Getting This Good

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

OK.. with the "shocks" for the front wheel built into the frame... and the wheel so far out on the forks... How are you going to keep the forks from breaking in half?

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

yeah.. it looks good... well, that backwards shark fin would have to go... wtf is that anyway?

[torn asunder]

yeah.. it looks good... well, that backwards shark fin would have to go... wtf is that anyway?

you mean on top? "hood scoop" - cold air intake... would probably work/look better as a long thin line across the top of the tank, instead of up in the air like that... as for the shocks, i don't think it has any - i think he's doing something similar to the old-school "girder" front end, where the metal/frame flexes for suspension. i have a buddy who actually had a full-rigid bike, both front & rear. he used (what an idiot) straight steel pipe for forks, no shocks, just bolted to the front wheel...

[torn asunder]

i was thinking, you know the best place for a scoop in this design? a gap around the outside of the headlamp, but inside the housing - it's right up front, gets the majority of road wind, and is unobtrusive...

[Rayne]

For the record, I like your designs a lot Marc ... but you already knew that.

[Msterbeau]

Dear Mark and Mike,

You're telling me some of the choppers I've seen out there don't have worse ergonomics? It's high at the handle bars... deliberately so, but not out of the realm of what I've seen come out of custom shops. I think there's plenty of knee room... I guess I'd have to build it to demonstrate that.

As for the suspension. It's out there, admittedly. But based on tech that's either possible or been demonstrated on real bikes. It just looks different here because nobodies applied those technologies to a chopper before. The idea behind the front suspension comes from a race car I saw. They had to design to an exisiting suspension type... a twist beam, but by using clever engineering and very precise material dimensions , it acted like an independent suspension. The "forks" aren't forks. They're more like control arms on a car. The spring rate is determined by the diameter, the wall thickness and the material. All calculated through finite element analysis. There is a front shock hidden under the body. Read what I said above... Sheesh. The exhaust, notice how the body curves in and the exhaust points outward? There might be a little soot on the outside edge of the fender.. boo hoo.

Will it all work? Maybe. That's not the point. It's a futuristic vision of what a Harley chopper ten years from now might look like and some possible tech it might employ. It's meant to inspire. A designer should keep things within the realm of possibility but also challenge the status quo, both aesthetically and engineering-wise.

I think if you and TA were running Ford when he first started out... we'd still be in Model-T's.

Oh... and the scoop? I hate having the carb hanging out one side. Talk about impeding knee room. This bike is fuel injected and the intake comes straight down the center. Nothing to get in the way of air flow. Look around it if you don't like it.

And yes, I rode bikes for a while. Through the canyon roads around L.A. when I lived there.

[torn asunder]

you'll notice that not once did i say the suspension won't work... my issue is with the turning ability. do you have a detail sketch of how the front wheel actually turns? because from what little i can see, it doesn't look like it's going to work... either your pivot point is where the a-arms attach to the body, which means it will turn like a grader (forget about highway speeds) or the wheel pivots on the end of the "forks", which, based on this one drawing, means that the tire will turn on it's axis only, which seems, intuitively anyway, implausible. did you end up throwing the whole "rake-trail" thing out the window for this design? how are you calculating for stability at both high & low speeds? like i said before, i'm just really curious!! :-)

[Msterbeau]

you'll notice that not once did i say the suspension won't work... my issue is with the turning ability. do you have a detail sketch of how the front wheel actually turns? because from what little i can see, it doesn't look like it's going to work... either your pivot point is where the a-arms attach to the body, which means it will turn like a grader (forget about highway speeds) or the wheel pivots on the end of the "forks", which, based on this one drawing, means that the tire will turn on it's axis only, which seems, intuitively anyway, implausible. did you end up throwing the whole "rake-trail" thing out the window for this design? how are you calculating for stability at both high & low speeds? like i said before, i'm just really curious!! :-)

I'm not calculating shit... I just draw what's in my head and let the engineers figure it out.

[torn asunder]

I'm not calculating shit... I just draw what's in my head and let the engineers figure it out.

ah, i see now... ok, i'll shut up! it's def. a cool looking bike, i just was seeing some "engineer" issues!