Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127857
RIDING IMPRESSION Drysdale 750-VB tern and came ra crane fo r the flouri shing Australian movie industry to use on loca tion ; or conv erting ATV quads for use by disabled fanners, etc., etc. How Drysdale find s lime to work on bikes as well as all this is a bit of a mystery. But as a motorcycle junkie from way back, apart from competing wi th varyi ng degrees o f success in almost every branch of two-wheeled sport from desert racing to mo tocross, flat track to road racing, he' s also built a variety of innovative machinery - so me co nven- tional, others avant-garde, a few frankly w eird. The outrageous Drysdale 750-V8ยท made in Aust ralia and soon to ente r production. n is the end result of Ian . Drysdale's desire to build "a road-legal factory racer ." Apart from the rear-wheel-steering bicycle he built at school as an entry in a scie nce co m pe tit ion (it proved tot all y unridable), fallin g into the latter categor y is s u rely the two-w he el-d rive Dry vtech desert racer - with hydraulic drive to both wheels and two-w heel steering, built originally in 250cc singlecylind er form , then up sizcd to 750cc Vtw in fo rm u sin g a bored-out Hond a CX650 motor. Perha ps it's fortunate that the com missioni ng of the V8 street bike has pu t the 750cc 2WD /2WS projec t on hold , since being able to ride even its smaller sister is apparently an acquired skill ma stered by only a very few . However, don 't ge t the impression fro m this ra rified engi nee ring ro ll ca ll that the Dr ysdale 750 -V8 is another wacky. project destined to end up as a footno te in the joke book of motorcycle history . It's not. Instead , the eight-cylind er su pe rbi ke p ro ject comes from th e p rac tica l side of Drysdale 's split en gineering persona lity: This is no "w hat-if' attemp t to d on e a two-wheeled equivalent of an American hot rod by squ eezing a Chevy 350 motor into a homemade s tretch -fra me. This is a fine ly engineered, ca re fully d esi gned attempt to crea te the ult imate 7SOcc street bike with a V-eight engine of his own design, into wh ich Dr ysd al e a nd hi s team of co wo r ke rs ha ve p oured lit e ra ll y th ousands of man hours and bucketfuls of mon ey over the past three years. It' s perhaps no coin cidence that the man on the other side of the world with whom Jan has found himsel f in friendly competition to produce the world's first producti on VB street bike, Giancarlo Morbidelli, also has a liking for freakish engineering. How abou t the high-performance 30cc moped he built to tou r his factory aboard? Or the per form ance vers io n of his wife's 900cc Fiat Pand a By Alan Cathcart . Photos by Paul Barshon I'0\ 0\ ,..... 1'-' .,..... ... Ili ..0 ~ ...... 0... Ili en 4 ustralia is the can-do country - a n a tion where problems a re opportunities, where adversity is a challenge, and whe re people don't wonder if they can overcome a d ifficulty , but houi it can be done. With the exception of New Zeala nd , where positive thought has equal power, nowhere else on earth has such a high proportion of "positively" pra ctical pragmatists in its population. Proof ? Look, for example, how Australasians d ominate the mechanic rosters o f World Superbike and Grand Prix racing, or indeed Formula On e as well, out of all proportion to the combined population of the two coun tries and irrespective of the nation ality of the team for which they wo rk. The Australi an rider factory not on ly produces all those star racers - there's a ls o a parall el produ cti on li ne o f mech anics and engi neers to acco mpany them . However, in mo torcycle terms, until recently, this Down Under can-do doctrine was on ly exercised on the products of other na tions - whether luni ng them up to go superbike racing successfully at the hig hest level (like the Ansell Suzuki GSXR750l or bush-m echanicing a quick fix to get yourself or a mate ou t of trouble hundreds o f miles from home, on a bike for which the neares t spare-parts stock migh t be tho usands of miles awa y. But now Aus tralia is coming of age, because in the past six months there' s been a blossoming o f innovative home- grown engineering w orthy of la bella Italia. First there was the outrageous Hun- w ick Hallam V-twin Power Cruiser; then it s ava nt-ga rde, swoopy-Ioo king X1R Superb ike sister set to introduce FI -type pneumatic valve "spring s" to the motorcycle world. Then came the radi ca l-looking Vee Two Squal o, the ultimate two-val ve desmo V-twi n heralding the arri val of a sc hool of sha rk-styled performance desmos from Down Under. And now comes argua bly the most ou t-: rag eous, the most amazing and , in the prese n t con tex t, the mos t Absolutel y Australian bike of all: the Drysdale 750V8 Supcrbike, soon to enter production after being launched in prototype form at the Phillip Island World Superb ike round in March. Tell us, Australia - we go tta kn ow : Is it something in th e water ? Or maybe the beer... . Ian Drysdale 'had a single objecti ve in mind when he started work on his Veight stree t bike back in January 1994. "I wa nted to build a road -legal factor y ra cer - the h ighest-performa n ce mot orcycle that co uld be ridden to the milk bar for a loaf of bread," sav s the 38yea r-old Melbourne-based design eng ineer , whose Ausdale Engineering bu sines s is one o f th o s e innova ti v e companies which in its 10 years of existence has tackled a wide range of esoteric projects in a my ria d of specialist fields - like con verting the mechanical swan used in the Au stralian Ballet' s pro- duction of "Swan Lake" to radi o control; or supervising the fabrication and instal- la tion of ro lli ng-road dyn os fo r the GM/ Holden and Ford car compa nies; or worki ng on the wind tunnel a t Melbourne' s Mona sh University; or developing a lightweight movie tracking sys- shopping car he built while simultaneo u sly d evel o p in g the 500cc GP race r wit h whic h he tried to ad d to the fou r world roa d racing tit leshis 125/250cc bikes had a lready ach ieved? Or the Vsix, two-liter, two-stroke Formu la Two race-car eng ine he built for his son Gianni to go racing with , en route to his pre- sent role as a Formula One driver? Two men with simila r mi nd s - an d similar objectives. "When I heard Morbidelli was buildin g a V-eight, I st opped work on my own project because I thought there was no w ay we co u ld compete, with him be in g better known and more establi shed ," says Dry sd al e. " Bu t th en I learned he was positioning the en gine len gthways in the frame and using shaft drive , which o bvio usly mean t he wa s building a spo rts tourer. That's not at all wh atl - or the two people who originally app roached me, each with the same idea of developing a V-eight motorcycle e ngine - had in m ind . So we restarted the project, and it looks like we may end up beatin g Morbidelli into production but with a very different kind of moto rcycle. If you want to build a sportbike, the engine has to be across the frame for