Bimota V-Due – The bus that broke Bimota…

Bimota V-Due

With Ian Fallon

A small company based in Rimini on the Adriatic coast, Bimota began building the chassis for the Honda 750 in 1973. Success at the Grand Prix soon catapulted Bimota into one of the aftermarket chassis manufacturers. world leader, but their dream has always been to produce a complete motorcycle, including the engine.

Financial constraints ensured this would not be the case until the 1990s when Bimota began developing a two-stroke 500 cc V-twin engine. With its roots in racing, Bimota originally hoped to develop engines for use in GP. They were encouraged by the debate in the sport at the beginning of the decade about the ban on four-cylinder configurations.

But the level of investment required to develop a brand new bike for GP resulted in a change of direction and the V-Due ended up as a street bike.

Designed by Pier Luigi Marconi, the liquid-cooled 90-degree 72 x 61.25 mm (499 cc) V-twin is planned to produce 110 hp at 9,000 rpm, with a transmission. six-speed cassette type and the transmission oil lubricates the main bearings. Finally, power is slightly lower, at 100 hp at 9,000 rpm.

Bimota’s main problem is that EPA requirements in the United States have virtually brought the production of two-stroke motorcycles to extinction. The appeal of a two-stroke engine is its simplicity and high power-to-weight ratio, but the two-stroke principle of using fresh, fuel-rich intake air to clean or purge the exhaust cylinder has resulted in Most of this charge escapes. out of the cylinder with the exhaust gas.

Then the Australian company Orbital developed a new direct injection system, with the injectors firing only when the exhaust ports were closed. The theoretical result is a nice clean exhaust, free of unburnt hydrocarbons and this is in line with Bimota’s requirements.

Bimota adapted this for the V-Due with four injectors that feed fuel into the four-port throttle body with two butterfly units per cylinder and an electronic exhaust valve.

As expected, the V-Due offers exceptional handling. This new engine case is a traditional Bimota alloy frame, with Peraluman 440 extruded oval tubes and a cast alloy swingarm with welded alloy arms.

Up front is a conventional fully-adjustable 46mm Paioli fork with carbon fiber outer tubes, and the rear suspension is a horizontally mounted adjustable monoshock. Braking is from Brembo, with a pair of 320 mm discs up front with four-piston calipers at the front and 230 mm discs at the rear.

Rolling on a pair of Antera lightweight aluminum wheels, the V-Due is very small, weighing only 160 kg. Reflecting the best of Italian style and function, this design is the work of Sergio Robbiano, with a full body made of carbon fiber and painted in Tricolore.

Bimota showed the V-Due at the Cologne Show in 1996, promising production in 1997. They even promoted its release by driving three prototypes three thousand kilometers from Sicily to the Isle of Man to celebrate Commemorating the 90th founding anniversary of TT.

Unfortunately, Bimota did not heed the lessons of the past. Honda tried unsuccessfully to inject fuel into Mick Doohan’s NSR500 GP machine in 1993, and while the Bimota’s scavenging arrangement was different from Honda’s, their electronic injection system had problems.

In an attempt to recoup some of their development costs, the bike went into production early. Bimota knew the tweaking wasn’t complete, and the early samples were extremely weak and problematic. These include oil loss, intermittent power failure, and piston failure.

The factory was forced to buy back many of the first 185 units built in 1997 and 1998, then decided to halve production and continue growing. Several versions of the Corsa Trofeo carburetor were built for the Trofeo Bimota races in 2000, these proved to be more reliable.

With a pair of Dell’Orto 39mm carburetors, the output is 122 hp. In 2001, another carburetor race car was produced, the Evoluzione Corsa, which now has 135 hp.

Released early, the Bimota V-Due just promises more than it can accomplish. Although Bimota eventually fixed the reliability issues, it was all too late. The failure of the V-Due resulted in Bimota’s bankruptcy in March 2001 and only 388 of the planned 500 V-Dues being built.

Even after Bimota went bankrupt, production of the V-Due continued on a limited scale. 141 examples of V-Due Evoluzione Carburetors produced between 2001 and 2003, the final version with the more powerful Trofeo 2000 engine.

The final version of the 30 bikes was the 2005 Racing EF (Edizione Finale or Final Edition). With 125-130 hp, JollyMoto exhausts, bigger brakes and black wheels, they are assembled at the Meda factory in Milan but are not road legal. Today, the main claim of the V-Due is the last vestige of the two-stroke era.

Bimota V-Due Specifications