Wheelchair Motorcycle

[mgwmgw]

Looks like fun.

http://www.mobilityconquest.com/

[Martin O Refurbisher]

Someone near me has one - I'll take a closer look.

Best,

Martin

[ex-Gooserider]

I've seen one, and was very mixed about it... It's HUGE - bigger than some small cars, both in length and width, but very little actual useful space - all those fancy shrouds are just plastic covers with hollow, non-accessible space underneath them - no saddlebags, tail trunks or other storage... (no touring in other words)

Seemed more like a three wheeled car to me than a motorcycle.... I'd prefer something much more minimalist, without all the fancy stuff that this has. I think the old (no longer produced) Tomco sidecars or other "chariot rig" setups are better - these were a sidecar that looked sort of like a Roman Chariot from the Ben Hur days, with a drop down ramp in the back to get in and out of the car, and a linkage setup that allowed the handlebars to be remotely installed in the front of the sidecar... Passengers rode on the bike seat, and all the usual tour-bike type accessories could be added or not as one chose....

Ironically enough, the sidecar that I was home building for several years pre-injury would probably not be that terribly difficult to adapt in some ways... However that will be a VERY long term project to look at after I get done with getting my van, rebuilding chairs, and so forth...

ex-Gooserider

[dannos85]

I Have the baby version of a conquest.

This is my Nippi 125cc, Its been fully rebuilt.

You can see my project on the disabled biker website,
http://forum.disabledbiker.co.uk/viewto ... sc&start=0

[Burgerman]

Looks fun.

Just needs my old turbo/nitrous GSX11E drag bike motor dropping in it. Its not that loud but it goes a bit.

[dannos85]

Looks fun.

Just needs my old turbo/nitrous GSX11E drag bike motor dropping in it. Its not that loud but it goes a bit.

Yeah, that would make it move. Or use a busa engine and call it diablo..

This Nippi would reach 75mph+ flat out i would think.
A friend of mine has a 183 kit on his and claims 90mph top end. He also owns a martin conquest and preffers his nippi for reliability and easy use.
The only down side of a nippi is they pull left when you open the throttle.

Im yet to ride this one of mine, still waiting on a few adaptions for the rear brakes and a chair restraint.

[Burgerman]

Either way it should be a laugh!

[ex-Gooserider]

I'd have some doubts about that claimed top speed - in my past was a rather ragged out Honda XL175 "dual purpose" bike. It had a 5-speed and hit the red-line on both the tach and speedo at 80mph indicated in 5th gear. Judging by the way I'd get passed on the highway, I'd say the speedo was about 5mph optimistic...

As far as pulling to one side, that is probably not a big deal - it is something that every sidecar rig in the world does, as an inherent "nature of the beast" thing, and I can say from loads of experience that it is something you get used to and just learn to dial in the appropriate compensation without even thinking about it after a few hundred miles (those first few hundred are SCARY though...)

I've been tempted by the notion of doing some sort of chair carrying hack rig after I get the 626 built and a few other projects taken care of, but I think I'd want MUCH more power than a 125cc engine. A "Boss Hoss" (V-8 powered bike) would probably be overkill, but I would not mind having something on the order of a 2,000cc engine...

ex-Gooserider

[Burgerman]

But its not about CCs

My drag bike with turbo/nitrous, and many modern turbo bikes = 350 to 500 rear wheel HP and more torque than my V8 transplanted car motor.

Average modern big japanese streetbike = 170bhp+ Stock and quiet.

Average heavy 2000cc car engine under 100 hp.
Average small block V8 less bhp than average big modern bike. And a huge heavy iron motor.

I am talking real bikes rather than harley here! They just have a volume knob...

[Martin O Refurbisher]

I ended up going down to a Benelli Adiva - still got wiped out by a car driver who wouldn't use their mirrors, or signal! (I had my first motorbike 49 years ago).

Best,

Martin

[Burgerman]

They didnt make "motorbikes" 49 years ago!

[mgwmgw]

What if one adapted something like this?
http://www.bosshoss.com/view_bike.asp?x=BHC9LS3

[Burgerman]

Appeals to custom car types, as a show piece! Looks cool. But for me its way too heavy. And a 1 litre turbo bike engine makes more power!

[ex-Gooserider]

Thing is, you don't need huge peak horsepower at the top end with a sidecar rig - what is needed is lots of grunt on the bottom end to get moving, and healthy mid-range to give decent highway passing acceleration. With a chariot rig, where you have the weight of the chair on top of the weight of the sidecar and rider, I'd expect it to need even more bottom end...

This is why the traditional "big-twin" engines (H-D, Guzzi, BMW, etc). tend to make good sidecar tractors - they make their power down low where it is needed... OTOH, you don't see many sidecars hanging off the big crotch rockets because the result doesn't work well because the peaky powerband makes them hard to get moving...

(BTW, Mary-Anne and I know a fellow who put nitrous on his Boss-Hoss.... )

ex-Gooserider

[Burgerman]

Have ridden and driven lots of V8 cars, trikes as well as Bike engined ones. Very little difference really. The bikes rev twice as hard, have half the engine torque. But the gear ratio from motor to wheel has to be lower to get the same roadspeed, so net result is same torque at the wheel.

CC for CC, V twins, singles etc dont actually have more torque than a 4. They feel that way because they have no power at higher revs!

EG my turbo/nitrous bike has (had) about 3x the measured torque and 8 times the power of a big harly motor. I had a dynamometer to measure this stuff. But it FEELS the other way around.

[ex-Gooserider]

No argument on the peak torque, but to me the big difference is WHERE the torque comes in on the power curve... The curves I've seen seem to say that the crotch rockets don't put out a lot of power until you have really cranked up the RPMs - no problem w/ a light weight bike to get it up to the speed where the HP kicks in, but w/ a heavy sidecar rig it means slipping the clutch like mad or otherwise abusing the bike to get it moving...

With the lower peak power "grunt" engines, the curves I have seen, seems to be that you have more power coming out just as you come off idle, plus big heavy flywheels that give plenty of oomph to get things moving along...

Interesting side note, I used to hang out at a shop that was also a Japanese bike salvage yard... The guy running it would pick up insurance "totals" and fix them or part them out depending on condition, etc... It was amazing the number of mid-size crotch rockets he'd get in, 90% w/ 500-1500 miles, front end hits... Check on owner to get titles, and it was uniformly teens w/ first bikes, financed w/ salary from first job - pattern was consistently riding around for first few hundred miles at low throttle while doing break-in, and learning (badly) how to ride - around the 1K mark they figure it is broken in, and they think they know what they are doing - at which point they open it up to past 3/4 throttle for the first time, and discover the POWER band, at which point the cops get to dig him out of some car driver's trunk....

The same shop would get in very few big bikes, as Jr. couldn't afford them, and couldn't get mom & dad to co-sign the loan (required since he's a minor) but he could convince them to sign on "it's ONLY a 600" w/o mentioning that the bike had higher performance than any Detroit muscle car... The big bikes got bought by older riders, usually with more experience, less testosterone overload, and a bit more brains in the throttle hand...

ex-Gooserider

[Burgerman]

No argument on the peak torque, but to me the big difference is WHERE the torque comes in on the power curve... The curves I've seen seem to say that the crotch rockets don't put out a lot of power until you have really cranked up the RPMs - no problem w/ a light weight bike to get it up to the speed where the HP kicks in, but w/ a heavy sidecar rig it means slipping the clutch like mad or otherwise abusing the bike to get it moving...

With the lower peak power "grunt" engines, the curves I have seen, seems to be that you have more power coming out just as you come off idle, plus big heavy flywheels that give plenty of oomph to get things moving along...

But this is the point. If you overlay the curves of say a harley, with a 80s 1100 suzuki the jap bike actually has more torque at all RPMs.

Occasionally the harley will have a fraction more at really low rpm. Where you dont drive. It doesent feel that way because the harley makes less still as revs go up making the bottom feel good. But the suzuki gets even better as revs increase making it feel weak at the bottom. Its mostly an illusion. And why stuff like jap bike engined cars are becoming common place.

Torque plotted against road speed rather than rpm is even better x about 2. Why? Because the faster spinning jap bike has shorter gearing. Increasing torque at the wheels at all engine rpms by double at comparable road speeds. My dyno software is old now and wont run on modern computers or I would print out or screen grab some eg for you.

Jab bike idles at 800 rpm at revs to 10k or more. Harley same idle and 5k at best. So needs 2x different gearing for same road speed. Which means that the jap bike rpm range should really start at 2k to be compared in rpm range too. Its the same thing as the harley starting at 2k rpm... It really should be idling at sub 400 revs. But it cant. So idle torque advantage isnt "real", mostly its an illusion.


In the same way people think deisels have better pulling power. But they actually just have limited RPM range and little power or flexibility. Hence about 8 gears to row it along.

[Burgerman]

Yes I know I cant spell deisel!

[ex-Gooserider]

Seems some ways like another one of those "religious arguments" - I just know that I see very few muscle bike based hack rigs in the US. Lots of big-twin based rigs, and also a lot of Japanese touring model based rigs, but muscle-bike rigs are very scarce... Part of this may also be due to the desire to get shaft or belt drives, as opposed to chains - as chains wear even faster on sidecar rigs than they do on solo bikes, and adjusting them is that much harder by the car being in the way.

There is also the elusive "soul" issue - big twins and singles seem to have something that has more "gut appeal" than the big multi-bangers... An interesting review article I saw many years ago had the side discussion that the author was always getting asked about what bikes he PERSONALLY owned. He was always puzzled by this, until one questioner pointed out that bike mag testers get to ride more bikes in a year than most of us get to ride in a lifetime, so it presumably means something extra when a tester decides to shell out his own paycheck to put a particular bike in the garage... Finding this an interesting idea, he surveyed the all the test riders he could reach, both at his magazine and the competition, with the question "What street bikes over 750cc do you personally own and ride regularly?" I forget the exact numbers, but Harley was the big winner, with Guzzi and BMW tied for second, followed by an assortment of Brit and Jap singles and twins - but only one or two fours out of about 50 bikes... This among test riders that mostly tested Japanese four's and the like - but they chose to BUY the twins....

ex-Gooserider

[Burgerman]

Well I used to work for Performance Bikes mag (basically dyno tresting and abusing everything) and they all had latest/fastest 4 cylinder stuff, as did I with an extra 70bhp Nitrous... + a big ducati race replica etc. Only one twin. Spent years at bruntingthorpe 2 mile runway speet testing with timing beams, radar, measuring, dyno testing, freezing and abusing bikes...

This is a trike... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeNLMN_R ... re=related