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/128005
Drysdale 750-VB Superbike By Alan Cat hcart Photos by Paul Bars ho n isito rs to Britain 's Don ingt on Park race circu it for the World Su perbike round earlier this year probably didn't realize there was an example of Australian eng ineeri ng ingenuity on view -alon gsid e Troy Corser' s on-trac k ridi ng expertise. You had to visit the circu it museum to find it, bu t there alongs ide the exotic ex travaga nza of Form u la One ra cin g cars th rough the yea rs sa t a new ad dition to th e Do n in g to n d ispl a y : th e Dryvtec h 2x2 x2, a two-whee l-drive, two-wheel-stee r, two-stroke enduro bike built in Melbourne back in 1990 by freeth in kin g free spirit Ian Drysdale, an expo nent p ar exce llence of Australia 's ca n- do doc trine . Bu t th e Dry vt ech , tho ug h ingen ious, was just a tas ter for 40-year old Drysd ale's most recen t technical tour de force - the design and construc tion of his own 750-V B sportbike. When I becam e the first person outside the Drysdale Mo torcycle Co . test tea m to throw a leg over the barely completed eight-cylinder bike at the Calder Pa rk te st t ra ck in Jun e ' 97, riding a machine bri stling with potential, I was provided a hands-on ap preciation of the Drysdale team's drive in making such a co m p lex p roject achi eve reality, and I underlined the probable pot ential for limi ted -production manufacture of spinoff version s. Two years down the road, ongo ing R&D , in terspersed by Dr ysdale's need to earn the funds required to fue l the next stage of VB developm ent by d oin g other, more arca ne engi neering wo rk - includ ing, for exa mple, acting as technical cons ultant to a Chinese mot orcycle factory have crystallised the final specification of the Drysdale V B road models. But a critical element in refining the design and construci tion of the worl d 's first-ever 750VB Su perbike was for Motor cycle Mot ion team riders J.J. O'Rielly a nd Andrew Willy to race in local even ts u nder a special di sp ens a ti o n th a t a llo ws prototype one-off machines of AustralDrysdale manu~ facture to take p art. The waiving of the v olum e: produc tio n homo lo gation rul e is similar to whnt has been done in Ital y for the pa st decade to p erm it bikes like the Duca ti alto vaivole and various Bimoj ta mo dels to be d eve loped on the racetrack, or ev ena t th e World level; where a b lind ey e is turned to the non- existen ce of custo me r sho rt-stro ke versio ns of Peter God da rd's April: ia RSVI000 w orks V-tw in racer, w hich com petes in WSC ro unds, Hey - if some creati ve interpretations of 0> 0> 0> (Above) Bad motor scooter: The lates t incarnation of the Australian-built Drysdale 750-V8 marks two years of ' research and development aimed at making it the world's first production eight-cylinder superbike. (Left) European editor Alan Cathcart puts ' the Drysdale throu gh its paces at the Bro adford circuit in Australia. As ide from its incredible competence for a cottageindustry effort, Cathcart finds the machine boasts the most appealing exhaust note on the planet.