Dakar Dazed II - the return! Part 1: Project LC4-50

Jenny,
I'm planning to be in Colorado riding my rallized 690R the last week of June and the first week of
July.I would be happy to help you with testing/ be your waterboy if you would like.Ron @ KTMTWINS knows
me via the telephone as we spoke quite often while I was waiting for all my parts from RALLY RAID UK.
Just a thought. Fritz

Ha! Top work NB!!!

Jx

Cheers Barrier & Jenny, makes sense. Four of us from the UK will be in a "team" for the Hellas so we'll see you in Greeece, I'll come and say hi

Subscribed, really cool project.

We have been CNC machining the first crank web today,to suit the new crankpin,This is 12,5mm nearer the centre than the OEM pin,so reducing the stroke by 25mm.
Although the crank was fairly hard,we used a solid carbide cutter,which worked well.
You can see the extra 12,5mm length in the new rod,compared to the standard rod.

Looking good John!

Thanks looks great!

John has been prepping his 690 [engined] Rally bike this week for the Tuareg Rally next month... his bike spec will essentially be the basis of the LC4-50 bike we'll race at the Hellas, and Dakar 2014... and he'll be race-testing the TracTive shock in Tunisia as part of the chassis development...

He's also got some fancy graphics fitted!









Jx

That, is quite nice.

+1

Very tidy looking!

Beautiful! Love white rally bikes!

Warning - photos of machined engine parts to follow for all you metal fetishists!

At the end of last week, John machined the original 690 crank to accept the new pin that will provide the shortened stroke.

Obviously this is still a mechanical prototype using as many existing components as possible to test our calculations - once the specification is finalised, a custom billet crank [with the correct counterbalancing etc to suit the 450cc capacity] will be produced in a limited batch for our race bikes and any customer kits...





We should have a the pressed and balanced crank back towards the end of this week, then Martin can begin the engine build...

Jx

..and so it begins! Wow its coming on in leaps and bounds, keep the updates coming

That is a very good looking bike!!!!! This kit is going to be a total success!

X2 - best of luck!

We went over to the Tractive Suspension HQ in Holland this week,with our KTM 690 EVO 2 Rally bike to fit their new PDS2 shock.
This will give up to 300mm rear wheel movement,something we have been after for some time.
This small,new company is staffed by all WP technical guys who are developing some radical suspension technology which will be coming on-stream soon.
They quickly sorted the problem of the prototype not quite clearing the frame,and will be CNC machining us a special part for the production shock,in preparation for the production version.
We will be testing the prototype at Tuareg Rallye in March,before returning to Tractive to collect the first production shocks.
Many thanks to Tom and his team for showing us round their new business,and some of the radical new technology,which,understandably,we could not photograph.But here are some shots of our development bike,and parts.


Tractive Suspension

Innovation is always nice to see, especially in suspensions which are quite complicated dynamic parts. Thumbs up to Tractive Suspension and looking forward to hearing a riding review

This bike already has lots of unique parts on it ... I welcome back this development in racing, something that I think is missing nowadays ...

Keep up the good work !
D.

Looking great! Jenny, are the Tractive shocks only air pressure units with no springs? Like Dungey's SX shock?