Design of a Landspeed Record Motorcycle Engine

The 3LV4 is an engine designed specifically to power a land speed record motorcycle. Most previous engines used for this purpose have been adaptations of production engines. The 3LV4 has a displacement of three liters which also makes it one of the largest motorcycle engines ever built. This paper describes the engine and some of the analytical methods used in the design. The engine was designed on an extremely small budget. Extensive use was made of computer analysis. All of this work was done using a small personal computer. This paper describes the type of analysis performed and demonstrates the range of analysis possible on a PC.