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Post by puttingalong2 on Feb 7, 2006 23:20:57 GMT -5
Chanito... Good points on some of the challenges, but I would like your opinion on the rpm sync issue. My thought is that the driven clutch will work this out if I add the electric power directly to the input shaft from the gearbox. Here are my thoughts..... The rear pulley is torque sensing, and eventhough the variator weights seem to run the show, the helix in the rear pulley will not allow the pulley faces to spread until the the torque output from the gas motor is high enough, or if the the torque from the electric motor is greater than the gas motor the rear pulley will open easier, and allow less centrifugal force from the variator weights to close the front pulley, and hopefuly keep things in sync. The load differential should not be very great because the speed controller for the electric motor has a programable throttle rate with delays that can mimick the acceleration of the motor that will be directly connected to the throttle cable. I hope that is a clear enough explanation to get your opinion on whether this may work? Heat should not be an issue since other than the acceleration the motor will be running below it's continous power output. I was not aware that the toothed belt would suck more power than a regular poly rib, so I will have to investigate the options there. Thanks again for your help!
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Post by timberwolfmadcat on Feb 8, 2006 21:15:27 GMT -5
wow, confusing a practical application of the electric motor would be to use it on the top end, where the ruckus looses most of its power, and would give a little extra umph to push the top speed up
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Post by puttingalong2 on Feb 9, 2006 1:41:12 GMT -5
Exactly what my goal is.... I do not have a dyno chart for the ruck to determine the torque, or hp at the lower rpms, but the low end torque should nearly double, and maybe tripple, but will be somewhat offset by about 120 extra pounds of motor (8lbs), and the batteries, etc. (110lbs) That sounds like lot of weight, but considering the fact that some of our riders would come just a little short of this, and my own weight combined, and they still manage to get decent acceleration. As for cruising at top end, I plan to gain an extra 1hp at the wheel and this will give an hours worth of battery life. My target gearing is now for 48mph top end because without doing extensive regearing of the transmission that is about it (9,500 rpm at the motor with the CDI unit) Eventhough I am gearing for 48mph as the top end.... I am still not sure we will be able to run that fast for a complete hour. As far as the range is concerned, I am shooting for 30 miles easily even if you hammer the battery pretty hard. If I do this... I plan to locate a fuel tank/cell under the seat, and conceal the batteries in the area of the stock gas tank so it looks almost the same, and will keep the center of gravity low. Ground clearance will suffer a bit, but still high enough that it would rarely cause a problem, and if it did... It would be offroad, or slowly dragging over a high curb. I also plan to make the batteries easily removed so if you want to drive further than the battery range, you can pop them out, and cruise as normal with only about an extra 15 lbs of motor, controller, and wires. I am not sure if I am actualy going to go through with this yet, but I am getting my idea pretty well refined, and the results should be fairly impressive.
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Post by timberwolfmadcat on Feb 9, 2006 21:57:08 GMT -5
my dyno with the H.O Cam is lurking around somwhere........
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Post by puttingalong2 on Feb 9, 2006 22:30:49 GMT -5
Timber...... I have your dyno chart saved on my hard drive..... Thank you! It was one of a very few real specs for our motor I had to work with. The only problem is that the dyno charts I have seen are based on secconds at WOT, and not RPM's. Unfortunately... This makes it very hard to make any real comparisons. I have a pretty good grasp on all of this, but I am not up to the task of calculating the intricasies (sp) of acceleration, and the formulas I have for top end are hard to figure out without drag coefficients, and frontal areas of the ruck with me at the helm.
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Post by chanito on Feb 12, 2006 12:43:44 GMT -5
Sorry, this is just my fabricator background showing, but anyway this is my input, i wished i draw some pics, but I've been busy, you will need to allow one of the power plants to over rev the other, the easiest way is with one way roller clutch from a car automatic transmission (you will have to do some research for the right size), , you can drive the clutch by using three of the cooling holes (of course you will need to enlarge the 3 others slightly), you can tap into the throttle position sensor and have the electric motor off at idle and use the voltage readings from the sensor to drive you electric motor or use the tach signal to sync both motors, or better yet use both. You can determine load by using high throttle opening with low rev as high load situation and have the electric motor kick in the super boost Good luck ;D ;D
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Post by chanito on Feb 12, 2006 16:22:32 GMT -5
What is the difference between 2-stroke engines and 4-stroke engines? 8-)All INTERNAL combustion engines need 4 events to happen in order to work properly, they need to get an explosive mixture, compress it to extract the more power, ignite it and use the expanding power, and then get rid of the inert gases, OK here is when it get interesting, most modern engines use reciprocal motion and they have to convert it to rotary motion to be use to power a vehicle, a revolution is the travel of the piston from the top to the bottom to the top again thus completing a whole rotation of the crankshaft, a stroke is the movement of the piston from the top to the bottom or from the bottom to the top, a two stroke engine completes the 4 steps in one full revolution (two strokes) however the 4 stroke needs two revolution (four strokes). To achieve this the 2 stroke engine relies on ports on the side of the engine some to let the intake mixture in, which are called transfer port, and some to let the refuse out called exhaust ports, the way this works is starting from the top dead center position the mixture explodes and expand pushing the piston down someway on its way down the piston will pass the exhaust ports allowing the gases out, farther down it will open the transfers ports, so called because it transfer the mixture from the crankcase into the cylinder, the crankcase is seal by a set of reed valves, which are just metallic one way valves, that allows flow into the crankcase but not out of it, so as the piston moves down it start to compress the mixture in the crank case, as soon as the transfer port is open this mixture rushes into the cylinder, so in the way down the engine has completed two parts of the required four (explosion and exhaust) and started the intake part, as the piston starts the second stroke it is still allowing the mixture in until it closes the port and opens the exhaust ports, here is were those muffler with restrictions are require as there should be back pressure to keep the fresh mixture inside the chamber until the ports are closed, then the piston starts to compress the mixture, and somewhere close to the top dead center the spark will ignite the mixture pushing the piston down, starting the process again. So in one revolution the two stroke has completed the four steps require for a successful operation of an internal combustion engine. The four stroke does it a little different, it uses valves that can be opened and closed to better control the intake and the exhaust of the gases, so then again starting from the top right after the explosion, the piston is being pushing down all the way by this gases expanding, as it get to the bottom the exhaust valve opens and the piston starts going up, pushing the spend gases out until it gets to the top, where the exhaust valve closes and the intake valve opens, then the piston starts traveling down sucking the fresh mixture in until it gets to the bottom where both valves close and the piston start to compress the mixture on its way up until it get to the top and a spark will ignite the mixture starting the process all over again, as you can see it takes two revolutions for the four cycle to complete the famous four steps to a successful operation. It might seems that because the 2-cycle engine produces twice the power strokes of the 4-cycle it is twice as powerful, but that is not so, In the 2-cycle engine at some point the transfer and the exhaust ports are open at the same time allowing some mixture of the fresh mixture and the burned gases plus not all the burned gases can left the engine, reducing the amount of fresh mixture that can go in, also since only part of the stroke is use to get the mixture in this reduces the amount of mixture that can get in. In the 4-cycle almost all the gases are forced out, and the mixture can go in during a full stroke, this creates a MORE POWERFUL piston stroke, so the power stroke in a 4-cycle is more powerful than a power stroke on a 2-cycle The advantage of a two stroke is the little amount of moving parts, limiting the friction loses on small displacement engines and the high rpm potential, but the 4 stroke can easily outlast them and have a more useful torque band with more reliability and less maintenance ;D
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Post by wonderdog on Feb 12, 2006 19:48:23 GMT -5
Gentlemen,
Many people, myself included, cruise this and other forums in search of information. We know that we lack mechanical skills and knowledge of how scooters work. We seek answers to questions that to you may seem no more than common sense. Personally I cannot tell the difference between humor (unless very obvious) and a question seeking information. Whether someone knows the answers to their questions or not is not important to me. What is important is the discussion that follows exchanging opinions, information and often finding agreement or agreement to disagree. All contain valuable information and I thank all who spew forth their findings. Thanks to all who discuss scooters here, your help has been invaluable. A FAQ section headed up by a couple of scooter wizards here would be wonderful. If I hadn't gotten started on this, I would probably have had my brand new Chanito windshield installed by now. Later guys.
Wonderdog P.S. Sometimes things come across wrong in print. This is not a rant, just thoughts and thanks.
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Post by Kami no Chiizu on Feb 12, 2006 20:18:26 GMT -5
Personally I cannot tell the difference between humor (unless very obvious) and a question seeking information. Word of advice, don't beleive anything I say.
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Post by chanito on Feb 13, 2006 19:29:23 GMT -5
Gentlemen, Many people, myself included, cruise this and other forums in search of information. Whether someone knows the answers to their questions or not is not important to me. What is important is the discussion that follows exchanging opinions, information and often finding agreement or agreement to disagree. All contain valuable information and I thank all who spew forth their findings. Thanks to all who discuss scooters here, your help has been invaluable. A FAQ section headed up by a couple of scooter wizards here would be wonderful. If I hadn't gotten started on this, I would probably have had my brand new Chanito windshield installed by now. Later guys. Wonderdog P.S. Sometimes things come across wrong in print. This is not a rant, just thoughts and thanks. I do not get it, but my reason to post this is and was always to help get rid of all the old-wife tales that sometime come in a forum such as this, like aftermarket muffler that would get your scooter flying or other such a myths, also i have the belief that the more you know about something the better, and the more question you ask the more likely you are to find the answers it was never my intension to make you loose your time
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Post by wonderdog on Feb 14, 2006 18:48:21 GMT -5
No, no, no. I'm not losing time here. The response was brought on by the discourse between Chanito and Smacky on page one. At the time I had no idea how many pages were in this thread or how much time had passed. My response posted on page 7 and had no tie to page 1. That was my failing. I was happy to read all of the questions Smacky posted for you to answer concerning jetting carbs, etc and had no idea that there was a hint of sarcasm in his post. That's because of my mechanical ignorance and I was happy because Chanito would post a wealth of info in response. It was not my intent to criticize. I consider my time spent here as productive in that I gain knowledge each and every time.
Wonderdog Plus I like my Chanito Windshield!
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Post by chanito on Feb 25, 2006 20:17:41 GMT -5
What are you talking about when you talk about sleeve on our motors? On any piston engine, you have a cylinder where the piston moves up and down, this cylinder wall is exposed to a lot of wear from the friction the piston rings riding on it, this rings are usually made of very hard material, so they can last and keep the tension against the wall, older engines were made of iron and this wall would last about 50k miles before they were worn enough to prevent the rings from sealing and started smoking, so you would have to go to bigger pistons and machine (bore) the cylinder to this bigger size and the process would start again, but advances in metallurgy means the wear could be kept to a minimum, but this engines were heavy, so manufacturers start using a lighter material, aluminum alloy, but this lighter material is also softer so wear become a big concern, engineers cames with a bunch of solutions to this problem, some more successful than others, the one used in our motors is to make a tube of hard wearing iron, which we call a sleeve, and cast the engine block around it, so the piston and its rings are riding on this hard surface, keeping wear under control. That sleeve is not design to take the abuse of combustion just the wear, in order to have this engine have an incredible high compression and use regular low octane gas, the Honda engine designers use a giant head for such a small engine with very clever water and oil passages to keep the temp under control, it also have pent-roof combustion chamber and a centrally located spark plug, all a dream can true for a high performance engine, all of this seems overkill, but our engines can rev all day long at 8k rpms without problems (race car engine territory) and outlast any other 50cc engine on the market bar none
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Post by Jasper on Feb 28, 2006 23:06:58 GMT -5
but why does the valve gaps ruin themselves at such as fast rate? Or maybe I don't know how other scooter rate of wearing down, but to me, those valves are screwing up so fast and to fix it is a pain for ppls like me, especially that im near 600km on my ruck soon
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Post by Dandy Dan on Feb 28, 2006 23:18:57 GMT -5
Chanito will likely explain better but I think it has to do with the engine breaking in and the intial wear and tear. The valve guides likely move slightly and a few other things probably do too so the valves often need a good adjustment after the break in period. If you do get the right this time you shouldn't need to adjust them again for another 15,000kms or so.
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Post by chanito on Mar 2, 2006 7:14:30 GMT -5
but why does the valve gaps ruin themselves at such as fast rate? Or maybe I don't know how other scooter rate of wearing down, but to me, those valves are screwing up so fast and to fix it is a pain for ppls like me, especially that im near 600km on my ruck soon 8-)The valve on our motors sit on a hard metal valve seat, this valve seats are installed on the soft aluminum head, When they make the head, they machine a relief and press these seat on the heads so the valve will ride a hard surface and not wear out the head, however as the engine is use the valve hammer this seat into the head, plus since our valve are so small the head of the valve "dish" a little, think of the valve as a capital "T" as it wears out it turns the top of the letter from a line into a slight curve allowing the bottom of the vertical line to go down, also since we do not use lead on our gas there is no lubrication on the valve face there is some minor wear on the valve face, all this combine makes the valve stem get closer to the rocker arm making the gap smaller or in the worst cases none, but after everything settles the only remaining varible will be wear, as the valve will dish as much as it will and the seat will not sink any more, so if after some miles you adjust the valves, they should not need adjusment for a while
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Post by chanito on Mar 19, 2006 21:51:39 GMT -5
I keep hearing about lift and duration on the cam. What are they talking about? 8-)Camshafts are a very important part of a four cycle engine as it is the device that open and closes the valves, It does so by means of some lobes (or cams) mounted on a shaft being spin by the crankshaft. The shape of these lobes determines how much and for how long the valve will open, as the engine rotates the the cam start to slowly open the valve until it reaches a peak and then start to close the valve, it can not allow the valve to close too quickly or it will bounce off its seat, and obviously the faster the engine run the more easier it is for the valve to bounce (our engine revs really high, so the closing ramp has to be gradual), the ramps on the stock cam are asymmetrical, that means they open way faster than they close. Lift is the difference in height between the heel (part of the lobe where there is no valve opening) and the peak of the lobe. On the ruckus/metro engine there is two lifts, cam lift (which i just explained) and valve lift which is the how much the valve actually lift from its seat, this is different from the cam lift because we have a rocker arm system on this engine and since, the valve side is larger than the cam side, this valve lift is larger than the cam lift, this large lift allows more air/fuel mixture to enter the combustion chamber (a good thing) but it also put more strain on the valve train (not a good thing) the Honda engineers have achieve a nice compromise and include some features found only on racing engines less than 20 years ago, like high flow valve heads and multi angle valve seats (this so if somebody says that the valves are a restriction for performance, i personally will whack them on the head with an adjustable wrench) sadly that high flow head design on the valve is one of the main reasons of our valve adjustment frequent requirement. Duration is the amount of time the valve is off its seat, and measure in degrees of CRANKSHAFT rotation, from the moment the valve starts to open until the moment it closes, at the beginning and at the end of the cam lobe there is a short period where the valve is not open because of the valve lash, as you see this valve lash is very important as it affect the duration on the valve, and is also a necessity because if there is none or very little the valves might not close when the engine reach its operating temperature due to metal expansion. As a rule of thumb the longer the duration the higher the engine speed where the engine will achieve the more power.Our factory cams are very conservative on the cam profile in order to make the engine smoother, and to keep the power band at a lower rpm range. Valve timing, is a more complicated subject, is actually the time in crankshaft degrees where the valves open and closes and it also relates to the piston position, common sense will tell us that the valves should open and close at the beginning and end of a piston stroke, but we have learn that an engine is more efficient is those event occur at different times. So let's start just after the spark plug fires and send the piston down on its power stroke, the exhaust valve will open 20 degrees before the end of the power stroke, will remain open through the exhaust stroke and close 10 degrees into the intake stroke, the intake valve however have already begin to open 10 degrees before the end of the exhaust stroke, will stay open throughout the whole intake stroke and will not close until the piston have begin the compression stroke, and have move 15 degrees into it. The opening of the exhaust valve before the end of the power stroke might seem like a waste of power, but the reality is that most of the power is spend by the middle of the piston down stroke, keeping the valve close will allow the hot gases to be in contact with a larger area of the cylinder making the engine run hotter, air cooled engines have the valve open way earlier than water cooled engines, loosing a bit of torque, we however have a water cooled engine extracting as much power out of the engine as we can , so anyway opening the exhaust valve before the end of the power stroke allows the engine to run cooler and use less gas. Having both valves open at the same time, at the end of the exhaust stroke and beginning of the intake stroke is called overlap, it might seem like a bad idea as it will allow the exhaust gas to go back into the combustion chamber, but the air intake have en ought momentum to help in pushing the gases out, with the added benefit of cooling the poor exhaust valve as the intake mixture is way cooler than the exhaust gases. Keeping the intake valve open after the piston start the compression stroke, takes advantage of the inertia that keeps the intake mixture rushing in filling the combustion chamber even more than if the valve would have close at the beginning of the stroke, therefore having a cylinder with more air/fuel mixture, generating more power and operating more efficient. There you go camshaft 101
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Post by chanito on Mar 27, 2006 21:39:22 GMT -5
???You keep whining that the Dio wheel are not the right size. Are the tires on the Dio that different from the ones on the ruckus? This is a picture of the front tire on the ruckus (the smaller one) next to the Metropolitan one (same as the Dio) I hope the picture is worth the thousand words
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Post by Dandy Dan on Mar 28, 2006 1:27:09 GMT -5
Nice Picture Chanito ;D The Dio and Metro rims are still 10" in diameter like the Ruckus rims but the difference is that the Dio and Metro use 90/90-10 tires whereas the Ruckus uses 120/90-10 and 130/90-10 tires. The '-10' part refers to the rims diameter which you can see is the same but the first number is the width of the tire (in millimeters) and the second number is the percent of the width that the tire is tall. The Dio tires are 90mm wide and 81mm tall where as the Ruckus tires are 120mm wide and thus 108mm tall. Because the Ruckus tires are so much wider they need to go on Wider rims. Our front tire (120/90) is spec'd to go on a 2.5" - 3" rim and the rear 130/90 is spec'd to go on a 3-3.5" rim. Since the Dio uses smaller tires the rims are only 2.15 inches wide which is really too narrow for our big rubber. Nothing catastrophic will happen but it does deform your tires and likely degrades the handling etc.
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Post by chanito on Mar 30, 2006 22:09:58 GMT -5
So the stock brakes are not good on the ruckus? No the stock brakes on the ruckus are great, they do offer a great friction area (the amount of material doing the braking). They are small in diameter but are wide so the contact area is big, the design is good and allow a lot of air to flow around the shoes and cooled them off. The problem we have with the brakes is that they are cable operated, and do require a lost of force in a panic stop, way more than if they were hydraulic, on any normal stop they are perfect and can easily be modulated to stop as good as we want, but yes you better be fit and strong if you need to stop on a dime, so give yourself some space to the guy in front, i have to stop really hard a couple of times, i consider myself strong as i used to be a gymnast as a teenager, so closing my hand with force i can do, and boy did i need to use all my strength, but yes the ruckii can stop and both times i did an endo (a reverse wheelie, where the bike stands on its front wheel). The only real problem i see, is with the diving, or leaning of the bike toward the front on hard stops, this is due to the design of the front suspension, which Honda went for simplicity, so the axle is right bellow the shocks, and that causes the bike to lean toward the front on hard braking, some scooters install the axle behind the shock centerline to provide some anti-diving on the suspension but that put a lot more stress on the shocks due to side loading instead of the normal up and down, expensive scooters use leading link front suspension and that is a great way to control diving but the front suspension is more complicated and prone to failure and wear, so in conclusion, the stock brakes are adequate for our ruckii even those with mods, having a hydraulic system will give us less effort braking, but the diving problem will be way more noticeable
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Post by Robert W on Apr 1, 2006 13:44:26 GMT -5
I live up a steep road and the ruckus just can't cut it. what can I do to get enough power to literally make the grade? Also, are there nitrous oxide kits for the 50cc ruckus? Any other thoughts for a reasonably priced hop-up?
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