Energy Breakthrough

[coln72]

Well the RACV Energy Breakthrough is nearly one me again and its time I started panicing. Still need to assemble frame, build the body, paint the thing, organise t shirts.........

 

For those of you who don't know the event, it involves supposed to involve schools building their own vehicles, which are then judged and raced for 24hrs. This year there are 95 human powered entries competing on one track and another track has the hybrid (motor/person) entries, so its a BIG event. Both of the schools hybrids are capable of 100km/h plus :)

 

Our bike, built by the kids last year is considered old technology even though it is made from Chrome Moly steel and aluminium. There are a large number of bikes being made completly from carbon firber and kevlar now.

 

In last years event the team manages to complete 691 laps in 24hrs which is around 768km at an average of 32km/h to finish 5th on the track and 3rd in the open class. With presentation points added in we ended up 2nd overall in our class, missing out on the win by less than two points :) to a team that set a new race record.

 

Anyway if you guys have nothing to do, come and say g'day over the last weekend in November. I will be managing a team called RUN A MUK and should be located near the swimming pool in Maryborough (which is around 2 hours from Melb for those of you who don't get out much :)

Edited October 31, 2006 by coln72

[TheNOBBLER[RL]]

Well sweet as, sounds good colin.

 

If I have the time I will make the trip, I used to go to soemthing like this in Murray Bridge in SA.

[Sam_Q]

when you make it could you post some pics on here? I own my own home-made trike.

[coln72]

here are some pics of our trike

[coln72]

After the race - as you can see we race close!!!!

[Sam_Q]

hey looks nice, do you have any pics of without the fairing?

 

heres an old pic of mine:

 

 

and a more recent photo:

 

 

 

I made the first dedicated off road trike here, its a blast to ride

[coln72]

There great fun until you barrel roll one at top speed........

 

The aluminium scrapes on the road were close to 11 meters long and the skin scrapes from my elbow were not much shorter. The kid that built it wouldnt talk to me for a while as I totalled it :jamie:

[coln72]

Well it has been run and won, but not by us. A shit load of pissy little issues killed all chances of a decent result. Really pissed off as nothing showed up during testing, training or qualifying.

 

List of problems;

front wheels kept loosening and falling off even when using bearing retainer in the threads - bout 5 hours to finally fix it :) Been using the same design without problems for three years.......f@$king teflon in the wheel bearings leaked out onto the threads

 

absolultly destroyed chain rollers - again the same design has been used for ever.....

 

bent brake disc 'cause above bearing retainer glued wheel bearing to axel which pulled wheel brake assembly out while disc was still in caliper - shit

 

destroyed nearly every spoke in one side of wheel :jamie:

 

two rollovers caused by us deciding not to take out other dimwits in carts that should have been well off the racing line as they were SLOW!!!!!!

 

Big chunk out of a brand new tyre caused by it jamming when front axel came out

 

After all of this we finished 12th outright (90 something entries) and 8th in our class, covering 545 laps (46 off our team record from last year) which is around 700kms

[kangaroosa]

Top work none the less. :y: I saw a bit of news coverage on the night that the race finished. Some very nice setups were on show there. It was like playing spot the rich school.

At least you now have 12 months of reseach and development.

[TheNOBBLER[RL]]

At least you now have 12 months of reseach and development.

 

Thats a very good point, even though you have had no issues with the said parts before you now know how to stop some of the problem... I hope!

 

Congrats on the placing though Colin, its still a pretty good finish considering the numbers entered.

[coln72]

Consider it to be a shit result as we should have been in the top 5 outright. We were about 50 laps down on last years effort.

[TheNOBBLER[RL]]

Fair call...