Hello from Belgium

[guytdi]

Hi guys (and girls), my name is Guy , 27y/o and living in Antwerp Belgium , i'm a school teacher in automotive tech. before i worked 5 years as a citroen mechanic and 1 year porsche mechanic.

Got quite a history on both 2 wheels and 4 wheels. I cant really remember every vehicle i have owned nor the modifications i have made on them but i lost count at 50. At the moment i own a 1990 discovery TDi for offroading , 1971 citroen DS as daily drive , a yamaha T-max daily drive and a 19?? Dnepr K650 wich is an ongoing project.

The latter got me interested in and researching dieselbikes. I ride 50kms a day to and from work and even tough the T-max is quite economical at 5L/100kms the price of petrol is getting out of control so i have been planning and researching for about a year now on how i'm going to dieselify the Dnepr.

The standards i set for myself are high, because :
- It has to be reliable
- It has to produce 40hp at least
- It has to be common enough so that in case of any failure parts are easy to come by
- It has to fit the original Dnepr frame / gearbox (willing to mod the backbone tough)
- It has to be a mechanical Tdi engine (price / posibility to run the engine on not only diesel)
- I have to be able to carry it all out by myself

I have searched far and wide for an engine that would meet these demands but appart from the (very hard to come by) daihatsu 3cil 1L TDi unit i dont seem to be able to find anything. While roaming the internet i also found out that the daihatsu unit isnt all that reliable so at the moment im looking into basicly cutting a peugeot/citroen 1.9L TDi unit in half to extract a working 2 cilinder 900cc TDi engine , also this engine had the bosch VE-pump on it wich allows alot in terms of tuning, alternative fuels and bullet proofness.

Bought the engine yesterday and i hope to get started by the end of september , first just throwing out 2 pistons / con rods and ripping the pump appart to disable injection to cilinder 1 and 2 (i'm planning on cutting off the flywheel side and in france they start counting from the flywheel) and just seeing if it will still run somewhat normal ...

I'll keep u guys updated and try to get some pics online asap.

[Stuart]

Welcome to the forum Guy. Sounds like an interesting project you have there. A few here have used these bigger engines but none, to my knowledge, have ever cut one in half.
I look forward to any updates you post

[guytdi]

I have to admit that the clip below sparked this idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDJxXdVpKVY

In THEORY it should work

[Tamber]

In theory it should work; but then again, in theory the gap between theory and practice is very small...
Sounds like an interesting idea, though! Hope it works out well! (Or, at the very least, that you learn something new; if it doesn't work. )

[silver fox]

Welcome and the best of luck with the project

[Rhynri]

Can I have the other half?

[coachgeo]

What is the firing order?

Would you in truth need the middle two cylinders according to fire order (actually front or back two but use middle of crank and cam.

[guytdi]

Unless i'm mistaken the firing order is 1,3,4,2 so the engine will probebly sound like a hit and miss engine as the 1 and 2 bit will literaly fall off. I honestly dont know if it is viable, but as i said , before i start cutting i am going to throw out 2 pistons, 2 conrods, 2 injectors and just see if it will run, let alone produce any kind of power.

[Diesel Dave]

You will have a 180 degree twin so balance should be OK, it will have an off beat sound as it will fire 1,2 then a gap before firing again but that's no different to a Ruggerini.

Best of luck.

[Blunt Eversmoke]

Second that: Good luck! Oh, and please DO keep us posted, cutting diesels in half would be quite the method of bike engine acquisition if it worked.