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Shorai LFX™ Battery Tested in Taylor Made Moto2 Carbon Bike

Shorai’s own Shawn Higbee continued testing and development of the Taylor Made Moto2 GP bike at the Auto club Speedway in Fontana California last weekend. The Fontana roadcourse is a perfect layout to test the limits and handling performance of a Moto2 GP bike. With 2.8 miles of asphalt separated into 20 turns it offers a wide variety of corner speeds and many linked corners to exercise the bikes ability to quickly transition from side to side. The Taylor Made Moto2 race bike is an all carbon fiber chassis design and utilizes a unique A-arm front fork design. Traditional telescopic forks are used but inverted and fitted with the Traxxion Dynamics AK internal gas cartridge. In the rear of the bike the Penske shock is attached to the massive rear swingarm made from carbon fiber as well but with special design considerations to tune the torsional and lateral stiffness. The chassis is a carbon fiber Monocoque design with a special design feature with the radiator mounted in the rear of the bike under the seat area. The cooling air is funneled down the center of the chassis through a massive open air duct. This Taylor Made Moto2 bike is a hand built one of a kind pure bred racing machine. Moto GP chassis are expensive, exceeding $100K, but after the prototype has been fully developed Taylor Made expects to produce them in small quantities and sell them to race teams throughout the world.

 

A light weight battery design is necessary to compete at the world level of grand prix motorcycle roadracing. This is one of the reasons that Taylor Made Racing has chosen the Shorai Lithium battery. At only 1.06lbs the lightweight Shorai LFX07L2 battery allows the Taylor Made Moto 2 GP bike to stay close to the 298lbs design weight. The Moto 2 class requires the use of the spec Honda CBR600rr engine, which would normally require the LFX14A2 battery. The LFX07 is usually not appropriate to use with the 600cc engine because the starter current would frequently operate above the batteries ideal current load rating. This relatively high current draw would be stressful on the small LFX07 battery and lead to much reduced service life. For ideal starting performance and maximum life span, Shorai battery models are recommended for a vehicle engine type in such a way that the starter load is approximately 25% -30% of the batteries CCA rating. The reason the ultra small LFX07, 2Ah battery can be used in the Moto 2 bike is that has been designed to start the engine via a remote starter battery(LFX14). Therefore the LFX07 battery only sees a few Amps of current draw to support the bikes electrical demands and is normally recharged via the charging system at higher RPM. Normal motorcycle charging systems operate such that the battery is properly recharged between 13.6-14.4V at ~2000rpm. However in an effort to produce less rotational inertia and electrical drag (HP loss), the Moto2 racing alternator is undersized to provide just enough power (watts) at the higher rpm keep the battery charged. To deal with this under spec voltage output, the low rpm run time needs to be limited because the bikes ignition system and data logger will be pulling power straight out of the battery. For ease of explanation, if the bikes electrical demands where 6A, and the Shorai LFX07 is 2Ah in capacity, the battery would reach 50% SOC in about 10 minutes of idling. So with this limited charging system output it is important to limit the time at idle while leaving the pits, sitting on the hot grid or heading back to the garage area.

 


Moto2 Shorai Higbee

 

 

 

The day of testing on the Moto2 bike was very successful. Much time and effort went into upgrading the front fork design to a larger diameter for improved stiffness and steering response. The larger fork diameter allowed Traxxion Dynamics to fit their AK gas cartridge system. Additional focus was placed on a redesign of the front A-arm pivot location to tune the ideal brake dive characteristics. Throughout the development process much work has been done to find a good balance in chassis stiffness, suspension control, and necessary bump compliance.

 

Higbee comments on the day’s work, “This was a break through test for the team. We had some front end feel and chatter issues that we struggled with in previous test, but the larger diameter forks with the AK gas cartridges were brilliant! And Paul has adjusted the front A-arm geometry to a point that I had complete confidence in the front end feedback. I think the Taylor Made Moto2 bike has matured nicely and is very much ready for evaluation in a race competition environment.”

“Here at Taylor Made Racing we are fanatical about weight – designing a Grand Prix racing bike you have to be! We scrutinize the weight of each component and optimize everything from the thickness of a washer to resin content of the carbon fibre. But weight doesn’t mean a thing without reliability and our Shorai battery has proved to score on both counts – their light weight is class leading but most impressive is their robust reliability”

An older article about the the TaylorMade Moto 2 Bike: Link Here

Video of the bike in action, please watch and share!

 


About Shorai: Founded in 2010 and based in Sunnyvale, Calif., Shorai Inc. has quickly become the world’s principal producer of prismatic cell, lithium iron phosphate power sports batteries. Shorai is leading the market’s
conversion from traditional lead-acid batteries to lighter, more efficient and higher performance lithium starter batteries. For more information about Shorai, product offerings, upcoming sponsored events or local Shorai dealers, please visitwww.shoraipower.com.


Taylor Made Racing is based out of Van Nuys, CA and specializes in a variety of high end motorcycle accessory parts