Buell MX450f revealed.......a little

Sad to see.

Wouldn't mind browsing though all the stuff though!

I'll shoot up there and take pics if they let me, only a few minutes from my house.
DD

Wow, nice find. Were they really gonna use the quad engine? Quite a lot of good stuff at that auction.

Buell being folded really broke my heart. He was just starting to build stuff that was competitive and now we will never know what could have been.

We were going to use the DS450 engine and the program was called Griffin. Maybe I should post some of the renderings. I will have to dig them up. Honda was the benchmark bike that we were copying, except it had no linkage. Showa was going to be the suspension supplier, but did not have anything that fit the KTM rear end geometry, so we had Ohlins stuff for a while. Funny thing, about 6 months after the program was cancelled, Showa introduced a version of their A-kit that would fit KTM's. That development was done at least partially on Buell's dime.

Something else I just noticed in the pic is the split seat idea. More on that later if anyone is interested.

What was the deal with the split seat?

I know Ozzy was sworn to secrecy never to say anything, but I'm wondering now if he could do a story in Racer X or some other magazine. Would be a great story to hear.

Freeh, would love to hear more about the project and the split seat idea. If you have some drawings, definitely would be very cool to see.

But what was the pressure cooker for?!

Is that the rendering?

I don't follow quad stuff much, is the DS450 engine any good? Fast, light?

Pressure cooker? That's a fucking boiler. Steam powered, it's the future!

If we're interested? Are you kidding?

This was the original mock-up. This was presented to HD as part of the business case to get the funding for the program. The last iteration was SIGNIFICANTLY better looking.

The DS450 engine is powerful, but heavy. If I remember correctly, it weighed about 8 pounds more than the Honda.

Quick story. There was an engineer from Rotax in Austria on a plane coming over to do some preliminary EFI tuning when the program was cancelled. He arrived and heard the news. We said fuck it and went and rode the thing anyway. Actually Tom just rode it that day. I was still in shock and quite disgusted and upset. This was two days after the MXDN that year, which the team had just gotten back from. We were at the height of the program, and then two days later is was over.

Ozzy can elaborate more if he wants. It almost feels like a bad dream to me anymore.

Freeh, are you Theresea's brother?

No. I am not from WI. I moved there for the Buell gig and then moved away when it was over. Don't know a Theresea.

Man this is too bad, I didn't even know Buell was working on this project. I would have order mine in a heart bit just to give it a shot. I love his out of the box thinking!

its a Pressure Pot for painting

You can post more info any time you like. Most interesting.

Wow wow wow..........!!!
It saddens me to surf the Auction site.
I surfed her well........
Warehouse stuff,
Vehicles, (my boxvan seems to be missing....?)
Tools & equipment,
Office stuff too..................
During my time there, I was all over the place....
Shoot, I even interviewed at that oval table, me on 1 side, 5 +
others on the other side.....
For me the chance of a lifetime.
For them maybe too........
Met & became friendly with a lot of great people.
Good times, & plenty of headaches & frustration.
The learning,
The dealings,
The meetings, meetings, meetings.........
The confrontations,
All part of it.
Now, for guys like "Freeh", myself & some others, only a memory
of what might have been.
Regardless of this & that, "Freeh" will tell ya, I tried hard each & every day
& each & every step of the way.
Yea, I rode her to that day, powerful & not even 100%!
Gotta walk 1st, before ya run, & we were.............
I miss it all & what might have been.
Again, the chance of a lifetime!
Dave O.
"Freeh" contact me, & I hope all is well.........
Maybe it's time.............?

Is someone going to talk about the split seat or what?

Is it a gnad grabber, or is that how you change the airfilter with no tools?

Dave O.....Freeh

Please if you can elaborate on the story, im sure there are a lot of us that would love to hear a synopsis of all the stuff that went on with the project, how it compared, what kind of progress you guys made, etc...I for one was really excited to hear about the project and equally disappointed when I heard it was cancelled.....Surely you can't still be sworn to secrecy if there is no more company to keep you from talking?

Hopefully someone like ATK or Bombardier will buy that stuff and pick up where buell left off

Personally, for me I'd love to tell all,
it's killing me........ha ha ha ........
No really, a formal write up is what's needed
I feel, to big of a deal I believe, at least that's my take.
Don't want it to play out if even at all on the internet either.
I'll have to see what "Freeh" thinks, plus, when I was
done there, I signed a pretty good amount of paperwork
to be QUIET!
Don't know about "Freeh"?........plus, mine not only had
Buell mentioned, but HD too................
But, hey, if she's dead she's dead, we'll see I guess?
Dave O.

Wow, this would indeed be a fantastic story.

You know....you COULD create another username and maybe that "anonymous" guy could tell us....

It really sounds like an intriguing story....I wonder why it would still have to be so hush-hush if it's been indefinitly cancelled, what harm would/could come of telling a story about something like that?....Especially since they are selling off the parts.....someone could simply buy them and try to reassemble what is leftover to give us at least a look into what happened.....it's sad, vey sad that we couldn't get another competitor in the mix since all the cottage brands over in europe for some reason are not able to compete here.....seeing the same 5 bikes gets a little old even when they are factory bikes.

It would be great if Dave could tell his personal story about the project. The fact of the matter is that Dave should have been leading the project all along, with some technical help from me and others. Instead it was led by someone who was a good engineer but a poor project leader who had little experience running anything. It was not Erik Buell by the way. We would have been a little further along and perhaps the powers that be at HD would have seen possibilities of the program.

Ironically, I just read last week that Husqvarna gained market share last year in a very down economy. How amazing is it that a well executed program with solid engineering leading to a very good product on the showroom floors would be successful.

Regardless, the bike had tremendous potential. The few times I did ride it were eye opening. That thing had some power. We were a couple of months away from having a near production ready machine. Of course the guys at Cannondale probably thought the same thing with their project. haha

The split seat was a perfect example of how someone can be an eccentric genius. Nine great ideas and one awful idea. Dave, is it OK to say who our test rider was for the program, or would he rather not be mentioned? I will say that until recently he was capable of running top ten in the nationals.

I need to dig through my stuff at home and see if I have any images that are worth sharing. Not sure if I would get into any trouble or not, so I probably won't post any of them anyway.

Good to hear from you Dave. I still feel bad about the whole thing, since I was the one who introduced your name to the "leadership" at Buell.

Hope all is well with you and yours too.

What happened to the bike? Disassembled and chopped up? In Willie G's garage?

Damn, this thread is sad but very interesting. These guys did what many of us dream about, building a new mx-bike! But it failed and we wan't to know why so we can learn and maybe recalibrate our dreams.

One day...

"Freeh", good to hear from you too.
E-mail me or try my cell, the #'s still the same.
No work for me yet I'm sorry to say.....sucks!
Thanks for the nod project wise.
As you know, you were 1 of so few on my "imaginary team",
of the people who got it!
& true, our assigned fearless leader was a brilliant guy for
sure, but as I told Mary in HR 1 day, "I wouldn't follow him
across the street"...........No disrespect just fact!
You see there's more to building anything than just the will,
money & commonsense!
Like in the music industry, a recording can have many songs, yet so few hits.
Erik Buell, our namesake was & is a brilliant guy & a "forward thinker".
Holder of far to many patents to name here!
Gonna stop now........!
Dave O.