Hi everyone
My name is Pavel and I live in Cyprus. I'm new to these forums but have been reading them for quite a while and have gone through a LOT of
posts.
Hopefully in a few months I'll commence building a locost or a viento.
What I would like to know is how bike engines compete with car engines in reliability issues. Since they put out so much power at such small cc and
spin such high RPM i would imagine they require a lot more rebuilding and their life expectancy is less. Is the same true of their gearbox?
I've been told by some that they will even last longer than some car engines due to them being built to much higher tolerances than car engines
etc.
Could somebody clear this up as motorbike engines certainly do sound appealing but don't want to have to constantly be rebuilding it.
Thanks everyone
Pavel
Hi Pavel,
The bike engines certainly seem to have a good reputation for reliability, I'm not so sure about lifetime though, lots of bikes get totalled
before high mileage is reached, these cars don't get a lot of miles put on them in the UK rain, and finally this forum is mainly peopled with
builders who haven't got as far as an opinion on reliability/longevity! I personally expect to get 40 to 50kmiles and that it will take 30 years
to do it.... Be interesting to see what others think.
Cheers
Bob
as bob c says
but if you give the bike engine constant thrash all day every day the valves can stretch,and then after a while you wont be able to get shims smaller
anough so you will need new valves,but iv only seen this a few times on road engines and they were high milage.i dont know if car engines do the
same ,havnt worked on them much 
[Edited on 19/9/04 by OX]
Pavel,
Try http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/bike-engined-cars/
I read a post (which I can't locate now) on another site, which opined that a BEC was the only way to go for $/power for autocross or track and
that car engines made a more tractable around-town driver (not having to keep the revs up and worry about lurchy launches.)
Regards,
Mr. Pete