bottpower

These days we are building a first prototype of our Moto2 in oder to move it to Barcelona, to Anima design studio. Anima designers will use it to build the bodywork. We don’t have ready yet the fork and the swingarm that the final bike will use, so we built a “mix” using the CBR fork and swingarm.

Compared with previous posts, now we have the subframe. The subframe and the fueltank fit very well in the chassis, the bike looks very compact.

Once we had our “mix” assembled, the first thing I did was to seat on it to test the ergonomics.  Because we have a very low chasis and a narrow fueltank, it is possible to close the legs and to take an aerodynamic position in an easy and “comfortable” way.

Theoretically it will be possible to use a narrower bodywork in order to minimize the frontal area of the bike.

Next step is to assembly the radiator and the exhaust, and to put a rigid bar working as shock absorber in order to give the correct height to the rear of the bike. Then we will have ready this prototype to build the bike’s bodywork. Meanwhile we will build the swingarm and a second chassis.

The time flies and we are very close to April 18th, the first race of the CEV in Montmeló (Barcelona) circuit…

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.

Anima designers continue working and here we have the third evolution of the design. We have defined the tail and the nose of the bike.

From now on it is necessary to work in 3D. Here you have some proposals for the nose of the bike.

And here several proposals for the tail.

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

The bodywork is beeing designed by Anima, a design studio from Barcelona.

You can see their first 5 proposals in our Flickr gallery (sketches A, B, C, D, E).

Here we have the second evolution of the design, these ones have a more racing feeling. Compared with the previous ones, air exits are smaller and surfaces are smoother.

The designs we are working on follow current design trend, more worried about turns than top speed in straight line.

Our intention is to create a design as effective as possible and later on try to make it look nice. But efficiency is our first goal. When I talk about efficiency I don’t mean top speed, I mean try to reduce lap times.

Please let me know your opinion about these designs.

This is proposal A1:

Proposal A2:

Proposal B1:

Proposal B2:

Proposal C:

As always, you can see the sketches with bigger size in our Flickr gallery.