That is a fascinating bike, and a total craftsman masterpiece. Although the rider position is compromised. I'm sure its handling characteristics are less than optimal, e.g. slow turning, limited turn radius, etc., but certainly not any worse than some Harleys. I enjoyed seeing this video. Thanks for sharing it. Fullminator
Thought 1 - The man's a mechanical genius, although he commented on his plastic gas can spout and I saw he had cracked spark plug boots ... and PERFECT metalwork on that bike! Go figure!
Thought 2 - I wish he had someplace to ride it other than tiny lanes and High Streets and show us "wottle she do mister?"
Thought 3 - I'd love to have a bike with that kind of workmanship and mechanical "presence", just not with pistons the size of 5 gallon buckets .... !!
Thanks!
Lannis
"Why do you wear that thing, Dobby?" "This, sir? 'Tis a mark of the house-elf’s enslavement, sir."
Some blokes will do anything to get a bike to idle at 20 rpm. So, when the engine dies at a stop light you must retard ignition and fish the lever from under the petrol tank, then hope it stays running long enough with sooty plugs to stash the lever?
Allen has made many amazing bikes Honda SS50 V twin Kawasaki 2 stroke triples made into 2 cylinders, 4 cylinders and 5 cylinders including a 4 cylinder watercooled Velocette MAC V twin Kawasaki Z1000 based 6 Kawasaki Z1000 based V8 Kawasaki Z1300 based V12 V10 viper Honda 6 replica
BSA B31 500 "Stargazer" Greeves 200 "Blue Meanie" Greeves 350 Greeves 360 Suzuki GSX1100 EFE "Sorcerers Apprentice" GM500 sprint/LSR bike "Deofol" Jawa 500 "Llareggub" Aprilia RSV Mille "Lo Stregone" '35 & '36 OK Supreme Kawasaki ZZR1400 "Kuro no senshi"
Making an unrideablke unbalanced and probably highly dangerous motorcycle from an aircraft engine is some what old hat. Been doing it since WWI when obsolete engines became available for their scrap price . Interesting exercise for apprentices . I can remeber at least a dozen down here made from either the front or rear 2 cylinders of a Merlin . All of them at least started and some even ran, there was a drag bike circulating for while ( very quickly ). But in reality just a case of "look at me see how smart I am ' Like all those clots who shoehroned a V* car engine into a motorcycle frame. For some insane reason the motorcycle press go gar gars over them when in reality they have no significance to motorcycling at all . Any old idiot can bolt some wheels on an engine & call it a motorcycle but it takes a different level of real engineering skills to make it a real, functional motorcycle .
As I'm a Dubbo boy, we all knew Lucky as a local legend and yes he made this (if its the same one) while there. My dad who serviced RR Merlins during WWII and met Lucky at the local IAME (Institute of Automotive and Mechanical Engineers) was a bit horrified.
This bike was on display at the Bulli show last year and was started, although I wasn't there at that point in time.
I remember Lucky turning up to a race meeting at the local short circuit track (Morris Park), c1980 when we we all rode rice rocket MX bikes, with a pommy scrambler. Most people sneered at it. It was either a B50 or CCM if my dim memory half works.
Cheers Ray
BSA 1969 A65F BSA 1966 A65H Triumph 1968 T120 Kawasaki A1R & too many projects!
Getting back to Alan Millyard's creations, he tends to take English understatement to extremes in his videos.
Despite the "oh, I just cut them into bits with a hacksaw and TIG welded them back together" pitch, there is a massive amount of measurement and setup involved. Engineering-wise, the cut and shut parts won't be anywhere near as strong as the cast or forged originals, but the things are technically interesting and must be immense fun for him to make.
Engineering-wise, the cut and shut parts won't be anywhere near as strong as the cast or forged originals, .
Mmmm, that remains to be seen. And may need seeing to comment. But a good strong TIG fillet weld of something like thin-wall crankcase castings could actually be stronger than the original bits ? Depending on the quality of the weld and the operator.
When I did a TIG welding course, the test for quality welding was that we stuck the welded bits in a press, and pressed away. If it broke across the weld anyplace, that was a fail. If it broke all across the parent metal, that was a good, and a pass. Grinding away most of the fillet weld to make it 'pretty' was a recipe for reducing the strength, big time.
Engineering-wise, the cut and shut parts won't be anywhere near as strong as the cast or forged originals, .
Mmmm, that remains to be seen. And may need seeing to comment. But a good strong TIG fillet weld of something like thin-wall crankcase castings could actually be stronger than the original bits ?
.
That's true. How many times have we found that the chemical bond between thread surfaces in a threaded fastener can actually be stronger than the molecular bonds between the metals that they're joining? Even a large bolt or stud can be so tightly seized together that the base metal will fracture before the seized joint will? And we didn't even design the bond, it formed as part of the oxidation process ...
In the process we used in the factory where I used to work, weldments were found in many cases to be far stronger and more consistent than castings ...
Lannis
"Why do you wear that thing, Dobby?" "This, sir? 'Tis a mark of the house-elf’s enslavement, sir."
Some thing must have changed since I read then taught metallurgy So there is a type of weld now days that is not made by the solidification of a molten metal ? Or is there a casting that does not come about by molten metal cooling & going hard ?
Engineering-wise, the cut and shut parts won't be anywhere near as strong as the cast or forged originals, .
Mmmm, that remains to be seen. And may need seeing to comment. But a good strong TIG fillet weld of something like thin-wall crankcase castings could actually be stronger than the original bits ? Depending on the quality of the weld and the operator.
When I did a TIG welding course, the test for quality welding was that we stuck the welded bits in a press, and pressed away. If it broke across the weld anyplace, that was a fail. If it broke all across the parent metal, that was a good, and a pass. Grinding away most of the fillet weld to make it 'pretty' was a recipe for reducing the strength, big time.
The tensile strenght is all about the cross sectional area which is generally thicker than the thinner parent . From memory it was a square function that came out at around 1.5 thicker .
But there is more to it than tensile strength as the weld being a casting is not particularly flexiable and welds failing by fatigue at the weld parent interface in service is very common and then these is stress corrosion if the weld alloy is not a very good chemical match to the parent metal , let alone oxidation state differentials and electrochemical corrosion potential cause by the variation in the grain structure fom the heat affected zone, through the weld to the HAZ on the other side .
As for Lannis's comment, from any one else I would have put it down to lack of understanding of the mechanics of a thread and corrosion but in his case it is him trolling for an argument .
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