THUNDERDROME - Detroit MI - April 30th

Well, I will be there but no ride. :cry:

I have chain line issues with the 26" bike....the DR bike is all aprart & smells like a house fire & i am absolutly beat after working 45 hrs this week at the shop & working at home till midnight all week....it quit being fun at 8:00 tonight...& if it aint fun i aint worth doing.
I Can't show up with another fragile build that may not make the racees end.

I will be riding with my Buddy Dave who will be racing the Pitbike class also. Still looking foward to meeting Grindz & the crew at the track.
Sorry Boys. Even on my best day, I am only human.
 
Bummer, I was looking forward to seeing the bike. Sorry to hear you had to put so much effort into it and not race.
 
Hey guys have a lot of fun tomorrow.
Please post some pictures, maybe even video.
Hopefully I will be ready to join to You next year. I am from NYC, so distance to Detroit is acceptable. I really enjoy watching last event Tucson Death Race 2011, but is way too far for me.
My current bike is not intended to race (to weak, to slow - 27MPH and only after fresh charge).
But I am planning to build something for next season and have fun with You.
Good luck.

SÅ‚awek.
 
Hi Guys, I met up with Thud and Gridz145. Thud was there to support his friend who raced a mini trail bike with a Honda 50 motor. He didn’t have anything to compete with. Gridz145 brought his ebike out and competed but it wasn’t really fast enough to be competitive. I’m sure he can fill in on the details of his race.

There was a first though for us electric guys. In the scooter division, someone from current motor company showed up and won that race! http://www.currentmotor.com/ They are based in Michigan. More info on the bike can be found on the link. I think Thud would have been a real contender in that race if he could have gotten his bike worked out. I took pictures of the scooter and found out that it used DC/DC at cell level to charge the packs. These were meanwell supplies off of ebay. Really seems like a good approach for large builds such as motorcycles and cars. I showed up around 12 and left around 3:30. So I missed out on the moped event. The whole event seems really loosely organized. They had even a foot race, with prize money of $150, $50, $25. They gave the money to 3 people who were last in place. Bummer for those who really ran the race. Mountain bikes and road bikes, even a dune buggy race.

It was great exchanging ideas with Thud and hearing about the race in Tucson. He really put in a lot of hours trying to get his bike to this race. The good thing is there will be other races and he really gets into the racing scene.

I’ve never followed the race scene much so it was a fun experience to watch the crowd and follow the action. It was loud and smoky, even though the displacements were small.
The fastest bikes were the 100cc division. Thud calculated that these bikes were reaching 60 mph on a course the was a little over a 1000ft. The heats were 10 laps. This was seriously fast and a couple of bikes actually came off the course. They made us stand in the middle of the course when these bikes ran due to safety concerns for the spectators. I don’t think any sane ebiker would attempt to compete with these guys. The lower division would be where the ebikes would have more of a chance, but the speeds are still pretty darn high. After watching the event, I don’t think I would try it. Something like the Deathrace is more my preference where speeds are kept down due to turns and risk from injury is kept low. Being close to the race made this event quite fun to watch, much like a backyard get together than a big production race.

I took a lot of pictures, will be posting some of them as I go through and resize them.
 
edit: (almost)1st report from the penut gallery.

good turnout for the hipsters & general counter culture bike nutz....& the Moped Army was there in force..Lots of cool machinery to oogle if your into that kind of stuff.

About the track.....totaly destroyed racing surface..there are sections with 6" shifts in the concrete that have a patch of concreet to akin to a speed bump...& it was breaking up all day...
45 deg banking is really steep!

The Scooter class was won oughtright by the Current motors team (Ellectric scooters BABY!) Jscoot's #1 bike & rider brought home the gold in a hot race with an Aprillia street racing scooter....last lap pass...Met Jscoot & his crew they were all smiles & having a blast.

E-bikes fall into the moped class...& the mopeds were well attended. Grindz & his buddy M were there to represent...After watching practice I gave grindz145 a 50%chance of making the main...word of mouth brought the real racing crowd to town & they were going plenty fast.

Grindz145's Buddy puled the holeshot in the 1st heat...Le man's- dead engine starts gave the e-bikes a huge advantage. Matt led untill the exit of turn 2 on a 72v lead-acid fueld tank of a bike.....Grindz experianced a throttle issue & his throttle was cutting out teribly ...a previous wire splice on his trim resisters was the fault....he stoped on the back straigh & got it limping again....then had a decent burst of speed coming thru turn 3 & 4 on the last lap....to little to late.The track pounding will discover any weakness & quickly. But Troy had fun & I look foward to the video.

I was running the stop watch on the Fastest bikes on the track...(they let up to 110cc run in the pit bike class)there were a few Jr flat track racers with 85cc 2-stroke,(cr85 honda,RM85 suzuki & one very very well tuned XR100) full supermotard set ups. 6 speed full on minicycles...They were cutting 15.31 second laps & it Looked much faster than the 49 mph average the math works it out to be...these guys were FLYING around the track. They had to slow to make the turns.....after one guy lost it in turn 3 & his bike FLEW off the track, the promoters stopped the action & made all spectators stand in the very wet infeild before letting these guy back on the track. No Way I could have kept up with them boys on that surface with my bicycle. If it was glass smooth....maybe,they were well over 55 heading into the turns.

I am certain no one in the local governmant has any idea of whats going on in Dorias park....If the township's lawer or insurance guy saw this action He would have shut it down instantly.....but the promoters are a bunch of outlaw garden'rs who know how to have a good time. :mrgreen:

I hung out with Kfong most of the day & had a great time meeting him. I lookfoward to getting to know Ken better in the future as we a ton of common interests & he is a very well schooled E-guy.
I have a mother of a sunburn face after being out in the ellemts all day...overcast cought me without sunscreen & a pale complected "ginger" like me has no busness out in the uv radiation.
I have some photo's i'll post up later on.

Hey Kfong beat me to the submit Button LOL
 
Hey Todd, my face is a bit burnt as well and I usually can take some bit of sun and I left early. Yours must be bad. Get some aloe on it.

Here is the first series of pictures. This is when I arrived just a little before noon. All the entries had to register by then. The pictures of people on the track were just practice runs. I started taking pictures of the track layout and the adjoining field where people were camped out and setting up. Spectators were starting to arrive and the area was slowly filling in.

Crap, no way to upload multiple pictures without waiting. I’m going to have to look into posting it elsewhere and place a link
 
What happened to your bike Thud??
 
?????
 
I guess the issues were more about Time than engineering....add a touch of "bicycle fabrication burn out" to the mix. I feel like all i have done for the last 2 months is Rush to get a bike built.

For this assembly:
Getting the chains line perfect on a oversized rear sprocket is a trial...once I had everything together I needed a guide to keep the motor chain off the chainstay. The only anchor point left 5mm between the pedal chain & motor chain. no room for a guide to mouunt & I wanted(needed?) the pedals to function. A single Jackshaft solves all hese issues. Guess what I am doing today.

I built a batterybox to run 10Ah packs estimating a one mile race. & they were running 10 lap races all day yesterday..that woulda prolly got me. My attitude was pretty bad Friday night after I dropped a re-wound stator on the floor & destroyed it durring assembly :evil: At 10:30pm I took good look at my progress, & determined I would be late into the night to get this bike finished. I was up untill 1:00am the night before & was getting tired. Since is a hobby after all, I decided to go to bed & be the pit crew for my buddy Dave running the pitbike class.(which turned out to be the Uber pitbike class!)

The speeds I saw the guys running have me a bit worried, I can make the top speeds easy enough but a bicycle platform is a huge disadvantage. I am really curious what the track layout will be at the next event in Kalamazoo.

I know for the last event back In Detroit, I will need a full suspension. After re-calculting the speed averages I understand the stir we caused in Tuscon...50mph Looks increadbly fast when the majority of the pack is only running sub 40mph. especialy on these small tracks.
 
I feel for you thud.
We or most of us have full time jobs (I have 2)
And tring to find time to finish a race bike is hard. We all need to quit our jobs and start a E-S collany/utopia in calli and we will just hang out and build sweet electric stuff and ride/drive/fly it!
 
I third the sunburn.... :oops: it wasn't even that sunny...

It was awesome to meet you guys! It was a shame there wasn't time to do a podcast about it but perhaps we can get a skype call together to rehash thunderdrome.

I was definitely fast enough to be competitive in the classwe were in, but with the throttle signal dropped out, I had no chance. Make no mistake, that track is brutal.

I have a kff story and many many others, but ill elaborate further when I don't have to swype my reply on my phone.

All in all, it was one of the coolest things I have had the opportunity to do in my life. I'm going to take home a victory in september!
 
I am certain no one in the local governmant has any idea of whats going on in Dorias park....If the township's lawer or insurance guy saw this action He would have shut it down instantly.....but the promoters are a bunch of outlaw garden'rs who know how to have a good time
Click to expand...

Awesome! It's reassuring to know that us ebikers fit into this category with hooligans and outlaws. :mrgreen:

I feel for you Thud, after working and thinking and dreaming and scheming ebikes for three weeks straight, I put the bike in the shed and didn't want to look at it for at least a week. I was burnt out and it was no longer fun.

I hope all had fun at the event. It sounds like the speeds were truly insane, which isn't really a test of the equipment as much of a test for the riders. How did Dave do in his class? An XR100 isn't a pitbike is it?

Love the attitude Gridz!
 
Hey e-tard,

We were the slowest of the small wheeled bikes there! LOL. we had fun...but a 3-speed auto clutch was like bringing "name calling" to a gun fight.

The only real "pitbike" that made the main in that race was a aluminum framed BBR with a 110cc Takegawa engine treatment....he was lapped coming out or turn 4 heading for the checkers...

here are some photo's

This is my rider in practice:
P4300070.jpg


here is Grindz145 practicing:
P4300079.jpg


The Moped class winner:
P4300080.jpg


this was a sic fast macine & pit bike class winner:
P4300072.jpg


Every one knew instantly this wea an E-bike:
P4300086.jpg


what i would call a pit bike:
P4300076.jpg


Does this bring back any memmories?
P4300075.jpg

P4300074.jpg

P4300078.jpg


here is an upshot of the current motor's meanwell battery managment & hub motor
P4300084.jpg

P4300083.jpg
 
Looks like it was a hoot!
 
So this would be a race my ysr would be good for! Hmmm cool ok back to mold making!
 
knoxie said:
Thanks for the pics thud, would love to see some more and any video if anyone took any? on other forums maybe?
Click to expand...

Once I have a chance to catch my breath, I have a ton of pictures and videos to upload. Hopefully this evening.
 
ahh great looking forward to it, those pit bikes are fast there were a bunch of young kids on them in some woods a few miles out of town today, they were pretty fast if a little too noisy but they must have been having fun as i was out on a 40 mile round ebike trip and they were still there on the way back, I popped in to the woods with them and they were surprisingly friendly and were really looking my bike over, I didnt hang around as it was a bit dicey with 2 or 3 of them flying round the corner at any time, had I had more time I would have stopped and chatted with them, I dont like gassers too much but I must admit they are great value for money and do look like a heap of fun :mrgreen:
 
Sorry for the delays in pictures. I had to find a place to post them so it would be easy for me to upload.

https://picasaweb.google.com/105432927143411325705
 
I fell asleep after I ate dinner last night, thats what an entire week of 5 hrs of sleep does to me :lol:

Ill post a bunch of stuff tonight!
 
kfong said:
Sorry for the delays in pictures. I had to find a place to post them so it would be easy for me to upload.

https://picasaweb.google.com/105432927143411325705
Click to expand...

Man, do I look gooney in my bike gear.... :roll: :twisted:
 
Sorry, I can't get any other video service to cooperate, here is my edit on facebook video if you're into that sort of thing: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=554387540977&comments
 
OK Vimeo finally cooperated tooo 8)

http://vimeo.com/23343676
 
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