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Thunderstar 1200 Diesel
This is where we are going to end up after peak oil productivity somewhere in the next 50 years or so....
Have a look at this!
Thunder Star 1200 Diesel by Star Twin
February 25th, 2005 by Paul Crowe - "The Kneeslider"
Stop the presses! er… stop the keyboards, I love this! Star Twin, a company over in Holland, has designed and built the Thunder Star 1200 TDI Sportbike. This is a 1200cc, three cylinder turbocharged direct injection diesel. They started with a 3 cylinder diesel engine from the VW Lupo, redesigned numerous parts using SolidWorks 3D computer modeling software, created patterns from those models and had them cast in aluminum. They use an FJ1200 5 speed gearbox. The frame is their own design.
Power output begins at 80bhp and 165 foot pounds of torque, BUT, a bit of remapping of the engine controls increases this to 120bhp and 250 foot pounds at 5500rpm! The bike weighs 450 pounds. You do the math, by my calculations that results in an ear to ear grin. The bike is not to the production stage yet and they are exploring lots of different configurations, touring, commuter, etc.
I saw this in Sport Rider magazine and looking around the net found lots of references but info is a little sparse, the Star Twin site is all in Dutch so it takes a bit of translating to get much more. Lots of pictures here. Listed below.
There are some other weird and wonderful examples of man's fascination with two wheels here...
http://thekneeslider.com/archives/2005/02/25/thunder-star-1200-diesel-by-star-twin/