I could swear I posted an earlier thread on a similar subject, but I can't find it. Anyway, as everyone here should know, Tucker originally wanted to go with a hydraulic drive for his cars, but had to abandon the idea in order to try and meet his production deadlines.
The idea has started to be revived, and now, its been applied to a
pretty cool looking bike.The group that introduced the world to the hydrostatic motorcycle powered by a diesel engine has now made a chopper. Regardless of what you may think of the chopper culture that has proliferated the airwaves these last few years, this machine features quite a bit of novel engineering. For instance, the single-sided rear swingarm completely hides the hydrostatic transmission from view and supports the rear wheel and suspension system. The Kubota three-cylinder diesel engine has been turbocharged and feeds power completely automatically through a hydraulic motor to the rear wheel, making this machine completely automatic.
There's a link to a message board where lots of technical information is given in a 30+ page thread. Given that there's at least one poster here building a replica of a Tucker and wondering what to do about the transaxle, this might be worth looking into. Be awfully cool to have a Tucker with the transmission that Preston originally envisioned for the car actually installed in it, I'd say.