Tuesday, May 27, 2008 - 01:26 pm, by: Peter Nitschke(Pen)
At the other end of the scale....
THE problem of what to do with old mining machine tyres is usually solved by either fixing them or burying them. But Western Australian ex-stuntman Ray Baumann had other ideas.
Instead, Baumann took two used tyres from a Caterpillar 992 wheel loader and built the world's biggest motorbike around them.
"We wanted to be able to transport this thing around the world, and those were the biggest and widest tyres we could get that would fit into a high cube shipping container," Baumann told MiningNews.net.
At 9m long and more than 3m tall, Baumann has fittingly dubbed it the Monster Motorbike.
It is powered by a 5.2 litre Detroit Diesel 6V53 two-stroke truck engine which sends drive through a six-speed Allison automatic gearbox, also from a prime mover.
The gearbox is connected to a two-speed Eaton differential from a road train, which in turn drives a massive chain on each side of the rear wheel.
The bike was built in Perth and was three years in the making. It weighs 13.6 tonnes.
Baumann said he doesn't expect the bike to go through tyres at anything like the rate of the wheel loaders they were designed for.
"These tyres will last us the lifetime of the vehicle, well and truly," Baumann said.
"We've only got 13 tonnes of motorbike sitting on these tyres, so we should have no problems whatsoever.
"We've designed it not just to be big, but to smash things up, and that's what people really want to see.
"We're in the entertainment business and you've got to give people what they want."
Typically, Baumann uses the bike to crush cars and caravans.
Baumann drove road trains before he turned to setting records for jumping vehicles over other vehicles, and Monster Motorbike combines elements of both occupations.
"We did stunt driving for quite a few years, broke a few records and broke my back a few times, so this is a way of taking a bit more care," he said.
"Now we crush things, which is definitely less risky than jumping them."