The Lego idea is brilliant, total out of the box thinking! You never know what won't work until you try it
My Cousin and I made it as far as 1/8 scale electric buggies and then bought dirt bikes a couple years ago. The R/C stuff sits on the shelf now One more roadbook test shot from Unadilla..... The Nav tower held up very well, I wish I could say the same for the Cycra hand guards
When I had lego it did spend a lot of time in dirt/mud/sand etc so the stuff has been tested to some degree. Probably by us all when we were wipper snappers
A neat round stock RB holder gleaned from a TT 600 thread http://advrider.com/forums/showpost.php?p=19653044&postcount=371
ok, this is the third time I am writing this, the backspace button is now out of my keyboard damn you backspace The Lego idea is nice but then again I have to question myself about the UV resistance of these plastics... Lego Technic structures usually they do not stay in the desert for ten days at the time... Think that we are looking for HDPE with UV protection, I have seen numerous Tamiya parts (from the RC cars) which broke after some years of use and the problem is that you don't know when it will break. May be for the use that I do it will break in a year, for you may be in six months. But will it be in the middle of nowhere? In any case I don't think knobs add that much to the cost. HDPE for example was used for the main structure. That is a money saver. If for example we were using Legos to build the body, that would be fun. But then again, in a crash ? I had a look in their pulleys though. Since they are inside there should be no problem. They have some fancy coloured rubber bands, red, yellow, blue... That should be fun... 1) I did some Internet searching yesterday. Looking for motors and one way bearings. I found one way bearings without problems from Boca Bearings. These should not cause any problems in this application. So I will go for them. 2) Roll size. you can never have a large enough roadbook. F2R the large unit holds 48mm rolls. Brodovich kindly gave me last year's Day 3 and Day 4 from Serres Rally Raid. Both rolled together where 50mm. What about if you had a roadbook which can hold up to 60mm? 65? Read on ... 3) Motors. I looked at Rotalink, Micromo, Portescap, Buhler ... Mabuchi everywhere... Looking for a motor which has 30rpm output shaft, working torque 2.4mNm (approx), 19mNm stall torque and consumes approx 3 Watts. These specs came from my Touratech rotalink unit. All the other values aside, the 30 rpm is an approximate value since again you can play with pulley sizes but for ease of manufacturing lets suppose that the pulleys are all the same. From all of the above manufacturers the unit with its gearbox are approx 35+ mm in diameter. Way too big. No wonder why touratech went with their own gearbox design and MD takes it out of the box. I found a small unit which if the values are correct the torque is enormous (Comments? ) here > http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ultra-High-Torque-DC12V-30rpm-Gear-Motor-Multi-Purpose-/300450336595 . Now this is not a motor supplier that I know and probably the quality may not be that good. But it is a start and I will keep looking. At least 17mm in diameter is as tiny as it can go so I am fine with its size and I will keep looking for a decent unit. 4) Shape of the Unit. Up until know we knew the Touratech and then the MD with its different shape. I decided to try a new one... Comments are welcome... Now the above is what I started sketching yesterday. 37mm motor with 50mm rolls. The rolling screen will allow you to see at least four tulips at a time so that i also a bonus. This is a complex design but lets talk through it... Brainstorming is never bad... You have three rollers and you get a spare part storage space in the rear bottom. Provided that you can find a small motor (17mm in diameter), you can fit one there, with rubber bands and a couple of rollers but it gets out of hand with its complexity and probably manuf costs... :huh This is just fun, cartoon like roadbook .... extruded aluminium cut in chunks That is the one I went for. The cartridge frame is bold. The hatched area is the area that we gain space. Not a lot, but enough to fit a 37mm motor and still have room for 50mm rolls. So, we then go to our computer and start the drawings from scratch once again... Let us suppose for now, that the 17mm motor can be found from a good source. If that is the case then rolls of up to 65mm in diameter will fit without any problems in this cage. The magenta line is where usually the other roadbooks stop but I see no reason why you cannot make it a little bit deeper. 15, 20 mm wouldn't be noticeable in this area... Thoughts? :huh ... The 125mm screen means four Tulips are visible without any problems... The inclination should not cause any problems since even now, we are adjusting the things to suit our personal viewing angle... Then we continue the design and late at night we are in this stage ... Any thoughts on these are greatly appreciated ... As an aside, and because late November I have a race to attend with my excellent quality Touratech roadbook I made a small improvement on that thing... The top cover is like so This bit, bites the rollers and stays in place for the rest of the race, amen. Since it is plastic, with a bolt through it, thickness calculations should be in order... Last year in the start of the race I had both these things broken... Thank God Touratech supplier gave me one new cover to complete the race otherwise I would be going all over it with duct tape... ... Therefore I took some measurements and went and machined some... They are made of aluminium so they will last, the holes will be threaded and the butterflies that you see above will be removed, the screws will be from the top, but just to give you the idea ... And the party continues
Obviously the tooling cost would be up there for an extrusion, but what a great idea! The internal cartridge could now be an integral piece and just cut out to facilitate the scroll, motors, shafts etc. The holes for the shafts, probably drilled afterwards could also be used to bolt the ends on. You could make road books of any custom width dimension, to suit the adventure bike market for putting maps in as opposed to road books this opens up a whole new market. It would be incredibly strong and yet light. Please lets go with an extrusion! Maybe get a Chinese, Thai or Indian toolmaker onto it and get a few hundred metres of stock made where labour is cheap. You could afford to put some good bits in if the extrusion cost could be kept low. The 'Screen' could slide in and out from the sides, ends. Assembly is easy with both ends off and load it up with components using the screwed on ends to hold it all together, so easy to work on in the bush too. Maybe get onto this mob for funding? Cheers Pilbara
A quick update before I do some work for the office I traced a nice motor and some nice springs. One way bearings too ... I will try to manufacture at least the cartridge and see if it works. Then adjust accordingly and continue with the case. <IFRAME height=315 src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/rdkHucQ0GZA" frameBorder=0 width=560 allowfullscreen></IFRAME> In the video above (choose the HD version) you can see the whole unit. I cose to use single pulleys. Double pulleys (like the ones in the F2r) are more reliable but I will stick with one at the moment in order not to make it wider. It is wide enough as it is ... :huh In the video below you can see the cartridge (choose HD again), pardon the quick animation of the disengaging process its too late for me to bother as at this time and after a number of beers it seems that I have gone over to this bad place again ... The spring does not compress... The animation software is not that advanced yet . You are not also able to see the lexan part. It will be there eventually when the beers get out of my system <IFRAME height=315 src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ANFjSjY-5H4" frameBorder=0 width=560 allowfullscreen></IFRAME> Basically you pull and get the roll out. Then the new roll in the other shaft and off you go. Rolls can be zip tied in your bag already taped on the shafts. This thing will take rolls of up to 60mm in diameter and its dimensions can be seen in the pictures below But what do I have to change in the unit to take larger rolls? The cartridge side parts and the cage. All the other parts are the same. So if anybody wants to put a map, a handbook or Harry Potter for crying out loud, then we can modify the cage and the side plates and off we go. It is indeed a little larger than usual but I think it is going ok at the moment ... I will see during the week if I can remove from the cartridge, the right side springs and make this side as fixed keys/slots. I should be able to shave 10mm from somewhere... Now if I shave 10 mm the unit is then comparable with the latest F2R so I think we are ok sizewise... Otherwise I will stick with ''size matters'' and I may make it even larger As far as the coolers is concerned I have no bloody idea... May be a look in KTM's microfiche ? till later, -o0-
Although with the extrution you could have very funny shapes and create something unique, the cost for the tools is quite high and you dont know how many units you will sell until you have sold them ... So putting anything from 3.ooo to 5.ooo Euros for a good quality extrution tools is a no go at the moment :eek1 . At least for me :huh ... On the other hand extruded aluminium come up to 6 meters long so that would fun on a bike ... Screwed ends is good idea, provided you have pockets for seals otherwise who knows what will happen. And this will add costs. ... Extrution is nice and cheap if you are producing kilometers of this thing ... and then you can go with this wooden look like the aluminium frames on the door panels who could resist that ? For small productions though, I thing the sheet bending is cheaper? Paul? :huh The site, I have seen it but it is open to the US only and there isn't something similar to the EU ... May be I have to move there or something ....
For the one way pulleys see if you can find some from older photocopiers. I stripped one a while back and thats where I got mine from. Smaller copiers don't use them but older ones have a few. If your lucky you may find one of the older 80 copy per minute machines and they had quite a lot from memory. I know this isn't a supplier as such but for someone trying to build their own if may be an option and have a few for spares. Also the internal measurements are quite often 6mm which I found was a size equal to plenty of S/S rods. Even from the copiers they have rods with a overall OD of 10mm and ends that are 6mm. Doesn't mesh to the lego pulleys I have but I'll work on it. Also I have a road book build out of steel so if I get some parts cast form from hdpe in the next bit I'll try and get the outer shell cast as well.
Yeah the KTM cooler is way too expensive, it's more than 500 here in Austria as well. Setrab makes very good quality stuff and is much more reasonably priced. Maybe they could make up a cooler to the same / or a very similar spec if we get enough people together? I would take at least one! Anybody in the US want to get in touch with them? http://www.setrabusa.com/oilcoolers_engine.html
How about an Earls; http://www.chicagoconnection.us/ind...uct_info&cPath=3_789_850_851&products_id=4419 Overall 11 inches wide and 3 inches high or even; http://www.chicagoconnection.us/ind...uct_info&cPath=3_789_850_852&products_id=4427 Price looks about right and the mounts are easy enough to add on.
Do you really need the oil cooler? Its just another group of things to go wrong. Aside from adding a small amount of capacity to the oil system I wonder if it really improves anything (for the majority of riders who are not riding at 99% all the time)....as in will it be the item to save the engine?