FJ Land speed racer

[fj1289]

Mechanics are back on track - one made it out as planned.  One had a flight cancelled - he's headed out at midnight now. 

Also figured out how to "repair" the oil leak without replacing the cooler and be "legal" to fly again.  We both know the repair has almost no chance of working, but it will let us limp her home where real repairs can be made while the rest of the plane is being modified.


While sorting out the logistics for the plane, had a bit of time to be surfing the web and reading up on land speed racing forums -- the MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE section of suzukihaybusa.org is a pretty good site.  Found a bit on Roland Sands trying to take an aircooled Victory to 200 mph.  Looks like they fell a little short but a very cool project.  6:03 in this video is the answer to how I want to modify the FJ tank for the next go around:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWbON8aFc-A           This should let me keep the FJ profile but still tuck in lower.  Prior to finding this I was looking at how to cut the tank to a lower profile without messing up the FJ lines too badly...  http://www.suzukihayabusa.org/forum/index.php?topic=131825.0

[fj1289]

     Huge thanks to Alan - he's volunteered to pick up the engine tonight and drop it at the house!     It's a huge help that'll get this beast ready a day sooner!   

[fj1289]

Well, we've talked about getting up to speed in a mile...how about a discussion about the other half...stopping.

There have been some concerns posted on a couple of other sites about the stopping distance available at the Colorado Mile.    



The runway at Front Range airport (KTFG) is 8000' long.  There are no overruns or underruns ("extra" pavement at the end or beginning of a runway that's often useful in emergencies – or used as a "safety zone" when you really want to pack as much as you can on an airplane to make as much money as you can...), so there's no additional length we can use for our car or motorcycle at this event.  So, 8,000 – 5,280' (the mile long race course) = 2,720' or about 80' more than a half mile.  Since this is a marked out 1 mile and you have to have at least SOME room to line people up (and you aren't allowed to "roll onto" the track) – for the sake of discussion let's say that "extra" 80' gets used for staging.  We've got 2,640' to get stopped in then.  Or maybe not – you really don't need to be completely stopped by the end –  you really only need to slow down enough to make the turn off...let's call that 30 mph?  Maybe 20 mph?  After a good high speed blast that will probably feel slow enough to think you could pop down the side stand and just walk away at that point!

How long does it take to slow down from speed?   Mr. Scott Guthrie (google him – he knows a thing or two about going fast and getting slowed back down) had a good reply on this over at hayabusa.org.   Here is a shameless cut and paste from there:

[NOTE – this discussion was based on the use of a shorter airfield in another country for a ½ mile event and would only have ¼ mile for the shut down area]

"A good answer can be easily calculated with a little simple arithmetic.

1) Assume you will travel at least an additional 1/2 second
before you can get on the brakes hard.

1/2 second is pretty quick, since you would not want to "hammer "
the front brake, and skid the front tire........

a) at 200 MPH, 1/2 second about
equals 1.466 x 200 x 0.5,
so about = 150 feet.

2) From 200 mph, a MotoGP rider, on typical runway pavement,
could probably achieve a reliable deceleration rate of f = 1.2.

A skilled rider, would maybe develop f = 1.0 decel,

and a typical street rider would achieve f = 0.8 decel.

3) One can use a standard formula to calculate stopping distance from a known speed.

a) Distance (d) about equals the speed (S) squared,
divided by the deceleration factor times the constant 30.

b) d = S squared / 30f.

4) Examples:

a) stopping distance from 200 mph if you are as good as a MotoGP star.
a1) d = 200 squared divided by 1.2 PLUS the "reaction" distance of about 150 feet.
a2) 200 squared = 40,000
a3) 40,000 / 1.2(30) = 1,100 feet of decel.
a4) add the reaction distance of 150 feet
a5) stopping distance for the MotoGP rider is 1,250 feet.

b) For the "skilled" rider the total stopping distance
about equals 1,350 + 150 = 1,500 feet

c) for the average rider, the total distance = 1,650 + 150 = 1,800 feet.

5) Assume you have 1/4 mile of paved shutdown, which today = 1,320 feet.

a) The MotoGP man stops with 70 feet ( 3 - 4 car lengths) to spare. Are you that good ?

b) The "skilled guy" needs 1,500 feet, but has only 1,320 feet.

b1) 1,500 - 1,320 = 180 feet.
b2) "Skilled guy" goes off the end of the track at about 75 mph (reverse calculation)

c) "Average guy" needs 1800 feet, and goes into the dirt at almost 110 mph
c1) Think about riding your 'Busa' at 100 in soft dirt, with trash and stumps...."

The late Bill Warner shows the perils of going a bit fast for the course on a 278 mph run (HOLY CRAP!) at the Texas Mile.  For anyone that doesn't know – Bill Warner set the all time speed record for a sit-on bike at 311 mph at Loring Maine.  

http://jalopnik.com/5708174/ride-to-2786-mph-with-the-worlds-fastest-streetbike

Bottom line of all this?  That ½ mile should be "plenty" of stopping room – even if you allow for a second and a half to roll off the throttle and ease into the brakes.  The critical part is to begin slowing at the line and not run through it too far.  Most of the accidents at these 1 mile courses occur when someone "zones out" going past the 1 mile markers and don't start slowing or are so focused on keeping their head down they miss the marker or get distracted watching the tach or a GPS speedo they miss the markers.  So, "plenty of room" – just not much room for mistakes!

[fj1289]

Airplane is fixed!  Airborne in an hour - "should" make it in tonight - but we do have one more fuel stop to nurse this bird thru...




Here's the culprit (for the oil leak anyway!)

[Steve_in_Florida]

That's almost a late-model colour scheme on that plane. Did *YOU* have any influence on that?

Steve

[fj1289]

Lol!  

No Steve - the Air Force spec'd that color scheme -- I'd of gone with red and silver!  

They also painted the small Polish built STOL planes I used to ferry across with a very similar paint scheme.  

[Firehawk068]

Delivery was successful! 

[Pat Conlon]

You are the best Alan!

It will be a busy next couple of days.

[fj1289]

You are the best Alan!

It will be a busy next couple of days.

X10 to both of those! 

Made it in tonight - too tired to trust myself to work tonight.   But I do have time off of work now!  Don't think I'll make the dyno tomorrow though.   

[fj1289]

Quick update - thrash fest continues.   Fairing miss complete and getting painted (rattle cans).  Tried getting engine up and going -- had a failing fuel pump give us fits.  Didn't want to start until we have it a LOT more fuel than expected.  Then wouldn't stay running.   Pulp wasn't putting out full pressure and eventually seized.   Spent last 4 hours getting a new pump.  We WILL be there in the morning for the drivers meeting and tech!

[jscgdunn]

 ?

[fj1289]

Well...you can tell from the lack of updates or news we didn't get to run. 

Got the bike finished up Friday night - but couldn't get it to crank. 

Still loaded up and went to the airport on Saturday - confident that with a little work we'd get it running and use the first couple runs as tuning runs.  No such luck.  We could get it to crank, but not stay running for more than a few seconds. 

Sunday we stayed at home and tried all day.  Never got it to run for more than 45 seconds or so. 

Microsquirt kicked my butt.  Thought I had a decent time and map to start from ... appears I was wrong!  The first two engines I installed Microsquirt on went a LOT easier.  I'm sure there's something I'm overlooking -- and will kick myself when I find it!

Bright side I guess is I'll be leaving the race bike setup and ready to roll once it's going...3 "builds" in the last 12 months has been a bit much!  Once this is up and running I'll take it to the dyno to help sort the tune -- then it will be ready to go. 

Then time to get the street bike back on the road -- without robbing anything off the race bike!

[Harvy]

Well...you can tell from the lack of updates or news we didn't get to run. 

  I'm sure there's something I'm overlooking -- and will kick myself when I find it!

That's a bummer Chris....... don't kick too hard mate!

Maybe a set of BIG carbs still running the NOX in your future???


Cheers
Harvy

[fj1289]

Well...you can tell from the lack of updates or news we didn't get to run. 

  I'm sure there's something I'm overlooking -- and will kick myself when I find it!

That's a bummer Chris....... don't kick too hard mate!

Maybe a set of BIG carbs still running the NOX in your future???


Cheers
Harvy

We thought about hanging a set of stock carbs on it Saturday night and leaving everything else wired up to the Microsquirt.  I wasn't sure how the CV carbs would react to the nitrous and fuel being injected at the throats of the carbs.  I don't have a set of flat slides that are set up anymore - all that stuff was stolen some years back with the trailer.  In the end, I decided running with the Microsquirt was part of the plan so I'd focus my energies on getting it up and running.  Still working thru issues -- now I'm thinking the VE map (fuel map) is way off for some reason -- and that throws off all the fuel calculations that are used as soon as the engine lights off and tries to continue running.  I've got two plans of attack to pursue - first I'm trying to work off the "default" settings and calculated base map in order to rule out errors that may have been built into the old tunes and maps I started with.  Going to an old tune that worked well with a similar engine was the plan -- but when one of my laptops took an unfortunate nose dive, I lost a LOT of data from the last couple years.  The other option is to resurrect an old tune I had uploaded to a file sharing site -- but it is based on a different firmware version and is throwing out a lot of configuration errors.  I can probably pull in the fuel table to a new tune, but all the start tables are going back to default. 

The EFI gives some definite advantages for a project like this.  Carbs are simpler, but then require a lot of additional boxes to reach this level of functionality - and even then it's not as well integrated as with the ECU. 

I've gotten to the same point twice now - cranks easy but struggles to stay running.  Tried increasing the VE table and reducing the ASE (after start enrichment) and WUE (warm up enrichment).  Didn't respond as well as I expected - so it's back to the previous point and build from there.   

[jscgdunn]

Very interesting to watch you guys work together to do this.  Jeff