Cars with bike engines

[jon ison]

obviously you've never been out in a BEC then or would realise all this talk about torque is nonsense, if you want too get anywhere near a BEC up too 120mph-ish then expect too spend some serious wedge on a car engine.

[GreenV8S]

Durability is often quoted as the main problem. You can't use much power for long on a bike, the extra weight of a car means you can use more power more of the time. If you manage to get a car as light as a bike you wouldn't need to worry about this problem, but that would be quite a tough thing to do.

[jon ison]

I would have too argue that one too, my Bird engine will be starting its 4th season's racing next year, god knows how many test day miles, even more track day miles and even more road miles, seems pretty durable too me. Ive not seem durability quoted before as a down side btw.

>> Edited by jon ison on Saturday 10th December 16:20

[GreenV8S]

Maybe I've been listening to the wrong people then. What sort of mileage has your engine done now?

Edited for smelling

>> Edited by GreenV8S on Sunday 11th December 12:26

[jackal]

[quote=jon ison]Ive not seem durability quoted before as a down side btw.[quote]

you need to look at a smaple size >1
ask say a trackday organiser who has witnessed something in the order of 600 events in the last 5 years or so
same with the K series, many bike engines have gone bang over the years and this isn't even racing

[jon ison]

ok, not getting into this one.

[rubystone]

Three Wells said:

jon ison said: ok, not getting into this one. jackal has a point, jon. Engines tuned to give huge bhp per litre are not going to be as durable as those of a lesser tune, surely?

erm it's not about tuning surely...it's about the engine being used in an application that it was not originally designed for - and that's not about a hike in power, it's about the loadings being put through it in the cas of BECs.

It could also be argued that a highly tuned engine can be ultra reliable if that work has been carried out using qulaity engineering in the first place.

[Shred-head]

I thought the durability issue was down to the huge revs.

The lower torque of the bike engines means you rev the nuts of them. So twice as many revs means half as many miles before they blow up.