SS1600K attempt on a 90cc Postie
- Thread starter Skidoo
- Start date
Got home about 2hrs ago had a kip and now have to clean 15w50 syn out of the horse float, then be Warts personal slave for the rest of the day... Any guesses as to how it ended? I will do a RR very soon.
on a positive note Taddy and I bettered our previous best by some 300km.
Thanks for all you interest in my hair brain adventure.
on a positive note Taddy and I bettered our previous best by some 300km.
Thanks for all you interest in my hair brain adventure.
Having always been a fan of small bikes I am following this with interest and a little fantasizing. Postie bikes here (USA) are often considered "collector items" and get a premium price. Therefore I would probably have to find something different for a small bike SS1000. But my interest is up so much to Linda's dismay I may drag something else home. I do have a question on the dyno charts. Horsepower is a calculated value from torque and rpm, the 2 curves should cross at 5252 rpm but the charts shown do not consistently cross at a specific point let alone 5252 rpm ?? And a fuel/air ratio meter on the bike? Very ingenious. My hat is off to you.
Here is a bit of a story, sorry for the PDF's but Photo bucket is uselessly slow, need to learn to turn off the adds???
EDIT: fixed image problems so PDFs gone
Here is Taddy ready to go, its 2 am on the 7th Jan 2017 and she chomping at the bit.
we headed out through Northam, not a route I would normally take on the Toadster as there is about 12Km of sub 110km/hr speed zones and one set of traffic lamps, really destroys the OA in the first 50km, but then again it’s only the sub 70 km/hr that upset Taddy’s OA. From Northam, on to York through to Cranbrook where we turn left on to Albany hwy and on to the first fuel stop at Albany.
The wind forecast was for 0-10Km/h head wind, but the wind was much stronger and consequently where on the last attempt I had an OA of 82km/hr This time it was only 72KM/hr, not a good start. Taddy used 19lt of fuel for the 467km definitely a good wind.
The next leg had a tail wind forecast but there were big hills as well.
It can be seen from the graph the amount of hills, strangely enough this 292km leg only gave me an extra .3km/hr OA, obviously, the hills more than countered the tail wind. On the other hand, the fuel economy increased from 25km/lt to 32km/lt. arriving in Ravensthorpe Brett (rocketman) met me at the bp to take some pics and cheer me on.
After short break we headed off east with said tail wind and big hills for Coolgardie.
Not far out of Ravensthorpe I decided to pull in to parking bay and lift the needle jet needle one graduation.
As I had tuned the carbie to give 12.5 – 13.2 : 1A/F between 80-85 Km/h the the trade off was a slightly lean burn at 90km/h and above. Since the big hills were forcing me to run above ninety on the down hill runs and flats thus making up for the up hill runs I thought it best to rich her up a bit.
Normally at WOT the needle valve does… not much as the main jet is fully exposed to the venturi.
Now you know me and with a 27mm carbie hanging off the little motor I decided to go to an extra large main jet (not sure of the size as I machine it till I got the numbers I needed) and a very long needle that didn’t come out of the needle jet at WOT. I played with the needle taper at the pointy end such that I could vary the A/F at WOT with small movements of the throttle. Once the slide was completely out of the venturi I could get a few more mm’s of travel… no more air going in but as the needle raised, more fuel J.
Back on the road again… the trucks were coming thick and fast, guess being Saturday they were keen to get back to Esperance and the pub. I had three occasions where I was over taken whilst doing 80-90km/h with double white lines on my rigth. Normally this doesn’t worry me but these guys were keen as mustard and all only left me a metre or so to the edge of the road. two had traffic oncoming so just pushed me over the white line and made me heat my brake shoes up. The third of these was so near that my full attention was on not dropping off that 3 inch cliff and onto the dirt and I neglected to notice that as the dog trailer passed me and I became caught in his void, little Taddy took the opertunaty to speed off in pursuit and when I look at the speedo we were somewhere on the wrong side of 100km/h.
We regained our composure and settled back at 80km/h the cars that had witnessed the battle rounded us up and passed some shaking their heads… at the trucks stupidity?... at my stupidity?
Ironically the next big hill we caught that truck and sat behind at 45km/h, could have pulled into the overtaking lane and held 65km/h in 3rd but knew he would catch us on the down run.
Turning north on the Dailyup / Gibson rd 20km out of Esperance the wind was now south easterly and we were zooming…until we hit a tree root speed hump that snapped my neck… yes there was a “rough surface “ sign but by the time we had seen it in the shadows it was to late as the root consumed two thirds or the road. My eyes settled in there sockets and I realised my head was still attached and not dangling from the ligaments so we continued to Gibson Soak.
Now unknown to me the damage to Taddy was already done, the first I knew was a whiff of engine oil as I slowed into Gibson. I pulled up to check and found the engine breather had lubricated the rear wheel and exhaust. Checking the dipstick I found it necessary to add about 200ml… not good.
I moved the breather tube so I could keep an eye on it and we continued on.
I stopped to check the oil out of grass patch and didn’t find much in there, my one litre bottle of oil was just about gone. being a Saturday there would be no servos till Norseman and I did not have enough oil for that distance. Lucky for us there was an old L300 express in a parking bay and a very kind UK man and his lady friend gave us ½ a litre from his 5lt bottle as his engine too was using 1lt/100km. I thanked him for that which he could spare and off we went. It soon became apparent that I still had not enough oil to get to Norseman, Taddy came up with a plan to save the day and clean the road side as well.
A catch can.
Every 100km I would tip 300 – 400ml back into the engine and away we would go.
With all the stopping to this point and the fact that we still had 600km to go, = six catch can stops, one fuel stop and Taddy was now struggling with the tail wind assisted hills. It wasn’t looking good.
The night was creeping in and with the new oil retention system in place we bypassed Norseman BP and headed straight though to Coolgardie for the last fuel stop.
This was the longest leg 524km, 23lt of fuel (22.7 km/lt L) and AO at 68.9km/h. we had a frank discussion and Taddy pointed out that we had 350km to go and 5hrs18mins to do it in… an AO of 68km/h would do it…just, and the county was flatter the air was getting cooler and dryer, I agreed we should give it a shot.
Around 40km west of Coolgardie there is a hill… not one that you would notice on a rocket3, FRJ or ST for that matter probably cause it has a big comms tower just of the road and you would be admiring the engineering marvel. Well we noticed it… for about 5mins… at 40km/h, Taddy was doing it hard. In the darkness I didn’t notice the can filling so much more quickly and near the top we had a sudden lose of power and puff smoke in the head lamp as the tail wind over took us. Taddy had once again given her all.
The can was full and the rest of her oil was on the chain, wheel my legs and pretty much any thing else in her slip steam.
I tipped the can and what oil I had left back in got her running and headed off using the phone torch I found 45km/h was the fastest I could go before oil came out. We road on till about 43km out of Southern Cross where at around 11pm I called the rescue team and took a little break.
We got going again, through Southern cross but the road speed was really starting to drop off and at 1.55am I called it and we were picked up.
With the gearing I was running for the final drive, 2.8:1, when we got dragged be the truck to 100km/hr the little Tike would have been doing over 10,000 rpm. This caused the top compression ring to break. If I get another ring failure I will have to look for 50mm steel ring as the cast iron ones don’t handle this sort of punishment. It must be kept in mind that at 80km/hr for 21hrs taddies little piston will go up and back down about 11,000,000 times, that’s a lot of busyness for an engine designed to hop from post box to post box.
Once again we didn’t get the 1600km but Taddy got a PB of 1394km (ODO).
I think we are wearing it down
EDIT: fixed image problems so PDFs gone
Here is Taddy ready to go, its 2 am on the 7th Jan 2017 and she chomping at the bit.
we headed out through Northam, not a route I would normally take on the Toadster as there is about 12Km of sub 110km/hr speed zones and one set of traffic lamps, really destroys the OA in the first 50km, but then again it’s only the sub 70 km/hr that upset Taddy’s OA. From Northam, on to York through to Cranbrook where we turn left on to Albany hwy and on to the first fuel stop at Albany.
The wind forecast was for 0-10Km/h head wind, but the wind was much stronger and consequently where on the last attempt I had an OA of 82km/hr This time it was only 72KM/hr, not a good start. Taddy used 19lt of fuel for the 467km definitely a good wind.
The next leg had a tail wind forecast but there were big hills as well.
It can be seen from the graph the amount of hills, strangely enough this 292km leg only gave me an extra .3km/hr OA, obviously, the hills more than countered the tail wind. On the other hand, the fuel economy increased from 25km/lt to 32km/lt. arriving in Ravensthorpe Brett (rocketman) met me at the bp to take some pics and cheer me on.
After short break we headed off east with said tail wind and big hills for Coolgardie.
Not far out of Ravensthorpe I decided to pull in to parking bay and lift the needle jet needle one graduation.
As I had tuned the carbie to give 12.5 – 13.2 : 1A/F between 80-85 Km/h the the trade off was a slightly lean burn at 90km/h and above. Since the big hills were forcing me to run above ninety on the down hill runs and flats thus making up for the up hill runs I thought it best to rich her up a bit.
Normally at WOT the needle valve does… not much as the main jet is fully exposed to the venturi.
Now you know me and with a 27mm carbie hanging off the little motor I decided to go to an extra large main jet (not sure of the size as I machine it till I got the numbers I needed) and a very long needle that didn’t come out of the needle jet at WOT. I played with the needle taper at the pointy end such that I could vary the A/F at WOT with small movements of the throttle. Once the slide was completely out of the venturi I could get a few more mm’s of travel… no more air going in but as the needle raised, more fuel J.
Back on the road again… the trucks were coming thick and fast, guess being Saturday they were keen to get back to Esperance and the pub. I had three occasions where I was over taken whilst doing 80-90km/h with double white lines on my rigth. Normally this doesn’t worry me but these guys were keen as mustard and all only left me a metre or so to the edge of the road. two had traffic oncoming so just pushed me over the white line and made me heat my brake shoes up. The third of these was so near that my full attention was on not dropping off that 3 inch cliff and onto the dirt and I neglected to notice that as the dog trailer passed me and I became caught in his void, little Taddy took the opertunaty to speed off in pursuit and when I look at the speedo we were somewhere on the wrong side of 100km/h.
We regained our composure and settled back at 80km/h the cars that had witnessed the battle rounded us up and passed some shaking their heads… at the trucks stupidity?... at my stupidity?
Ironically the next big hill we caught that truck and sat behind at 45km/h, could have pulled into the overtaking lane and held 65km/h in 3rd but knew he would catch us on the down run.
Turning north on the Dailyup / Gibson rd 20km out of Esperance the wind was now south easterly and we were zooming…until we hit a tree root speed hump that snapped my neck… yes there was a “rough surface “ sign but by the time we had seen it in the shadows it was to late as the root consumed two thirds or the road. My eyes settled in there sockets and I realised my head was still attached and not dangling from the ligaments so we continued to Gibson Soak.
Now unknown to me the damage to Taddy was already done, the first I knew was a whiff of engine oil as I slowed into Gibson. I pulled up to check and found the engine breather had lubricated the rear wheel and exhaust. Checking the dipstick I found it necessary to add about 200ml… not good.
I moved the breather tube so I could keep an eye on it and we continued on.
I stopped to check the oil out of grass patch and didn’t find much in there, my one litre bottle of oil was just about gone. being a Saturday there would be no servos till Norseman and I did not have enough oil for that distance. Lucky for us there was an old L300 express in a parking bay and a very kind UK man and his lady friend gave us ½ a litre from his 5lt bottle as his engine too was using 1lt/100km. I thanked him for that which he could spare and off we went. It soon became apparent that I still had not enough oil to get to Norseman, Taddy came up with a plan to save the day and clean the road side as well.
A catch can.
Every 100km I would tip 300 – 400ml back into the engine and away we would go.
With all the stopping to this point and the fact that we still had 600km to go, = six catch can stops, one fuel stop and Taddy was now struggling with the tail wind assisted hills. It wasn’t looking good.
The night was creeping in and with the new oil retention system in place we bypassed Norseman BP and headed straight though to Coolgardie for the last fuel stop.
This was the longest leg 524km, 23lt of fuel (22.7 km/lt L) and AO at 68.9km/h. we had a frank discussion and Taddy pointed out that we had 350km to go and 5hrs18mins to do it in… an AO of 68km/h would do it…just, and the county was flatter the air was getting cooler and dryer, I agreed we should give it a shot.
Around 40km west of Coolgardie there is a hill… not one that you would notice on a rocket3, FRJ or ST for that matter probably cause it has a big comms tower just of the road and you would be admiring the engineering marvel. Well we noticed it… for about 5mins… at 40km/h, Taddy was doing it hard. In the darkness I didn’t notice the can filling so much more quickly and near the top we had a sudden lose of power and puff smoke in the head lamp as the tail wind over took us. Taddy had once again given her all.
The can was full and the rest of her oil was on the chain, wheel my legs and pretty much any thing else in her slip steam.
I tipped the can and what oil I had left back in got her running and headed off using the phone torch I found 45km/h was the fastest I could go before oil came out. We road on till about 43km out of Southern Cross where at around 11pm I called the rescue team and took a little break.
We got going again, through Southern cross but the road speed was really starting to drop off and at 1.55am I called it and we were picked up.
With the gearing I was running for the final drive, 2.8:1, when we got dragged be the truck to 100km/hr the little Tike would have been doing over 10,000 rpm. This caused the top compression ring to break. If I get another ring failure I will have to look for 50mm steel ring as the cast iron ones don’t handle this sort of punishment. It must be kept in mind that at 80km/hr for 21hrs taddies little piston will go up and back down about 11,000,000 times, that’s a lot of busyness for an engine designed to hop from post box to post box.
Once again we didn’t get the 1600km but Taddy got a PB of 1394km (ODO).
I think we are wearing it down
Last edited:
Ok so I can't find those particular Graphs must still be in the dyno computer. But here is a run file on two different graphs, one with forced scaling and the other with auto scaling.
The forced scaling will have the 5252rpm crossing as the two Y axis's are equally scaled, where auto scaling has the Y axis's scaled independently so the torque and power traces fill the page better its cosmetic thing that I don't bother much with, very rare that I would be looking at both torque and power at the same time as it depends on the application as to which one I would tune to.
The forced scaling will have the 5252rpm crossing as the two Y axis's are equally scaled, where auto scaling has the Y axis's scaled independently so the torque and power traces fill the page better its cosmetic thing that I don't bother much with, very rare that I would be looking at both torque and power at the same time as it depends on the application as to which one I would tune to.
David, I had to read your report twice to digest all the information.
I appreciate all the detail you provided and loved the 'catch can'. You are certainly an expert on pushing the Taddy well beyond design specs of running mail box to mail box.
Looking forward to catching up soon and buying you a beer mate
I appreciate all the detail you provided and loved the 'catch can'. You are certainly an expert on pushing the Taddy well beyond design specs of running mail box to mail box.
Looking forward to catching up soon and buying you a beer mate