Electric Race Bike

[Jay64]

Wow, the rumor mill is flying at full speed. I just got an email asking if I was dropping out of the goal for electric racing because someone told them I was selling all of my electric race hardware based on some of my for sale posts.
No, I'm not dropping out. Yes, I did run out of time to get my build done before the first 2 races of the season. No, I'm not posting up a bunch of stuff saying I will definitely be at the next round every race. I don't want to sound like Brammo and their Empulse. It actually started bothering me to read blogs about how I was going to be at a race, and then read about how I failed to show up, even when I didn't actually say I was going to be at the race. As soon as the bike is done, we will definitely be at the following race. I just can't promise when the build will be done. I can say that we are getting close. Basically I am working with Matsushima Performance, a huge name in ICE motorcycle racing, to build a race bike. That is the team I used to race for in the Pro AMA races. Matsushima got out of the race game, but he is interested in this new electric stuff, so we got to talking about collaborating together on the build. We pretty much started over from scratch to redesign everything from the ground up. I really wanted to focus on it being an actual race bike, not a repurposed street bike. Having Matsushima on board for this is huge. I haven't been posting much because so far it is just a bunch of chassis work. But I will be posting build info asap.

[jonescg]

See Jay, that's the trouble with being good - people listen to you

I agree on your new build philosophy - do it properly if you can afford it. My race bike plans have changed a bit lately too, but I will update the thread when things are a bit more concrete. Keep us posted mate.

CHRIS

[Jay64]

I've got a lot of pics and stuff I will be posting very shortly. Hopefully we will be able to get it running soon to be doing a video too. But we all know how it goes, right when you think you are close, something comes up to delay everything.
I forget if I mentioned this or not, but I packed up my race van with all the parts and drove out to California from Florida to work with Matsushima Performance out here. I got out here about 2 weeks before the last race, but we just didn't have enough time to get everything done. So I've been couch surfing for almost a month now. And this is after only being home for about a week from my last month long race trip.
One of the biggest problems is that there is a specific machinist who we normally use, but he is in China, he was supposed to have been back at the beginning of last month, but now he doesn't think he'll be here till the end of this month. So we were having our backup guy doing some work for us. But He went out of town for a vacation for a week, and that backed him up with his regular work. So then we had a third machinist start doing work for us, the motor mount plate cut, and then HE went out of town. I talked to another guy, but before I got the stuff over to him, he also went out of town and said he was going to be too backed up to help. Went to another shop and he wasn't around, so I left my business card and asked them to tell him to call me, he never did. Sheesh, is there some huge machinist convention going on or something???
Today I took the chassis down to one of the guys that used to do a bunch of stuff for us back when I was racing for Matsushima. He welded on some support rails for our frame. So now I have a base for the battery box and our frame is more structurally supported.
So now I got the GSXR 600 front end with the Ohlins internals and the Ohlins triple adjustable rear shock. Turns out I left some critical components for the marchesini rear wheel back in Florida, so I will probably have to run the stock rear wheel if we make it to the next race at the end of the month. Little extra weight, but not that bad. I also left some of the stuff for the Marchesini front, but Matsushima has some spares of that stuff, so I can at least run that to save a little weight.
I bought a used gas tank online, and that just came in last night, it has a lot of crash damage to it, some big dents. So today I cut out the bottom and got to work banging out the dents. I have all the big dents banged out, now I just need to do some detail work to get the original shape back, and smooth out the hammer dimples. As soon as I have that done, we can take the bodywork and tank down to get wrapped. Hoping to have the drive components all installed by early next week, but we'll have to see about that. One of the major parts that we need got ordered Wed night, and turns out they never sent it today, so hopefully that will get sent out tomorrow, but we'll see how that goes. That makes it look like it won't get here till at least Mon.

[Mike Edwards]

I can say that we are getting close. Basically I am working with Matsushima Performance, a huge name in ICE motorcycle racing, to build a race bike. That is the team I used to race for in the Pro AMA races. Matsushima got out of the race game, but he is interested in this new electric stuff, so we got to talking about collaborating together on the build. We pretty much started over from scratch to redesign everything from the ground up. I really wanted to focus on it being an actual race bike, not a repurposed street bike. Having Matsushima on board for this is huge. I haven't been posting much because so far it is just a bunch of chassis work. But I will be posting build info asap.

Grant is a top guy. Really looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with.

[Jay64]

Hi Mike, it is really cool to have you on this forum. I've heard about you through Grant. Yeah, he is one of the top guys in the US for building a bike, so it will be great to see how this thing comes out with his input. The best bikes I have ever rode where when I was racing on his team, and I really look forward to an electric race bike with that kind of handling.

[Mike Edwards]

I think lots of people are amazed at the power delivery from an electric bike and how much grip is actually available. Few people have yet to maximise the benefit though as most aren't really in to chassis design, etc.

[etard]

Wow, big moves Jay! Can't wait to see what you and Matsushima Performance come up with. What is his opinions on power systems and batteries? Did you guys agree on weight placement, or did the chassis guy have any new insights for improving anything? I guess I'm just curious how a well financed endeavor would do anything different other than improve individual components already provided by the donor bike. You must be happy with this arrangement as long as you get to ride, right?

I also can't believe your bad luck with the machinist evacuation of 2012, that's a long series of misfortunate events I would say. Speaking of being out of town, I will be in Orlando next weekend, I'm guessing you are on a racing circuit somewhere?

[Jay64]

etard, yeah, I'm still in SoCal right now. Yeah, Grant Matsushima and I have very similar ideas of what is needed for a good race bike, but he is really good at actually implementing all of these designs and building a fantastic chassis. We still need to do testing, but I know we can get a really good performing bike after we work out a few kinks. For the power system he really wants to go with brushless because "that is the way of the future." He has some interesting things that he has done with his batteries, so I'm looking forward to trying them out. He also wants me to move away from the Turnigy batteries. We are trying to get something running for the Laguna Seca race, and will probably be doing modifications/upgrades before the following race.
That sucks that you are going to be in Orlando while I'm in SoCal.

[Jay64]

Doing a bunch of balance charging on the zippy flight max LiPo packs. I started charging at a RC car shop earlier yesterday, got about 6 packs charged. Then I came back to Grant's house to continue charging last night and today. Charging them on the grill just in case one of these packs gets out of hand, we can just close the lid.

[Jay64]

So far some of the packs balanced out perfectly, and some of the others aren't. I had a couple finish a charge session, according to the charger display, but some cells were at 4.20 and some were at 4.17. Is that normal?

[Jay64]

Question: How quickly does a LiPo pack go "thermal"? Will it be getting hot for a while and then just catch fire, or can it be cool to the touch one moment and then just catch fire out of the blue? I guess what I'm asking is, do you normally get a few minutes of warning as it starts getting hotter?

[Jay64]

In the ttxgp rules, there is a section that talks about needing a power indicator light on the tail section. It states: The light must flash between 1-2 times/second on a 50% duty cycle. Do you guys have an idea on how to get the light to flash 1-2 times/second on a 50% duty cycle?

[fechter]

In the ttxgp rules, there is a section that talks about needing a power indicator light on the tail section. It states: The light must flash between 1-2 times/second on a 50% duty cycle. Do you guys have an idea on how to get the light to flash 1-2 times/second on a 50% duty cycle?

They make turn signal flashers designed for LED lamps that are load independent (and cheap). Assuming you have a 12 source somewhere on the bike, you could use one of those to power any kind of 12v light.
Search eBay for "LED flasher". A small dc-dc converter or switching power supply could power it.

As far as the battery heating question; I'm not sure. There is more than one failure mode, so sometimes I think they could just 'blow up' even when cold if a separator shorted. I would highly recommend some kind of cell level monitoring, like CellLogs or Methods' HVC/LVC boards.

4.17v to 4.2v is all within the 'healthy range', so I wouldn't worry much about it.

[jonescg]

Question: How quickly does a LiPo pack go "thermal"? Will it be getting hot for a while and then just catch fire, or can it be cool to the touch one moment and then just catch fire out of the blue? I guess what I'm asking is, do you normally get a few minutes of warning as it starts getting hotter?

Danny (Ripperton) and I have frequent disagreements about LiPo cells and the risk of overheating. He has gone to great lengths to ensure his pack stays cool, and after a race his cells are up to about 40'C. He is also using an old pack with old cells, and some of them are a bit puffy. I think his cells are being overheated because he's skimped on the terminations. Sure, being careful of overheating is important, and a set of thermocouples is important, but hot cells would indicate something else is wrong.

My next bike will be a sealed box with vents for the unlikely risk of a runaway. If it's warm when you get in, wait a bit before charging. The risk of fire is highest at charging, so if you can pull the pack out to charge it you have reduced the risk of failure by half.

[Jay64]

Getting some work done on the bike.

[jonescg]

Looks horn Jay

Is that a single Mars/Motenergy?

[drewjet]

Looks good Jay.

Is that a variable pulley for the first stage reduction?

[Jay64]

Thanks.
Chris, yes, it is a motenergy brushless.

Andrew, yes, we are experimenting with a CVT setup for the race bike. We were hoping to go with a custom built transmission, but the machinist that we were going to work with for that was out of town the whole time we were building it. So we bought a CVT out of a catalog just to have something to work with in the mean time and do some testing. Unfortunately, this model that we got is not up to par with the torque that this motor is capable of putting out. We made a bunch of modifications and got it real close, but it is still slipping under hard driving. So for the time being, we switched it out for a chain/sprocket primary. It drives really hard. We have been testing in the parking lot and then a few runs down a back street. But I still haven't been able to get to full top speed yet due to testing on a public street and traffic. The brakes are waaaay overkill for this thing. We were still getting all the cable/wire routing sorted out and just had things like the contactor and throttle rigged up to be able to test the system, not as a final position. So the tank and tail section would not fit on, therefore I was test riding it with no tank and no tail section (seat) I just through a foam pad over the bar that acts as a seat pan support and took it out for some test. I was going down the very bumpy back road, got it going pretty damn fast, probably about 60-70+ and I went to grab the brakes. Unfortunately I grab a handful and it pitched me forward. Without having the tank there to support myself, I fell forward and off the bike under the left hand clipon. Luckily the speed of the bike was high enough that the momentum kept the bike rolling in a straight line. I somehow managed to catch myself with my right foot on the subframe and my left arm on the front fender, I could feel the front tire rubbing against my forearm. I then somehow managed to push/pull myself back up onto the bike and bring it to a controlled stop.
After that we got all the wires routed the way that worked and made a permanent mount for the contactor and did a nice setup for the throttle so that we could mount the tank and tail section on. It made it sooo much easier to ride. I was almost able to get my knee down in the parking lot after that. I let Grant take a few turns on the bike in the parking lot, which was his first time riding an electric motorcycle. He said that when he got off the throttle, the motor kept driving for a moment before starting to slow down. I hadn't noticed that happening when I was riding it. But after that we let a friend of ours ride it, who rides motorcycles all the time. He took one turn in the parking lot, and crashed! He said when he got off the throttle if felt like it kept driving, so he panicked and grabbed for the clutch, then panicked even more when that wasn't there and grabbed the brakes. His stab at the brakes was too hard for what was needed and it locked up the front wheel and drove the bike into the ground on the right side. I'm glad we decided to use a pot box instead of a magura throttle. The front brake reservoir broke off, kind of damaged the front brake lever and clipon, bent the foot peg/bracket/rear brake lever. I'm just glad he was alright. From my angle it look like he face planted off the bike.

Here is a video of a test ride without the tank/seat and with the chain primary.

[Jay64]

After this video, we made some adjustments to the primary chain and got the noise cut in half. But I didn't get any video after that.

[Jay64]

Also, we've been having an intermittent problem with the controller cutting out. It seems to work fine when I'm riding it, but then when I'm trying to do a full speed test, if I'm up to a fairly good speed and go WOT instantly, it turns itself off. I then have to cycle on/off both my switches and it works again. I haven't had this problem with instant WOT at slower speeds, and if I'm at a higher speed and slowly go WOT I haven' been able to replicate it. When Grant was riding it, he got it to shut off at a slower speed in the parking lot going instant WOT.

Not sure if I mentioned it in this thread or just the other one, but it is a Sevcon Gen 4 size 6 controller with a ME0913 motor. I was told that the absolute max voltage on this motor/controller combo is 108 volts. So we are running 25s of LiPo for a fully charged voltage of 105. It is currently 40 ah, but we are looking to probably have to go higher to make the race distance with this voltage. The pack voltage at the time of the above stated issue was between 103 and 97.

[Jay64]

[c_a]

What happend to you in Miller?

Everything ok with the bike? What do you think about the motor and the performance?

[Jay64]

The controller kept cutting out on the track for some reason. Whenever I tested it in the parking lot it worked phenomenal. I was riding it harder in the parking lot than I was on the track, but it wouldn't cut out. On the track it would start cutting out on the first lap. But in order to get off the track I would have to reset the system to get back to the pit. And since it wasn't wired w a dash fault LED, I wasn't able to see the fault code. So basically, I have no idea why it was cutting out. If i was just out on a test track I would have kept pushing and took the chance w it cutting out. But I didn't want the bike to cut out right in front of someone else and cause them to crash. So I opted to not race it. I actually did a complete timed lap in qualifying by reaching back to the tail section and resetting the system every time it cut out. 3 times in one lap.
But when it was running, it was good. The handling was awesome. I found a fenced off area of the parking lot that was really big and completely empty. I was totally hammering it and never found the limit. I actually had the track security chasing me around for riding too fast in the pits. It was disappointing, but we had a huge improvement in the bike.

[fechter]

It will be hard to guess without having the error code from the controller. Wild-ass guess: being close to the maximum operating voltage, spikes are hitting the over voltage protect and triggering shutdown. Lowering the pack voltage might be one test. Adding more capacitor across the controller power input might help too.
Under really hard acceleration, the pack sags a bit which may be enough to keep the peak voltage under the trigger point.

[grindz145]

Hah, there's nothing like dragging a knee in the parking lot. That's one thing Luke always stresses, is the difficulty to setup the Sevcons such that they will never fualt.