| Author | Message | ||
     Gentleman_jon |
This incredible insight occurred to me on a visit to a Harley Dealer with a lot of left over Buells. Sitting right there on the floor, was a very rarely seen Military Harley Davidson, with nothing but an overhead cam, Rotax 500cc single sitting right in the middle of it!! Sooo.......Natcherly I immediately realized that this was the prototype for a Rotax OHC water cooled Vee Twin for the Buell, ( can't fool me:-), that had accidently been shipped from the Buell skunk works to an unsuspecting Long Island dealer, with a bunch of left over Buell road bikes. God it is hard to be a Buelligan when there is snow on the ground!!! Can anyone confirm this?  | ||
| Trojan |
You may joke, but it appears that Aprillia are keen to produce their own V Twin superbike engine to replace the Rotax developed unit in the current version of the RSV. That would leave Rotax without a customer for it's gorgeous motor......Erik!! | ||
| Court |
The military HD w/Rotax is neither secret nor rare. Now, see if you can find one of the bomb casings HD made for the military. | ||
| Kaese |
GentlemanJon, how much was he trying to sell the beast for? I have never seen one of those. | ||
| Gentleman_jon |
Keith- The bike is listed on eBay. Here is the URL: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4529693582&indexUR L=2&photoDisplayType=2#ebayphotohosting It is a model MT 500. The Buy it Now price is $7500. In the wonderful Harley tradition, the price they are asking in the show room is $10,000. I am afraid I don't know anything more about them, but it looks like Court does. | ||
| Dano_12s |
Court,while on the York tour awhile back I was aloud to peek behind the "wall"..amazed to see all the#250+#500 casings floor to ceiling. | ||
| Gentleman_jon |
Heads up, ye faithful. It may be simply my overactive, snow bound, imagination, but I think I might possibly have detected a semi-official non-denial from Court, for whom, I have certain reasons to believe, the most intimate Buell secrets are, shall we say, more than moderately well known. Now that the venerable Matt from Trojan, possibly our leading offshore Buelletician, has almost confirmed the possible availability of the motor, one can only conclude that I have may have, in all innocence, stumbled on to something big. REALLY BIG. Please confirm. Anonymous? | ||
| Blublak |
A buddy of mine told me about buying a '45 WL new in the grease bags for about 15 Pound Sterling back in the late 60's. Turns out they were clearing an old military store house, you bid on a box, site unseen and when they opened it, if it was weapons, you got 2X your money back from them. Anything else was yours to keep. He had a local shop assemble it for him and spent a year there riding it. Not realizing what he had, he sold to to the shop prior to coming home for a nice profit (something like 900% profit on his purchase and they 'ate' the re-build costs he'd paid them a year before) Just shows to go ya, you can never tell what you will find just lying around somewhere.. Later, | ||
| Davegess |
REALLY BIG. Please confirm When h e l freezes over | ||
| Reepicheep |
I saw the Rotax specs somewhere, I forget where. On the Duke II site maybe? Anyway, they were decent, but nothing to die for, and I think it would be a step backwards for reliability. Probably more then one Rotax motor though. | ||
| Ravensmith22 |
Those MT500's are strange creatures. We had one at the shop for a while. Very light, but very tall. Never rode one, couldn't reach the ground if I sat on it. I'd also hate to be the one riding pillion, that has to be "for emergency use only". | ||
| Court |
>>>in the grease bags That was cosmolene, not grease. The accurate, and operative word, above is "stumbled".  | ||
| Mikej |
http://www.brp.com/en-CA/ Jon, Let your imagination fly free.  (Been watching these guys for a few years now.) | ||
| Gentleman_jon |
Fellow Streetfighters-- Do my eyes deceive me? A second semi-official non denial in as many hours? A confirmation that your humble servitor has indeed "stumbled" upon something? This what the new motor looks like, thanks to Mikej.  As far as reliability is concerned, all reports are that the model V990 Rotax engine achieves a Japanese, that is to say, a very high standard of consistent operation. It is even more compact than I thought, might even allow the wheelbase to be tightened up a bit, if anyone dared to do so:-) I guess all we can do now is wait for "anonymous" to set the record straight. Rather curious that he is still lying doggo:-), isn't it? Erik? | ||
| Dr_greg |
Well, as the owner of both an '03 XB9R and an '00 Mille RSV, my absolute dream bike would be the XB9R chassis with the RSV engine... | ||
| Buellman39 |
Thats a bad @ss looking engine!  | ||
| Tarmac_eater |
We use to have one of those bikes at harley when i worked there. Very cool bike and i actually got to sit on it. She seems like she would be alot of fun. Alas someone bought it ,hopefully shes in a good home. | ||
| Gentleman_jon |
Greg, No reason on God's green earth why a professor of mechanical engineering like yourself, couldn't pull an Alan Wilzig! Wilzig, a prominent New York Banker, and Italian motorcycle enthusiast, thought the perfect motorcycle would be a Ducati, with an MV Agusta motor in it, ( or was it the other way round?). In any event, the merger was made, and reported in with great elan in the Robb Report: he kept the bike in the bank's boardroom! Now Greg, since you already own most of the necessary parts, all you need to do is assign the project to some willing graduate students, and voila : Buell Tuono!! ( Tuono MEANS lighting in Italian, for God's sake:-) Shouldn't be too many problems. Of course the Aprilia chain is on the left side, the Buell drive is on the right, but that's no biggie is it? You can scrap the whole engine isolation thing, because the Rotax engine doesn't vibrate very much, ( as if I have to tell YOU!), because of the anti vibration shafts. Squeezing the radiator in will give your students something to think about, that's for sure:-), but hey, they gotta earn that degree, am I right? Oh, Glitch, would you mind terribly giving everyone an idea of what the new Buell Tuono Speciale might look like? Uh, Greg, you do want it in the Lightning version, don't you? | ||
| Court |
Hey and you could get Mike Cyz and the Hanlon's to fianance it....maybe even with some public business development funds from the state... Now we're talking...... | ||
| Gentleman_jon |
Court, Welcome aboard!! I knew this was your kind of project right from the old git go. Of course, I know we can count on you to get Erik and Jeff Bleustein on the page too. How great is that:-) | ||
| Riderx09 |
IS there anyone in here that doesnt mind the idea of keeping a push-rod v-twin in buells, I know that they are limited with their power out-put capibilites,but i like my 45 degree ohv pushrod engine i like the power-band i like knowing that if anything happens i could rip it apart with my eyes closed. It just seems that putting some over-head cam liquid cooled forgien engine is selling-out the buell image and idea. When your thrashing the street i dont think the comman man needs 120hp.. i dont know im bi-ist but i think if you want all the fancy motor but a TL or a RC etc...just my thoughts | ||
| M1combat |
That thing is water cooled yes? I don't think we'll see one in a Buell for a while. How much does it weigh wet? | ||
| Mikej |
Riderx, I have no problem with the engines in the tubers. And while I haven't had to open up my transmissions yet I feel it was a loss to lose the trapdoor tranny concept as it relates to XB's. And on the XB's I don't like how difficult it is to remove the sparkplugs or pop the rocker covers off. That pretty much sums up the only (apart from one or two other issues) problems that I have with the XB's in general. Does Buell need a new engine? No. Are they developing a new engine with a definite public market timeframe currently? I don't know. Are new, bigger, faster, more powerfull engines in bikes interesting and fun to see what is developed next by various companies? Yes. Do I need something more? No. Would I like something more? Sure. Am I happy with what I have? Yep, for the most part. Will a new Buell be in my near future? Probably not, but I'll wait until July to say for sure. Am I casually shopping for a new or used bike? Yep. Does Buell currently have a model that fulfills what I'm shopping for? Nope. Would that Bombardier/Rotax engine above make a difference? Not to me, not now anyway. Do I forsee that engine above being put into a motorcycle?  Do I forsee Buell or Harley using that above engine in any production bike in the near or forseeable future? Nope. Could I be wrong? Yep. 'scuse me now, I think I'll go check the classifieds to see if any Flatheads are listed. | ||
| Riderx09 |
Im not saying the current motor is the best it can get i know that,theres always room for improvment.I would just like to see the basic design and function concepts remain the same. I would like to see a 6-speed cassette type tranny,ditch the primary chain, and maybe some 4-valve heads | ||
| M1combat |
Four valve heads would be nice... We'll only need a six speed when we have >120RWHP (unless we'll just use it for a cruise gear/OD), I wouldn't mind having one really. I would like a trapdoor for the transmission, but I understand that the non-trapdoor helps with rigidity... I do NOT want water cooling... If Erik HAS TO go there to get >120 reliable RWHP, I'll buy it, but I'd rather he do it w/o water. I would also like to see a 10K RPM air cooled V-Twin in a Buell . | ||
| Dr_greg |
RiderX09, I really don't mind the old pushrod OHV motor in the XB9R; I especially like the fact that it's oversquare. HOWEVER...and this is a BIG however...when you crack the throttle on a Rotax V990 (Mille RSV) it just has SO MUCH TORQUE and sounds SO GOOD, and is SO SMOOTH that I can't help but dream about that engine in the gem-like XB chassis. And the V990 is pretty much bulletproof. The XB9R still fits me the best and feels the most natural of any bike I've ridden...and I've ridden a lot! But, man, I would still kill for a crossbreed of the XB and the Mille. | ||
| M1combat |
Hmmm... I know it should be taken w/ a grain of salt, but Sport rider says... XB9 - 61Lbs of torque 2004 Mille "R" Factory - 70.5Lbs of torque XB12 - 77Lbs of torque 2004 Mille "R" Factory - 465Lbs Wet 2004 XB12R - 461Lbs Wet I'm pretty sure that the actual "Out the door" price on a 12R is less as well, and you get the SWEET chassis . | ||
| Charlieboy6649 |
Ahhhhhh, the numbers!!!! Thanks M1, that air cooled lump is just fine by me! I love my two valve air cooled lump. Especially when I'm passing the squidlies in third! | ||
| Court |
Wouldn't it be funny if we were over here playing "what if" and something very interesting happened at Buell while we were otherwise engaged? | ||
| Gentleman_jon |
I just KNEW it! And now, finally, we really have the semi-official, non-denial, attempted misdirection I was looking for: if Court suggests "something interesting" might be happening at Buell, that's good enough for me! Obviously a rather significant development is afoot in the engine room! Is it definitely going to be a Rotax V900? I must say that I am not prepared to say yes or no authoritatively at this point, although I still think all the evidence points in that direction, and one or two other members seem to think it is a good idea, especially Dr. Greg who rides both motors on a regular basis. All I can do at this point is suggest that all Buelligans do the following: 1. Keep the faith. 2. Continue to working on your riding skills on a daily basis: you may riding just a bit faster in the future. 3. Take advantage of this lull in the action to review and upgrade if necessary, your protective riding gear. 4. Keep your ear to the ground, and those emails coming. 5. Check your tire pressure, and adjust your suspension to cold weather settings if necessary 6. Stay tuned to this station! |
