Build in progress
For example:
“At first, the bike ended up weighing so much—it weighs about 1200 pounds—that the airbag suspension wasn’t even able to lift the bike off the ground, so I had to relocate the airbags to give them more mechanical advantage to help raise the bike up. The steering was very difficult to turn, so I ended up lengthening the control arms going down to the steering cables, so that made it a lot easier. The turning radius was less, but the mechanical advantage of turning the bike was easier.”
Listening to Sam describe some of the twists and turns the project has taken was fascinating. One of his biggest headaches was a pump he had ordered that ended up being a counter-clockwise-driven pump, when his motor was setup to turn clockwise. “It was trying to pull from the pressure side and send hydraulic pressure to the return side, so it was spinning backwards. That was a big letdown when I went to fire it up and test drive the bike for the first time. I went to give it throttle and make it move, and it wasn’t doing anything. I thought something was up, because it should have been doing something.”
He’s gotten things well in hand now, with only one obstacle yet remaining. He says, “The pump that drives it is a log splitter pump, and those are designed to pretty much only go one speed, it only has one set displacement. The bike has great top end, but it has zero low end. As you can see in the video, it’s very slow on acceleration. It’s very similar to a diesel locomotive pulling a bunch of train cars. It’ll do 80 MPH, maybe even 90 at the top end, but it just takes forever to get there. It’s kind of like starting a truck out in 5th gear, riding the clutch out forever.”