- Twin turbines produce roughly 150 pounds of combined thrust.
- The Harley has no conventional engine, transmission, or drivetrain.
- Bikes and Beards reached 60 mph and said it had more.
There are plenty of ways to make a Harley-Davidson unique, but replacing its engine with a pair of jet turbines probably isn’t in the Screamin’ Eagle catalog. YouTubers Warped and Bikes and Beards have done exactly that, creating a Harley with no conventional engine, transmission, or drivetrain. Instead, two turbines simply shove the motorcycle down the road. And yes, they actually rode it.
The wonderfully questionable project started when Sean Kerr of Bikes and Beards sent a thoroughly dead Harley to Matt at Warped. The original engine was toast, with exposed pistons and missing cylinder heads and walls, so Matt ripped out what remained and started over.
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In place of the V-twin went two micro-turbines mounted alongside the rear wheel. Each produces around 70-75 pounds of thrust, giving the bike roughly 150 pounds combined. There’s no gearbox because the turbines aren’t connected to the rear wheel. Twist the throttle and thrust does the rest. That’s where this bike gets really complicated.
In title alone, a “jet-powered” Harley sounds super cool. In reality, just getting it to run, much less ride, is a serious feat. Matt says the transformation required over 400 hours of work. Beyond fabricating mounts, covers, and a custom fuel system, he retained the Harley’s switchgear and displays and engineered electronics to control the turbines.
Next, we should chat briefly about safety because turbine engines present all sorts of interesting challenges in that realm. First, they can fail catastrophically, as in, come apart into countless pieces while running. So each one needs a containment and scatter shield. Then, there’s the issue of slowing down, which is so hard to manage in some jet applications that even Jay Leno struggled with it in his EcoJet.
The guys here decided to install a manual fuel cutoff. The only issue is that there are several feet of fuel line between the cutoff and the engines, so there’s no telling how much time after hitting the kill switch that the engines will run. Despite these potential issues, and some hardware failures late in the build process, the guys managed to get both engines running and took to the street.
Without the original engine and transmission, the Harley is remarkably light. Kerr estimated it weighs around 350 pounds (159 kg), although that figure wasn’t verified. More importantly, he managed to hit 60 mph (97 km/h), and said the bike still had more to give.
The strangest part may be how it delivers that performance. There’s no shifting, drivetrain vibration, or traditional connection between the engine and rear wheel. Kerr described it as simply being pushed through the air as the turbines build thrust. It’s not particularly fast by motorcycle standards, but that’s almost beside the point. Lots of bikes can hit 60 mph. Very few can do it while sounding like they’re preparing for takeoff.