The social component is pretty important in these kinds of academic projects. Some possibilities that have always intrigued me include:
- ergonomic controls with extra leverage for arthritics
- accessories to give the bike more utility in developing economies
- relocated controls for amputees
- eliminating haz-mat spills and combustion in accidents
- zero-emission retro-fit
- crash protection gear or devices to reduce injury
- increased visibility devices to prevent accidents

Good luck and please let us know what you settle on!

 

Bruce is no longer working. Unfortunately, I think his health has been very poor. I bet he'd be willing to pass his secrets along.

 

Just wanted to thank everyone again for all of their ideas. Any project I decide on has to be approved by our advising professor first, however. So I won't actually know what I will end up doing until September. I will definitely let you guys know what I end up doing, especially if it is motorcycle related.

-PGBC

 

My thought was more of an integral thing...bolstering/redesign of the existing unit an not an add-on cyclerack unit. I like the idea of more serious modular luggage rack unit though.

Center stand could be a good idea. I probably wouldn't want it because of reduced clearance, but many others would = market.

 

Ram air has always been an interesting concept, but it appears that most of the benefit for most "real world" applications has actually been cooler air. Most applications short of F1, Indy cars, speed record vehicles, etc., get little to no benefit from ram air...or at least the true "ram" part of the concept. However, most ram air systems do supply an abundance of cooler air than what is right around a hot engine or openings stuffed in the warmer confines of a motorcycle. The best test I've seen used a dyno with high speed fans ducted into the intakes of several sportbikes, but the fact that they used ducting from the fans directly into the bike's intake kind of kills "real world" application to me. In some cases the bikes even lost a bit of power under these conditions, and the ones that showed a benefit only achieved it at an ungodly speed...one of them at 145mph. A dyno mounted in a wind tunnel is probably the only real way to get absolute proof of anything. I wonder what that would cost?

 

TNC is right on. I'm a licensed professional engineer, my area of specialty is fluids and thermodynamics, and I'll tell you straight out that ram air as a sort of free supercharger is a farce. The only tangible benefit in certain applications is due to cold/clean/non-turbulent intake air. In reality, most attempts at ram air will either do absolutely nothing or actually result in lost useable power due to aerodynamic drag.

 

I am thinking that the rack idea is one of the best as long as it is very light weight and strong and could have add on for saddle bags

 

That's what I was thinking, the ram air system would create a cooler charge of air. I don't know how the heck he'd do it with the radiators right there, but it could be a cool idea.

 

What about a project for another bike, ohhhhh just randomly off the top of my head, how about some tip over bars for say...oh I don't know a 2005 Honda ST 1300? Not that I would ever need tip over bars, but uhhh a friend of mine might want them,.,,,,yeah that's the ticket.

 

There was an electric supercharger on a diesel Toyota truck I bought over here 12yrs ago. I can't verify that it added any power though.

A electric charger on a 250cc bike would need to put out about 46cfm just to keep up with the engine's normally aspirated demands.


Airbox temps on my XR200 were 6 degrees hotter than ambient when I checked about a year ago. More of a factor at idle/stopped in traffic perhaps? I could see temps rise as I rode along just after giving it some throttle.

The XR had a finned electronic device (the name escapes me this early in the morning) mounted immediately in front of the airbox which might have been contributing to higher temps.

Once those KLX radiators start radiating heat the variance could be much higher. Motoman over at mototune even had a page about the 10 hp loss when you remove the heat shielding on a certain sportbike.

I'll have to check the same on my KLX sometime. I have a electronic indoor/outdoor temp gauge. It'll check temps at the guage body or at its remote sensor at the end of wire about 3 feet long with a flick of a switch. I just mount the gauge on the bars