Stavesacre21

Just so happened to have stumbled across this motorcycle on display at the Findlay, Ohio mall. Guess there was some rare motorcycle-fest-thing going on, so i just kinda ooo'd and ahh-d most of the time. I wasn't even paying all that close of attention to many of them until I stumbled across the familiar rotary cocoon. I about crapped my pants I guess I shouldn't be surprised that there are rotary engines in motorcycles, but wow...what a shocker to see out of the blue.

I'd love to see how one of these things hauled! It just looks especially funny because of the size of the engine...it almost looks like a toy motorcycle because of it's compactness. I'd think that with it only being a single-rotor design that it wouldn't be near a smooth. The lack of a second rotor to help equalize the centripital force really had me wondering what it would be like.

Cody Red

Pretty cool.

-Cody

chickenwafer

iTrader: (9)

nice. A two rotor would be sweet. Pretty cheap to build, too.

Stavesacre21

holy crap! according to their website their 2 rotor engine only makes 170ish HP, and costs easily in excess of $10K. Not all that reasonable...

Carrera26

Rotarys always seemed ideal for motorcycles and other small cars (like caterhams, Lotuses, etc), always wondered why they weren't utilized...

eviltwinkie

can you stuff a 20B in that?

Raptor2k

Gas inefficiency if you're still wondering.

stormyblu8

Suzuki made a rotary engined bike in the early/mid 70s. I think it was about 500cc or so.

tjbourgoyne

Look at all the extra space haaha!

tjbourgoyne

Their site should have a sound demo. bummer.

N rider89

posted this in the other thread as well. saw this at 7 stock

9291150

^ Interesting bike. A rotary hooked up to a BMW shaft drive, gixer front end...wow.

I've ridden with a guy with a mid '70's rotary Suzuki. 500 cc's, redlines to over 16000rpm, about 70 hp I understand. 30 years old and still works, claims he never had it apart.

Why did they never sell? First off, lets remember that consumers don't always make rational decisions. The RE5 was a great bike by most accounts, but was too unusual and unknown. It was was thirsty, had a short range and the exhaust system was always red hot (sound familiar?). And with two strokes common at the time, there was no shortage of rev-happy bikes out there.

But working against it, there were many things. It was a flagship bike for Suzuki and was pricey compared to Honda's still relatively new 4 cylinder CB750 that dominated the market, wiping out Brit bikes in the process.

Suzuki lost a ****-load of money of this bike, nobody has the guts to do it again.

Stavesacre21

wow nrider, that looks to be one stupidfast bike! Is that a 2 rotor?!

skillmaker

I have only two sets of two words for that sickly radical amazingly awsome wickedly cool rotary motorcycle:

Set one: HEARING PROTECTION!!!!!!!

Set two: Mikey Likey!!!

Daaaang. Words cannot describe how badass that looks!!!!