Diesel Bikes

Cliffy mentioned this at the end of a comment about the Lake Superior ride and I figured that it needed to be it's own thread.. You asked about diesel bikes, here is what I found while snooping around on Google.

http://www.peace65.freeserve.co.uk/Pictures/militaryproduction.htm



RW

Wow - looks good to me

Thanks for posting the link. I could get excited about a second bike that will do 80 mph and gets 120 mpg!! Even if it only came in Marine Corps green....Cool beans.

I will share what they sent me

So I followed the link and then I followed another link "if you are interested in a civilian version" and left my e-mail address. Here is the e-mail I received:

"Production of the civilian version of our military diesel KLR has had to be delayed for a short time. We are just a small company and have been working on this engine for about six years now, however we have been unable to attract any financial backers or partners to the project.

Even though the US Government has pretty much paid for all of the development of the engine, we still need private funding of around $2 million, a very small sum considering the huge market for this particular, world's only high performance small diesel engine, especially in light of current events and current gas prices.

This funding is required for EPA and DOT testing, crash testing, reliability testing (even though we have thousands of miles on the military bikes and upwards of 60,000 miles on a couple of the earlier test bikes), production facilities, marketing, advertising, warranty and spares programs etc., plus a million other details that we are not required to perform on the military units.

All of our resources are currently being used on the new USMC contract for 600 Diesel Combat Motorcycles.

Scheduled delivery of the first production bikes to the USMC is August 2004, with production continuing through 2006.

We had hoped to be building engines for the civilian version alongside the military unit, as this would have reduced cost quite significantly, the cost of 5,000 sets of engine castings from the foundry is obviously a lot less per engine than 600 sets. The same goes for everything else in the engine.

So, although we are still actively searching for a partner / backer, we are sad that we have not yet been able to get this great machine out on the highways. We do however, still hold out hope that someone with the financial resources needed will come along to help us continue on with the project.

Meanwhile, yes we are continuing to build the diesel engines for use in the USMC Diesel Combat Motorcycle, and of course our development program continues on alongside the production line.

With NATO's new requirement for "one battlefield fuel" several NATO countries are currently testing our bikes, all have given glowing reports on the bikes performance, especially the ease of riding even with amateur riders, and of the quiet, smoke free, easy starting diesel engine.

We now have software engineers working on mapping the engine for a new common rail fuel injection system, the same system used on the new Ford Powerstroke and GM's Duramax.
This should give us quite a boost in horsepower over the current mechanical unit and make the machine very tractable under all conditions.

The production USMC version of the diesel KLR is now right at 40 horse power at 5700 rpm with 45 foot pounds of torque. With a power range from 1200 rpm thru 7000 rpm!!

Dry Weight: 369 lbs.
Fuel type used during tests; Diesel / Aviation Kerosene / Biodiesel
Performance: 0-30 mph, 3.3 sec. - 0-60 mph, 8.6 sec.
Maximum speed as tested; In excess of 102 mph.
Fuel Mileage as tested (full military load); 105 mpg @ 55 mph.

Thanks for your interest, and if you know of an enthusiast or someone with the financial resources available that might be interested in our project, please let us know, we need to get the word out there."

Once those military bikes are out there where people can see them, there will be money falling from the sky for them to produce a civilian version. That, or someone will more likely buy their designs and produce the bike themselves.

RW

It looks very similar to this Harley I saw at a recent rally!



It had a thumper engine, and the thing you see sticking up from the other side is an M16 holder and in front two fuel cans. The whole thing was clad in thick green plastic that the mold flashing was somewhat crudely removed from.

Jim