Race Readier

Upper control arms are complete, lowers are very close. Leaf spring is in UPS. Upright design is complete, so next weekend I will be living at the machinists' and driving up to Olive Branch to complete the lower arms. Also we will be begging at University of Mississippi for a remade spring clamp. Maths show that our 125mph-top speed gearing will work well, allowing us to mostly utilize 3rd gear for much of the lower part of the course. We are tight on time but still confident, as we have a parametric test plan and the ability to run through it in only a few days time. It's go time and I'm ready to ride.

Still lacking some bracing at the upright-end and the spring pickup

It's a big weekend for racing so I'm off to the Indy 500. Don't forget the Monaco GP on Speed TV!

TreMoto are still Vaporware

We're T minus 37 days and still vaporware. But that's ok cause we got:

6061   This foot x foot billet will make both the uprights, both outer spring-end pacmen and some other misc bits. My machinist's assistant asked if we were going to make the race. If it's in my hands we will!

Some minor hop-up mods. We'll be running K&N quad-pods, a Dynojet Power Commander (for altitude adjustment) and a 4-1 ZX9-style exhaust. It should make 125hp at sea level, but at 14k feet that wheezes to about 82hp.

Center rocker fitup check. It's tight in critical areas, as it should be with any optimized design. We will undoubtedly be fitgeting around with spacers and fasteners to get it all working optimally,  initial impression we have our design targets quite close. When will flex-form.com bring the leaf spring? Where are the tie rods? These things keep us up at night, so at least there's no worry about the mountain!

We also have 430mm of rubber on the road. Know of any bikes that can say that?

All right, enough trash talk, Lots of items still to cross off the whiteboard and control arms to build...

Weekend Update

The 3Z1 isn't done yet, but the race is in 6 weeks. Fortunately the Monstrosity 620 is running great, so I'm able to get in some seat time. The 12.2 mile run doesn't have much elevation change, but the pavement/dirt mix is comparable to Pikes Peak.

The center rocker is almost done. Machining a big chunk like this can be tricky with a small 3-axis machine but it came out pretty well. We'll get the bearings and dampers assembled next week.

 

Most of the Laeger Pro-Trax parts came in last week, so the upright spec is almost finalized. We'll order the materials and finish up the prints today.

Reassembly in Progress

The engine, EFI, cooling system and rear suspension are in place. UPS owes us a lot of goodies and we should have a lot of bespoke parts headed our way. Hang tight, we'll be riding in a month. That means some sick new YouTube videos and some knee dragging action shots. Ok enough of that, back to the drawing board (or 37" CAD screen) to put the final details on the uprights before we send them to Southern Machining.

Hubs, Frame and Leaf Spring Testing

 Hubs are done. Bearings are not shown, but they have been installed. I only had three wheel studs, so the others are on order. The rotors also bolted right up with the original Z1000 bolts so no issues there. The ZX10 rotors do a nice job of filling out the wheels and should be more than sufficient for some nice nose wheelies. Plus, the Aprillia wheels look sweet in orange.

The frame is also done. We just went back with black for simplicity, although the orange looks good in electronic.The engine will go back in this week, so it will be nice to finally be in the "reassembly" stagee. All systems go for ride testing in June.

 Our friends at the University of Mississippi have completed some destructive tests on a few of our old Flex-Form springs. We had hoped to test these in an MTS rig, but leaf springs are a bit oddball so we ended up testing these on a hydraulic ram rig. Special thanks to James McPhail in the machine shop for setting it up; James also worked on the Monstrosity project, machining our hubs and center rocker, among other parts.

The guys from senior design also preformed some FEA wizardry, simulating various clamp designs to optimize for refuced stress concentrations. Changes in the design resulted in about 30% lower maximum stress concentration as well as increased maximum wheel travel. Thanks to Jeremy, Dan and Thomas for their excellent work on this project.

Keep Poundin'

Yes, we're still here, and yes, we've been working hard. Flex-form has us a composite leaf spring on the way, thanks to the excellent work of our guys at the University of Mississippi Department of Mechanical Engineering. Laeger Racing also has our ProTrax parts on the way so hoepfully the UPS gods will smile on us soon... in the meantime:

Hubs are machined! It's a nice change to see 3D models turned into engineering drawings, .dxf files and finally into tangible 6061 chunks. Thanks to Joey at Southern Machining for the excellent work on these parts.

Upper control arm design is completed, and the jig is almost ready. We've got a few more waterjet brackets to pick up from Valley Racks (thanks Brad) and these will be ready for fabrication this weekend. We'll also be adding the final steering head braces and the seat mounts. If the schedule holds, we'll be painting the frame Monday and reinstalling the motor, rear suspension, etc next week. Much more to come.

Progress is Made

Recently, TreMoto have been building trikes... The frame is almost complete. We still have a lot of suspension bits to build of course, and there are never enough hours in the day. Generally, though, we are on course to complete the build in May. This should leave ample time for test and tune prior to PPIHC.

This week we'll be finalizing the seat mounts, orange-ing up the front wheels and sending the wheel hubs to machining. Very excite...