250-500cc 1998 WR360: questions about carb and forks

[ohmygewd]

Re: Forks - even the Shivers that came out with the 360's required a fair bit of valving work to get the harshness off the forks, l've never ridden a Husky with the magnum's nor every worked on one so can't help ya there mate.
I'm sure a man ofn man of many resources could source a set of KYB SSS forks and triple clamps and mate them all up or 50mm units from later models?

Justintendo is correct, in comparison to 430-500cc 2t's, the 360 doesn't vibe that much but if you're coming from a 125-250 it does but you don't really feel it when riding.

 

[justintendo]

different forks, but the original damping stack in my 95 showas were all jacked up. thanks to WER its a much different story now..

 

[DaBit_temporary]

I am having a lot of account problems here . Instead of removing the 'moderation needed' they blocked it.

Anyway.
Having fun:

That day I put over 170km (106 miles) on the odo. That was tiring; the bike doesn't run smooth below 1/4 throttle, so it was brwaaap, brwaaap, brwaap the entire day.
Luckily I received the tracking number of the Lectron coming my way. Can't wait...
Changed the final gearing to 15/46 yesterday. Did a small 10km loop on the road, much better. Makes no sense to have only 2-3 useable gears in the mud.

I liked the front forks. Very plush, didn't loose traction, didn' t throw me off line. Rear end, not so. That one is quite harsh.


I also did the initial soldering on the Li-polymer regulator/rectifier/charger/protection:

It works

Battery+electronics will just fit at the location of the original regulator/recifier. The RR design is MOSFET-based, so not much heat expected.
Need to add a cell balancer, pot the electronics, and mill an aluminium housing for it.

 

[ohmygewd]

Dabit, you got a wiring diagram for this bit of gadgetry? You are sir, a clever man!!

 

[shawbagga]

Yes nice work but quit smoking that shits no good for ya or ya bike fitness! My health message for the day 'smokings bad mmmkay'

 

[DaBit_temporary]

Dabit, you got a wiring diagram for this bit of gadgetry? You are sir, a clever man!!

Yes, once it performs well on my bike. This design is a little more sophisticated than the one I used on my ex-KLX650R (but still only a handful of cheap components) and the Internet is already full of nonworking things.

I also drew up a preliminary aluminium housing for the electronics & battery:

Need to add entries for the wiring and maybe an adapter plate for the original AC regulator mounting points.

Without the mounting tabs it measures 124x60x33mm (4.9" x 2.4" x 1.3"). Will have to check if that does not collide with the forks at the original regulator location.
Mass of that housing is 187 grams / 6.5 ounces according to CAD. Add ~100 grams for electronics+potting, 190 grams for the battery, a bit of wiring, and total weight is ~500 grams / 1lb. The weight of the original regulator can be subtracted from that.
Much better than the regular DC/dual sport conversion.

Yes nice work but quit smoking that shits no good for ya or ya bike fitness! My health message for the day 'smokings bad mmmkay'

Yeah, I know, bad habit. Luckily I have a bike now that smokes more than I do .
Here it comes in handy since everybody seems to know how large a box of cigarettes is

 

[DaBit_temporary]

Link to preliminary schematic:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2762301/LiPo_RR.pdf

The balancer is untested yet (have to order the TL431 components for that). R/R part of the design seems to work OK, but I still have to test it on the bike.

For the battery: order whatever 3S Li-polymer pack suits you or grab one at a local R/C store. I am using something like this:
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__21346__ZIPPY_Compact_2200mAh_3S_25C_Lipo_Pack.html
A 3S pack constructed from 18650 Li-ion cells will work too.

A word of warning: Li-polymer packs can be dangerous. The energy density can be higher than in a block of TNT of the same size. Do a Youtube search on 'lipo explosion' for example.
With great power (density) comes great responsibility: if anyone decides to copy this design, please obey the following rules:
- Mount the battery pack in a metal enclosure.
- Do not mount the pack under the gas tank. Air filter box is probably not such a good plan either.

If you watch the videos it seems very dramatic and dangerous, but the people making the videos do their best to misuse the battery in such a way that the effect is dramatic. The same can happen to the battery of about any portable device nowadays. Your cell phone, your laptop, etcetera.
Milions of people carry more than one of these devices day in, day out, and don't get blown up. Lead/acid batteries can explode too when misused, especially the unsealed variants.

This R/R design protects the battery from overcharging and from over-discharging. In fact only part of the battery capacity is used to prolong battery life, especially when sitting unused in the garage. This keeps things safe. But as usual: everything can fail, and given enough devices in the field: will fail. And in case it does, I would rather not have that underneath the gas tank.