Meet 13 year-old Max Farnsworth, who attends Oundle School. He spent a couple of hours in the Dyno room this week with his dad and Mark rejetting a Yamaha XT225. Nothing unusual there, you might say, but when you know the beast runs on apple juice… Max explains; “We started off pressing some apples in a home-made press and got about 60l of juice. We left it for four weeks to ferment and then, with a still we made out of a couple of 25l drums, condensed it all back down which left us with 85% Ethanol. The bike’s worked well today on the E85 commercial fuel we bought along to try, but is spluttering on the apple; a bit too much water in it really. I think we’re going to have to put it through the still again. We’re doing it all out of curiosity really, just to see if it works and it’d be great to get some sort of eco-friendly fuel out of it! I love bikes – that’s my own one on the dyno – and my favourite racer has to Rossi. My dream bike’s a GS1100.”
Max's XT225 prior to firing into life - on a diet of apple juice!
You won't want this with your cornflakes, but could run a bike on it...
Max; likes messing around with bikes, Rossi and flapjacks. Good lad!
Hard at work extracting apple juice...
The business end where the magic happens...
