Brodie Posted August 19, 2004 Share Posted August 19, 2004 How many of you guys are switching to Bike power next year?It would be great to see more BEC's competing in classes 4,5 and 6 then possibly a separate class could be created to handle the demand!!?? Is this just wishful thinking on my behalf or a tangible proposition for the not to distant future? Lets have your thoughts here! '......in yer bike!' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chelspeed Posted August 19, 2004 Share Posted August 19, 2004 Yeah, great idea.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickaddison Posted August 19, 2004 Share Posted August 19, 2004 Brodie - I will be having a crack myself I think next year, straight into class 5 😳 Gulp Hurray for a Novice Championship! By the way, I have a DVD for you with the run from MIRA on it - assume we'll see you at Curborough? Look out for Carolyn's T-shirt Scream if you wanna go faster! Caterham FireBlade NJA509 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Plato Posted August 19, 2004 Share Posted August 19, 2004 How many of you bike powered cars are switching to regular motors next year Nick - I have some tapes for you at Curborough .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irrelevant Posted August 19, 2004 Share Posted August 19, 2004 I'll be tootling round in a Hayabusa engined Caterham next year - I have to nail it in first though 😳. I'll be in class 6 BTW. Accumulating bits . . . Edited by - AdamHay on 20 Aug 2004 01:27:59 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silver 21 Posted August 31, 2004 Share Posted August 31, 2004 May be going that route next year, possibly Blackbird just for the hell of it, getting bored with the xflow 😬 😬 😬 😬 😬 (Must lose weight as well otherwise theres no point 😬 😬 😬 😬 😬) Graham Competition Secretary 2004 Speed Championship - 9 events Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rgrigsby Posted August 31, 2004 Share Posted August 31, 2004 Hopefully going the Busa route but I've got to sell my Xflow first of all! Rob G www.SpeedySeven.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Molloy Posted September 1, 2004 Share Posted September 1, 2004 IMHO the "bike engined" concept is the logical progression of Chapman's "add lightness" philosophy. I guess my Blackbird counts as a "first generation" BE Cat, and weighs in at a lardy 450kg+. The 2nd gen. Fireblades have been built with much more focus on weight saving. Witness all the nice Paul Harvey/James Whiting bespoke parts, and the potential for a genuine sub-400kg (road legal). This must be close to the limit for a standard Caterham Chassis. The only way to a better power-to-weight would be a) driver diet (!), and b) more grunty engine. Is the extra weight of the "daddy" Hayabusa worth it for the power advantage over, say, a Yamaha R1? Estimate 12% more power for 6% more (overall) mass, so it should be true, but I for one would *really* like to see the alternatives on track. R1, Gixer Thou, ZX10, ZX12R, RCV211, etc. Potential for some real engineering ingenuity rather than the woefully predictible K tinkering. Having said all that the pictures of the Motopower V8 SV in EVO did cause a certain stirring in the trouser region. 340bhp, 2 litres and 75kg... Oh my, I gotta get me one of those! 😬 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Molloy Posted September 1, 2004 Share Posted September 1, 2004 Just spotted a couple of interesting figures on the Fluke Motorsport site. Food for thought... A Busa lump plus reverse gearbox weighs about 90kg. A dry sump K plus 6-speed box weighs 132kg. Handy 42kg saving. A de-dion rear end (diff, shafts, ears, brakes, tube) weighs 66kg. Barry H's live axle (with discs, calipers, alloy diff nose) was 45kg. Ergo +21kg for de-dion over LA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rgrigsby Posted September 1, 2004 Share Posted September 1, 2004 I believe the Evo bloke who had a Blade engined car got it down to around 360Kg... but that was with every single bit of lightweight CF?Magnesium etc you could get.... Rob G www.SpeedySeven.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silver 21 Posted September 2, 2004 Share Posted September 2, 2004 From memory I think Barry H's complete car weighs 375Kg but this is without road going hardware Graham Competition Secretary 2004 Speed Championship - 9 events Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Carmichael Posted September 2, 2004 Share Posted September 2, 2004 Potential for some real engineering ingenuity rather than the woefully predictible K tinkering. Buying in a motor is nothing new or ingenius. What exactly is so clever about a bike engine? It is a four-stroke internal combustion engine. It has bore/stroke measurements and poppet valves. It produces as much power as the air it can breathe. The short stroke raises the revs required (and if I had a power output graph to hand I could show how it compresses the power band compared to a long stroke). Good BHP/litre but never many litres. They don't weigh much, but the difference is less than quoted here. They are good value for money, for the inclusion of the sequential gearbox. That's about it, surely. Did Brodie start this thread because he can see the imminent future where the roadgoing K-series cars are going to start specialising a bit more and steal his thunder. A BEC-only class would be a good place to run and hide. 😳 What would happen if you stuck Dave J's car on sprint slicks? Equally, my big engine will be up and running next season. Perhaps class 6 is the place to take it seeing as a 90bhp power hike in class 5 would be "unsporting". When are we going to see some competitive Duratec sprint cars? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silver 21 Posted September 2, 2004 Share Posted September 2, 2004 Peter Where have you been hiding 🤔 🤔 🤔 🤔 🤔 Graham Competition Secretary 2004 Speed Championship - 9 events Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Carmichael Posted September 2, 2004 Share Posted September 2, 2004 I'm in France and my season is done. I missed shaking your hand and picking up my second place trophy at the weekend. I thought it would be fun to set Dave J off with the task of retaining his championship with a full set of maximum points wins in the remaining events to deprive these bike engined upstarts. 😳 As far as I can tell it will hinge on how many entries Class 6 has in the remaining events and whether Dave can be bothered to go to Aintree. FWIW, the championship win seems to go to the dominant force in the least competitive class. I wonder if some collective head scratching could come up with a points system that would rebalance it in favour of the more closely fought classes where the real driving performances are being played out - not to say that Brodie's drives have not been anything other than astonishing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Plato Posted September 2, 2004 Share Posted September 2, 2004 Dave got a max at Curbuggar 😬 Daves doing Aintree Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Molloy Posted September 2, 2004 Share Posted September 2, 2004 Buying in a motor is nothing new or ingenius. No, but fitting it to a Se7en in longitudinal rather than transverse orientation and solving all the related issues certainly is not a trivial process. Ultimately rewarding if you can do it, though. Peter - I would have thought you of all people would appreciate the "full race" engineering contained in a sports bike engine. Your efforts turning a sow's ear into a silk purse are all well and good, (well actually "amazing" would be a better description) but check out the latest R1 engine spec. here 180bhp in a 65kg package? Yeah, baby! 😬 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Carmichael Posted September 2, 2004 Share Posted September 2, 2004 There's also a full entry of class 6 cars at Aintree. *eek*and probably Wiscombe too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Carmichael Posted September 2, 2004 Share Posted September 2, 2004 From the R1 spec: increased bore size to 77 mm, while stroke is reduced to 53.6 mm, and this free-revving shorter stroke engine now delivers peak power at 12,500 rpm, some 2,000 rpm higher Exactly the sort of stuff I was talking about. You go to all this effort to produce a 1 litre engine and look at the torque per litre figure which gives a true impression of the VE in the head and it isn't impressive, especially for a five-valve per cylinder head. The short strokes constrain valve acceleration - you can't open the valve quickly because the piston is still in the way. A long stroke allows you to have much more optimum valve openings. Another comparison - bhp for bore area: 172bhp from a 77mm bore: 0.009234 bhp/mm^2 You can do the same just against total bore diameter: 0.558bhp/mm These give a good correlation against the viable valve curtain size and valve area, so are useful metrics. The equivalents at 80mm (K-series bore size) are 185bhp (bore area) and 178.7bhp. Take the better of those two figures and you will see that K-series engines at over 185bhp are commonplace. The K is making better use of the flow potential in its head. In the R1 engine, the valve openings are holding back the power. If you could stroke the R1 to get the pistons out of the way, the cam profiles could be optimised and you'd start to see the potential of the head. At the moment, they've got potential in the head that just can't be realised. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Molloy Posted September 2, 2004 Share Posted September 2, 2004 cos I'm blinded by science... So Peter, if Yamaha made a 2 litre 360bhp engine, would you still persevere with your glorified Metro lump? 😬 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Carmichael Posted September 2, 2004 Share Posted September 2, 2004 Would it still weigh 65 kg? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Molloy Posted September 2, 2004 Share Posted September 2, 2004 Well... *If* the Motopower V8 really does weigh 75kg as reported in EVO mag, then I guess it's possible! You should write to Rob McElnea and tell him where he is going wrong with the BSB R1s. Get into competition with Ammo as he is a consultant to the Crescent Suzuki team! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
christian.v Posted September 2, 2004 Share Posted September 2, 2004 I could not recommend using the new R1 engine in a BEC. The clutch and gearbox just aren't up to the job-My folk in the know have raced one all year and have had all sorts of grief, even to the point of being given new boxes by Yamaha in exchange. There is now an aftermarket box available- not sure how good. For a 1 litre it's definately Suzook or ZX10 Kawa. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Carmichael Posted September 2, 2004 Share Posted September 2, 2004 Perhaps if it weighed 67kg or wasn't made of cheese it would be more reliable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
christian.v Posted September 2, 2004 Share Posted September 2, 2004 Judging from the oil that pisses out when it's broken, one could assume gorgonzola to be the major crankcase constituent 😬 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irrelevant Posted September 2, 2004 Share Posted September 2, 2004 My Busa engine arrives tomorrow Maybe I'll put it in instead of my Crossflow which is currently in bits 😬 Accumulating bits . . . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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