Sideburn Stories: Alta and Anders at Santa Rosa

I was fortunate to see Alta Motors competitive flat track debut at the CFTA's Santa Rosa short track meeting. The electric motorcycle company put a local hot shoe hotshot, Evan Anders, on the bike and both he and the bike were impressive.
Alta sent a bunch of beautiful shots from the weekend, so we had Alta's Jon Bekefy write his take on proceedings and put it in our burgeoning STORIES section on the new website. Go give it a gander. G

Our friends: Electric

Alta Motors of California are building seriously capable electric off-road bikes. MX legend Kurt Nicoll raced one in an EnduroCross race (indoor assault course for motorbikes) and won his class. The same weekend, Alta prepped a dirt tracker for Evan Anders to compete on at the recent CFTA Santa Rosa short track round. Alta have experienced dirt track mechanic/engineer, Dale Lineaweaver on board. I saw the bike, and was impressed by the whole set up. I'm not sure if electric bikes are the future, but I like the idea of them. Silent motorcycling, stealth blasting through the countryside. Yes, please.

We're going to race it over the winter. Until then, this is what the company said about their Santa Rosa experience.

Think of [the short track] format like the Roller Derby to EnduroCross's Tough Mudder. It is handlebar-to-handlebar chaos, with riders skating on the edge of traction non-stop from start to finish around an 1/8th mile dirt oval. Dirt track racing has tremendous ("hyuuuge") historic and cultural significance in America as the roots of our motorcycle racing, and has experienced a recent revival with major manufacturers like Ducati, Triumph, and Yamaha introducing street bikes based on the dirt track aesthetic. 

'This format should be a stretch for the Redshift MX, built as a Lites class (250cc equivalent) motocrosser with 40hp, competing against tuned 450cc gas-powered bikes putting down 50% more horsepower. Under up-and-coming rider, Evan Anders #32z, the Redshift blew some minds, taking a 2nd place in a Friday night heat and taking a holeshot and leading for three laps of the Saturday night semi-finals. As with the EnduroCross, no one outside of Alta was expecting this kind of result. This same event was Polaris' Indian Motorcycles' first race campaign of their brand new purpose-built FTR750 flat track racer, with a massive presence at Santa Rosa including a top pro rider, banners, booths and sponsorship of a few racing classes. In the pits, despite a much more modest presence, the buzz was about the Alta. It's hard to describe what it feels like to hear that excitement and enthusiasm from such a traditional crowd, but it tells me that the revolution has started and because we did this right, from the inside out, it's actually being welcomed.

Battery to Battery Charging

This looks useful for race bikes that use small batteries, especially over a longer race meeting, or practice day into a race meeting. I guessing though, because my race bike doesn't have a battery, so it's never a problem for me. G

OptiMate's new DC to DC charger enables the charging of a 12V lead-acid motorcycle battery using a 12V car battery; perfect for race paddocks and in garages and sheds that don’t have an AC power supply. It recovers, charges and maintains any STD, AGM and GEL 12V battery (from 3 – 96Ah), but it doesn’t need to be plugged into the mains. To get charging, hook up the DC to DC to a car or marine/RV deep cycle battery and thanks to OptiMate's Source Battery Protection, it will charge the bike battery without killing the source battery i.e. it shuts off when the voltage drops below 11V. 

The DC to DC’s smart long term maintenance mode extends protection to the bike battery as long as possible, delivering just enough power to protect against parasitic draw from the bike’s system and keep it ready to deliver. And if you forgot to maintain that bike battery, it can save a deep discharged, sulphated battery from as low as 1 Volt. OptiMate DC to DC is totally safe for vehicle electronics, is spark suppressed and will automatically shut-down if short-circuited or the battery is disconnected.

OptiMate DC to DC is priced at £69.99 (including VAT) and comes with everything needed to get charging: 1 x weatherproof battery lead, 1 x standard battery clamp lead, 1 x fused battery clamp lead and a full 3-year warranty.

Spaghetti Junction

Take two saucepans (cheap spun aluminium ones from Brick Lane market are fine)....

God created Heaven and Earth, but I've no idea who came up with the smart idea for electrics. I actually enjoy the challenge of a large Bolognese. But with the resurrection of my chop I wanted to go haute cuisine with no battery. Even the boffins at Boyer Bransen were'nt 100% sure about my amassed eBay parts and fuzzy logic (also mostly found on the internet). I sent them a minimal wiring diagram for appraisal and they responded not very reassuringly "It should work. In Theory".
The blue baby is a Vishay 6800 MicroFarad 25 Volt capacitor. The red box is the Boyer Bransden Micro Digital unit. These are two of the magic ingredients.

The Beaming video I posted is actually a bit of a scam. I was beaten and I cheated. I couldn't get the mofo to spark, so I jerry rigged in a battery. And then it did work. Well that meant all the new BB bits of the ignition were fine.
But with some more F'ing and B'linding and some divine electrical knowledge from Ferret (via Rupert Paul), it now Does work battery-less and I am truely a proud Daddy. BP

(this diagram could be a simpler schematic, but as-is, relates to the actual positions of components on my bike)

Electric Boogaloo

This is part 2 to my post on the xs650 Boyer Bransden up-grade ignition, I have just been waiting for the last piece of the electric jigsaw puzzle from Germany (good name for a magic mushroom fueled psychedelic band). Been on a proper world tour of the interweb researching up-grades to the XS650 Alternator (the original of which, isn't great).
Short version of the travel diary is: I absorbed everything written by pioneer Mr Riggs of Go Fast For Less, including any forum post written by him, but eventually all roads lead to Hugh Owings of Hughes Handbuilt. If you want to save yourself a LOT of time faffing about on eBay, just to save a few pennies (like I did) - and still not know if all the bits you amassed are correct and in working order, then just buy one of his ready-made kits. Unbeatable value.
The Sparx version made in England by Tri-Cor, looks like it takes a technological step further, and if you are in the UK (or Europe) it would be a saving on the killer shipping from the States of the HH one.
So fingers crossed my DIY parts (from top left) Yamaha RD250LC stator, RD350YPVS rotor (instead of the Banshee quadbike one everybody in the States uses), 350VYPS Regulator-Rectifier, and Karlheinz Droste adaptor plate, all sing in harmony to create a powerful and reliable 3-phase constant magnet alternator...BP

Relight Light My Fiah

These electronic gubbins from Boyer Bransden are hopefully going to bring my XS back to life. The kit includes a Zener diode capacitor (the blue thingy) so I can junk my dead battery - that saves 5kg. Another pace forward in it's health and diet regime. BP

Chasing Daylight

As my shed is still electricity-less, I wheeled the CCM out into the garden to catch a few more minutes of daylight to work by. Apparently some bright spark has invented something called an e-x-t-e-n-s-i-o-n-
c-o-r-d but it all sounds a bit high tech. After much swearing and pacing up and down, it turns out my starter solenoid is shot (the small gold, pot-like thing, ripped out from inside the air-box in the photo - this stage is with half of the spaggetti ripped out of the standard road-bike loom). Sods law, it was the last thing I checked having bought a new battery, stripped down the starter motor and ripped out a few unemployed wires.
Once it was pitch black and holding a torch in my mouth was causing me to dribble to much, I pushed the bike up to the house to work by the back door light. Only problem being it's also right next to the exhaust from the central heating boiler so I had to hold my breath each time it wafted out a big cloud of carbon-monoxide. Come 10 o'clock, and having pruned the dead wood right back - Alan Titchmarsh would be very proud of me, all was in order. I still need a new solenoid but Anthony CoBuilt has a used spare for me - they cost more than £100 new! I might just be ready for Sunday's race at Rye House. BP

Did You Know?

(Duh I didn't until today) If you use your bike less than every 3 months, the battery plates will begin to Sulphate and it's capacity to hold charge will deteriorate. To combat this you should use a trickle charger - mine here is a cheapo from Maypole. Plugged into the mains it gives a 12Volt 500mA output, with a 800mA maximum current.
You can leave it clipped on to your battery in situ, on the bike (presuming it sleeps in a garage) and it will cut out when it's had it's fill. (With my now deceased battery, the little red warning light on the charger only came on briefly before going out when plugged in. This was a warning I didn't appreciate that it wasn't holding its charge).Previously I'd only ever used this beefy Ferm charger once a year if my battery was dozy usually come winter. It says 12V 6A so I always presumed (wrongly) it was fine for the likes of my CCM battery which is 12V 8A. But designed for car batteries with a much higher cranking Amps, it's way to Frankenstein for a small bike battery, and if you leave it on it will start to fry the battery - so I've been killing my batteries in their sleep rather than resuscitating them. BPDoes electricity completely baffle you? Do you look at wiring diagrams and trip your brain cells? All the answers to life's mysteries are covered in this magical book by Arthur C. Clarke

Alternative Fuel

There's been a lot of hype in the motorcycling press about the TTXGP. But the only 'sustainable' energy (fuel) being considered as an alternative to the evils of petrol, is battery power. The electric bikes make a quiet Star Wars pod-racer whine, but don't tell me the batteries are made out of flour and yeast, or are even 1% biodegradable at the end of their working life.
Ben Wilson is an internationally acclaimed industrial designer. Together with the genetic scientist Dave The Roofer, he has developed the bio-mechanical XTSNOODLER HYBREED 4X4. It runs on a liquified mix of Pedigree Chum (39%), left-overs (21%); pizza or soggy Weetabix preferred, and water (40%). Snoodlers are bred domestically in Taiwan, the mechanical sections are assembled using 100% recycled parts. The noise it makes, is an intermittent but inoffensive 9Db "yap yap". The team are boycotting both the eGrandPrix and the notorious FIM backed e-Power world series in 2010, and will instead enter their true alternative fuel vehicle into the UK Short Track; Thunder Bike class, in the coming season. And are hoping to sign Stevie Coles as factory rider. BP

UPDATE:
Another beauty of the afore mentioned HYBREED hybrid, is its simple manufacture. No need for expensive tooling, or set-up costs for new model variants. Building such a vehicle in ones own shed; or kitchen even, could be a real possibility in the very near future. To illustrate the speed at which their factory can change tack due to market winds, Wilson and Roofer have just produced a Harley-Davidson™ variant to comply with the All American Twins rules for 2010 - a mere 48 hours after having received news of this new race series. This new variant also makes use of obsolete AMF stock and should retail at approximately half the price of a Fat Bob. BP