Ask any motorcyclist in the know, and they’ll tell you the biggest single-cylinder motorcycle engines ever mass-produced were from Suzuki, in their DR750 and DR800 bikes.
But that might be changing shortly; the DR750 was first sold in 1988, then upgraded to the DR800 in 1989, but the beastly off-road adventure machines were last sold somewhere around 2000. Now, Taiwanese two-wheeler company Dinli is building a machine that comes pretty close to the size of those old thumpers.
According to Visordown, the Dinli DL281 and DL282 cruisers both have a watercooled DOHC motor with 106mm bore and 85mm stroke. You can look it up and do the math, but that’s larger than the original DR750.
It still lags behind the 779cc DR800, but since one of the easiest ways to boost performance is to overbore an engine, we wouldn’t be surprised to see these bikes overshadow Suzuki’s big single before too long.
In any case, nobody else is making a thumper that’s anywhere close in size right now.
Don’t get all excited and hope to buy one, though; first, we haven’t heard anything about these bikes coming to Canada, and secondly, all that big-bore thumper power is channeled through a CVT and belt final drive instead of a conventional gearbox, which would surely take some of the fun out of the experience.
