bottpower

I started working in motorbike racing as telemetric in the CEV, in Kawasaki D’Antin team, in 2007 season. I met there Jose Luis Contreras, he was the “real” telemetric of the team (he was combining the CEV with MotoGP in Ducati Pramac Team). He teached me how to manage telemetry and electronic engine management.

I think that from the first day we had a good connection. We both love motorcycle races and technology, and we both try to approach our projects in a scientific way (within our means).
I think we both are very humble regarding what we think we know. I mean, we are very aware that our knowledge is very limited and that we have almost everything to learn.
Finally we both had one more thing in common. We dedicated most of our free time and money to personal motorbike projects approached with the intention of learning and increase our know-how. In that time I was working in the Morlaco and Jose was developing an electronic device that would allow him to generate his own motorbike control strategies (for example traction control, drive by wire, launch control, inteligent fuel compsuption control, etc).

During 2008 our paths split up, Jose abandoned the CEV to concentrate in MotoGP and I moved to Kawasaki Palmeto team. But we kept in contact and we kept informing each other about our projects.

Some months ago, when I explained Jose that I quit from my mechanical engineer job to concentrate in Bottpower and the Moto2 project, we thought about the possibility of become partners. He is more interested in engines and electronics and I am more interested in chassis, so we thought that we could make a good team. During the last months the idea was thinked over and finally we decided to do it. So now Bottpower core is formed by Jose and me, and we work together with a common objective, we want Bottpower to be a competitive racing brand.

In the Moto2 bike that we are building now, we already will see the first fruits of Jose’s work with electronics. You know that nowadays electronics has become in a fundamental part of racing motorbikes. If you want to be competitive you need a top noth electronics package. We will have our own technology, that will allow us to develop our own ideas at a reasonable cost.

I will talk about it with more detail in the next post.

During the last weeks we had a lot of activity. The chassis welding was programmed for December but several delays in the parts manufacturing has delayed it to January. We start beeing with up to our neck to have the bike ready on time. Next months are going to be really “funny”…

As you can see we made some progress with the bike design. The CAD model now has fueltank and a swingarm. We are doing the design, fabrication and developing of the swingarm in collaboration with a South African company called CRP (you can see their logo in the sponsors area).

From a mechanical design point of view, I do not feel comfortable with the electronis location (battery, ECU, telemetry box) in the tail area. It should be closer to the center of gravity of the bike. Fortunately those 3 components are ultralight, so its location is not so critical to minimize the moments of inertia of the bike. From a practical point of view, taking into account the electronics wiring routing and the mechanical accesibility (I’m not talking about accesibility to the electronics, I mean to the rest of the bike), this is a good place.

The CAD model is far from beeing complete. We still must add a lot of details (in which we are working right now) like the radiator clamping, the exhaust system, airbox intake, display, bodywork, etc.

I don’t like to start the fabrication till the CAD model is 100% finished till it has the last screw on it, but in this case, taking into account how fast we must work (we started the design with Honda engine in September), we had to overlap the design process with the fabrication process.

In next picture you can see the parts of the chassis located in the swingarm axle housing. These are made out of steel, cnc machined. That “oval” hollow allows to adjust the swingarm axle location.

Right now we are fabricating 2 complete bikes. During last weeks I received several emails asking about the possibility of buying a Bott M210 to race in 2010. At this moment we don’t plan to sell any bike in 2010. Our Moto2 project is planned from a technical and sports point of view, and not so much from a commercial point of view. Our objective for 2010 is to have fun, continue learning and developing our bike.

Going back to the motorbike design subject, right now we are working in the airbox intake design. we are doing it with a CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) parametric model. This model “plays” with several variables, in such way that after doing several calculations for each design possibility, the model tells us which is the best design. Of course the final resoult will depend on how good is our model.

As always, you can see bigger images in our Flickr gallery.

We will keep informing!    :-)

Since the last change of the rules saying that all Moto2 bikes will use a Honda engine, I didn’t write about our project. We had some news, the most important is the incorporation of Pablo Gonzalez de Chaves to the Bottpower team.
Since August I work in Bottpower full-time and now Pablo is doing the same. For those of you which don’t know who is Pablo, he is one of the designers of the Demonstener D1200R that already appeared some time ago in this blog.

Pablo has an enviable CV, he worked as designer in Lamborghini, and last summer he finished his MSc in Motorsport Engineering, in Oxford Brookes, England. He went there to study because he achieved a Fernando Alonso scholarship.. I think he has been a great signing for Bottpower!  :-)

Pablo is engineer, but one of his strong points is industrial design. In Bottpower, till now this task was made by Hugo van Waaijen, but for this Moto2 project we need to work very fast and Hugo can not work full-time on it, so Pablo is the one who is working in the Moto2 bodywork design.

By the way, by the moment we call the bike BOTT M210 (M2 because it is a Moto2 bike, and 10 because it is our prototype for 2010 season).

Next image is a sketch made by Pablo which shows the way we are following regarding the bodywork design.

Pablo: “We are looking for a bodywork that covers the bike almost completely. A bodywork with classic and smooth shapes, far from current aesthetics of street superbikes. The size will be halfway through the compact bodyworks of current SuperSports and the more “enfolding” Aprilias 250 GGPP. We prefer no to do something too much enfolding to avoid problems with side wind.
On a race bike functionality and aerodynamics must be ahead of any trend so we also want to avoid ultra-short tails like the ones of the new Aprilias V4 and previous Honda MotoGP.
We still must add some air exhaust ducts at the sides of the bodywork, althoug the bike would be more aerodynamic if we could avoid it”.

Using Pablo’s sketch, Ernesto Arnaez from Husmee Studio Graphique! is studing graphic possibilities about which could be the “corporative” image of the bike. He has made a lot of sketches, and by the moment this is our favourite one.

Both sketches are not definitive designs, they are just concept sketches that show the way we are following by the moment.

Right now Pablo is already working in the bodywork design in 3D and I am focused on the chassis design. Our objective is to weld the chassis before the end of the year, and to have a  bike ready to ride in February.

As always you will find bigger size images in our Flickr gallery.

Two weeks ago English magazine Motorcycle News published an article about the Morlaco project, which also talks a little bit about Bottpower and our Moto2 project.

Regarding the article, I am very satisfied about the final resoult, I think it expresses very well the Bottpower spirit (a garage project, a bunch of friends).

In the article they mention something which is a very important step for me, it is that I quit from my job as mechanical engineer in Sedecal, a Spanish company which develops X-ray medical systems (I had been working there for 7.5 years). So from now on I will have more time for Bottpower and our projects.. the Morlaco, the Moto2 and some more interesting stuff that is looming over the horizon…  :)

Here you can download the article in pdf format.

Last Friday I signed a collaboration contract with Incomet, a young Spanish engineering company. It is a technical sponsoring agreement by means of which the Incomet logo will appear in the Bottpower projects and in exchange for this advertising Incomet will provide Bottpower several services, the main one will be reverse engineering (parts scanning).

Incomet is the exclusive dealer in Spain, France and Portugal of 3D Digital Corp., a 3D scans American manufacturer company.

Some months ago I mentioned that I was looking for a way to scan parts and thanks to this collaboration agreement now I will have access to this technology!

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

Lately I am spending some spare time designing a tool that will allow me to measure chassis and swingarm stiffness. My intention is to design something relatively simple and cheap, but that will allow me to obtain precise data. The images that you can see below are just sketches, the final design will be probably quite different.
First image shows an arrangement to measure the chassis stiffness regarding torsion. The chassis is clamped in the swingarm pivot area, and a torque is applied around the steering head. The torque value is adjusted in a precise way adding steel discs (blue color in the drawing). A digital inclinometer will be placed over the lever arm to measure the torsion angle.
In order to measure the chassis stiffness with the engine assembled on it, it is possible to locate the green clamping parts in the external faces of the chassis.

Second image shows an arrangement to measure the lateral stiffness of the chassis (flexion). In this case we just pull from the steering head, hanging a weight that is converted in lateral force through a pulley. Here it would be necessary to put an object under the chassis to avoid it to fall over the table (rotating over the swingarm pivot).

Third image shows an arrangement to measure the swingarm torsional stiffness. The arrangement to measure lateral stiffness would be similar to the one used for the chassis, using the same pulley.
I also want to use this tool to measure transversal torsional stiffness of the chassis, I mean, the stiffness that it has when we apply a load similar to the one that appears when we use the front brake.

I think that it is impossible to build a tool that could give you absolut stiffness values, the objective is to build a device to achieve values that will allow me to compare different chassis.

I want to use this table also to meassure chassis (general dimmensions, geometry, etc) and also to build chassis, using it as a base for my jigs.

Regarding stiffness meassurement, appart of general meassurement, I want to use extensometry to meassure local deformations on the chassis, in this way it will be possible to know the influence of each area of the chassis in the stiffness of the whole chassis. This could be very useful to validate and improve FEA models, trying to make these models more similar to reality.
I will keep you informed of this project progress in the blog.

Tags: bottpower, other projects, chassis, swingarm, stiffness, tool, extensometry, FEA

I remember  very clearly when I saw this motorbike for the first time in a magazine, it was 1987. I was shocked. It is very easy to impress a 14 years old boy, but I still like it as much as  I did as a boy. From time to time some design catches me, to such an extent that it becomes a source of inspiration and motivation to try to create something new. This is one of those designs.

Generally I am mainly interested in racing motorbikes, and my interest are mainly technical. This is not the case, this is more an aesthetic/concept subject.

This bike emanates a very agressive feeling, and 20 years after its creation, I still find it a fresh and original design.

The rider is located very low, almost lying down, in some way it reminds me of the attitude that it would have in a very sporty car, it is also similar to the attitude in some megascooters, although I think that here everything is more exaggerated.

The bike was created by Hans-Joachim Maier, it was his final thesis.

I would like to design a motorbike in this way, as a street legal vehicle. I talked about it to Hugo van Waaijen, we like to talk a lot about motorbikes. He is a motorbike freak, and couldn’t resist the temptation of doing this cool 5 minutes photoshop proposal.

You can see that it is a fast sketch in some details, for example there is not too much room in the seat area. Personally, I would like a lower motorbike, with the rider located closer to the ground. And maybe a more agressive design, not so civilized.

 Regarding the engine, I think it would be interesting to use a V-twin, in this way the rider wouldn’t have to ride with his legs very opened. An engine with personality, like a Ducati or a Harley. Any suggestion is welcome.
We looked for a name for this project, and finally we choosed this one: TORPEDO.

Tags: maier, concept bike, design, feet forward