Alligator build discussion

[3-Wheeler]

Michael,

Is Tony Foale's first book worthy of a purchase?

After your nice discussion through this post, you have my curiosity up.

Jim.

[Michael Moore]

Jim, do you mean the one with Vic Willoughby as co-author? If you find a used copy at a low price I don't think you'd go wrong getting it. But Tony's latest edition "Motorcycle Handling and Chassis Design" incorporates everything in that first book and adds a great deal more so if you are only going to have one or the other, go with the current book.

John Bradley's books are a two volume set, with the first book being the "design" book and the second book being the "build it" material.

When I was John's US distributor I also sold Tony's book and software, and I encouraged people to get all three books and never had anyone say they'd regretted it.

Tony and John's books have some common material (not surprising) but they had different goals in writing them. Tony goes into much more detail on theoretical aspects, while John wanted books that would inspire people to take it out to the garage, do some measurements and calculations (as illustrated in the Volume 1), and then move on to changing/building things. Of course, Tony discusses construction topics too, but John goes into much greater detail in Volume 2 on material selection, construction techniques, etc.

So by getting all three you get a broader spread of knowledge than with just John or just Tony's book(s).

cheers,
Michael

[ldjessee00]

Doing a few mental exercises of trying to figure out where to put all the components on a FF design (radiator, engine, battery, oil tank, fuel tank, airbox, etc), it seems like it would be very hard.

Then I thought about how this might be much easier with an EV setup, especially if you are making your own frame.

Take one of the Zero motorcycles for the components (electronics, battery, motor), and then you can mount the motor and chain drive with a shorter chain behind the passenger, while you can put the battery down low between the rider's legs and the electronics on top. I would probably go with a longer wheel base and a remote steering head, but there may be ways around that.

Just a thought.

Oh, and don't forget Velomobiel FF aero scooter. He put the foot pegs on bars running down parallel to the forks (wider) and thus kept out of the way of the front wheel turning.

[Michael Moore]

You also need to consider the effects of different locations for the parts on the center of gravity of the vehicle. E-bikes may eliminate some parts (you'd think no radiator, water pump, hoses etc but then some more powerful electric motors use those parts) but a sufficient quantity of batteries may be both very heavy as well as bulky. You might be able to locate individual cells/batteries in different spots instead of all in one location, but you have to then consider if that makes it more difficult to service or swap out discharged/damaged cells.

A spread sheet is useful for determing the overall CofG by having a line for each component along with its weight and where the component CofG falls in the assembled vehicle. You sum all of that together to arrive at the combined CofG. Don't forget to include the CofG for the rider/passenger too.

You need a reasonably accurate scale, and everything needs to be weighed. You'll probably need several scales in different ranges. A freight scale suitable for weighing a 160 pound motor is probably going to lack resolution for getting accurate numbers on light parts. If the CoG of the part isn't obvious (say a rectangular battery vs an exhaust system) you'll need to determine the location of it. That can be done by hanging it from different points and drawing a line across the part directly below the hanging point. Where the lines intersect is the CofG. Here's an example where I hung a motor from different motor mount bolts with a plumb line from the attachment point on the hoist:

http://www.eurospares.com/graphics/y...f/yz250cog.jpg

He put the foot pegs on bars running down parallel to the forks (wider) and thus kept out of the way of the front wheel turning.

That will help on the footpeg bracketry, but you still need to ensure the rider's legs clear the tire. I'd have some concerns about the parallel footpeg mounts being more prone to flexing because of a longer unsupported run of tubing. You can work around that by increasing the tube diameter but that might end up bulkier or heavier than a triangulated structure. With a lot of this stuff you will probably start off with several different possible ways to build the component and then you have to mull it over and figure out which works best, keeping in mind that "best" for that component may mean "not so good" for the way it interacts with some other part. Try to not design a part in isolation, but rather keep in mind how everything may best work together.

It can drive you mad trying to keep track of everything.

cheers,
Michael

[3-Wheeler]

Originally Posted by Michael Moore

Jim, do you mean the one with Vic Willoughby as co-author? If you find a used copy at a low price I don't think you'd go wrong getting it. But Tony's latest edition "Motorcycle Handling and Chassis Design" incorporates everything in that first book and adds a great deal more so if you are only going to have one or the other, go with the current book.

John Bradley's books are a two volume set, with the first book being the "design" book and the second book being the "build it" material.........

cheers,
Michael

Michael,

I ordered John Bradley's first book this weekend.

Around $40 used if I recall correctly.

Thanks for the tip!

Jim.

[Michael Moore]

If you see a copy of Volume 2 you should buy it. I had an email from John over the weekend and he said that he's out of V2 and it will be a while before more are printed. Powell's in Portland OR has carried both John and Tony's books and might have some on hand so you don't have to order from England (John) or Spain (Tony).

I think you'll like the chapter in Volume 1 on aerodynamics. There's a full page listing the results of about 30 wind tunnel runs on different changes to an LSR bike and I found that very interesting.

Here's John's website:

Broadland Leisure - Publishers of The Racing Motorcycle

and Tony's:

TONY FOALE DESIGNS - Home page

cheers,
Michael

[beatr911]

Michael, thanks for those references! Lots learned just from the sample pages. I'll be ordering soon.

[Michael Moore]

http://www.eurospares.com/graphics/c...CS for R6 hub/

I've added a some photos showing recent progress on the hub center FFE (funny front end) for my "gator-ish" project. I've made the bearing carriers and the new carrier for the 315mm Brake Tech/Axis cast iron rotor.

I didn't find a photo of how the lightening holes in the Axis R6 carrier were done until after I'd played things safe on the one I made. I'm not going to spend the time now to try and shave a few more ounces off since this will be a street application.

I was forced to do some tidying up in my office room and the garage as I couldn't find the small bag with the rotor buttons. It eventually turned up in a middle layer in a tub sitting next to the mill. I suspect it had been sitting on the welding table when I needed to clear it and all the miscellanous stuff got pushed off the table and into the tub. I must admit that the extra floor space in the office and the stack of empty boxes and tubs in the garage are proving to be mood improvers. :-)

cheers,
Michael

[Michael Moore]

Royce Creasy very kindly supplied me with a pristine Voyager brochure and
a copy of his FF Info Pack and said it was fine to scan them and his "What Ever Happened" (I used my somewhat wrinkled copy) and make them available.

I've put them in this folder on my website:

Index of /graphics/FF

There's an 8MB

FFInfoPack.pdf

three pages of the brochure (I stitched pages 2 and 3 together)
that are 4.4, 13 and 5.1MB :

VoyagerBrochure001.jpg
VoyagerBrochure002plus003.jpg
VoyagerBrochure003.jpg


The color brochure scans are fairly large format/high res and should
look nice if printed off.

And Royces retrospective at approximately 14MB:

WhatEverHappened.pdf

cheers,
Michael