Yesterday I took Electrocycle to Wakefield Park to set an official electric motorbike lap record.

Since no one has set one yet, it wasn’t too hard to make it a record!

Circuit Club very generously let me run the bike before and after their Australia Day track day, with official timing equipment.

I made the first attempt at about 9am on a cold but thankfully dry track, which was going really well until the motor controller cut out on the way down the hill into the hairpin and I had to stop and reset it before continuing (I think I bumped the kill switch which glitched the power and reset the controller - which then needs to be stationary before it’ll start up again!)

That first lap came in at 2:29.797 which is an embarrassingly slow time for Wakefield on anything more than a pushbike, but it was still a record

After plugging the bike in to recharge while the rest of the track day continued  (it only needed a couple of hours max) I waited for another opportunity to have a run.

At the end of the track day, around 4pm, that opportunity came. It was now much hotter, but the bike didn’t seem to mind the morning’s lap at a nearly constant full throttle

Here’s me ready to hit the track for a second run:

And here’s me doing about 50km/h across the back of the track after coming out of the hairpin corner:

This lap was much smoother, without having to do an unplanned standing start in the middle!

The time was 2:14.623 - much better than the morning run, and a time I wouldn’t be able to improve on without a fair bit of practice.

So, I’m claiming 2:14.623 to be the Australian electric motorcycle lap record, and challenge any other electric motorcyclists to break it I’ll be aiming to break it by a large margin once Electrocycle 2 is up and running

Here’s a brief flyby video:

This started out as a routine checkup of an Evinrude / Johnson 90hp outboard motor about to be put into use on a boat, until someone gave it a compression check and found one cylinder to be reading low - deciding it was in need of a rebuild.

I like to avoid rebuilds and other such expensive activities where possible, so thought it’d be worth seeing if the engine would run first.

After connecting up a fuel tank and battery it started up quite easily and seemed to run ok. After a brief run I gave it a compression test and found that three cylinders had a healthy 120psi, but one was down to about 70 - which is low, but not completely dead.

The head gasket was leaking a bit of water, as it had been removed previously and not re sealed, which may also have contributed to the low compression reading.

I pulled the cylinder head off to have a look inside and re seal the head gasket and found that the engine had obviously sucked something solid through it and munched the piston and head fairly extensively!

The piston obvously has had a hard time, but the cylinder walls actually looked ok. The most likely cause is that the engine has sucked a nut or washer through at some point.

The cylinder head was in a similar state to the piston, but it’s a lot easier to tidy up, so I was able to flatten out most of the sharp points.

I cleaned up the sharp edges on the piston as much as possible, then applied high temperature sealant to the head gasket and bolted it back together.

The engine fired up and ran quite smoothly with no more water leaks.

Another compression test showed compression on the bad cylinder to be up to about 90psi, so the engine will be used at least to test out the boat and decide whether it’s the right size, etc before spending big money on replacing or rebuilding it.

I got the motor sprocket back from the machinist, so it now fits the annoying tapered shaft on the motor.

With the sprocket on the motor, the motor in the bike, and the chain on the sprocket, the drive train is ready to go!

Obligatory power up test:

This amplifier had a case of scratchy volume controls, so when you adjust the volume you get crackle from the speakers, and at full volume they actually because unreliable and the signal would drop out.

Being a power amp (a big one, 1500watts!) the volume knobs are usually left at max, and the level is controlled by the separate preamp. Having to keep the knobs slightly below max, and occasionally having the amp go crackly wasn’t ideal, so I decided the best option was to bypass the volume pots.

Inside the amp:

The original wiring for the volume pots:

and the modified wiring:

I just moved the output wire from the wiper terminal of the pot (middle) to the input terminal (left in the photo) so the signal passes straight through to the amp. No more crackle!