpm
Top speed: 100mph (approx.)
Engine: 495cc air-cooled SOHC parallel twin
Weight (dry): 286lbs
Ask your local bike trivia champions when the first double overhead cam eight-valve vertical-twin was produced and by whom. Chances are they won’t even get the country right — and they probably won’t believe you when you tell them the answer: the 500cc 1913 Peugeot Grand Prix, designed by the brilliant Swiss engineer Ernest Henry.
Peugeot history
Peugeot lays valid claim as the world’s oldest surviving motorcycle marque, as the company displayed its first bike — the 1.5hp Motobicyclette — at the Paris Exhibition in 1900. Peugeot originally used supplier engines to power its way into the fledgling motorcycle industry, but in 1906 began using its own large capacity (726cc and 994cc) V-twin engines, essentially derived from their car designs. These proved so powerful and reliable that Peugeot’s reputation swiftly grew outside France, resulting in deals to supply other manufacturers with Peugeot engines.
Two of these were British — while the record books tell us that Rem Fowler rode a Norton to win the first-ever Isle of Man TT in 1907, it was powered by a Peugeot engine. Similarly, a pair of Peugeot-engined, British-built NLGs finished first and second in the inaugural motorcycle race at the new Brooklands track in 1908.
Spurred on by these two-wheeled successes, Peugeot decided to construct its own Grand Prix motorcycle racer, employing the latest in automotive and aviation engine technology, of which its designer Ernest Henry was a proven master. In 1913 he produced the world’s first double overhead cam eight-valve parallel-twin motorcycle, the 500cc Peugeot GP racer that, while unquestionably fast and decades ahead of its time, suffered problems with cylinder head cooling.
Development was interrupted by World War I, and when racing began again in 1919 Peugeot developed a completely new, less complicated design that swept all before it.
Saved and restored
Jean Nougier’s 1922 Peugeot Grand Prix racer shares the same engine dimensions as its pre-WWI double overhead cam sister, measuring 62mm x 82mm for a total capacity of 495cc, and produces 27 horsepower at 5,000rpm. The hefty outside flywheel helped deliver good torque at low revs, and together with the dry sump engine design permitted a strong, narrow crankcase for good crankshaft rigidity, with three main ball bearings. Exposed coil springs and two valves per cylinder — note the parallel exhaust ports — were actuated by a massive vertical shaft running off the right end of the crank. The top bevel housing must have been dealt more than a few mighty blows in the course of a race by the rider’s hand, since the knob of the three-speed gearbox’s hefty hand-shift lever sits about an inch away from it. Remarkably for the time, the Peugeot is a unit-construction engine with gear primary drive and a two-plate dry clutch. Magneto ignition and a single carb with siamesed inlet ports complete the engine specification.
The Peugeot’s rigid frame was almost as advanced for the era as its engine, consisting of a double cradle chassis with twin top tubes and vertical seat pillar, to which the slim oil tank is affixed. The steering head is braced for extra stiffness, and is fitted with Druid-type girder forks with side friction dampers. Apparently, the French bikes handled very well by the standards of the day, confirmed by Jean Nougier after parading the bike in his local Avignon street circuit’s retro celebrations. “The performance can be compared to a good Triumph twin-cylinder roadster from the 1950s,” he told me years ago, “once you get over the handicap of the gear change, which isn’t easy to use. But the acceleration is quite brisk, and the straight exhaust pipes mean it pulls cleanly out of slow corners. And for la periode des annees Vingt (the period of the Twenties), the braking is not too bad,” Nougier said.
Read more: source
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1947 TRIUMPH "GRAND PRIX".
Ducati 125 Grand Prix Motorcycle Road Racer
and a testament to the metalworker’s skill. It was created for a 1955 Ducati 125 Grand Prix prototype, a machine based on the 100cc Gran Sport designed by Fabio Taglioni. Nestling in the frame is asingle-cylinder DOHC ‘Bialbero’ engine: in Grand Prix trim, it produced a 16hp at a heady 10,500rpm.
This particular bike was successfully raced by Willy Scheidhauer, who scored wins at Zandvoort and Tubbergen between 1956 and 1961.
The fairing was removed after the ban of 1957: riders discovered the fairings could make a bike dangerously unstable, trading safety for efficiency. All the Ducati dustbins were then destroyed or ‘lost’, so this one was meticulously recreated by Evan Wilcox, using archive photographs as references. The rest of the motorcycle was restored by Hugo Gallina ofVintage Italian Restoration. If you’re thinking it’s worthy of a place in a museum, you’re right—the bike is now owned by the Silverman Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Isn’t it beautiful? [Many thanks to Jose Gallina for the images and information: see more in his wonderful
Stunning and rare Ducati 125 Grand Prix
motorcycle road racer brought to us by Bike EXIF blog.
Cotton motorcycles don’t grow on trees
After seeing the recent Throttle Yard posting for an octet of Cottons for sale, I thought this might prove of interest. I wrote this short Cotton history as my Winter 2009 Pulp Non Fiction column in theAntique Motorcycle Club of America’s magazine — the Antique Motorcycle.
Say the word ‘cotton’ and most people would think of the material used to produce Levi’s jeans or Hanes T-shirts.
But say the word ‘cotton’ around a few motorcycle cognoscenti and another image entirely might emerge – that of a storied British marque famous for winning Isle of Man TT races and other competitions.
In 1913 Frank Willoughby Cotton of Gloucester, England designed a unique triangulated motorcycle frame and patented the idea in 1914. Cotton’s frame was stronger than the spindly ‘bicycle’ diamond-type chassis that was in vogue at the time. Cotton enlisted the help of Levis — another British motorcycle maker — to build two samples of his new frame but the First World War intervened and hampered his plans to bring a complete machine to market. It wasn’t until 1919 that the Cotton Motorcycle Company came into existence, and the first Cotton appeared in 1920.
Purported to have an extremely low center of gravity Cotton motorcycles became a popular mount for racing, and this did not escape F.W. Cotton’s attention. He saddled Stanley Woods on a 350cc Blackburne-powered Cotton in the 1922 Isle of Man Junior TT, and Woods managed a respectable fifth-place finish. (During his 1922 outing on the 350cc Cotton, just about everything that could go wrong, did. He botched the start, having to stop to retrieve some fallen spark plugs. The machine caught fire in the pits. Not long after putting out the flames and back on the circuit, Woods had to stop and wrestle with the valves thanks to a broken push rod.)
In 1923 Woods won the TT aboard a Cotton, and a bit of a sales boom occurred in 1924 after the factory swept the first three spots in the Junior TT. Cotton used a variety of engines in his triangulated frame, including side valve and overhead valve Blackburne, OHV JAP and Villiers two stroke units.
In this 1938 brochure Cotton offered ‘14 Superlative Models’, and advertised that ‘Cotton Stability Makes Speed Safe’. Of the 14 models available there were three 350cc machines, the Model 9/38, 350/38 and 9/Special. These all had OHV JAP powerplants, but the Special was fitted with a high camshaft JAP engine. There were three 500cc motorcycles, the 500/38, 5/Special and 25/Special. A 500cc JAP five-horsepower single was specified for each; the 5/Special was an S-Sports engine while the 25/Special employed a high camshaft unit. The largest Cotton was the Model 600/38 with a 600cc OHV JAP.
In the 250cc range there were three motorcycles, including Model 6/B, 250/38 and 30/Special. The 6/B ran a 250cc OHV Blackburne engine, while the last two used 250cc OHV JAP engines.
All of the machines listed above featured “The famous Cotton Patent Triangulated (frame) – by common consent the Masterpiece of modern design – giving perfect riding position with magnificent stability and controllability. Originated the phrase ‘Speed with Utter Safety.’ Front and rear wheel stands fitted.” Forks were specially-constructed Cotton-Druid girders.
Further specifications include a Burman three-speed gearbox, with a four-speed Burman listed as an option. Carburetion is via Amal TT or Bowden, and ‘silencing’ is carried out “By imposing large bore chromium plated exhaust pipe, leading to a sports cylindrical silencer. These modern upswept pipes remain immaculate, and improve appearance.”
So far, we’ve covered 10 Cotton models. The remaining four are the Model 1/V, fitted with a 150cc Villiers two stroke, Model 1/B with a 150cc OHV Blackburne, Model 2/JC and 2/J, both powered by a 250cc sidevalve JAP – for a total of 14 motorcycles.
Cotton suspended the manufacture of motorcycles during the World War II period, with the factory turned over to the manufacture of war goods. Post-war, Cotton did not immediately return to the production of motorcycles.
By 1953 Cotton’s triangulated frame was of course obsolete, given the rear swinging-arm suspension systems that were coming into widespread use. F.W. Cotton himself retired in 1953, and the concern was branded E. Cotton (Motorcycles) Ltd. Several models were produced, with Cotton making frames only and most every other component bought in.
A letter dated 23 June 1961, addressed to the Nicholson Bros. of Nicholson Bros. Motorcycles in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan enquired after overseas dealers.
“After a quiescent period covering many years the Company has been re-organized during the past year or so, and has once again been obtaining striking results in trials and competitions during the past two years. Production has now reached a point where we are in a position to extend to overseas markets, and we are, therefore, seeking distribution arrangements in Saskatchewan.”
Nicholsons did not take on Cotton, but for 1961 the range included eight models such as the Vulcan 4-speed 197cc Road or Sports and the 250cc Scrambler and the Continental Duplex Frame 250cc. Two-stroke Villiers engines powered all models.
Cotton soldiered on in the late 1960s after Villiers quit supplying engines, building primarily competition machines around Italian-made Minarelli engines and even a 250cc Rotax powerplant.
Cotton lasted until 1980, much longer than many other British ‘cycle builders.
The 1949 BSA B33
Though the company also built large V-twins for 20 years before World War II, its stock in trade remained midsize singles. These were often available at bargain prices and thus sold in large volume.
During the war, BSA supplied more than 120,000 of its M20 500-cc flathead singles to Allied forces, where their simple mechanicals made them reliable and easy to repair.
Top 10 Weird looking vintage motorcycles
2) Harley Davidson Bobcat – So you thought that Harley only made huge V-twins, huh? In the Sixties the Hog people got into this weird partnership with Italian manufacturer Aermacchi and foisted a number of small displacement malodorous piles on the American motorcycling public. But nothing could compare to the Bobcat, with its dented tank, scrawny forks, Schwinn front fender, silly high pipe, and to top it all off, a bumpy lump of bodywork running the entire rear half of the bike that looked like it had been run over on the freeway. Did this homely design set the scene for the dreaded Bobtail in the early Seventies?
3) Sears Puch – For reasons known only to retail historians in Chicago, Sears Roebuck decided to rebadge some Puchs (not Pukes, but close) as Sears and Allstates in order to sell them to anyone insane enough to buy one. Taking the pressed steel school of motorcycle design to outrageous limits, the kyphosic scoliosis of this backbone is enough to scare off even a chiropractor. Throw in oversized fenders, chain guard, paint the whole mess fire engine red, and then prop a fat bicycle seat suspended on the back of the tank and you have a Searsaster!
4) Jawa Bizon – Drawing from the same creative well that created the MZ Trophy ugliramathon, here is another Iron Curtain siamesed tank / headlight with a triple tree running through it. The Commie Red and Siberian Snow paintjob outlines each and every disgusting line on this massive piece of junk. If anyone needed proof that command economies don’t work, they could just put a poster of this aberration on their office walls.
5) Royal Enfield Diesel – I’m kinda partial to the traditional ultra-vintage styling of India’s Royal Enfields, but when it came to building a diesel, they definitely were smoking that wacky tabacky. What were they thinking when they put that big lawnmower chromed sidecover on the side of a scrawny little cylinder spewing out through a thin reed of an exhaust? It looks like they forgot at least half of the top end!
6) Honda Dream – For some reason known only to Hondaphiles, it is generally considered sacrilege to diss the Dream and its “sporty” cousin the Benly, even though they are profoundly ugly bikes. If anyone ever needed a reason to never consider designing a pressed steel frame, the BenlyDream is it. The front fender would keep the rain off a Peterbilt, the chain enclosure and fork covers are a bulky mess, the sidecovers look like they belong on a Craftsman tool chest, and that horrific square headlight! Eeek!
8) Harley Davidson Sprint – Another Aermacchi Harley bastard son of the Sixties was a bike with every line in the wrong place. The monstrous over-finned horizontal single cylinder engine just hanging off the frame set new lows for both styling and engineering, the sidecovers were put on as an afterthought, and they weren’t fooling anyone with that pseudo-Sportster fuel tank. What an Aermess!
10) Suzuki TC – It’s not entirely fair to pick only on Suzuki, as Yamaha, Kawasaki, Bridgestone and Honda all produced equally stupid looking scramblers in those days, but the TC homey tank curvature, speedo embedded headlight and atrocious nameplate on the sidecovers got a bit of an edge over the competition in the weird race !
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Why 4 wheels When I can do with 2
When everyone is trying to build s custom motorcycle using V-twin this lad choose to build his bike around 4 cylinder engine ,
The Heart of this motorcycle comes from a car which happens to be quite rare
Its from the
196O’s 1200cc nsu prinz car engine ,
Brief history on the car
length 4000 mm
Bore & Stroke 75.00 mm × 66.00 mm
Width 1500 mm
Compression Ratio 8.00:1
Torque Output 8.5 kg/m at 3500 rpm
Max Speed 138 km/h Transmission 4 Manual
Technical specs
Sourced spares
air-cooled engine
BSA plunger gearbox
Norton amc clutch,
jackshaft from engine to clutch,
merecedes- benz supercharger
chain final drive,
duplex chain primary drive,
hand shift,
remote brake cylinder from cable front lever for front brake,
Honda fireblade wheels,
zxr kawasaki inverted front end,
Custom Built parts for this bike ( garage )
shed made yokes/bars,
frame,
wheel spindles
seat
footrests,
nuts/bolts,
3″ belt drive,
shed made covers etcsilencer,
manifolds etc out of stainless steel,
silencer has a brass baffle in it thats removable
This bike is one true European bike
West German engine,
Mercedes – Benz supercharger
Norton Clutch
BSA Gearbox
most of the parts of this bike was hand built in his garage and rest sourced from the rarest kind , the builder who happens to be ma friend once told me ” its cheaper to make it then buying one ” he is quite a perfectionist the pictures of his build will make your realize that
Robbie was kind enuf to share more pictures with us
Robinson_yvonne@sky.com
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Flying Merkel – Tribute build
First was the inspiration…..
Second was the design. This is the first project where I’ve designed and had almost every part purchased or figured out prior to starting any fab work. It’s much easier to change it on paper than steel. It took me nearly 6 months on and off to get everything worked out. This unfortunately is not my final drawing, but you get the picture… so to speak. It get’s better, I had to start somewhere.
And finally the real work can begin.
This is where the design work really paid off. I had to have a handrail company bend the lower hoop so I had to modify the radius to match their mandrel dies. Cost me $300 but it came out perfect. You can imagine how nervous I was making that first fishmouth with my cheap Chinese jig.
I couldn’t have done it without the full size pattern. Glad I work at a sign company.
Top tube was bent on a friends hydraulic tubing bender the mid tube I bent on my Chinese pipe bender to get a larger radius. The other tubes are for the rear triangle… also bent on the cheapo pipe bender.
The motor I chose was a Yahama XT500 because they’re single cylinder, the exhaust allows for a single down tube and I got a whole running bike with title for $300. **side note** The further I get into the project the more I question my motor choice but it’s too late now. I may have to do some work to modify the look of the case and cylinder to fit the look. Should be enough power though.
After tacking the hoop to the other main tubes I sat the engine in place to get the mid tube placement. Tack, check for straightness, repeat.
Getting the rear dropouts ready. Again, the use of a pattern is essential.
I made a jig on a CNC router to get my dropouts and rear triangle aligned perfectly to the main frame. I used the jackshaft in the bottom bracket as the mounting point. More on that later.
Here’s a good place the throw in a thanks to my friend Tyler for hooking me with the waterjet dropouts and sprocket mounting ring on the jackshaft…. as well as other parts to be named later.
Even with the jig I was nervous about alignment so tack, check, tack, check and repeat.
More to come… I just want to get this first post out of the way.
Rebuilder
Gnarly Adventurer
Joined: May 2009
Location: Minnesota
Oddometer: 167