Frockfest

Hyena said:
But this would be 10+ hrs for most
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I thought Aussie's were tough.....I am an old, one armed,greying, dried out, fat, shell of an old man......I drove 30 hours to my last race.....killed an elk with my bare hands (on the steering wheel anyway) on the way home just for kicks. :twisted:

Man up already.

speaking of tutu's & racing, the annual end of season grass race at Redbud has mini bike race & costumes are encouraged. It's a freekin riot watching the wicked witch of the west doing battle with the m&m man & 8 time national champion Jeff Stanton all on hopped up XR75 Hondas.

I'll leave you now to tend your gardens :mrgreen:
 
adrian_sm said:
So what type of race/events
- tight and twisty road based
- off-road technical
- on & off-road, rally-X
- drag race
- hill climb
- economy/distance challenge
- tow a bus challenge.....
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I vote for tight and twisty road based. It will be a good balance of bike performance and rider skills.

Lets have one within a month. In case the go-kart track doesn't work out maybe start looking for a largish abandoned carpark, pref near a train station. Could line up the course with with hats (bricks, rokcs stick, whatever)
 
Thud said:
Hyena said:
But this would be 10+ hrs for most
Click to expand...

I thought Aussie's were tough.....I am an old, one armed,greying, dried out, fat, shell of an old man......I drove 30 hours to my last race.....killed an elk with my bare hands (on the steering wheel anyway) on the way home just for kicks. :twisted:

Man up already.

speaking of tutu's & racing, the annual end of season grass race at Redbud has mini bike race & costumes are encouraged. It's a freekin riot watching the wicked witch of the west doing battle with the m&m man & 8 time national champion Jeff Stanton all on hopped up XR75 Hondas.

I'll leave you now to tend your gardens :mrgreen:
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Duuuurp. meant to post that in quotable quotes :oops: :oops:
 
full-throttle said:
I vote for tight and twisty road based. It will be a good balance of bike performance and rider skills.
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Agreed.
Another option which might be easier to organise and essentially free is a grass course, a quiet oval somewhere and mark out a track with what ever (riding around slowly dragging a big bag of flour with a hole in it comes to mind :) ) and keep it fairly twisty so the speed doesn't get up too much. Non-slick tyres would be a must but injuries would be minimal if people are sliding out on the grass.

Lets have one within a month.
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Optimistic!

In case the go-kart track doesn't work out maybe start looking for a largish abandoned carpark
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That's probably going to be the easiest. The key is the word abandoned. I thought about this a year or 2 ago when I rode up to my local westfield shopping centre. It was a public holiday and I wasn't sure if the shops would be open so went up for a look. The shops WERE shut so the carpark was empty but check out the circuit possiblities!
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=miranda+fair&hl=en&ll=-34.035113,151.099732&spn=0.001571,0.002411&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=48.822589,79.013672&t=h&hq=miranda+fair&radius=15000&z=19

It's 3-4 storeys high too so no one would even know you're there. Apart from security, assuming they're monitoring it either remotely or from an office on site. They'd show up soon enough but it'd be cool for a quick underground style F&F race. You wouldn't need to mark out a course either because it's fairly well defined - maybe just an aerial photo distrubuted before hand with the course drawn on.
All we need is to find a public holiday where everything is definately shut. What's everyone doing on the 25th of December? :lol:

Could line up the course with with hats (bricks, rokcs stick, whatever)
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Good idea, maybe some broken bottles and scrap metal too :lol: :p
 
Another concept,( seems like a few of us have been mulling over this for a while, I certainly have...) is to look for sections for road that have been Isolated or cut off due to new infrastructure going in.. I recall about a month back seeing a section down near frankston (yeah where the "e-bike rider" got towed) where the "new" freeway replaced old infrastructure and there were a couple of hundred yards of straight line bitumen leading to nowhere...

another potential venue here in melbs is the viaduct sections along the creek, down stream from the previously mentioned velodrome... there are a couple of access ramps (with no access signs, conveniently graffit-ied to make em unreadable) that give access to some reasonably clean and wide concrete "raceways" that run a few hundred metres and are about 20 metres wide... on which a course could be laid out... very f&F :) there are similar up near the start of the tulla freeway.

Joe
 
Race classifications...

maybe too early to get all techo and stuff if like T3sla suggests n I agree that we push to get this rolling ASAP however I reckon some seperate classes could help create more interest and bring in a larger selection of participants

EG

Open Class (still with "must be able to complete lap pedal only to qualify" but otherwise, 2kw and up)

Mid Power (1kw to 2kw)

Pedal Pusher Parade (250w to 1kw)

I'd also love to see a non-bike race, to include things like powered kick scooters, electric skateboards and other such stuffs for a bit of variety and to enable those of us who have a few of these lying about to be able to run em out in public.

Joe

Oh n Hey .. check out this beast I saw in an ex brunswick St cycles shop in the commonwealth building cnr Elizabeth and bourke in Melbs CBD...

had a chat with the guys there and they were actually quite keen on the idea of electrifying it :)



Joe
 
winkinatcha said:
another potential venue here in melbs is the viaduct sections ...about 20 metres wide... on which a course could be laid out... very f&F
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I shall be naming my bike greased lightning. And watch out for my spoke minching axle extensions :p

RiverBedRace.jpg


I think these sort of sections aren't terribly suitable. They're going to end up with some pretty tight turns if it's only 20m wide. It doesn't leave alot of room to map out too much of a track and it might end up a bit slalom-ish.

If we're all going to travel why don't we find a quiet country town somewhere and take over it on a Sunday. A bloke at each end of town with a high vis vest a few witches hats and a detour sign and off we go :p
 
I do like the midway town thing but in the meantime I'm gonna run with pushing for a local Melbs based thing first, Having T3sla here and gunning for it helps and I confess I'm in love with the Altona Goat track ,I mean go Kart track concept that hopefully Full-throttle n myself will be checking out Sat'dy... will try to check out that old horse race course thing of T3sla's suggestion too, batteries and time withstanding...

On that note... current plans are to meet FT at Seaholme station (nearest to the place, I think about 5km) between 10:30 n 11:am Sat'dy... all welcome. Plan to find and run n photograph n hopefully vid the course (yeah I know, considering it was pretty rough 20+ years ago, the chances are it will be totally busted up now.. but the aerial photies suggest there is at least one straight away and a couple of turns that might be useable... anyways we'll see...

Ultimately tho, state versus state, mate versus mate... it's an Aussie tradition that MUST be satisfied...

Joe
 
Great discussion everyone!

Salutation from the fifty second state to the Americans, it would be great if we developed a transferable model that worked everywhere.

Fight Club Style.

There is no point going into crazy depths at this stage (they should be noted for future use),but for now we should select a few attainable race events that we can manage to pull off within a six week date.

Short term goal.
-Scout a local location for preliminary testing of event [FT & WA]
-Determine race data acquisition method [Anyone have ideas, phone GPS loggin? Issues with consistency, laps should be with a stop watch]
-I can handle on site charging batteries [10s (~3000/4000Wh?) to 240V, anyone got the best way to do this? 12V voltage reg -> Inverter]

-Drag race, [top speed over distance test, another that is first to speed X then back to 0, first to speed X]
-Handling test [cones in some arrangement that test your bikes setup is well balanced and not a train, good test that anyone can do once we have a set config pattern]
-Lapped race with Le Mans start and Pedal lap, few laps for good measure since all our bikes are bound to conk out
 
Personally I'd be keen if someone else were using the track at the same time. Elite cyclists without notice, for instance. :shock:

Don't underestimate the ability to get local and state government money to do this. Ballarat has been positioning itself as a cycling city and I've been canvassing them for some months for cashing up an interstate race. What if I could get your travel partially funded folks?

It wouldn;t be underground, but it might be legit, on the flip side.

Joe, I have a 12v 100Ah deep cycle SLA if it turns out to be any use for recharging. And maybe some solar panels might be donated prior for the promo sake....
 
Hey Samd :D

Wow that's some battery...

Yah I have 3*20ah 12v thunderskies and still to go through I dont know How many SLAs salvaged from dead old e-bikes n scooters... but that deep cycle thing would have some good long term punch

I've got a couple of 12v dc to 240v AC invertors, one tiddler 300w and one slightly beefier 800w so there are more solutions there...

Dunno how useful the solar cells would be for a single meet (not knocking the offer at all, just not sure how much collection would add on the day...)

I am all for the gov't funding thing, but past 'sperience generally sugggests there is a bit of back n forth (read a lot of time to get the funding to eventuate)... But longer term.. man I am all for it.. if we were able to get some legit race/displays going that the public n media could attend it'd be awesome...

t3sla: whaddya reckon? wanna run a "side project" with samd n whoever else wants to throw a shoulder to the wheel along the lines of legitimacy n funding? Imagine if we COULD actually offer transport funding for the likes of KiM and other Sandgropers and the CrowEater contingent as well... it'd be Ace.

Joe
 
winkinatcha said:
t3sla: whaddya reckon? wanna run a "side project" with samd n whoever else wants to throw a shoulder to the wheel along the lines of legitimacy n funding? Imagine if we COULD actually offer transport funding for the likes of KiM and other Sandgropers and the CrowEater contingent as well... it'd be Ace.

Joe
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Rather having fun acting like a tard, commercial isn't that hard I know a few money trees I could shake.

But if I've learnt anything in life is if you're in business this is your mindset
[youtube]cP_GOoBPKfQ[/youtube]
Not exactly parallel to what we want to do, I'm more of a purist as it allows for total freedom and the only constraint is energy and creativity. Money is the easy solution that saves time an energy, the most important factor is how we are competing.
You're ideal situation involves creative control, you want them reaching out to you so that you can dictate the terms.

Charging set-up isn't hard, just a matter of if we bulk charge/12vRC/Inverter.
It's not like we are starting with a 100 lap enduro race, the most important commodity is some tools and tubes.

Heh I have field ebike service guys that would be interested in attending, one day they can be a pit crew.

There are 10 ways everything can go, like having a standard bike and motor but allowing freedom of controller and battery.
Competing in teams, but that is more advanced and for now the focus needs to be on the immediate.
 
let me rephrase that...

So t3sla, are you saying that you could organise funding (shaking those money trees) which'd help make this pink slip thing more accessible to e-bikers throughout Aus but you can't be stuffed cos you just wanna have fun?

Joe
 
What is the sales pitch for guys with RC lipo and overpowerd motors? That knocks out all the big retailers and importers. They stand to gain nothing and can actually hurt their business my affil.

So what are you left with, stealth?
Johns is stupid busy and he has test ride days for that kinda promo, maybe if he brings bikes and whoops us ;p

I can ask the solar battery suppliers if they wana lend some batteries and inverters.

ATA are the best central EV group that have regular interaction, so tack on affil works.
 
Lets just get at least one meet organised before we bog ourselves down on all the nightmare constraints of making it official.

Just need to pick a location that can accommodate the type of show-downs we want, pick a date, and get every type of electric personal transport known and unknown to man kind there.
 
Agreed... Was a longer term thing... still gonna be checking out the goat track Sat'dy, still able to provide charging solutions and still rarin' to get the "underground thing" happenin' asap.



Joe
 
8)

So what other options do we have on the cards if the goat track is too ripped up. Looked pretty rough from the google maps satellite view.
 
Not too sure mate...

Current suggestions of merit

- Abandoned/closed carpark

- Industrial areas outside of business hours

- New housing developments with roads but no houses

- Hiring of operational go kart tracks

- Quiet oval/grassed area with laid out track

Joe
 
I`d be keen , but I`d much prefer a race on a knarly steep rocky downhill or a supercross track . Re the charging , I have 4 * 100amphr batteries & 2 invertors & thats barely enough to charge 2 Fighters . I also have a generator . A go kart track would be good but a smooth surface means power is everything .
 
full-throttle said:
Bingo!

Good things happen when you talk to your workmates while drinking beer :mrgreen:

Criterium track, Casey Fields, Cranbourne
[/quote

Good choice , no access issues if a club isn`t using it . Pretty close for me also .
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It's a beauty alright, but in reading through the website there is a definately a human powered/pedal only element, and there may be certain risks if we take e-v's there... IE

Motorised vehicles including cars and motorbikes are NOT permitted to use this facility (excluding emergency and maintenance vehicles). Offenders will be prosecuted pursuant to Local Law No.2 (3.23 and 3.5). Unauthorised vehicles may be impounded by an authorised officer pursuant to Local Law No.2 (4.7).

THis does concern me...

Casual hiring of the criterion track can be done, but to do so it must be hired by an organisation which has to be incorporated and have public liability insurance...

Bottom line... looks the goods, but with our current disorganisation, the risks may outweigh the benefits of using this as members of the general public...

Joe
 
full-throttle said:
Bingo!

Good things happen when you talk to your workmates while drinking beer :mrgreen:

Criterium track, Casey Fields, Cranbourne
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Rigid!

Site looks good
http://www.casey.vic.gov.au/criteriumcyclingtrack/

Edit: saw winkinatcha post.


Ok, so we are now a NFP(non for profit) that is helping people with physical disability rehabilitate through the use of electric bikes.

KiM you cool with being pimped out in such a manor?

No one will frock with us and you might get a free flights, lol :p
 
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