Autoblog

What to do with that spare Mopar big block you've got left over from your monster truck project? Why, let's build a motorcycle! We're not using our arms that much, anyway, so we might as well just tear 'em right out of the sockets; it's not like we perform manual labor, we're keyboard jockeys. Voice-recognition software will ensure our job security once the old extremities are history, anyway.

Bike owner and builder Nick Argyle got out of the monster-truck business but still wanted a nice toy. He'd downsized his shop, so the available space dictated a motorcycle. Nick's wife was down with it as long as he used the engine he had sitting around -- an 8.2-liter supercharged Mopar V8. Whooee! That's a lotta iron to climb over just to get to the drag strip. It's road legal, and some ingenuity led to the engine being used as a stressed member of the frame. Note also the routing of the supercharger drive belt through the front forks.

Basically, the bike looks like a couple of wheels bolted onto an engine. Sure, that describes essentially every motorcycle on the road. In this instance, however, it's supremely cool (and strange) to see an engine sitting there looking just as it would under the hood of a car, but with a set of handlebars and a drive chain connected to it. There's no performance data, but some rough math assuming a 1500lb total weight (blown Mopar big blocks aren't light -- the engine alone probably weighs 1000 pounds) and using the provided horsepower figure of 1200 gives an estimated quarter-mile ET of 6.27 seconds with a trap speed of 217 MPH.

Damn.

We'd be curious to see actual ETs, as we just scratched a few things out on paper without knowing gearing or the actual weight using the handy formulas in our Auto Math Handbook. Even if it didn't go fast, it looks mean, and we bet it sounds even meaner with those wide open headers. WHAT!?

More photos after the jump

[Source: Carscoop]

It should come as little surprise that several of us here at Autoblog are motorcycle fans, and one can also find broad support for the axiom "there's no replacement for displacement" among staffers. We typically don't combine both of those into one project, though (the turbocharged Vmax project languishing in the polebarn for the last five years notwithstanding). Those wacky Germans over at HMS don't share our inhibitions, though, and managed to drop a 5.5L V12 from a BMW 750i into a custom drag bike. If that's not enough, plans are in the works to throw on a couple of turbos and a bit of laughing gas. We're damn near speechless, but we'd love to hear that V12 cut loose on a quarter-mile pass.

Related: 502 big block.... on a motorcycle

[Source: The Kneeslider; a hat tip to Eliot from Hackaday]