Suzuki RG250F Gamma conversion

OK so an update on the shitfight that has been getting my bike to the TTX-GP

TNT failed to pick up my crate. Cunts. Yes, I will use that word profusely - the Devil infects an Aussie's tounge with this word, and it is used only in these circumstances.

The cunts at TNT promised to pick up the bike on Thursday since they didn't get to it on Wednesday. Well I get home only to discover they haven't picked it up, and tomorrow is Good Friday. :x I phone the useless cunts to find out WTF happened and they wouldn't help me unless I offered a booking number. The booking was made by my university on my behalf, so I don't have the details. I leave for a hopefully relaxing weekend in Nannup tomorrow, but if the bike can't get to Canberra by Saturday at the latest, I will be one very pissed off angry cunt.

So I used Friday to my advantage and installed the new, more powerful Kelly controller. Man this thing is a chunky little fella. I actually managed to get the cables to go under the seat prop so I was able to use the original seat - just as well cause the one I tried to make was awful. I rigged it up but was getting a low voltage error. Turns out the 12:24 V converter I use to run the controller wasn't putting out. Fortunately Jaycar is open at 8.30 am so I can get another one, then reassemble the bike, crate it and leave the consignment note for TNT should they decide to take it.

Grrrrr!
 
Damn, Chris. Sure hope you get this worked out.

Seems that shipping is getting worse and worse. We shipped a crate down here, and it took 10 days, total, from contact for pickup, to on my front step. That was from Florida to Costa Rica, and, 5 hours from the Customs stop ??

Sent the second crate, same outfit, and, all up, it took over 2 months, and Customs stop to delivered address was less than 1 hour ???

Seems that the world just doesn't care about small customers, anymore.

Nice job on the Bike build. 8) 8)
 
So I phoned TNT and it is now going to go by air. As we can prove the booking was made last Tuesday for road express we can argue that the costs should be borne by TNT. However until then UWA will get slugged with the bill. They will pick it up today.


TNT guy: "OK so cause it's going by air, are there any dangerous goods?"
Me: "No, none to speak of..."
TNT guy: "Any lithium batteries?"
Me:"... err how do I answer this... Yeah, actually. A few."
TNT guy: "OK how many?"
Me:"... 96."
TNT guy: "What the frock have you got in there???"

...

Turns out there is a miscellaneous DG code for them, and I have the A123 MSDS which says there's nothing wrong with them. I just need to declare it on the outside.
 
Ok so you will be here!

When should we be picking up the bike?


jonescg said:
So I phoned TNT and it is now going to go by air. As we can prove the booking was made last Tuesday for road express we can argue that the costs should be borne by TNT. However until then UWA will get slugged with the bill. They will pick it up today.


TNT guy: "OK so cause it's going by air, are there any dangerous goods?"
Me: "No, none to speak of..."
TNT guy: "Any lithium batteries?"
Me:"... err how do I answer this... Yeah, actually. A few."
TNT guy: "OK how many?"
Me:"... 96."
TNT guy: "What the I want to hug have you got in there???"

...

Turns out there is a miscellaneous DG code for them, and I have the A123 MSDS which says there's nothing wrong with them. I just need to declare it on the outside.
Click to expand...
 
OK, so depending on when it leaves Joondanna, it will be there overnight. Friday morning for sure. I have to print out all of the forms and DG declarations etc.

I arrive tomorrow evening in Canberra, staying with a friend that night. Would you believe the cost for this weekend testing event?


$450!

Not the whole series - one weekend!

Ouch! I don't get paid till the 4th of May! Man, I NEED sponsorship.

Will phone you when it finally leaves, Tony.
 
So there you go!

The TNT truck arrived and took my creation away. It's in the hands of fate now.

If we lose the battle with TNT I am up for big $$$ to cover the air freight. But I am confident we will win.

Canucks are entering their final period of their best chance of a semifinal... The stress never ends!
 
Well the saga ends here. :cry:

TNT, acknowledging their failure and trying to weasel out of it, told me it could go by air as long as a dangerous goods specialist checked it over and made the declaration. TNT doesn't have it's own planes in Australia, they use Australian Air Express who are horrendously expensive and about as punctual as TNT. So I called DGM who do this sort of work and they could smell a rat. Essentially, by dragging DGM into it, TNT could lay the blame for it not being delivered on time on them, instead of their own incompetence.

So I demanded my crate be brought back to my door and a full refund. And I assured them they won't be hearing from me, or anyone else who I tell, again.

Just as well, cause I can't even afford the $450 shakedown fee. TTX-GP - I mean really? 2500 pounds for a race meet? That's one tenth of the average annual UK salary!

All very sad.

:(
 
Oh you just found out that rip off Britain is expensive :(

Sorry your trip buggered up, delivery companies seem to want to go out of business lately.
 
That just SUX.

I was really looking forward to how you got along, Chris.
 
Well it's kind of just as well I missed the track testing as it would have been an embarrassing first lap. I put the tank cover and new controller on, and as the new controller is a bit shorter, I was able to use the original seat (thank Dog for that - much more comfortable). And I finally got the speedo pick up to work! So I took her for a quick spin and started to wind it up to about 80 km/h...

And had my first catastrophic drive shaft fail:

shaftfail002.jpg


Thankfully this just made lots of noise as I wound down to a stop, and I had to push it back to the house :(

Just what I need - more practice pulling the bike down. Hopefully the motor shafts are OK and it's only the joining shaft and sprocket hub that need replacement. Still, not a quick job.

:(
 
FAAAAARK!!!

I bent the fuc&ing motor shaft! :evil: :x

I hope Agni sponsor me, cause I can't afford a new motor :(
 
Ask Liveforphysics if he'll send you one of his dead ones; you could probably get the bent one pressed out and the dead one pressed back in? (assuming I read his post about them right and he has what you have).
http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=27301&start=0
 
OK so it looks like the shaft can be replaced... The instructions say it's fairly straight forward: http://www.agnimotors.com/workshop_manual_v1.pdf

I'll have to see if they can send a 180 mm one instead...
 
Tough luck, for sure.

Is the sprocket end of that shaft supported ??? Hard to tell from the photo.
 
The drive sprocket is mounted over the top of the motor shaft and the joining shaft, just like the other side. I'd say what's happened here is there simply wasn't enough purchase on the supporting hub, so when things got out of alignment it just popped out :(

I really need a long shaft on the driven hub, and mount the supporting hub to that. Less points of weakness for the system to fail. I mean, I did 0-85 km/h in under 3 seconds... That's a lot of torque !!
 

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  • Long shaft motor.JPG
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Hi Chris,

I replied to your PM, but will also copy the reply here so others can gain from the experience in the future..

Now I can see the damage, I would say that the motors were not properaly alligned, or perhaps not fixed firmly enough not to flex out of line under heavy load, and vibration rather than pure torque was the cause of failure.

I've seen only 2 shaft failures in all last years racing, both were caused by the motors being mounted offset and there being a physical imbalance (Tork India had a horrible shaft breakage preceeded by vibration).
I very much doubt torque was the cause, I've managed to run a pair of Agni's mounted in this fashion all the way to max power on that model of controller with no sign of problems (65% or a little more is all the brushes can take usually, you will toast them at a race wet any more than this), and have even once been sat on a TTX02 whilst the controller blew and pulled some 1500A batteryside, followed by the controller shorting and locking the back wheel at over 90mph giving a -1200A hit. I can't imaging the shafts being hit any harder than this, and yet upon inspection no damage was done even to the keyway's (which we do fit extremely snugly).
A longer shaft wont help stop breakage (unless there is a reason I can't see). From the pic its hard to see, but is it really the shaft thats broken? It looks more like the bar used to connect the 2 bosses together? Can't quite see how the shaft sits in the boss/coupler..

THere are full instructions on how to dissasemble and replace the shaft in the Agni Workshop Manual here, http://www.agnimotors.com/workshop_manual_v1.pdf. I would suggest that Agni would be slow to send you a replacement shaft, especially if it needed to be made to yur new specifications, but you should be able to get one machined locally with little trouble. That said, it's worth trying Agni and informing them of the failure.

Hope this helps,

Steve
 
Well the immediate problem is the shaft on the LHS motor is bent. It still spins up and there is no other problem with the motor. I would imagine it should be replaced fairly easily, just a matter of how. Now, the motors are so well aligned there is absolutely no inhibition when you turn the two motors at the same time, so I don't think that's it. Short of getting a 300X300X300 block of warplane grade aluminium and CNC'ing it into a solid mount, I can't see any other way of doing this.

Like I mentioned earlier, I think the supporting hub simply didn't have enough of the joining shaft inside of it (unequally spanning the motor shaft more than the joinging shaft). If you look carefully at the photo you will see only about 5 mm worth of joining shaft was in the hub. This could be because the keyway worked itself loose and moved to one side, leaving the joining shaft to screw out and cause the grief. Or I didn't align it properly in the first place...

I would rather have a longer motor shaft simply so that there is one less point of weakness. Having two hubs with keyways seems unnecessarily compromised to me.

But the new controller is pretty darn cool! It's like I never changed the reduction - just hauls arse off the line!
 
Chris,

Do you have some pics of your coupling shaft? Was it welded at both ends?
We use a 27mm steel shaft, unwelded, to sleeve over both motor shafts, then weld a collar for the sprocket to that. It looks like the bosses may be welded on both ends of your shaft, this would extremely difficult to balance or check for absolute straigtness, and will surely have warped a little when being welded.
With the amount of resistance the motors offer when turned, a small imbalance would be hardly noticeable when hand turning the motors coupled together, but would get rapidly worse at speed. How long has the bike been run for in total? (the shorter the time, the more they would have to be out of alignment to cause a break.)

Glad you like the controller, as I said, it is a massive improvement over the KDHB huh?

Steve
 
Yeah, I have some elsewhere in the thread, but this one shows it nicely.
shaftissues.jpg

And another (although this one is sitting upside down :oops:) The bolts were fouling the chain on an earlier setup, but I moved to pan head bolts and all is well.
motorshaft.jpg

And a photo showing the motor mount plates, precision welded with an engineering jig:
Mainwiring003.jpg


There is nothing fixed on the shaft (welded). Only two hubs with keyways, one of them with the drive sprockes, and the other for supporting the other end.

I've run it for about 20 km when I started to hear a bit of an odd noise, but only a few blasts up the street today was enough to have it pop put. I don't think it was the alignment that's the problem, but if it was there's not a lot I can do about that. How did you ensure your motors were 100.0000% perfect?
 
So there is a boss at each end pushed onto the motorshaft, and the cross shaft is pushed in to these bosses? (so 4 "loose" joints rather than 2?)

Steve
 
BTW, in one of the pics it looks like you have used the outer ring of boltholes to secure the motor, but in the other (with label saying "offending boltheads") you are using just the centre bolts.
Just to say, either one or the other is fine, no need to use both sets of holes. Any more than 4 fixings evenly spaced on the outer ring should be enough to hold things firm (so you can get rid of the offenders!).

Steve
 
I still count two, but yes, you have described it as it is :)

Not the best picture, but I think I have every angle covered :D
motorsareready003.jpg


Either way, it's too many weak points for my liking. An extra long shaft on one motor and the regular shaft on the other, joined with a sleeve / hub and keyway would be ideal, with the drive sprocket sort of floating on the long shafted motor would be ideal I think
 
Yeah, from the look of those pics the mounting plates look well done, if you are sure they are parallel then that is not the problem.
If the shaft actually does rely on 4 keyways I'd say this likely the cause. Try again with solid bar(25-30mm), 19mm holes machined in the ends at dead centre, then a boss carefully welded on to accept your sprocket. This was the method used by nearly all the Agni entries last year, and the only failures were definitly caused by misaligned motors (in the case of tork India, they used a very lightweight chassis with motors bolted one either side, and none of the bracing you have in your design. When the bike was under power and cornering the frame rails moved a long way and started vibrating).
Let me know if the description isn't clear, and I'll take some snaps for you from the workshop on Tuesday..

Since Agni can be a little slow sometimes with email responce, I'll ask them myself next week and see if I can get a shaft pronto to mail out for you..

Steve
 
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