Imagine the power to weight ratio of what the Superbikes are getting these days. Imagine adding 50% more to that! Imagine no more as there's a bunch of crazy enough people to build a 1100cc 2-stroke engine making more than 250hp.
One for the "Because We Can" file: What do you do when you're bored with the paltry horsepower from a garden-variety Japanese superbike? We've seen power output from the Japanese fours plateau around the 150-hp mark (at the rear wheel on a dyno) for a few years now, and the OEMs seem to be focusing more on rideability rather than the exponential increases in torque and horsepower we've grown accustomed to over the last three decades. If they can make 220 hp MotoGP bikes, they can make them for us. If they wanted to.
Stephen Rothwell of The Two Stroke Shop, located in Tropical North Queensland, Australia, decided to tackle this crisis by using tried-and-true technology: the two-stroke engine. Rothwell had heard enough of legendary two-strokes like the Yamaha TZ750, so he decided to build his own legend. Rothwell and partner Wayne Wright (who designed two-stroke motors for GP race teams in New Zealand) were already building complete top-end kits for Yamaha two-stroke motors, so they already had some of the parts and the know-how for such a project.
"What the world needed was an answer to the current literbikes, which we find anemic," Rothwell told me over the phone. "If a bike can't hoist the wheel in 4th gear off the throttle it's not a superbike." The 1100cc three-cylinder TSS1100GP should have no such problems; when completed, it should make 250 hp at the rear wheel and 160 ft.-lbs. of torque. A powervalve will keep things rideable, with a characteristic hit of power as the revs climb. The chassis will be a lightly-modded Kawasaki ZX-10R ("it's beefy enough") and Rothwell expects the wet weight to be under 340 pounds: "when you dismantle a literbike and see how heavy that four-stroke motor is, it's just sad, really." The next project? The 112-hp TSS500 engine installed in a Yamaha WR450 supermoto chassis. "There's nothing 'super' about a four-stroke supermoto," sniffed Rothwell.
Not crazy enough? Rothwell and Wright can build you a 2200cc four-cylinder that could pump out 500 bhp and 300 ft.-lbs. of torque (add 10% if you want to run alcohol), although he admits that would be "far too much for a motorcycle, even by our standards." But the goal of TSS isn't to crank out demented one-off specials for wealthy lunatics. Rather, it's to bring attention to the efficient, powerful, and even environmentally friendly (Rothwell says these engines could be Euro3 and CARB compliant with the use of direct-injection technology) potential of two-stroke motors. The hope is that the Japanese factories will return to the smokey, wheelie-ing ways of their youth (minus the smoke) and build light, fast and durable motorcycles that can scare the crap out of us.
For more information: click here
