Bikes with two engines?

I also believed that time dilation effect was due to adrenalin until I started taking beta blockers which stop the adrenalin rush. These days. if I have a moment, I simply cope with it in the cold hard light of day and I still have the time dilation effect. The adrenalin rush does not help anything, it is probably a primordial response to danger which prepares you for flight or fight. But it is un-necessary. Before I took beta-blockers, I used to suppress the adrenalin response and that is probably the worst thing you can do. If you were living in the wild, you fight the tiger and burn off the cholesterol which is formed as a result of the adrenalin rush. This is one of the things about workplace stress - you cannot bash your boss when he gets right up you over some triviality. During my life I had both the stressful job and the adrenalin rush from racing motorcycles. At age 65, I could not walk 15 feet without having an angina attack, I also had three strokes. However I am brand new now - after two major operations.
I'm glad your health issues are working out for the good. I have been lucky in that respect, but I certainly don't behave the same at 67 as i did when I was young. I don't bounce like I used to.
 
I find I ride better at age 76 than I ever did previously. It seems that if you ride for long enough, almost everything that can happen has happened, so everything is easier to cope with. When I ride on a race circuit, I am totally relaxed - (as soon as the motor fires, I am never going to crash again ). It takes 5 laps and I am up to 95% of race speed. It would take 5 days of racing to get the final 5%.
I would say this though. These days if I race, it is in 'historic racing' - the young guys are fast, but they are more tyre dependent. When we raced years ago, we had crap tyres - so the way we rode was always more careful but not necessarily slower. These days the modern tyres put guys with the old mindset a fair bit ahead. To me the old tyres used to be like trying to stand up on ice. Your brain was always glued to the rear tyre contact patch.
 
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Sorry Alan but what has that got to do with 2 engines, we all know about your circuit riding but this thread is about 2 engine motorcycles, not what you do in your old age riding around around around, sorry if I sound a bit well I don't know, but you seen to be off course in what this thread is about.
Bikes with 2 engines.

Ashley
 
The point I am making is about functionality. When you design a bike to simply do straight line blasts down a straight, can it ever be used for any other purpose and is the exercise of any real benefit to every-day riders ? I can see the point about getting an adrenalin rush - but what else ? I could get a bigger scare from crash-landing an aeroplane.
 
The point I am making is about functionality. When you design a bike to simply do straight line blasts down a straight, can it ever be used for any other purpose and is the exercise of any real benefit to every-day riders ? I can see the point about getting an adrenalin rush - but what else ? I could get a bigger scare from crash-landing an aeroplane.

Alan, I don't think you understand your own point...

You said the point is 'functionality'.

Well, the functionality of a dragster is to cover a fixed distance from a standing start in either a bracket time or the shortest time.

Cornering, and all the other things that you hold dear, are simply not functionally required.

A dragster designed for cornering would be seriously dysfunctional !
 
Yes designed for one thing to go as fast as they can down a straight 1/4 mile and beat the other bike beside you, they aren't designed to turn and you don't want them to turn going down the track at the speeds they do.
Look at the work that is involved in getting those speeds and the courage to be able to sit on one is a feat in it self, it take a good team working together for one thing, to be the fastest on the day.

Ashley
 
I must be getting old - my memory is fading. Years ago I rode at a couple of drag meetings at Calder Raceway. A friend of mine was disdainful and said he wanted something with corners. Drag racing is a car thing - most of the car guys are chicken-shit. The second drag meeting I rode at was eventually cancelled because of rain. I would have kept competing but the car guys cried too much. I remember I had the shits because my entry fee was not returned. In Australia, bike drags are not televised, but the car drags are like watching paint dry. I would never encourage anyone to road-race a motorcycle, because you can get killed doing it. But if you survive the first 5 minutes, you will probably live forever.
When I first started road racing, my two very young sons watched me crash at about 100 MPH. I am forever grateful that happened, because it meant I never had to watch them riding racing motorcycles. One of them had a ZZR750 Kawasaki - took me for a ride as pillion passenger. He rode through an S-bend on a main road at about 50 MPH. When we got home, he said 'how was that, Dad ?'. I said ' very good, Geoffrey'. I did not tell him that I had been through that bend absolutely flat strap in top gear. These days there is a new roundabout in the middle of the bend.
 
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Well, I gotta say it, I think double engined drag bikes are just fabulous, the engineering, the creativity, the dedication, the absolute focus on a single goal. Plus the noise, the spectacle, the excitement. Just f-ing fabulous !!

I saw the V8 TZ drag bike at Santa Pod years ago (it kind fell off the scene for a while and is now re surfaced and for sale). Not strictly double engined perhaps, but grafting two 4 cylinder two stroke top ends onto a home made bottom end seemed even more impressive to me.

When I saw it, it was still 'under development' and didn't have a great weekend. But the sight and sound of the thing was, well, fabulous!

What I couldn't work out, then or now, is how one can make a V8 two stroke work. I can't see how the primary compression (in the crank cases) can work?

Anyone know??
 
I have seen a 500cc V4 Yamaha two-stroke which was two 250cc motors welded one on top of the other, one with the gearbox cut off. The two cranks are geared to the same clutch.
 
I have seen a 500cc V4 Yamaha two-stroke which was two 250cc motors welded one on top of the other, one with the gearbox cut off. The two cranks are geared to the same clutch.

Sounds like one of Alan Milyards creations. Yamaha did build a street version of their 500cc two-stroke V4. I always called them "The REAL Kenny Roberts replicas, much to the chagrin of RD 400 KRR owners. Never sold new in the US, but Canadian and gray-market examples are around.
 
do some internet searches on the v8 evenrude outbord.

What I couldn't work out, then or now, is how one can make a V8 two stroke work. I can't see how the primary compression (in the crank cases) can work?

Anyone know??
 
Every rod throw would have to have a separate pre-compression chamber, so a twin crank would probably be easiest. Even V-twin 2-strokes have to have the cylinders offset enough for two chambers. Enough offset for 2 banks of 4 cylinders would make for an impossibly wide engine. Of course, you could mount the engine inline with the wheels rather than transverse.....
 
this is definitely twin crank.

Bikes with two engines?
 
Here's the Evinrude V8. Imagine that across the frame of a motorcycle. Looks like some fancy-schmancy port casting at the cylinder level.

Bikes with two engines?
 
When you double the number of cylinders, you rarely get double the horsepower.
 
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