Around 6 months ago I started this diesel motorbike project. It started life as a Honda CB400 that I bought from a guy in Somerset. He had already carried out the diesel engine conversion using the following specifications:
Chengfa 178 200cc Single Cylinder Diesel engine.
Enfield/villiers 4 speed gearbox
Twin fuel tanks with primer pump and pollak switching valve
Pictures of the original setup are below:
After I purchased the vehicle, I had plans to remove the 200cc diesel and put a 406cc single cylinder and a amr500 supercharger on it. This should give it enough speed to keep up with modern traffic and a supercharger is marginally easier to engineer in than a turbo charger.
The first step was to remove the old engine and strip off and the fuel piping, valves etc. I did this all before this website started, so please view the album below for photos of this process, including offering up the new engine to see if it would fit etc:
After that, I managed to get the new engine mount bent into shape, this was accomplished initially using a forging process on bars/sheets of Iron to get the shape of the front of the engine, where it would be mounted. Pictures of this process are below:
I have successfully mounted the engine, using a backing plate against the gearbox and welding support pieces that will bolt onto the bottom of the engine. One the screw holes are drilled, I will fill the gearbox with oil and bolt on the support plate. Once this is done its time to align the primary drive. Pics:
And just before it got dark, we managed to get a video of the first running of the engine. Its running on veg oil (As its easier than getting diesel) which is why it took so long to start and why there was grey smoke.:
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This is a neat project and I have a couple of non-running BMW R bikes sitting around just begging for a conversion. Are you planning to supply any more details?
They would be ideal as they are shaft drive, and I believe that you could re-use the BMW gearbox with a diesel, have a look on dieselbike.net for more information. Yes, when I have finished the whole thing I intend to provide more information on the whole process.