Remember Ian McElroy's Kickboxer? That was a really wild concept powered by the Subaru WRX engine. Well, Ian's at it again, he had been tossing around the idea of a diesel bike for some time and thought, "Hey, Subaru makes a diesel, it's more compact than the gasoline engine, it's powerful, gets great mileage, why not?" So he sat down and got to work. 
He says making the engine fit was relatively easy, but he also decided to differentiate the diesel bike from the original with new bodywork, swingarms, and a different turbo layout. Then, just for fun, he figured with all of that diesel power available, why not all wheel drive? So he worked up a second design with power going to both wheels. 
The standard bike features lightweight composite bodywork, under seat radiator, front mounted intercooler, LED lighting, and under engine turbocharger. For the AWD version power is transmitted to the front wheel by way of two chains, a jack shaft, idler sprocket, and a drive axle with a U-joint.
Ian is a stickler for detail, on his first Kickboxer design, Ian said, "I designed the model to be accurate and realistic enough to build a real bike from. If I had the money I could take the CAD files straight to a machinist, and have the parts made today." I assume, this diesel model was created to the same standards.
Wouldn't it be interesting to see someone with the funds, pick this up and build it?
No comments:
Post a Comment