Part of what I had wanted to try on the 2010 bike was a different set of wheels and tires, I had seen all the problems people were having with their tires in the mid 230 MPH range and decided that the tires being used by many people were running on the edge of their capabilities. The really fast cars were all running Goodyear Land Speed tires, which are rated to 300 MPH. That seemed like a good starting place to eliminate tire failure. I had contacted Kosman Specialties to see if a set of rims could be made to fit the automotive tires on my intended missile of choice and Sandy made up a set of rims and hubs. There were a few fitment issues that needed to be straightened out but eventually the tires were on the rims and a frame and swing arm were set up to start the build. I had a lot of ideas in my head and needed a way to get them into the real world. Enter Joe Martens and Antigonne Sharris. Joe is a designer that I started working with and built a good working relationship with. He is very talented and really helped get some of the ideas bouncing around my head out and into digital format for the CNC people to have a field day with, as you look at the pictures you will see a ton of his work. CAD had changed a lot since I worked with it years ago. I was so impressed with the solid works program that I started sitting in on a class on it from Antigonne over at Triton college (in River Grove IL. Check her program out and get your inner engineer on!!!) And started pushing a few ideas out on my own. She is quite patient to say the least and a great teacher for putting up with some of my goofy ass designs that were a little challenging to get drawn to say the least. Between Joe and Antigonne, we managed to get a hell of a lot of items drawn and modeled and the bike would not be on wheels without them. Thanks guys!
From the design stage we moved on to the manufacturing stage, some of the designs were prototyped on a 3D printer and some were milled out in modeling board tweaked a bit and then chips started flying as real parts started being made. It is totally mind blowing to me to see how fast something can go from a digital model to hard part these days. I used several CNC houses through the course of this build; some were old friends and some were new but all were top notch. The first of the machinist to be plagued by my silly ideas was someone I had been bugging for years, Sarah Wilson over at CNC Chicago, she is a really top-notch gal and produces some really nice work. I can see why she has been named Mrs. CNC Franklin Park for 3 years running. You can see some of her excellent work on the triple trees on the bike, but she is also responsible for countless brackets, spacers and doodads that make this sucker roll. Thanks Sarah, you went above and beyond, your time and effort is greatly appreciated. Check out CNC Chicago (www.cncchicago.net) for you machining needs they support racers but make their living doing good old-fashioned quality work, contact them and let them show you how good their work is. And yes Sarah the triple trees fit perfect, they slid together like butter.
The next machinist to suffer my racing insanity was Darrell and the gang over at Muck Engineering (Franklin Park, IL), a new friend and hopefully they will stay that way as long as I don't try and bury them with more motorcycle stuff for a while. They specialize in lathe work and made some outstanding parts for me. Their work can be seen in the drive hubs as well as scattered around the bike. Darrell is the sort of guy that will share his expertise as you work through a project and gave me some guidance on press fit issues on bearings and other items. If you are looking for some quality work, give them a shout you won't be disappointed. Thanks Darrell and crew!
Paradigm Development (Elk Grove, IL.) suffered at my hands as well, this was a first go around with them for me but it turned out that Ken over there is someone I went to high school with and is a fellow gear head. His handy work can be seen on the front hubs as well as stator jig prototypes and various other tidbits. Again their work was nice, precise, and quick. Their bread and butter is short run prototype work and they can knock out some nice stuff quick. Check them out they might be able to help with your next project, they have a broad range of capabilities including short run molding besides their machine work capabilities. Thanks Ken!
ERA Industries (Franklin Park, IL) has a fellow named Elvis running the show, an avid enthusiast of both cars and bikes he fits in the bill as a gear head and runs a big operation. These guys go 24/7 and have a ton of machines and capabilities as well as some darned good people. The trigger ring that runs the electromotive TEC GT powering the bike was a nasty bit of machine work and Elvis's crew gobbled it up like it was a cakewalk. Fit and finish was outstanding and Elvis has a broad knowledge base and some outstanding ideas. If you are looking for a shop capable of big production runs and high quality on a diverse range of operations take a peek at them. Take a look at the trigger ring and you will see just the sort of work they can do. Thanks to Elvis and his team.
Last but not least is a fellow by the name of Wally over at Arccraft (River Grove, IL), while his main line is welding he is a darned good machinist. He helped bail my ass out many times through out the course of the project. A good old-fashioned German machinist, he has probably forgotten more then I will ever know about welding and machining. Small jobs and specialty stuff are his forte' but there are no CNC machines here, it's all hand done, and it's nice. A lifetime racer and gear head he's happy to do almost any work you want and especially racing related work. Thanks for all the help Wally!
As you can see if you look at the pictures there are a lot of parts that were fabricated in house, it's amazing how the little things soak up time. Brackets and mounts to secure things just abound and fitting things up and making sure you have all the parts to make things work consumes hour on hour. I bet for every hour there is in building the bike there is 1-2 hours in chasing parts and researching specs on stuff. As race date draws nearer the days get longer and your nights later. It is for this reason that I chose to bring in other people on certain items the CNC machine work above is outside my skill set and I am short a couple million dollars in CNC equipment. So those jobs I was forced to sublet out. Some basic mill and lathe work was done in house, but my time was best spent designing that stuff and fabricating the custom parts you see all over the bike. I decided to free up some time by letting Brian and his crew over at Suburban Welding and Steel (Franklin Park, IL) take care of some of the welding duties for me. They also supplied much of the raw materials I used such as the sheet aluminum, aluminum and steel bar stock, and other metals and materials. Alex was given the assignment of welding up much of the goofy stuff I created, and it was nice to be able to confer with him and tap into the knowledge base he has. When someone takes pride in their work like Alex, and welds all day long they tend to get pretty damn good at it so it was nice to be able to pick up tips and tricks from him to improve my own personal skill set. Alex did an awesome job welding up my various components, (thank you sir!!!!) and all the guys down at Suburban helped out a ton every time I stuck my nose in the door. Brian and his crew are top notch so I owe them a big thanks, thanks Brian and crew!!!! I tend to recommend them a lot because they always make me look good. If you are looking for welding or manufacturing services or materials supplies give them a try they are good people to do business with.
Part of the heart of this project is the engine control unit. Everybody has his or her personal favorites. We at Area One have had a long and good relationship with the folks at Electromotive. I think they build a really good product and like the high resolution that their trigger pattern provides. Experience has shown me that proper control of engine functions = more power, so I chose their TEC GT to run the engine functions of the bike. Not only is the TEC unit good but their support on it is very good as well. And when dealing with electronic injection, believe me, good tech support is huge. The stock Suzuki trigger wheel was not going to do what I wanted so Joe and I designed the modified trigger wheel assembly you see in the pictures and the jig to press the ring onto the stator assembly. After that we designed the cover to fit over it and crank sensor mount to fit the Electromotive mag sensor to read it, and I'll be damned it worked. It's a pretty sweet setup and it almost looks stock, most people don't even notice it. But it sure made a difference on the engine control available when the boost was stuck to it. Control over the ignition and injection events is super important when you start really pouring the coals to an engine. Uwe (pronounced ooh-vah) does a great job with the tech support and the goofy questions that I throw at him and Troy helps out with the silly questions as well. Between the two of them and Fred they have the bases covered. Check their ECU's out I think they are pretty damn good. Thanks for all the support guys!!!! Check out the pics of the trigger wheel and the stator cover I'm pretty proud of those.
As I started stacking parts on the bike I reached the part where I got to build the exhaust/turbo system. Since the turbo chews up such a large amount of real estate, I decided to rear mount it. The headers are all built from 321 stainless and all the primaries are 13 inches in length those are dumped into 17 inch secondaries then into a single up pipe to the turbo making the system a big Tri-Y design. The tubing and merge collectors were all from Burns Stainless, their workmanship is beautiful and they have a large selection of materials to help you get the job done. The rest of it is up to you on what kind of plumber's nightmare you want to make. Look at the pics and you will see what kind I made. The Turbo is a big ball bearing Precision unit (Precision Turbo & Engine out of Hebron, IN) that makes plenty of boost, and does so quite quickly. A Turbosmart waste gate controls Turbo function, the blow off valve and boost controller are also Turbosmart products. I like their stuff I think it is well built and like it when I can see the quality built into a product, their machine work and choice of materials shows it, they are more than just pretty looking parts, they work and work well and I've never had one let me down.
Plumbing this little sucker was going to have to be braided lines and AN fittings the whole way. I met Tim from Phenix at a trade show when one of their nifty new fittings caught my eye. While not every fitting on the bike is theirs I'd say it is ten to one easily in their favor. I was a little leary trying out a new companies product in such a critical area. Hell a fuel or oil leak can result in a fire and on a bike at high speeds there is no place to go except for a very warm ride. But I can say that I was very happy with their fittings and hose. It all worked well and their innovative new designs are really nice. They offer hard anodizing on their fittings as well so the corrosive effects of the salt are virtually non existant on the AN fittings on the bike (very cool just in itself). Of course I can't leave out MADE IN THE USA!!!! That keeps us all working. Tim did a great job of getting me what I needed when I needed it, I'm pretty sure he made at least a few extra trips to get some fittings shipped up to me over the course of the last few months. Another racer helping fellow racers out, give Tim and Phenix a try I think you will be surprised how good their stuff is. Thanks Tim!
As I said above, hard anodizing is the way to go for protecting aluminum parts from the salt (it will eat them quick) so a lot of the goofy stuff I had machined ended up getting anodized by Doug over at Accent Metal Finishing (Schiller Park, IL). They do a great job, turned the parts quickly so I could keep right on working away on the bike, and it really made the parts stand out. When the bike gets torn down there is going to be a lot more stuff heading over there to get hard coated, it just makes sense to protect the investment. The parts were not cheap by a long shot to make, why let mother nature and the salt eat the little goodies up, and they look cooler to boot, I'm pretty sure that the cool factor adds horsepower all by itself. Dial up Doug and he'll hook you up. Thanks Doug!
To achieve the equal lengths I wanted from the primaries and secondaries on the exhaust system I was forced to run outside the boundaries of the body work so you will see aluminum blisters on the outside of the Catalyst Composites racing body work that were hand fabricated by Dane over at Hot Rod Chassis and Cycle (Addison, IL) Here is a real craftsman and a great guy, he busted his hump to make them and did a great job, he's got some real talent and has the rare quality in this day and age of integrity. His efforts during the fabrication of the blisters showed that this guy can walk the walk and stands behind his word and his work. That is getting to be a rare thing these days. He's a pretty cool guy; I'll be looking forward to working with him again. Thanks Dane!
Rider feedback was going to be traditional gauges at the onset of the project, but as the scope of the bike grew and grew it became apparent that gauges were not going to cut it as the way to monitor what was going on. As I started looking at different data logging systems I came across Dave & Dave at Precision Auto Research (Bensenville, IL) they were the local dealer for the Aim Sport package that I ended up running. What sold me was the knowledge that these two had, they are some pretty sharp cookies and they understand the racing industry, they were more then happy to help with their knowledge and insight throughout the project, they were definitely not just there to sell you their product and disappear. The Aim Sport product worked great and was a real help during the whole project and the support from precision Auto research made it a real sweet package, thanks Dave & Dave you guys really helped a ton!
Ok not everything needed to be machined and welded and built, some of the parts were just good old fashioned motorcycle parts. Team MCC over at Motor Cycle Center (Villa Park, IL) helped me with all that stuff and more. I've known these guys since I was a punk riding dirt bikes in high school. Geoff and Greg and their crew have helped me out over the years and are racers themselves, from mounting and balancing the tires (Their service and parts departments are top notch) on the rims, to supplying chains, my helmet, leathers, safety equipment, even the tie downs came from them. Check out Team MCC for all your motorcycle needs both street and dirt, and if you're gonna buy a bike GO SEE THEM they sell the good stuff. Thanks guys for all the support over the years.
Brian over at Win racing is a hell of a guy, he is a real racer, straight up, a hard working guy with a real knowledge of what it takes to make a bike make power. Since I only have a chassis dyno at the shop, we used Brian's dyno for the setup of the injection and ignition maps in the ECU. We ran through the tuning wizard in the WinTec4 software and in about 15 minutes had a start up map that got the bike running then Brian got the bike up on the dyno and he and Todd (from area one) went to work. We data-logged the runs on the aim sport system and tweaked the map until we ran out of traction between the dyno and the rear tire. At which point we loaded it in the trailer and headed west and Brian and I sent tunes and data files back and forth for the rest of the race week and he dialed it in better and better every time it ran. This guy really was a life saver and is a real racer in my book. Go see Brian he will make you some horsepower.
Guardian Logistics – they say the country moves on trucks. Well someone needs to get that all set up. Jane know how to get things where they need to be when they need to be there!!! Here is a gal that wont let you down her and her team got things moved around for me and did it at the best possible price and got the deliveries there when they needed to be. And in the world of logistics that is what it is all about. Then to top it off they are great people to deal with. They wont promise and not deliver, quite the opposite they went above and beyond what they promised. In a day and age when more and more business is being done across the net and shipping is becoming a added necessity it is nice to have a solid reliable source to use as your go to. Give them a try and you won't be disappointed, and you certainly won't get let down. Call Jane, she really is a guardian angel.
Heat was gonna be a real concern throughout this whole project, we were stuffing so much into a limited chunk of real estate then operating it at wide open for most of it's run time that you have to keep the heat contained and away from some of the sensitive items that had to go along for the ride. The headers were all built from 321 to withstand this abuse but you cant make the whole bike from 321. I had met Colleen Matte at a race industry event. She told me about her products and how well they worked, of course what salesperson is gonna tell you there product is just OK. Well she put her product where her mouth was and we tested some of her thermal barrier in the shop and we knew we had a winner for our heat control needs. Not only could you package the rest of the bike around the exhaust the way we needed to the custom built the header wraps to fit the pipes as needed and they fit great. On top of that the built some safety panels for my leathers to keep me from cooking myself on the hot pipes that had to be run closer then my skin appreciated. We got a bit tripped up on the shipping but they turned the work very quickly and the product lived up to all of colleens hype and then some. In racing heat control is huge, my heat control solution has a name, and that is Thermal Control Products and that is the only name you will need to know!
I'm not one to get wrapped up in the latest Hype, so when I heard about ceramic bearings for my bike, I just said yeah whatever, well let me just tell you get some. They aren't shiny, there is no "bling factor", they probably wont help you pick up chicks, they don't make any more horse power. But they do make the bike roll smoother and with less effort and that does translate to more power to the ground. I was amazed at how nice these worked, I know a bearing is a bearing right, hell no anybody who has been in this field for a while knows that quality is key when it come to a precision bearing, and Dave knows his bearings he will build you what you need and that little sucker will perform better then you can imagine and last longer then you can believe, the more I used them the more I liked them. I was looking at the bike trying to figure out what else needed ceramic bearings and every time I replaced one it worked perfect. World wide produces a great product, backs it up with superior technical help, and to top it off they are great people. If you are not running their product I'll put one of their stickers on the back of my bike so you can look at it, the view will never change till you do.
All the people and companies above are contributors that did an outstanding job with either their product or service or both. They did not sponsor me or give me anything. The words of thanks are sincere and not bought and paid for. Area One is a dealer for some of the companies and that is because we try to sell what works, I could have my choice of any brand parts I wanted to have assembled the bike from and I chose these particular ones because they work and work well. I would hope that if you are looking for any of these products and/or services you would give them a try, I wouldn't recommend them if I didn't believe in them.
One thing that I find very interesting is the fact that so much of this project occurred in such a close area. I would put a good guesstimate on the number that 75% of this project occurred inside a 10-block radius in Franklin Park and 90% of it inside a 10-mile radius of Franklin Park. If you can't build it in this town you can't build it anywhere.
