Akira Bike By Evilgenius (Read 1,218 times)

[Evilgenius]

Those of you who've seen the anime know exactly what I'm talking about. For the rest:

This is a replica of Shotaro Kaneda's bike from Akira, built by Masashi Teshima over the past seven years for a cost of around $120K. It's the only replica with the official blessing of Akira's creator Katsuhiro Otomo, and now Teshima is riding the bike across Japan to raise money for children's autism. Afterwards, the bike will be on display at an exhibit celebrating Akira's creator, where it will be raising money for victims of last year's earthquake/tsunami. And after THAT, it will be purchased by yours truly and ridden up and down the street while wearing a Godzilla mask and yelling at my neighbors about the dangers of nuclear proliferation. They will call the police. There will be a chase, and I will crash into a mailbox trying to jump a curb. I will be tazed and, God willing, not evacuate my bowels this time.

kotaku.com/5899681/the-akira-bike-of-your-dreams-is-racing-across-japan

Now, I see this and not far after "Cool!" comes the thought "wonder if it's a scooter engine in there?".

To my great bemusement, it was not. You can distinctly hear gears grabbing as he takes off in one of the videos, so it's no CVT, though I can totally see how a big phat CVT would be primo for that kind of app. Never found any info on what the donor bike was, although there's another (non-uber-rich) guy making a rather respectable homebrew:

.matus1976.com/akira_bike/welcome.htm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">.matus1976.com/akira_bike/welcome.htm



I'm really diggin' that, from a fabrication standpoint. (Again, no CVT.)

Anyway, thought some here might find this interesting.