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Neander Turbo Diesel Motorcycle
Some Insight
Neander Motors looked at diesels and saw small displacement diesel engines of the one, two or three cylinder variety underrepresented in most applications. The major reasons were weight and vibration. Although ideal in large displacement and stationary applications, you didn’t see many diesels in small watercraft, ATVs and, of course, motorcycles. Rather than trying to fit an existing diesel into those roles, they designed a new diesel engine with the idea of low weight and vibration as goals, the result is a twin counter-rotating crankshaft design that looks like they might have come up with a winner.
They’ve built a vertical parallel twin cylinder diesel, which would be plagued with far too much vibration in the configuration and displacement chosen, yet the counter rotating crankshafts all but cancel the majority of the vibration. And this is no computer model, the engine has been built, tested and installed in a prototype motorcycle which has been showing up around Europe in a variety of venues where folks could get a look at it.
The final configuration is a 1400cc, twin cam, four valve per cylinder, vertical twin turbo diesel with inter-cooling producing 100hp and 144 foot pounds of torque at 2600rpm. It looks nice without some of the bulky and clunky appearance you might expect when you hear the word diesel. Performance figures are quoted on their site as 0-60mph in approximately 4 seconds. Not bad for a cruiser and sure to improve as the engine is refined.
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