Two-stroke engines have pretty much been relegated to off-road use these days, with the notion of them being approved for road use nearly impossible due to their smelly, smoky, and noisy nature. Indeed, when was the last time a manufacturer released a street-legal two-stroke model? Nevertheless, this hasn’t stopped companies from pushing the envelope of two-stroke technology.
Take for example, Minarelli, and its newest two-stroke engine. Based on the Yamaha 250 engine that Minarelli owned and produced from 2002 to 2020, this new engine is expected to make its way to the upcoming Fantic XE300 enduro models. The bikes are set to hit the European market in the summer of 2023, however, while their main focus will be for the trails and off-road courses, there’s a chance that you could ride this bike from your home all the way to the trails. That’s right, the new 300cc two-stroke engine in the upcoming Fantic XE has managed to acquire Euro 5 homologation.
How Minarelli was somehow able to pull this off was with some thoroughly high-tech wizardry. Sure, electronically controlled injection systems on two-stroke motors are nothing new. KTM has been doing this for years. However, the fact that Minarelli’s new engine could be approved for road use could mean that it’s packing much more tech underneath the casing. All we know so far, as published by our friends from German motorcycling publication Motorrad Online, is that the engine has a special exhaust outlet controller which also doubles as a decompression system for the electric starter.
It also stands to argue that the tuning of the engine will have to be vastly altered so as to deliver a more agreeable road-going character. As such, chances are it won’t be churning out anywhere near the 50-horsepower output commonly found in two-stroke enduros of this displacement. Instead, we can expect a smoother, more linear torque curve as we move up the rev range. However, Minarelli does say that the engine provides explosive performance under full load.
Apart from the sophisticated electronic injection and exhaust controller, we can also expect the exhaust system to be extensively reworked in order to reduce the high-pitched buzzing sound that has become associated with two-stroke engines. Interestingly, the new engine was displayed at EICMA, but apparently, it didn’t seem to get as much attention as it deserved. Nevertheless, it’ll certainly be interesting to see a new era of two-stroke machines once again hit the road.
