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Last weekend I was in Jerez, in the second event of the CEV (Road Racing Spanish Championship). The main atracttion was that the moto2 raced for the very fist time, integrated into the Formula Extreme category.
In Jerez we saw 4 moto2, the already known BQR (with Honda engine and chassis made by Kozono in Japan) and the LaGlisse Y2M (with Yamaha R6 engine and Suter chassis) and two new bikes, the Promoracing with Harris chassis and R6 engine and the AJR with Honda engine and trellis frame built by themselves. AJR is a Spanish company that builds classic replicas of the Bultaco TSS racing machines, keeping the old design but using modern materials.

Both Friday and Saturday afternoon, after the trainings the bikes “posed” for the press in the pitlane so it was very easy to take photos.

I will comment some details that took my attention.
The four bikes have much of the fuel located under the seat. In LaGlisse’s bike the fueltank is extended very far to the rear.

BQR: The bike of Jerez had a new fueltank which had much more fuel under the seat. From this bike it caught my attention how massive the chassis looks in the area of the front mounting point of the engine (it can be apreciated only when the bike is without bodywork). This goes against current trend of long and “thin” chassis arms arriving to the front engine mounting points (as we can see in the Yamaha M1, for example).

Promoracing: The chassis has been made by Harris. The central area has been milled from an aluminum block. The front area of the chassis (around the headstock) is formed by aluminum tubes. Rumours said that they made it in this way to be able to modify chassis stiffness if it was necessary.

At first sight this was the bike that looked more compact, I found it the most similar to a 250. The bodywork was really narrow, very close to the chassis and engine. From a front view the bike looked very narrow, so much that maybe the bodywork doesn’t cover the rider in a completely effective way. This is the bike that I liked more of the four, although I find the AJR more interesting from a technical point of view.

AJR: I like the trellis frames because they allow to achieve a good stiffness/weight ratio in an “easy” way. Anyway I prefer those chassis built using only straight tubes, like in the multitubular Cobas or in the most recent Ducati Motogp trellis.
In the AJR the rear part of the chassis (which holds the swingarm pivot point and the rear suspension) is a bolted part, independent of the rest of the structure. In the assembly point of this part with the chassis, there is an eccentric which allows more adjustment possibilities.

In someway it reminds me the Ducati Motogp chassis concept, in which the front and the rear parts of the chassis are independent. In some design ideas for the bottpower moto2 bike we are considering this possibility.
AJR people mentioned that this was the second unit they built. This chasis is an envolution of the first one and they continue developing it. The bike was not 100% finished yet, for example it didn’t have installed the airbox intake conduit.

In the Bottpower Flickr page you will find more photos of these bikes, at higher resolution.

In a recent post I mentioned that Claude Fior is one of the motorbike designers that I admire the most and that his 1987 250 GP bike is one of the most brilliant designs ever to me.
Steven Burge (he also designs motorbikes and owns a Hossack which he races in UK) read that comment and sent me an email with several photos of the 1987 Fior 250 GP. In fact I already had searched internet for pictures of this bike and I found almost nothing. So, thank you for the pictures, Steven!

The bike has a FFE (Hossack/Fior/Foale style) although probably this is not the most remarkable feature. What most impressed me when I first saw this bike in a magazine article 20 years ago was the chassis design, which is formed by two thin aluminum plates (I’m guessing here but I don’t think that they are thicker than 3 mm) situated in a parallel way, each one at each side of the engine (a Rotax tandem twin). The plates are joined by means of some small diameter steel tubes (unfortunately we can not see the tubes in this photos, it would be necessary to remove the fueltank to see it).
With such a minimalist chassis, the bike was under the minimum weight of the 250 GP category (90 kgs) and it was necessary to add some extra weight as ballast. The bike achieved some good results in the 1987 World Championship, the most remarkable one was a pole position in Germany.

This chassis inspired me when I designed the BOTT 250 H7 in 1998, although I used 4 plates (2 at each side of the engine, making a sandwich) instead of 2.

Unfortunately, Claude Fior passed away in a plane crash in December 2001, when he was flying an ultralight plane designed by himself.

Photos via moto-side-solo, pubished with permission of the autor.

There are things that are difficult to assimilate. Till now the new moto2 category was beeing a big success, with a lot of projects going on (BQR, LaGlisse, Moriwaki, Arbizu, Promoracing, Inmotec, Cosentino Engineering, Fabrication Techniques, Bottpower, etc) and even a motorbike (BQR) already on the tarmac.
Also, some engine manufacturers (Ilmor, Maxsym) already showed interest in building engines for moto2.

But some days ago, during the IRTA test in Jerez, the FIM president Vito Ippolito declared in a press conference that the MSMA (Motorcycle Manufacturers Association, consist of Aprilia, Ducati, Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha) made an unanimous proposal for a single engine for moto2 category. This means that all the bikes would have identical engines made by a single engine manufacturer.

By the moment they didn’t give more details, I guess that the “old” moto2 technical rules are not valid anymore. The first reactions to this single engine proposal are that BQR team shelves their project, and that Ten Kate team declared they lose interest in moto2. Now I wonder what will happen with Dorna plans to race moto2 in the CEV during current 2009 season.

Logically in Bottpower we also “freeze” our project, waiting to see the end of this story. It is a pity because till now I was really happy about how everything was going on regarding our project in particular and the new moto2 category in general.

Lately I do not have too much free time to dedicate to the moto2 design. These days previous to the CEV start we are training almost every week. Last week we were in Albacete and this week we will be in Valencia.

Anyway I am already working on the chassis design. Currently I am working on several different concepts. What I do with each one is to study in a very rough way its 3 main stiffnesses:

• Chassis torsional stiffness around the fore-aft axis of the bike.
• Chassis torsional stiffness around a transverse axis of the bike (this is the chassis stiffness during braking).
• Chassis lateral flexing stiffness.

For sure you already know that current trend in chassis design is to have a “high” stiffness in cases 1 and 2 and some controled flex in the third one.

Normally I draw each idea directly in 3D. For example, regarding the concept you can see below, I knew that it wouldn’t work because it is too stiff in side flexing, anyway I liked the very direct connection between the headstock and the engine mounting points, so I drew it and I made a very simple FEA analysis in order to have a first idea about the stiffness values for each case. I think that to study several different ideas is interesting because it allows me to “locate” each concept with respect to the others, and that gives me a better understanding of the behaviour of each concept.

This is a very simple FEA, using “bar” elements.

The next concept has a less direct connection and a not so compact design, but however it has a more interesting behaviour regarding stiffness. Like you can see I didn’t draw the triple clamp or the rear suspension yet. The rear area of the chassis (swingarm clamping area) is just roughly sketched and incomplete. The airbox is still the ZX6 original (of course we must design a new one). Ah! The swingarm is the Morlaco one.. till we design the new one this one has to do.   :)

I made a more complex FEA model of this concept, although it is not yet a very elaborated one.

Torsional stiffness.

Lateral flex stiffness.

Braking stiffness.

One thing that you can see in these drawings is the headstock design, with two cut outs at both sides to let room for the airbox intake. This design is used in the Ducati Motogp or in the Kalex. I think it is a very good compromise between efectivity and simplicity.

Probably the final design of the chassis will be very different compared to what you see in these images, this is just an example, I am working on several different concepts.

One of the things that I like more of this process is that in the beginning I have no idea about how the bike is going to be, and by working and thinking on the ideas, the bike starts appearing gradually.
I remember that more than 20 years ago I read an Alan Cathcart’s article about the Fior Rotax 250 GP from 1987 (Claude Fior is one of the designers I admire a lot), I think his 1987 two fifty is one of the most brilliant designs ever. Fior said: “I always thought that the motorbikes design themselves. In reality the only thing I do is translate to tubes and plates what they are telling me“.

Formula Moto is a monthly Spanish magazine. In the next number #52, April, available in magazine shops from next tuesday (March 17th), there is a 4 pages article about the Morlaco. This is inside a bigger article about Spanish prototypes, which shows also the D1200R, another prototype with FFE and an impressive aesthetics.

The concept in which the D1200R front end is based was invented by Juan Elizalde, the mechanical design was made fifty/fifty by Carlos Beltrán and Pablo González de Chaves, who created also the aesthetics of the bike. I strongly recommend you to visit his webpage dechavesgarage.com, you will find great stuff there.

By the way, I take the opportunity to show here some of the photos I took to generate graphic material for this article. I took the photos in my garage, using a background white clothe and a Nikon D200 with an external flash that my friend Jose Bautista lended me.

You will find these photos with higher resolution in the Bottpower Flickr gallery.

The Morlaco was designed as a racing motorbike, in the meantime Hugo van Waaijen is exploring several conceptual possibilities for this motorbike. In the next image you can see the original design and behind it a possible street version.

The main objective of the Morlaco project is to learn and have fun and these concepts are part of this process.

For this design Hugo was inspired by a bull (a Morlaco is a kind of bull in Spanish), with powerful shoulders (in this case the fueltank area) and a low head (the nose of the bike). Of course, the mirrors are the horns..  :)

The rendering process (to apply colours, textures, lights, and cameras for the image generation) has been made by José García Pérez, alias “cutangus”.

We are exploring other concepts and Hugo is working on it from time to time. As soon as we have it ready we will show it in the blog.

As always you will find higher resolution images in the Flickr gallery.

Last weekend I continued drawing components from the Kawasaki ZX6. In this case the water pump, the injection body and the airbox.

Of course we must design a new airbox, but I thought it was interesting to draw the ZX6 one in order to have a reference. Regarding this airbox, it catches my attention that the box has a quite small size, and the intake conduit a big cross section.

To design an airbox is not a simple issue. Pressure waves produced by the intake valves travel through it, and it is necessary to dimmension the box volume and the intake conduit (length and cross section) in such a way that the frequency of the pressure waves going through the airbox matches the opening frequency of the intake valves at certain rpm (normally top power rpm).
Also it is necessary to achieve a design that maximizes pressurization at high speed, in this way it is interesting that the air intake is located at a high pressure area in the bodywork, ideally in the nose like for example the KTM 250 GP or de Ducati MotoGP.

It is also necessary to try to achieve an air flow as much laminar as possible inside the intake conduit. Theorically the cross section of this conduit should increase as it arrives to the box, in order to reduce the air speed and increase it’s pressure.

I would like to find a collaborator with experience in CFD (Computer Fluid Dynamics) to study these questions, and analyze several virtual solutions before deciding the final design. So if you know about CFD and want to collaborate in this project, please send me an email..  :)

Continuing with the airbox design, other points to take into consideration are the box stiffness, that must be stiff enough to avoid beeing deformed by the pressure waves. Also it is important to make the box and it’s cover watertight, in order to avoid pressure losses.
There are also other issues that add extra complexity, for example the airbox must house the secondary injectors. In the ZX6 airbox they are located on the box cover.
Finally, the intake conduit design determines heavily the chassis design, but this is a subject for another post.
Like always you will find higher resolution images in the Flickr gallery.

I had some time without writing about the Morlaco, a project that is going ahead at idle speed. Yesterday I took this photo that shows the current status of the bike.

Comparing with the last time I took photos, this is the new stuff:

• The bike has custom built Technoflex shocks.

• Carbon fiber airbox.

• Carbon fiber fueltank (here and here you can see 2 post talking about the fuel tank construction).

• The “triple clamp” is a new, stiffer one.

• I changed the steering rod-ends.

 Although currently I am fully focused on the Moto2 project, I want to continue working on the Morlaco, even if it is at idle speed.  

You can see a higher resolution photo in the Flickr gallery.

(Thank you Hugo for the photo postprocess).  

Tags: morlaco, prototype, construction

These days I am spending some time drawing in 3D all the standard components that will be used in the Moto2. With standard I mean all those components already existing and well defined (engine, brakes, suspensions, rims, tyres,etc). Once I had all these parts drawn and located in it’s position, I will be ready to start working on those parts that I must design and build (chassis, subframe, airbox, fueltank, bodywork, etc).

The first component I have drawn is the engine, a Kawasaki ZX6 2009 one. One of the design goals is to achieve a very compact bike, with an ergonomy as similar as possible to a 250 GP bike, so it is advisable to draw the components in a very precise and detailed way, in this way it will be easier to make the most of the avaiable room.

The problem is that with a scanner you get a points cloud, that it is necessary to convert to a “solid”, which is the kind of format I need to work with CAD. The process of converting the points cloud to a solid takes quite some working time. There are softwares which make this task in an automatic way (I never tested one, and I don’t know how well they work), but they are expensive. I also asked companies which offer scanning service, but the cost was quite high. So finally I drew the engine following the “classic” method, meassuring with a caliper, squares, straight edges, etc.

Chassis mounting points are meassured with a 3D meassuring machine, so they are located with a precission of hundredths of milimeter.

I think that the rest of the engine has been drawn with 1 mm tolerance, more or less. Regarding time, it took 2 days of work (a whole weekend). Maybe I could draw it less detailed, but I think I wouldn’t save too much time anyway. 

I have been several months without publishing any post in the blog, I have been very busy, although this time I think I have a good justification for it.

Like you know, after a lot of rumours, finally during last December Dorna unveiled the basic rules for the new moto2 category. These changes are creating a lot of controversy, although it seems that a good part of the opinions are beeing positive because it seems that moto2 regains a little bit the spirit of some decades ago: mechanical variety, teams building their own prototypes, even for sure that we will see some “underground inventions”. Hopefully it will be a tough category, with exciting and funny races.

Since I heard about this category I had clear that I wanted to build a Moto2 motorbike. It seems that even during current season (2009) Moto2 bike will race in the CEV (Spanish Championship). Some teams have been working on it since a lot of months ago, and they have their prototypes ready to start training. I started working on it in December (once I knew the rules), of course I couldn’t start such a big project without knowing the rules, mainly because for the time being this is a personal project that I’m going to carry out in my free time, with the help of some friends.

However this time the project is more solid than in previous times because I count with the colaborationn of the Kawasaki Palmeto team (a top Spanish team owned by Pedro Parajua and Jose Luis Lazaro. This team races in Supersport and Formula Extreme in the CEV). I have been working in this team as telemetric during 2008 and I will continue with them in 2009. Counting with the experience and means of such a big team will make the workload lighter.

My objective is to have a bike ready to ride during this year, and I want to share with this blog readers the project development.

Tags: bottpower, moto2