Innovative Moto Developments IMD250. Now you can help!

[steveyb]

Now you are talking!
Sign me up.

Get to fiddle with the girls and not have to go on camera and perform on cue.

Unless you were talking about the other crowd.........

not my gig.

Check out my listings for stuff for sale. All going into the pot.
KTM rolling chassis, Dainese leathers, RS125 parts, pound of flesh, soul..... The list goes on.

[Bert]

The IMD250 on display on VMCC round 4 (today). Steve smiling ear to ear.
photo's here

Amazing work done in such a short time; lovely shaped frame.
Great work too all involved.

[Shaun]

Looking very promising guys

[crazy man]

holy cow that can't be legal can it

[steveyb]

SX450F with mountings for turbo charger.

oops.........

cat, bag.....

[Sketchy_Racer]

Hi Steve,

Bike is looking great! Just out of curiosity I was wondering how the frame design came about and if you guys ran FEA analysis on it? It would be interesting to build a 3D model of an existing RS125 chassis and compare them in a stress analysis.

Cheers,

-Sketchy

[codgyoleracer]

holy cow that can't be legal can it

Can i spy a dodgy weld there.......... :-)

[steveyb]

All the welds are dodgy, or should that be codgy, given the bloke who has done the welding! But that is part of the perfectly determined frame flex.....

Sketch, no Finite Element Analysis (FEA) at this stage. The chassis has been designed and built empirically based on 5 previous incarnations that have all been tested under fire and modified when necessary. One of the chassis is a multiple NZ championship winning chassis, one is a possible championship winning chassis and the design has had much direct compare and contrast with the Tigcraft chassis, which we know also works well.

If you are keen to do the FEA then I am keen to let you, hahahaha. Not sure if it is readily available here???

Cheers

Steve

[steveyb]

HUGE thanks to all those of you who have figuered that I am worthy, but more importantly that our project is worthy, of helping.
The Pledgeme project has reached the target of $5500 with 5 days left to run.
If you want to pledge, but have not yet done so, please don't hesitate in doing so, the more the merrier!!

Huge thanks again.

Now I'll have to get those caps, shirts and jackets organised.....

[Tony.OK]

Good stuff!!

I put down for a cap but thinking about it I'd prefer ya didn't have to get one so can buy a couple of nuts or bolts for the project instead Steve

[steveyb]

Cheers Tony!!
Every bit helps.

With regard to your thoughts on bikes to get for yourself, the SV650 makes a good platform for low(ish) cost racing, and not too slow y'know. Good riders are sub 76s at Manfeild. That is pretty quick in anyones language and it is all relative anyway. 10 bikes doing 76s altogether is better than one doing 70-72s on its own.
As pointed out though, they can be tempramental as they really are not designed for racing.
The other option is to convert a 600 into 450. The Yamaha and Suzukis seem to work really well and go plenty fast and are much easier to ride than an SV or a 1000. The Yamaha seems to be a bit more reliable than the Suzuki, but that might well be because the Suzukis have been used much more and therefore have seen the bugs come up and be sorted out, while the Yams have not yet seen all that.
You can get a really nice 450 bike with top level suspension sorted for a really good price.
That would be my advice.

[Brian d marge]

All the welds are dodgy, or should that be codgy, given the bloke who has done the welding! But that is part of the perfectly determined frame flex.....

Sketch, no Finite Element Analysis (FEA) at this stage. The chassis has been designed and built empirically based on 5 previous incarnations that have all been tested under fire and modified when necessary. One of the chassis is a multiple NZ championship winning chassis, one is a possible championship winning chassis and the design has had much direct compare and contrast with the Tigcraft chassis, which we know also works well.

If you are keen to do the FEA then I am keen to let you, hahahaha. Not sure if it is readily available here???

Cheers

Steve

you do remember what I do over here, !

Stephen

[steveyb]

Oh, yeah, umm, suitably chastised!!

Righto, email me what info you might need me to send you to perform said analyses my ex-pat friend.

S

[Brian d marge]

Oh, yeah, umm, suitably chastised!!

Righto, email me what info you might need me to send you to perform said analyses my ex-pat friend.

S

Just a working drawing of the frame , or a .STL file , loading data would be geat failing that I can estimate , using http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be5zmIh5Jm4

or you could do it yourself using http://www.dhondt.de/index.html which it what I use

Stephen

As per reaching your target , well done!! now wheres me tee shirt !

[steveyb]

As mentioned elsewhere, Sat 24 Aug was a perfect day to be racing motorcycles, so we decided to congregate at Manfeild to do just that.
After having sat out the less than appealing weather of the July round (well alright, I was flat on my back with what felt like influenza) we were all raring to go and to see how the new front forks would perform.
The KTM 250SX-F engine had had a bit of a seeing to also with a new piston, rod kit and good set up.

Robert Taylor and Dennis Shaw at Kiwi Suspension Solutions had worked their magic on the forks (OK,ok, in their case 'magic' really means 'lots of time and sweat') to transform the standard Honda RS125 Showa forks into Ohlins emulating NIX20 style forks. With some smart thinking and tricky machining we now have forks which are as close to Ohlins forks as one can hope to get, for a small fraction of the cost.
If you are unaware of what the NIX system is, fundamentally it creates forks where one fork does the compression speed control and the other fork does the rebound speed control. Also it allows rapid modification of the valving without having to remove the forks or the cartridge from the bike. Very smart and VERY effective. So now we have just one 'clicker' in the top of each fork to twiddle. Simple.
And not to mention that now we actually have effective control, not like the standard Showa forks which have bugger-all good control.

QP: Marc-Antoine set the fastest time of the MotoGP125 class (well, thanks to Rogan not setting a time), but hey, we will take it. So the IMD250 gets its first official Pole Position, yay!!

Race 1 saw Marc get the holeshot and lead the first lap. The bike was going really well and looked like it was on rails. Unfortunately on the first lap the bike sputtered to a halt. Back in the pit it fired right up and made no odd noises, so we were a bit puzzled.

Race 2: after checking a bunch of different things and changing the spark plug Marc again got the holeshot into T1 and powered off around the track. Again, the bike looked great, sounded great, was going really quick, almost keeping up with the RS125 and again looked like it was on rails. Marc says that the handling is superb, even if he is a learner rider. But after 2 laps the bike sputtered to a halt again.

Again we checked some things and sent Marc out at lunchtime where he did a few laps on his own in front of the spectators. Must say, the bike out there on its own looks and sounds pretty CHOICE!! But it spluttered again, but Marc bought it back to the pits this time.

So we had a good think about it and finally traced the issue to a mistake I had made where I had set up the fuel tank breather hose with a sharp bend in it. This bend was enough to kink the hose and not allow air to pass fast enough. So we re-routed that and sent him out for race 3.
All was going swimmingly until Marc made a good old fashioned rookie mistake and stalled the bike on the line. He was forced to get off the track for the start, but after the bikes had all gone we got the bike started and he set off in chase of Roman on the RSF250 about a half lap (and a full lap) ahead.

Marc had suggested that the front was diving down under brakes a bit faster than he would like so we had slowed down the compression damping just a touch (so easy to do with the KSS NIX 20 system).

Marc caught up to Roman and managed to pull about a half a lap more, so was only half a lap down at the end of the race, or something like that. I was really pleased to see how well the bike and Marc were going. He indicated that the small adjustment made to the forks made a good difference to the handling to make it even better.

The fine control that we now have and the dynamic response that the forks now have that provides great feedback to the rider is courtesy of the time that Robert and Dennis have put into design and manufacture of parts and the time of tuning those parts on their suspension dynomometer system. Without all that effort we would all be shooting in the dark and possibly ending up upside down. Nobody wants that, so do yourselves a favour and give them a call!

So, all in all, a great day at the track. Shame about my silly set-up mistake, but now I know it will make it easy to do it right.

We are off to Ruapuna for next Saturday with Jamie and Roman Rajek. It will be great to see young Roman going great guns on Ruapuna and to see how quickly Marc-Antoine can adapt to a new, and complex, race track.

I wish to wholeheartedly thank all those people who have helped us get to this point where it finally looks like the bike is fast, handles well and is reliable (next weekend should tell us that). Robert and Dennis at KSS, Liz at Interislander, Brent and Scotty, Victoria Motorcycle Club, Henshaw Signs, RaceSupplies, Cycleworks, RichBan, Greg P, Jean-Phillipe Jacquet, Marc-Antoine Jacquet, W White Wholesale, Bridgestone, the TSS team, NZ Cylinders, PledgeMe.co.nz and all the pledgers, GrowWellington and TechNZ and of course, Martin Dunn.

Cheers all.

SteveyB