Andrew Warren wrote: > > Roman Black wrote: > > > motorcycle weight is like financial planning, every few grams seems > > totally stupid by itself but when added up at the end of the day > > makes a major and important change in the balance of performance. > > > > how can we drill the heck out of it to remove the most possible > > grams of wasted aluminium??? > > Roman: > > Ok, if you really ARE at the point where a) every few grams will make > a difference, and b) you've removed all the weight you can from other > areas of the bike/rider, then I'd advise getting an FEA (finite > element analysis) program and using it to decide what you need and > what you can cut away... At this point, everything that's still on > the bike is there for a reason, and it would be foolish to start > cutting and drilling without doing some real analysis first. > > I was kinda lucky when I was doing this sort of thing -- the Nissan > IMSA GTP team was just down the road from my house, so there were > people nearby who were willing to run my simple pieces through their > high-powered FEA systems for free -- but you can do what you need > with a relatively low-priced PC-based FEA package. Algor's FEA > programs, for instance, are quite good. > > If you can't afford Algor, your local university may have an FEA > setup that you can use; one of the engineers with whom I worked on an > SCCA car enrolled in a mechanical-engineering class at UCLA just so > he could use the computers in their lab. > > -Andrew > > P.S. If you haven't already, read Carroll Smith's "Tune to Win", > "Prepare to Win", and "Engineer to Win" (and his "Nuts, Bolts, > and Fasteners Handbook", aka "Screw to Win"). They're written > with auto racing in mind, but the information within them > applies to all forms of motorsport. Truly EXCELLENT books > that, along with Keith Code's "Twist of the Wrist" series, > should be required reading for all racers. Excellent help, thanks Andrew! :o) I'll look for a FEA type program. -Roman -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.