KillaJoule design finally finalized
KillaJoule - Land Speed RacingPosted by Eva Håkansson 22 Jul, 2010 08:35:08After close to one year in front of the drawing board and four design iterations, the KillaJoule body design is finally finalized. You can help us make this reality and write history (see bottom of this post).
Picture: The final body design for KillaJoule. These days almost all streamliners - motorcycles as well as cars - have composite bodies. Everything shape is possible with composites, the sky is the limit. At least as long as you have deep pockets; an 18 ft (6 m) long composite body is expensive (we are talking several thousands of dollars just for the material).
Unfortunately we don't have deep pockets; our annual budget is what a professional team spends in a weekend. (If you have missed it - the entire KillaCycle/KillaJoule/ElectroCat racing program is Bill’s and my very expensive hobby. We do this all on Bill’s very modest governmental salary, I am a graduate student in mechanical engineering at University of Denver and that doesn’t generate any income).
So, how can one build a streamliner body without the budget for a composite body? The answer is in the history book: aluminum. Traditionally, land speed vehicles were built like airplanes out of aluminum, but when composites were invented they soon became popular because you can make any imaginable shape. However, airplanes are still built out of aluminum and they go really fast (like 500 mph). If an airplane can go 500 mph with an aluminum body, KillaJoule should easily make 200 mph (320 km/h), which is the goal for this year.
Except for the spherical nosecone (that will be made of fiberglass), the entire KillaJoule body will be made of single curved sheets of aluminum. The body will mainly be riveted together – just like you build an airplane. (It is really handy that Bill actually built half an airplane. We sold it to buy the large race trailer, but we still have all the tools left. ;-)
<< You can help us write history! >>
If you happen to have a few hundred square feet of suitable sheet metal, rivets or other “airplane material” hanging around – we would be happy to help you get more room in your garage.
Whoever can help us with material will get his or her name on the side of the vehicle as well in the history books…. We are going to order material very soon, so if you can help us – contact me immediately. eva@killacycle.com
<< 90 horsepower for 200 mph... >>
Oh, I almost forgot to mentioned the most amazing: the CF Design computational fluid dynamics simulation shows that this body design will take 90 horsepower to push the motorcycle to 200 mph (320 km/h). Yes - you read it correctly - 90 HP! I am initially going to borrow KillaCycle's spare drivetrain (a 1000 amp Zilla controller, a 990 cell A123Systems pack and 2 series wound motors). This drive package will barely be jogging at 90 HP...
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The next step is to do aerodynamics modeling to optimize the shape. 
The building started with this Suzuki GSXR 1100 -90. We needed wheels, brakes, wheel axles etc., and it turned out that buying a whole motorcycle was much cheaper than buying parts. We got the donor bike locally at Craigslist for $850. A real bargain! 
Before I could take the wheels off I had to make a dolly so the bike still would stand up and be movable. The wheels on the dolly come from a tool box. When we bolted the toolbox to the floor in the race trailer, the wheels were over. The rest of the dolly is just some plywood and some wood we had hanging around. The dolly works great and the remains of the bike can easily be moved. 
The front and rear suspensions are designed by my dad Sven. It front is a “Springer” or “Trailing link” style suspension. It is a classic suspension but rarely used today. It is very strong and rigid and it is lower than a telescopic fork. Sven drew the suspension by hand and Bill transferred it to CAD and figured out the exact dimensions. This made it possible to print out dimensioned full-size drawings which helped a lot in the building process. By putting in batteries and motors in the drawing and sweep around a body, we could see which dimensions the chassis needed to have. 
The first, and the most complicated, part to build was the front swing arm. Clay is an excellent machinist and welder and made it look very easy. 
The swingarm twisted a little bit during the welding (this is almost unavoidable). By mounting it to our forklift “Clark” and use a big leverarm we managed to bend it back. 
I am machining the ends for the front forks. 
The front end finished! It was quite a bit of work, but it came out great. 
Figuring out the height of the chassis. I have to be able to fit my knees inside and see over the body, but we still want it as low as possible to get low air resistance. 
The first loop done on the roll cage. 
It isn’t easy to bend 1 ¼ inch 090-wall Chrome-Moly tubing. Clay's hydraulic tube bender really had to work. 
More parts to machine! I spent most of the four days machining parts. It is really slow to machine steel, especially chrome-moly steel. Here I am making the ends for the rear swing arm. Our new rotating table came in handy. 
It starts to look like a chassis! Now we have to decide where (and how!) to put the rear wheel. Bill has just come home from his day job, he has to work to pay for all this fun, so he gets a big hug. (All our racing projects are just very expensive hobbies; we definitely don’t make any money on it). 
The front suspension was the most difficult part to make. Bill spent hours just machining the neck on our old lathe (also from Craigslist! ;-) and Clay really scratched his head before he figured out how to mount the front end to the rest of the frame. 
All the angles have to be correct or the bike might behave really bad at high speed.
One of the beauties with CAD is that you can print out full size drawings, cut them out, tape them to the material and simply drill the holes and make the cuts. Here I am cutting out the drawing for the mounting brackets for the rear suspension. 
Making the brackets that I just cut out the drawings for. 
Lunch in the garage. To save some precious time, we had lunch in the garage. Clay is playing with the spot-welder he will use to build the battery pack for his own dirt dragster. Bill and I got an awesome deal on eBay on a whole pallet of spot-welding equipment. For building the frame for our streamliner, Clay and Gary got a spot-welder from us. New these spot-welders cost half a fortune. 
This is the cabinet with used-up motor parts from KillaCycle. Bill explains to Clay how he should adjust the brush timing to get maximum performance. 
Clay and Gary Gardiner are really great guys! Gary is Clay’s uncle, and together they have built more than 80 frames, mostly for dirt dragsters. This was the first streamliner motorcycle frame they built, but they are already thinking of the next version...
Gary is really a character! You just got to love him! 
The first “test ride”. 
