Bike’s 675 eco-Triumph misses the point

I’ve read a couple of articles in recent ‘Bike’ magazines about the alcohol powered Triumph 675 triple. The first was on how they managed to get it to run on a couple of pints of alcohol laboriously distilled from fermented apple juice, and the latest in the October issue was on setting the bike up on the dyno.

The results are quite interesting. Firstly they did manage to get more power out of the bike – not a huge increase, but a few horsepower extra.

Unfortunately, the downsides were the increased fuel consumption (and thus reduced range) and the toxic fumes from the exhaust, the concentration of which was enough to make the dyno operator feel ill and force them to re-jig the exhaust extraction system.

Which kind of leads me directly to my point. They’re touting the bike as environmentally friendly, with a green earth paintjob, when it should be obvious that something that needs more fill-ups and produced toxic fumes into the bargain is hardly eco-friendly.

They suggested that the fumes could perhaps be tuned out, but rather than look to simply maintain existing power (as if 100+ hp isn’t enough) and get better deliver, they were more interested in bunging on the biggest injector pump they could find and force more fuel down the Triple’s neck.

If, and it’s a big if, we’re going to see a lot more alcohol being added to fuel in the coming years, then we need to make it go further, not to push the bumps on the peak power curve ever higher.