Upgrade to enjoy this feature!
Vital MX fantasy is free to play, but paid users have great benefits. Paid member benefits:
- View and download rider stats
- Pick trends
- Create a private league
- And more!
Only $10 for all 2024 SX, MX, and SMX series (regularly $30).
I'm enjoying owning, riding and racing a nice cross section of what is on offer...I really like my yz 450...so much power and it hooks up...squirt it and jump anything...but drop it in a mud race? Games' over b4 I get it started again....my 125 is just so much like home to me...totally comfortable on it....but I get blown away on starts and out of
corners...my 250 four stroke...it's the last of the carbureted Yamahas ...feels light...handles well...but when it comes to clearing that big leap...wish I was back on my 450.... The truth is my corner speed is embarrassingly low...
Say a nice roll on curve to an easy 55hp,
problem is no one wants to make 1 cause it could literally last 10 years
The Shop
Bottom line, I'd spend 10k for a new 500 from the main manufacturers but won't for a 450. Perversely, I think the Alta offers the best value out there right now and I hope they bring it to Europe.
You will never get drawings or line layout or even tooling drawings without extenuating circumstances. Although you may think they are old and useless, they are still valuable to the corporation. They contain proprietary and confidential information that they aren't going to release. Sometimes things do sneak out but they aren't just going to "sell" someone that kind of information.
You can take a complete NOS 500 motor and send it off for metrology services where it will be reverse engineered into an exact replica 3D model. A company like Exact Metrology specializes in this type of work for many big customers in the US.
Take those 3D files and find a contract or freelance mechanical engineer specializing in internal combustion/engine design and show them the project. They can cleanup the model & do all of the engineering needed to make sure that the parts are designed for function & manufacturability. Additionally, you could pay them to further develop the CAD files needed for quoting parts. The engineer would probably want a donor motor to send it off for a complete metallurgy analysis which will be needed for the caster's recipe.
You will spend a long time in the engineering phase. Eventually, you'll get something ready that you can actually work with. You would want to find a higher end CNC or motor shop that is competent enough to provide engineering services for you for the manufacture of all parts. They should be able to work with the casters in the area to make molds & rough cast and then utilize their in house CNC shop to finish. If the modeling and design are good enough and you also supply them with a NOS motor to have on hand for proto, it really is not that complex of a job!
Building only a few motors is extremely expensive, but if you can get batch orders or enough of a production run to justify specialized tooling and fixturing, the price per will start to drop drastically because you could just ammortize the tooling over a spread of units. This will reduce manufacturing time in the shop and improve quality.
It just takes alot of money and time but it 100% can be done. You would have to Dyno the hell out of the first few batches and plan on destructive testing to see how it's going to break before I even thought about putting one under a real person.
If I had to estimate, I think a guy would spend $80k to $100k by the time they were holding the first reproduction unit.
Again - even if you can afford it I don't know how you get around the legality.
A small bike company is such a huge underdog to be able to eat into the market share. It would be so hard to keep up with R&D when your competition is KTM, Suzuki, Honda.....you get the point.
Pit Row
Post a reply to: buy and run the CR 500 or KX500 production line