jonescg's NEW electric racebike pre-build thread!

[voicecoils]

bike looks awesome!

to kick things off you can draw a texta strikeout line through 'fuel' on the exhaust

[jonescg]

OK so today being ANZAC day I had some time to take it out for a quiet run up the street. Since this is an electric bike build thread, I won't bore you with details of the awesome power the ICE puts out But suffice to say it's a ball tearer. And torque! Man, for a petrol engine on a bike this thing has oodles of low-down torque! A friend of mine was telling me he's got a buddy who does clubman racing at Wanneroo and just leaves it in fourth the whole time - no need to change gears. Sure it's bouncing off the limiter for a while down the straight, but it's the right gear to be in when taking turn 7

As for comfort, the bike is surprisingly comfortable for a race bike. The rear sets are going to take some getting used to, since most bikes I've ridden have lower pegs. I doubt that I'll be scraping pegs with my mad skills, but I think I get off the bike enough to not have any problems. I scrape a knee on the Blackbird around turn one, so this thing should be fine

Oh, and I fixed the soldering irons so they run decent sized wire and plug into AU/NZ sockets.... Cheesus do they get hot. 400 W of copper melting brute force I will use the two of them together to melt the tinned 3 mm bars down onto the cell tabs, and making the pack-to-pack series connections for the race bike. I think I will leave the wedge tips on it - a safe way to limit the amount of heat going into the blocks. As always, have the ice water and some sponge handy for when you're done soldering.

Can't wait for my first trackday on the oil burner. Not until June though Man I wish we had another racetrack near Perth. Wanneroo is always booked out from arsehole to breakfast. I might need to start doing some clubman racing just to get my track time up.

[Jay64]

I doubt that I'll be scraping pegs with my mad skills, but I think I get off the bike enough to not have any problems. I scrape a knee on the Blackbird around turn one, so this thing should be fine

Sounds to me like you can carry more corner speed going in.

[jonescg]

I could always carry more corner speed going into turn one

[jonescg]

I took the tank off and had a look at the belly-pan since I need to lock-wire the sump plug for any racing this year. While the tank was off, I looked at it with a measuring tape and lo and behold, there was a marked change in the size of the frame from 2004 to 2005.

I am going to have to get creative with my battery packs Dammit! There is barely 300 mm x 250 mm inside this frame! The 2004 frame I measured up would fit a 320 mm x 320 mm square with room to spare.

So I need to make my packs even more modular so they can fit on the sides rather than through the top...

[jonescg]

I just paid for my first opportunity to test the oil-burner at Wanneroo raceway. D-grade racing! What better way to get to know a brand new 170 hp race bike than to mix it up with a bunch of D-grade racers

I have a pair of paddock stands on their way, tyre warmers ready to go, a 15 litre fuel can, new leathers should show up early next week. The only thing missing is a motor vehicle to carry me and the bike up to Wanneroo. D'OH! The only problem with having a non-road registered trackbike.

If I can do 71 seconds on a 250 kg blackbird with road tyres, I reckon sub 69s should be broadly achievable even for me. Lap one turn one race one... watch out


On the elctric bike front, I have been thinking of ways which I can get more room out of a bike. The AFM140 is actually a very narrow motor, so there is still the prospect of replacing the swingarm with a 'hollow pivot' arrangement. Then the back of a '07 GSXR frame can be hacked to fit this in, and move the suspension to sit above the motor.

I gather this stuff is the domain of smarter folks than I, but I also know that running a jackshaft to the drive sprocket is pretty complicated and wasteful, and uses up all the available battery space.



If I was to get this fabricated, how can I get it done in the cheapest yet lightest way possible? Laser cutting? Milling? Both? The bends and curves won't be easy.

[Rodney64]

I could give you a lift to Wanneroo if it's on the weekend

[jonescg]

That's be sweet! Do you have a trailer? I have asked a friend (George) to see if he can help me and he hasn't got back yet. He will be at the AEVA meeting on Tuesday night so I can ask him again then.

I just drained the oil so I could drill a hole in the sump plug for securing it, cause sump plugs always unwind themselves ...

Man electric bikes are a lot of trouble, but once they are working they are a lot less hassle than an oil burner.

[Rodney64]

I have a van VW. What weekend is it

[jonescg]

Nice! It's on Sunday the 20th of May. Details are here: www.mcrcwa.com.au
Either way, would be great if you could come up. There's always a bit of tight racing going on

[jonescg]

So I have been thinking long and hard about this next race bike, and how no matter what chassis I try and fit out, it will still let me down somehow. I thought I should probably start by redesigning elements of the donor bike to suit my needs, and one by one, replace the ill-fitting parts with bespoke parts. I figure if I build a bike from an existing chassis design it will cost me more in the long run, since I will need to build a third bike to satisfy my desire for the perfect build

Like the swingarm. If I was to mount an AFM140 in a GSXR chassis, it would occupy almost the entire lower half of the frame. Until batteries pack 300 Wh/kg, that's a lot of space I really wish I had access to. So If I can do away with the need for a jackshaft I could mount the motor inside the swingarm pivot point. Well, not completely concentric like a Bimota, but pretty close. Then the swingarm pivot would be just behind the front drive sprocket. The shock would go in line with the upper bars on the swingarm and attach just the other side of the motor. Pretty close to the seat actually. The motor would need to be attached using a couple of 8 mm plates either side and these would be fixed to the frame (not shown).





I dread to think what making this from billet aluminium would cost, but I would also seek to cut lightening honeycomb patterns in the bars to reduce the weight. I'm also trying to find a way of getting it built in the cheapest way possible - three pieces which bolt together? Welded? Any CNC specialists here?

[jonescg]

Well it's not an advance on the e-moto plans, but it is a start. I finally got my leather race suit! $800 and not without much acrimony to get it... Still, they fit me like a glove.



Happy Chris!


My first trackday on the oil burner is this Sunday! I will be busy sorting crap on Saturday, but the weather is holding out for me and Sunday looks like a winner

[deVries]

Mate, you look crikey sharp as the Black Knight. Wholly cow batman! (Battman too!)

[jonescg]

Super excited!!!

Race day tomorrow on the oil burner. A good friend loaned me his car and trailer, so I'm sorted for the day. Even threw a couple of chairs in for resting the legs between sessions. I have two goals - smash my personal best of 1:11.507 around Barbagallo, and secondly, to not come off It's going to be a bit tough with 23 other novice and D grade racers, but oh well. What better way to learn! Come on up if any Perthites are interested.

Chris

[Rodney64]

What time is your first race

[jonescg]

Hey Rod!

Qualifying starts at 9 am. I think we get two or three sessions out before lunch. Then the racing starts from 1 pm, where we get three races of 6 laps each.

[voicecoils]

good luck today Chris!

[jonescg]

Cheers Abraham.

It was a fun day out, but unfortunately my lap times were much slower than I'd hoped. I went out for Q1 on cold tyres because the power distribution boards weren't installed until 9 am.

Q2 was much better, placing me 23rd out of 27. I flopped in the first race, but held my position for race two. In race 3 I put in a couple of 1:14s which was good, but lost a place. Overall my lap times were disappointing. I have gone consistently faster 1:11s on my 245 kg Blackbird. It's probably a comfort thing. If I move the foot pegs back to their original position the ride should be more comfy. I don't think I have any trouble with clearance.

Oh, and scrutineering was such a pain in the arse! Lockwire this, clamp that, tape over this and drill holes in that... Electrics are a cinch in comparison!

[voicecoils]

Sounds like a fine first day out on the new bike!

Move the foot pegs back!? Your supposed to be stretched out and hugging the thing for dear life! The big banana rider demonstrates:



In the future of electric racing scrutineering, they'll eye your bike suspiciously and just hand you a roll of kapton tape...

jasper-beardly+kapton_small.jpg (36.4 KiB) Viewed 454 times

[jonescg]

Well here is a pic of me looking somewhat uncomfortable on the big gixxer.
http://flashpixx.zenfolio.com/p35028668 ... #h16d0339c

The turn is turn 7 - the one where most people were crashing for some reason... I tend to tip into T7 too early, running wide on the exit. However the secret to going fast at Wanneroo is to get through T1 fast. Everything after that will then be fast. Braking early into the Basin (T6) can lose you a second, but T1 is where it's at.

That Lightning bike is simply huge

[jonescg]

Hey guys,

Well again, not much to report however I am convinced my LiPo battery sub-packs are a good idea. At the AEVA scoter conversion day, Rod Dilkes brought along 4 of his 12 V BMS modules. These basically monitor 4 cells at once. The LVC is set to 11 V and the HVC set to 14.6 V. The idea is that those 4 cells will tend to stay roughly in balance so if one goes it will tend to bring them all down. It reduces the number of cells being monitored by a factor of 4.

Given that my race bike will have somewhere between 108 and 180 cells in series, maybe sub-pack monitoring is a better way to go about it? Method's boards would be ideal for individual cell monitoring but there would be between 18 and 30 of them, which still takes up a bit of room.

I have a feeling the TTXGP rules specify 'individual cells must be monitored'.

In other news, I contacted both YASA and EVO asking why I should buy either opponent's product respectively. YASA is stupidly expensive, but super power-dense. Evo's motor is markedly cheaper (roughly half price) but the power density is half as much as a YASA. On cost alone I will go with an Evo, but man it's a honking big motor to find space for. I'm also unimpressed by the high failure rate of TTZero/TTXGP bikes running on big AC motors. Would I be setting myself up for a lemon? How many seriously powerful induction motors are out there? Would it be possible to get >110 kW from an induction motor and do induction motors under 200 kg and this powerful actually exist? Regardless, I will be initiating the motor purchase shortly. As for getting it to fit, I might yet swap the K5 for a K4 Gixxer. A fellow racer might be interested in an upgrade.

Many ponderings...

[Nuts&Volts]

The failure rates of the teams with BLDC and PMAC is not due to the motor at all. Most of the DNS is simply because they didnt finish in time or have battery or controller issues. I do not believe any of the TTXGP or IOM TT Zero failures have been due to the PMAC/BLDC motors, and I have never seen any team report otherwise. MotoCzysz has been running a BLDC for 3 years now with no motor issues.

As for the YASA I am under the impression that they are very quality motors and will put down the power they say they can. Kingston proved that last year and if you read some of their patents/papers the technology is very impressive. High cost comes from limited production and probably expensive magnets.

One option you have for AC induction is trying to get a Tesla Roadster motor. Those can do over 180kW and weigh about 45kg I believe. They are air cooled thou and not quite as efficient as the YASA or EVO which are over 95% peak.

[Grinhill]

Hey Chris, have you seen Sutho's car using the EVO motor?

http://www.facebook.com/DMCEV

I did wonder myself whether the motor could fit in a bike. Looks like it would chew into the available space for batteries though.

[jonescg]

I don't doubt that the motors are solid - what can possibly go wrong in an AC motor - unless it wasn't built properly there is no opportunity for mechanical failure, and the electrical failure options are no different. Too much current and you start melting stuff.

It's the drives to run them that seem to be fussy. I mean, you have to know Fortran or some other crazy enigma machine based code to run a Sevcon, let alone tune it to racing needs. And companies are wary of selling their products to folks wanting to race their goods (totally understandable; we plan on running them on a 90% duty cycle flat out) so naturally any failure will result in bad press. OK so the failure rate of bikes running on AC is probably no different to those running on DC, but man it's an expensive way to do it.

This is where I maintain that the biggest bottleneck to electric motorcycles is not batteries - they're a more distant, but parallel bottleneck. I believe making use of the available energy and turning it into useful motion is the most pressing limitation right now. And getting them small and light enough to fit into a bike... and making them affordable!

Anyway, I can't justify spending 9,000 pounds on a YASA and another 5000 pounds on a controller to run it. An Evo is only about 6,000 pounds and an inverter to run it is somewhere between AU$6000 and US$11,000. And for all this cash, will I end up with a motor/controller combo which is more robust, reliable and powerful than a pair of Indian smoke machines? That is my quandary.

[jonescg]

Hey-ho! A practical, actual update on this bike!

I have committed to buying an AFM140-4 motor. I will run a 700 V maximum DC Bus, as this allows for more efficient use of the motor's power. It should settle down to about 640 V in use. I will use the RMS PM150DZ inverter as it is rated for the awesomely lethal voltages.

http://www.evo-electric.com/inc/files/A ... t-V1.1.pdf

It will cost me about AU$10,000 landed, but I can also use the same motor in the eCRX. 8 bolts and you have a hot-swap motor! I'm paying in instalments since the lead time is about 4 months, and it will take me that long to get close to having enough money.

It begins in earnest