Halloween race in Tucscon !

Alright, passed an inspection today. Now I need to rat my bike together enough hopefullly in time for the race. I am having to scramble!

OK, I'm driving to Tucson this Sat and to the track Sunday, that is the day of the race isn't it? Just started my build, have to wait till April to race, but thought I'd learn something, can help out, plus get motivated. Will bring clipboards, pens, 100' extension cord, couple of lawn chairs. Any ideas what else to bring? Are there enough generators for charging, could buy a 900W cheepie, but only if needed.

Will

Race is Saturday, the 30th. Track opens at 10am I think, first practice scheduled at 1pm, race at 4pm IIRC.

SoSauty said:

OK, I'm driving to Tucson this Sat and to the track Sunday, that is the day of the race isn't it? Just started my build, have to wait till April to race, but thought I'd learn something, can help out, plus get motivated. Will bring clipboards, pens, 100' extension cord, couple of lawn chairs. Any ideas what else to bring? Are there enough generators for charging, could buy a 900W cheepie, but only if needed.

Will

Click to expand...

Video camer(s) would be great, if you have wifi/laptop perhaps you could broadcast a race or two LIVE here on ES so we can cheer on the DoGMaN and Evo that would be WICKED and really simple to do, if you need live broadcasting software webcamXP Pro is one i have used to setup live webcam feed in the past breeze to use if you wanna less than legit copy to use lemme know can up it for you to download...

Best of luck to all attending hope you have a blast and come home in one piece... DoGMaNz here's a bit of added incentive for you, if you can place top 3 in the main i'll stop calling "hub" motors frock motors on E.S :lol: Go hard ol boy give them youngsters a hurry on buddy ...

KiM

Youngsters? 3/4 of the riders last spring had white hair, and display tons of riding experience and finesse. But yeah, on the podium they were mostly at least under 40.

I have hopes of a podium, but it might require a certain couple guys to either not be there or crash. And we'll see if my estimations of battery size are right. I could just have to bail out with 2 laps to go or murder a $600 battery. This race is more of a test run than a contest. I'd be stoked enough if my bike was fast enough to lead the first lap, till voltage drop eats my speed. For next spring, I have definite plans for a huge battery that won't fade. Just throw money at it.

I'll be trying to get some decent video from my bike. I'll have a handlebar mounted cheapie turnigy cam. I got a big card for it, so it should fit both races on it. Be nice to get video of nobody, like FR 31 does. 8) In practice laps I have a helmet cam too, that will shoot better film. But it catches air, so not in the race. In practice at least ,you may get some vid passing slower guys.

The track is not made so good for spectators or shooting video unless you have a really good lens on a real camera. Mine goes to crap if you zoom, and the fence keeps the crowd way too far from the more interesting corners. Only track personell are allowed out there, so you can't get a camera in a good spot to film the whole race. Be nice if they had a central observation tower you could buy admission to for filming. They did it right though, once racing, there is absolutely nothing for you to hit. No piles of tires or hay in front of stupid stuff needed.

Hope you like driving at night So Sauty. Uggh, sounds like you need to call in sick friday. :wink:

Good to hear your job finished up Evo. I know what it's like. I used to routinely go on a 24-7 schedule to get the trim carpentry done on a new McDonalds. I'd work 4 hours, nap 2, work 4, nap 2. Round the clock for the last 7-14 days. Big check for it though. Then two months off till the next Mcstruction job.

I'm bringing a bit of shade, a generator that can do 3000 watts continuous, and some cord so the thing can be a few feet away. A demo bike with an Ebikekit 9x7 will be there too for those that want to demo a typical kit. It could be raced if you bring a 48v battery.

dogman said:

Be nice to get video of nobody, like FR 31 does. 8)

Click to expand...

I believe he will be one less y ou will have to beat, rumours are he's not racing..? Unless things have changed..

KiM

Yikes, I'll be on the road Friday (Bakersfield, CA) Retired, white hair also, on the big vacation Dogmanz, I have a 48V batt in non-use, 10.5Ahr, need to verify it works, if so I'll bring along Add camera to list, don't have vid cam and I'm broke (just finishing our kitchen remodel), maybe a mid-size ice chest and shade. Oh, and a stopwatch.

AussieJest, I'll look into webcam, yet 'tween my not having done it, and being prohibited from standing trackside, don' know.

I'd better 'choke ko buke' (hurry in Turkish)

Will

No internet connection either, so you'd have to have a real nice cellphone to do a live cast of the race. Maybe my second camera on a tripod could be allowed near one of the more interesting corners. I'll ask about it. Likely I won't get much vid posted till monday.

Dave is the organizer this time, so he may not run. But there are three others dang near as fast. So that leaves 4th open. Honestly, I'e be thrilled to make top ten if the field is 30 fast riders.

Working hard to at least "rat" my bike together for the race.Took it out for a test (pedal) to get a feel for it all. I like it! I didn't like the pedaling much though. Too much work not enough time ....gotta go. You can check out my other new pictures at my build thread Evoforce bike build 3 in E-bike photos and videos build thread.

I'm still trying to work out a way to get the 9C/GM into a 24" wheel that will fit on CrazyBike2. The short kids' bikes' spokes I have just wont' cut it--they break trying to tension it, much less true it and ride it. I am still looking for my small round file to oval out the rim's nipple holes to be able to use the larger/longer ones, since their angle is so much greater there is no other way to do it.

I am sorely tempted to just stick a 26" fork in front instead of the 24", and use the 9C off DayGlo Avenger, but that'll change all the steering angles and stuff, too, so I don't know how well I'll adjust to the steering this late in the game.

Right now I stopped on that to let my mind ponder, and am working on wiring up the TS60Ah cells so I can use them as part of a pack, with (hopefully) the NiMH as 3P 24V or 2P 36V on top of that, using some big fat stud diodes out of really old teletype power supplies to isolate them from each other. Only problem with the diodes is that it'll prevent regen braking, which I was kinda hoping to use to help me stop, as I only have a front rim brake otherwise. No rear brakes (no time to make and fit anything).

The race is this weekend isn't it? bit late to be doing all this now Amberwolf
you should be packing things up on a trailer and getting there now not deciding on what to build to race LoL...

KiM

Well, I have been trying to get all this stuff done before now, but so far almost all of the things I have been trying to make work have not worked. Wasted a lot of time trying to get the 9C/GM laced into a small enough wheel to run on CrazyBike2, because the Fusin really is too small a motor to run at any great speeds. I'll either melt it or break it's gears.

I am taking another break right now that I shouldn't, because I'm getting crosseyed with figuring stuff out and wiring things.

I can't figure out a way to put batteries on DayGlo Avenger in a way that doesn't require the box on the left, so it can't make a left turn very sharp, and would probably end up being a danger on the track to someone (probably myself :lol.

That basically leaves CrazyBike2, or The Velcro Eclipse. Although, as of today I do have two other bikes I could convert, in theory, but like TVE, they are just plain bikes and not special to me and my way of doing things. Yet, anyway.

I'd really rather take CrazyBike2, so I'm trying hard to come up with ways to make it work, and when I get up from the computer in a few minutes, I'm going to go see if the 26" forks I have will fit it's headstock, and stick the 9C off DGA on it instead. And I'll bring the 9C/GM so I can put it's stator in if I have to, plus an extra controller.

I guess I am better at last minute thinking than planning stuff out and getting it done.

I probably wont' get much sleep tonight. :lol:

I hope you get it worked out amberwolf

I asked everyone who wanted plenty of track time to show up earlier cause I was first told there might not be many supermoto or Karts in the morning. But now I am getting a different story...happens every time :x

But our event is not schedule until 1pm so as long as you are at the rack before 1pm you will not miss anything. I am going early with the hope that there will not be too many supermotos or karts and we can have more track time.

I am real excited and probably won't get any sleep tonight :lol:

Hope to see you guys out there, have fun and be safe and good luck to everyone. See you at the track!

David

I got it built, dunno if it'll actually work for long on the road but I have 4 battery packs and 2 controllers so if i blow somehting up on the way there I should at least still be able to ride on the track even if it' snot fast enough to race. also a 3rd spare controller in case i need it to get home afterwards.

dang thing is as heavy as it was with the sla now, all that nimh on there.

gonna have to unbolt the cargo pods when i get there to run it on the track i think.

hope it works at least long enough to get me to the light rail so i can get to the meet point. :lol:

if it wasnt'a crazy bike before it sure is now.


now i am so tired; gotta try a copule hours of sleep since i have nodded off a zillion times while working on it already.

I'd figured that any track time before 1:00, was to be shared with any karts or motos that wanted to run. Entertaining to watch anyway, and won't interfere with the real purpose of the meet, the gabfest.

Whoa.

That's your wildest build yet I think.

Can't wait to hear how the racing goes.

Ok, I spent days, and all night tonight ratting my racer together, maybe i can get in 20 min sleep before having to get up to go. Still don't have rim spoked yet. Oh boy! Wish us luck.

an ti ci pation...is makin me wait.

And fun was had by all.



































No, really, it's true. :lol:

This is the lineup for the start of the race

but I'll leave it for others to tell their own stories though. If they leave out anything interesting that I know of I might remember to post it up.

Evoforce and two non-ES friends of his picked me up at the far end of the light rail, and we headed off for a long trip to Tucson from the Valley.

The trip itself was interesting and fun, although it was difficult at times to keep from nodding off (I knew if I did I'd feel worse than if I just stayed awake, as I'd only gotten an hour and a half or so of sleep). On the way, I was relacing Evoforce's main bike wheel into a new rim, which had a pretty destroyed rim that I wouldn't have wanted to let anyone ride on. The lacing went well enough, but with the tire and tube sitting upright on the floor in front of the seats we were in, I somehow managed to drop one of the old spokes in there which neither of us noticed as we put the wheel back together later, and it gave him a flat we didn't really have time to fix, essentially putting his main bike out of the race.

When we arrived at the track there wasn't anyone there, because we didn't quite go far enough down the road. His friends rode a couple of his bikes up and down the road, and had a lot of fun--EV grins all around. He and I finished a basic truing of the wheel on the bike, reassembled the bike and eventually we all went to the correct track, after his friends came back to let us know our problem.

I didn't end up in the race itself, as after riding the track I found two things, one of which I already knew:

--I don't have very good reaction times, which leads to poor control over a fast machine, especially since I have trouble telling how fast I am actually going once I get past speeds I usually ride at (below 20mph).

--Crazybike2 is not the easiest to steer at high speeds unless you lean it WAAAAAAAY over. Which works perfectly fine on the paved track surface, which is pretty sticky even with the crappy tires on CB2. But just touch the gravel/dirt at the edge of the track with your rear tire and that lean is now a slide with a dust cloud to rival an experimental fighter jet plowing into the desert at mach five. :lol:


Since I was wearing those new-to-me hockey leg guards, with plastic side covers and all that padding, and I was smart enough to just keep holding the bars instead of trying to reach out, I didn't get any injuries, but it did tear the kneepad leather pretty good.

If I hadn't been wearing them it would've *at least* taken the skin off my knee, and quite likely a lot worse. Other than a lot of dust and dirt in my face I was otherwise fine. As it happens, it was a good thin I did not bring or use the ventilated side covers from Icecube's 9C/GM, or the motor would've been fillled iwth dirt and gravel at that point, as the front wheel on that side dug itself in fairly well, with dirt packed into the threads and whatnot, and up between the washers/etc, as well as on the side cover. :lol:

The bike itself was mostly unhurt, though it ended up doing something to the brakes that later caused me another near-crash, at the opposite end on the other tight curve past the straightaway, just past the pit exit/track entrance. The left side brake (opposite side of the crash) dived under the rim and stuck in a way that left me with no braking power but also no motor power for some reason, and fortunately didn't reach the spokes. I ended up choosing to continue straight-line into the gravel with my feet out flintstone-style for brakes, and I still slid at least 15 feet before stopping, but upright this time. I took it back to the pits to figure out what went wrong and fix it.

I ended up being unsure enough of it's mechanical reliablity and my own handling ability to not go on to the heats or race, but I think I would like to do this again come springtime.

At one point in the practice, I got it up to 31.5MPH on the straight,

at only 60V of damaged NiMH F-cells; I bet if I had done what I wanted to and put the 32V of TS60Ah cells in there, and paralleled the NiMH for 36V more, I could've gotten at least 5MPH more out of that, because the voltage drop on these NiMH is pretty bad at the high current drains I was probably getting.

I have no wattmeter data because I still had the large andersons on the WU I brougth with me and totally forgot to pull one of the TWMs with the small andersons off DayGlo Avenger before I left home (I remembered halfway to the light rail but it was way too late by then). I really wanted to know what performace I got out of it but I guess that'll happen next time.

For the trip up there, I had the cargo pods on, stuffed with my gear and extra parts I might blow up and tools, so it was pretty heavy. It was on 48V for that trip, with the traction pack of 2x 24V NiMH packs from Ianmcnally, and a signal lighting pack of 12V NiMH made of half the 24V pack from Deardancer. A 36V D-cell NiMH from Deardancer ran my CFL lighting only becuase I did nto have time to change it's connector from Multipole to Powerpole (liek the WU); I had also intended to try that one in series with all the others to see what speed I could get but ended up not trying it out because I was afraid of ripping the motor out of the fork dropouts already. :lol:

The light rail trip was interesting, as I have pondered but never actually taken CB2 on it. It is too long to do what I originally thought to do, which is stand between the doors; instead it must be put along the seats to one side and placed so that one side's cargo pod is in the "well" where the seats fold up for wheelchairs and the like. THis means that on busy times I probably could not ride the rail with it. Also, I can only ride the rail from end to end, and never get on or off at any other station, because they do not stop long enough to get the bike to or from that position (it takes over 2 minutes, maybe 3 or 4), and there's no way I could maneuver it while they're accelerating or decelerating, even though they have finally figured out that they don't need to gun the throttle or slam on the brakes, at least, so it's much gentler than before.

I was actually able to ride the whole way just seated on CB2, kicked back and relaxing, trying to not fall asleep. :lol: Being pulled back and forth by the braking/starting helped keep me awake, as even with the brakes on, CB2 slid a little bit with each start and stop. The pic shows the Fusin wheel Dogman brought for me, on my trip home. I forgot to take a pic on the way there. Wish I had thought to ask someone to take a pic of me on the bike while on the train.

For the track, I took off the cargo pods,

and hooked up the NiMH in series for 60V, 2x 24V plus 12V, all F-cell.
View attachment 4
THe controller used for everything was the 12FET from Ianmcnally that I think had been hooked up backwards to power and blew the caps and melted shunts, so I have no real idea what it's current limit was, since the replacement shunts I used are probably 1/2 to 1/3 of the original ones, at a guess. (I dont' know what the originals were, or even for sure what the new ones are, just what the PCB was marked next to them on the blown analog controller I pulled them from). The controller didn't even get warm, though, probably becuase it's mounted along the side of the front top tube, with it's front end open and the FET side up with lots of airflow. The motor was a little warm after my practice runs, but not much. Probably the same as my regular commuting with it on DGA.

I never needed to use the Methods controller I had on there, originally there as a backup but also to try with all the NiMH in series.

I couldn't trust the dropouts of the tiny fork I ended up using to hold the motor, after several times (on the trip to the light rail and on the track) of having the motor begin to come out of them when I pushed the throttle down too quickly, instead of gradually. Even what I would normally call gradual still required me to pedal a lot at starts from stops to keep it from coming out. When I first powered it up on the road outside my front door, I almost spun it out of the fork! I had not realized it would be such a problem at only 48V, but it is. Even the torque arm wouldn't keep it in the dropouts, becuse it is not designed for this shape of fork. I think it might actually have made the problem worse. I had to go back in the house to get a big wrench that I could use easily and quickly to put it back if it were to happen again (as I was pretty sure it would).

While the heats and race were going on, I charged my batteries at Dogman's generator

so I'd have them full for the trip home from the end of the light rail. It took the better part of all that time to finish charging, so if anyone knows how long that was (I forgot to check) then I can guesstimate how much power I used.

I'm only sorry that I did not take more pictures (forgot I had the camera with me until too late for a lot of stuff), and that I chickened out on actually trying to race. But hopefully there will be a next time when I am better prepared.

great job!

Looks like a lot of fun.