Riding an Insane 1000cc 2 Stroke Dirt Bike!

We are always on the hunt for the world's wildest two-strokes and I think we might have just found the holy grail. That's a CR500 cylinder, that's a CR500 cylinder and this is a CR1000. This is the story of how we found the world's craziest two-stroke and as you've seen we will start it and we will ride it. So our hunt for the world's most monstrous two-stroker starts right here at Stansted Airport. We literally go to the ends of the earth to find these bikes. Luckily today though we don't have to go quite that far. So like millions of people around the world I've been mesmerized by the carnage of the French hill climb championships and more precisely I've been mesmerized by the bikes that they use in these events. So whilst I was looking into this crazy hill climb world I came across one specific bike that I couldn't stop thinking about. So I messaged the guys that own the machine and that's who we're traveling to meet right now. Unfortunately these guys don't talk a lick of English and I don't speak a lick of French. German was a language I failed at school so I think it's going to be an interesting few days. Thankfully though I found this handy app. Subscribe to 999 Laser if you love two-stroke motocross videos. And a big thank you to our sponsors for supporting videos like this one. So fingers crossed we'll be all right. I really do need to give a big thanks to our channel sponsors for enabling us to go on adventures just like this one. So if you'd love to see more like this from us in the future be sure to check out Pewterline for your motorcycle oils and lubricants and 24MX for your hard parts accessories and much more. And remember to use our code MAX15 for 15% off a whole load of products from the 24MX website. Also I need to say a massive thank you to O'Neill for always helping me to enjoy the ride. So we're here in southern France. Some would say this is the European epicenter of the hill climb world. As you can see there's lots of steep mountain faces around and there's plenty of crazy Frenchmen willing to risk it all to make it to the top. From the brief history lesson I got from Google you can see that hill climbing started out in the 1920s over in the US and there's still a strong scene there today both on the east coast and the west coast. Here in France the sport really picked up in the 80s with events like the Arete Impossible climb becoming massive crowd pullers here in France. Team LCH are regular attendees of that event and they've built a very special machine in order to make it to the top. So let's meet the men behind the bike and go and see that monstrous two-stroke. This is Sebastian. Not only is he the crazy Frenchman that rides this monster but he's the mechanical genius who, together with his friends, built this beast from the ground up. So that is an engineering masterpiece. No idea how they do it or how they've done it but we'll ask the team, Sebastian and the rest of the LCH team, how you go about making one of these things. You guys have asked us to see a CR1000 or a 1000cc two-stroke twin-cylinder for ages and we've been looking, we've been searching, we have found one. So let's go and find out about it. We've got team LCH here who are a French hill climb team. They're going to tell us about the bike. We've got the magic app so communication hopefully will be perfect and we'll be able to find out all about this bike. So here we have team LCH. Sebastian, Serge, Stefan and Dominique. Together they built this beast. Let's find out how they did it. So here we have a Sebastian from team LCH, the proud owners of this 1000cc CR two-stroke here. Sebastian, just tell us about the bike, what engines are used for it and also tell us about the chassis. Is it a completely custom chassis or where is that from? Yes, the engine is a two-cylinder 500CR base that I have coupled with mass-cut cranks. Then the frame is custom-made in aluminium. The suspension has been tailor-made and prepared by a preparer in France. And tell us, were there any problems that you had to overcome to get two CR500 engines together like this? And how long did the development of this bike take from concept to riding? So why did you choose the CR500 motors as the base for this bike? In England, we don't have hill-climb bikes like this, but are they common twin-cylinder two-strokes? Is this the only one or are there lots? And have you made it to the top of Arete? Is that the goal this year? So what happens with your beautiful motorcycle if something goes wrong on the hill and it falls down? Is that a bad day at the office? Are there lots of damage? So the exhaust pipes are obviously lovely cone pipes. Are they handmade? Did you guys do that or did you get them specially made somewhere else? And what's the feeling, Sebastian, when you firstly start up a bike like this and feel the vibrations, but then when you actually put the power to the ground, what does that feel like? This CR1000 really is a work of art, an engineering masterpiece. Sebastian showed me around his workshop and gave me a little preview of some of the developments that they are making for the next generation CR1000. Sebastian also has a friend that helps him to 3D model and 3D print prototype parts for his builds. Sebastian estimates that the bike cost him around €10,000 in parts, but obviously he built and designed this bike with his friends, so really it would cost a hell of a lot more if he was to buy one of these beasts off the shelf. So as we know, the bike's cylinder head, crankshaft and connecting rods come from a CR500. It's got a Wiseco piston, a VHM cylinder head, V-Force 3 reeds, a Cajun 41mm carb, twin air filters, NGK spark plugs, a programmable HBI ignition from a 350 Banshee, the pinion crown is from a 1098 Ducati as is the drive clutch, the bike's got a direct drive gearbox so that means no gears, the suspension up the front we've got KTM 48mm air forks, we see a 21 inch rear wheel with a hyper reinforced 520 chain and in total the bike weighs 134kg. So Sebastian and the guys had the CR1000 stripped down for us this morning so we could see the insides, inner workings of the bike, we could see the pipe, we could see the motor, we could see the spark plugs, we could see those two twin cylinders. So whilst they're putting it back together now so we can go riding this afternoon, we're going to get it started up, we're going to hear it, we're just going to take a look at the first hill climb bike that Team LCH created and actually Team LCH, they told us this morning, stands for Team Iron Horse and you'll see why in just a second. Look at that, so this is the first beast that they created to go hill climbing and racing with, this is a Gixxer 1000cc engine in there so that's like that super bike motor that we've seen on the channel before, those wheelie bikes that we featured, that crazy 1000cc dirt bike that Chris Thorpe built that we featured, that's the same motor as this. As you can see, this is obviously a hill climb setup with that long swinging arm, just look at that beefy back tyre with the studs in there, they're all about getting power to the ground so they're just literally nailing these bolts here to get extra grip. Look at that, it generally looks like something out of Mad Max Fury Road, it's an intimidating, scary machine. Sebastian told me this morning that because this was the first bike that they built for hill climbing, they was actually quite scared of wrecking it, obviously you've seen the Carnage videos at hill climbs, the bikes tumbling down the hill, they was quite scared, so that's why it's got this beefy tank like fuselage on it, but as they gain more experience they realise that that might not happen as often as they thought, so the CR1000 looks more like a traditional motocross bike, but that's why this one looks so intimidating like it is from Mad Max Fury Road, but what a beast, what a machine. So there's absolutely no doubting the Honda heritage of this bike, with those genuine CR plastics, they're from a 1998 CR250, it makes it generally look like a 1000cc Honda CR dirt bike, insane. So I don't actually know yet, they haven't showed me, but I assume this is the starter for the bike, you'll have to take a battery around with you to get something like this fired into life, certainly wouldn't want to try and kick one of these things over, so one of these is going to be handy, we'll show you how it works in just a second. The bike takes one litre of regular pump fuel, and the tank is actually built into the frame, as is the radiator, and Sebastian reckons that this one litre of fuel will give him five minutes of ride time. It's a tractor starter. So that's what a 1000cc two-stroke sounds like, sounds like a war machine, death on two wheels, the crack on that was insane wasn't it. So Sebastian's just doing up the bolts again, he just said when it's on tick over like that, or just in the spot, the vibrations are so savage that the bolts just shake loose. He said on the powerway it's not so bad the vibrations, but as we saw, when it's just revving up like that, that was insane, that was monstrous. So they're just tightening those bolts back up so we don't have plastic flying around everywhere when we hit the track, or hit the field. So there we have it, a genuine CR1000, a twin-cylinder 1000cc two-stroke. This might well be the world's craziest two-stroke, it's certainly the craziest I've ever seen, but I've got a feeling this is only the start in this wild world of hill climbing. So let us know if you want to see us come back in the summer with Team LCH and go to Arete Mountain Possible. Let me know if you want to see that in the comments down below. As always, my name's Max, this is 999 Laser, until next time, we'll see you at the track.