Introduction

This is my story about the designing, building, riding, and the perfecting of my V8Bikes. It is a story that spans almost 30 years and because of the effort and time it involved I decided to finally put it in written form. Little did I know in the 1970’s when the idea was born for a V8Bike that it would take so long to reach my final goal. But the journey has been a success and I am immensely proud of the end result and of my achievements.

My profession is mechanical engineering with the bulk of my work being machine automation design for industry. In addition, I do specialty machine design in many other fields which includes prototype machine development for inventors. Machine design is my natural talent and building them and watching them work has always been a gratifying experience.

The criteria for the factory equipment work is tough, the machines must be rugged and long lasting. Break downs and heavy maintenance must be minimized. Around the clock operation for months or even years is a requirement. Ongoing improvements are always required to make current machines constantly better. It is with this mind set that I undertook my V8Bike design. Existing motorcycles on the market in the 1970’s were for the most part short term use machines designed for occasional drives. They were lightweight and delicate and prone to heavy maintenance with the small air cooled engines and chain final drives. My desire was to have a motorcycle comparable to a car in terms of long distance highway use, longevity, and ease of maintenance. My bike must be able to carry two people with some luggage over long distances with out undo strain. It must look good, sound good, and be able to be easily worked on with simple tools. It must possess plenty of power and not be strained by occasional full power roll-ons nor all day twelve hour freeway driving. In short, I wanted a long distance heavy weight touring motorcycle that had pleasing styling lines, an attractive sound, plenty of power, and minimal maintenance over a 100,000 mile life span.

In the 1970’s I had very little knowledge of the details of motorcycle engineering; motorcycle design yes but not the engineering part. The best publication available on the subject was “Motorcycle Engineering” written by Phil Irving in the 1960’s. Phil’s book was catered to lightweight English motorcycle design with weights of 200 to 400 pounds. There was nobody that I knew of at that time that had pioneered in the field of 1200 pound touring motorcycles so I soon learned that I was headed for new territory. This didn’t stop me from undertaking the project but it did raise many concerns over the viability of the idea. Because of this concern, I was very careful in my design efforts throughout the whole project.

As you will read in the book, the first decision to be made was the engine choice which was the 215 GM aluminum engine. The second big decision was the transmission. After much studying of all kinds of car and bike transmissions, I decided to design my own. This was a large task but in the end my 3 speed side mounted shaft design transmission worked beautifully. I gave careful consideration to the whole approach of heavy up front design work verses cobbling something together in the garage. With my engineering skills and my desire to have the finished product look and perform right, I chose the former and am so glad I did because V8BIKE turned out to be a great touring motorcycle!

John J. Strickland January 26, 2006