I thought this was pretty wackie at the time. I have meet and spoken to Ian a few times and he admitted the handling was pretty odd. I'm not quite sure what advantage he was trying to get - it wasn't traction alone.
http://home.pacific.net.au/~iwd/2x2x2/ride/index.html
Brilliant work and execution mine you.
Ive known Ian for years & I guess he is somewhat of the Nutty Professor.
That bike was both weird & brilliant at the same time. I was invited to view it before it's debut along with a few others in what must have been early / mid eighties. He set out to reinvent how a motorbike should be put together. He didn't build it thinking he was going to win anything with it, it was a design exercise.
As I remember it had a hydraulic pump for a gearbox that drove hydraulic motors in the hubs of back & front wheels.
It had single sided swingarms back & front, which reduced the steering lock so he made it 2 wheel steer to make up for it. The barrel was rumored to be based on a Maico 400 which he had cast. At one stage he was planning to have hydraulic suspension that could be raised or lowered for different conditions. That would be handy now with todays tall bikes.
I believe it ended up in a museum in the UK.
Their is in modern times a two wheel drive kit that is fitted to a Yamaha, I think built by Ohlins?? It has a small hydraulic pump on the countershaft sprocket that drives a hydraulic motor in the front hub. I often wondered if it was inspired by Ian's bike.
Last I heard he was thinking of building a helicopter
