Porous Special

1/5 Scale scratch built nitro bike!

The Porous Special was fabricated over a period of about 4 months by Porous, a talented scratch builder. Porous produced all his own drawings and made all the parts, including the vacuum formed body. The frame was fabricated from 0.75" sheet aluminum, wheels were machined out of 6.2L GM diesel pistons (what a great idea), and the exhaust was made out of three pieces of car A/C tubing. The top section of the forks was made from 0.500" O.D. aluminum, bronze lined and honed to size, while the bottom section is solid 0.372" aluminum. The Porous Special was initially powered by an OS CV .12 but this was changed out in favor of the larger OS CV .15 fitted with a pull starter.

How does it perform? Well, Porous said that after the forth or fifth tank of nitro he started to get a feel for what he needed to do to make the bike behave (taming the beast). He took it over to the track at the Silver Bowl in Henderson, Nevada, where the First National R/C Motorcycle Championship Bike Race was held and ran the bike around the track. The track was more challenging than he remembered from the bike race, so not wanting to chance things the Porous Special was tamed in the parking lot instead. Porous says "the bike is most relaxed then the throttle is wide open, strait and stable. With more practice this thing is gonna be some fun."

Frame & Forks (6 images):