Background

The Background

Offroad motorcycles or dirt bikes are primarily designed with reduced weight and high power for short distances

In rare occasions, dirt bikes are modified to beat long distance, high speed races. Most known are the Dakar Rallye
Africa Eco Race and the Baja 1000

With the first two having their distinctively designed navigation towers for their extensive roadbook naviagtion equipment.

Fabricio Meonis 2002 Winning Bike 2020 KTM 450 Rally

The latter Baja 1000 does not require such navigation equipment, as the course is preset and nowerdays shared in GPS files. However, as this race can and will have periods of riding at night, the focus shifted to
extensive, and sometimes ludicrous lighting

1994 Kawasaki KX500 for Baja 1992 Honda XR600R for Baja

Use Case

Use Case

With my fixation on the combination of sleeping outdoors and travelling by motorcycle and the upcoming of the Trans Euro Trail,
a low weight, low maintenance dirtbike with a sufficient navigation and lighting system is to be achieved.
The basis will be a 2004 Suzuki DRZ400E

Requirements
Modularity To be taken off when not in use/needed i.e. short trips or races.
Weight To keep it as close to the original lighting system (around 2kg)
Navigation To include a phone or tablet mount as a GPS navigation device
Road Legality To somewhat fulfil the road legality requirements in Germany

Prior to the project start, a new secondary wiring harness as been designed and fitted.
The wiring harness uses a relay module fit for up to 480 Watts. Also a new Tachometer has been sourced and fitted via a
custom fabricated bracket.

Modelled in Solidworks Tach Bracket assembled
For more information on the wiring harness or tachometer bracket, please contact me

Lighting System NETS

Night Elemination (by) Twin-Suns

After research, the NETS system features two 5.75 inch LED Lights (LY-OL-2301) manufactured by Loyo LED. Each Light outputs 4000 Lumen
at 42 Watts. These lights feature the ECE 148R00 and 149R00 certifications, making them sufficient for the occasional street use and traffic stops.
Each Light weights 750 grams.

After the first prototype analyses and personal experience with another GPS Mount, I've come to the conclusion, that the NETS system
will be frame mounted. This will reduce the affinity of low frequency vibrations when not used with a steering damper (aka death wobble)

Previous Development

The first approach was mounting the NETS onto the fork triple trees. Various experimentations have been done on that idea. The result would have
been a large CNC milled main body with each seperate part mounting onto it. First a rough body was shaped and a primal stress analysis was performed.
Afterwards the initial body was imported to nTop for further meshing, further analysis and a topology optimization workflow. The topology optimized part
was then reimported into Solidworks, where it was used as stencil on the initial part. The result was an optimized main body weighing under 400grams.
This workflow was repeated with at least 6 approaches. These are some more recent excempts:

Topology optimized version 3 Primal load analysis of version 5 in Solidworks
Topology optimized version 6 in nTop Topology optimized version 6 in nTop
Result of topology optimized version 6 Full assembly with optimized version 6

It is to be noted, that on the first approaches manufacturability was not considered. The stress analysises were only a rough estimate. Further analysis was to be examined in Abaqus and Ansys.

Current Times

Current development

As described before, it has been acknowledged that a frame mounted system would benefit the handling. A 3D model of the motorcycle has been acquired for better fitment modelling.
The 3D model was modified to only feature the required parts.

modified 3D Scan Mesh
The new mounting will consist of two plates screwed underneath the radiator mounts and bolted/clamped together at the steering head.
Assembly with plates in Autodesk Fusion Assembly of the plates with the clamping block