Pikes Peak Project: Chapter three

Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is an event in which you can race only by invitation. The total amount of vehicles (cars plus motorbikes) that race in the PPIHC has been limited to around 100.
The registration entry deadline was January 27, 2017. After this date, the PPIHC Race Committee selected the teams that were invited to race, and on February 17 they notified the competitors if they were invited to participate in the race.
Although we didn’t have any specific reason to think that we were not going to be accepted, it is true that the 17th of February we breathed a sigh of relief when we received an email from the organization confirming that we were in. On February 20, they published the official list of competitors invited to participate in the race.

Our rider for this race is Travis Newbold, a local rider that has raced in Pikes Peak 8 times, winning in different categories, and finishing second in the motorcycle class in 2015 when he was riding the EBR powered Ronin bike.
We are really happy of having Travis as rider for Pikes Peak. With his experience and speed on this race, we think that he is 100% capable of riding as fast as any other rider. The key-point is to see if we will be able to give him a good bike for the mountain. Taking into account that we have no experience there, and no experience (by the moment) with the XBRR engine, it is clear that this is not going to be an easy task for us.

Another great point of having Travis with us, is that he lives in Arvada, Denver, where he runs “Newbold’s Motorbike Shop”, a motorbike workshop which is at one hour by car from Pikes Peak. This will make everything much easier from a logistics point of view, because we will have a place where we can ship the bike from Spain, and also a workshop that we can use as our operational base if we need it.

Regarding sponsors, during the last weeks we got some very interesting companies joining the project. By the moment, apart of our main sponsor Kriega, we count with the support of Rotobox, Global Racing Oil, Continental, EFI, Ceracarbon, Totimport, Husmee, Newbold’s motorbike shop, Technical Composites, Motorbike magazine and Sideburn. In next posts we will explain what each of these sponsors is adding to the project.

Regarding Kriega, they have launched a great line of products with the Bottpower image, which are already in pre sale in their website. All the money coming from the sale of these products will go directly to our team to finance our Pikes Peak project. We encourage you to buy one of these top quality products if you want to help us to carry out this project!

Now let’s see how is everything going on regarding the design and construction of the BOTT XR1R that will race in Pikes Peak.

We still have many things to do in order to have the bike built on time for doing several tests before going to Colorado. We have many fronts moving ahead at the same time, so if everything goes OK, we should have it built in a few weeks. Anyway I am sure that we will keep working on it till the very last moment before shipping it to Colorado.

In previous chapter, we had scanned the original XBRR engine intakes to modify them to allow our frame to run between them.
Next image shows the design of the new intake. The most important thing has been to keep the injector in the same position it had in the original intake.

Once we had the new intake designed, we printed 2 units in plastic. These printed intakes are not functional, but they served us to check that everything was correct before milling the definitive ones.
Here we have our 3d printed prototype next to the original magnesium one:

Next pics show the 3D printed intakes mounted in the engine, with the frame running between them. Fortunately, everything fits as planned, and we already ordered the milled intakes.

We also mounted the top part of our XR1 carbon fiber fueltank, just to check that the injection body and velocity stacks fit properly inside it. As you know, the Pikes Peak race bike will use only the lower tanks, with the top one acting as an airbox. Everything was OK and now we must design the lower part of the airbox and the intake conduits that will feed the airbox with fresh air.

We also mounted the subframe and the electric wiring loom of the XBRR, just to check that we didn’t have any length problem with the wiring.

The XB and XBRR engines share the same front and rear mounting points, but the rest is quite different. We had to design a new right side footpeg, because the one we use on the XR1 doesn’t fit in the XBRR engine.
Because we do not have the XBRR engine in CAD, we are using the 3D printer more than what is usual for us. Before machining the footpeg in aluminium, it is well worth to print a prototype in plastic just to check that everything fits properly.
Here you have the prototype still on the 3D printer:

And here mounted in the engine:

From now on we expect to move the project forward in a faster way, so we will update the blog more often.