• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

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Frames - Steel -v- Aluminum

ray_ray said:
Seems like the ALUM frames were gonna be more flexible when the Japan bike makers started down this road and quit the steel frames several yrs back...
Click to expand...



ray_ray, I think, if I remember the aluminum perimeter frames came out of need by the japanese from the crotchrocket crowd of japanese multi cylinder bikes before the dirt bike crowd got involved. The steel tube frames from the older kawasaki 1100s used to flex like crazy in the head area under the tank. I had triangulated this area with a couple pieces of fish mouthed tube on a few of them myself connecting the backbone to these 2 lower tubes about 7 inches behind the neck. The lower 2 tubes ran outward from the steering head under the sides of the tank then to the rear of the main backbone to the front of the seat area. Doing this triangulation mod stopped the ever present high speed death wobble for many of my buddies back then.

Then the perimeter frames came along. I look at it like this. Its an "Exoskeleton".
For instance A lobster may be fast in his own element. = (Honda/Motocross track.) but he ain't as agile as no snake. = (steel framed bike / in the woods.)

You know what I'm saying? although both will Molt and shed their skin several times in their life time.

I myself can't wait to see what comes of all the composite materials being brought to market. Soy bean based plastics for John deere tractors you can smash with a sledge hammer and run over with a car and pick it up unharmed so they can grow more Soy beans. Now parts for cars like mirror housings and other plastic parts are being made from Tomato skins for the sake of saving the planet or whatever. I think thats great.

I've repaired 50cal. bullet holes in Harrier jump jets with resins and micro balloon mixtures and honeycomb that was equal to the weight of the material per square inch of area being repaired from being shot up. Even on the wings control surfaces on these jets. They can even be repaired in this manner.

I say bring on the plastics,bonding agents,composites of all types and lets get some newer modern technology available at affordable pricing. There haven't been much of any technological signifacant advancements for several years in dirt bike design. I mean just look at the 2 bikes above the UNIT is awesome but I don't know what I would do with that thing. They should build stuff like that for the average dirt bike rider too. So we old farts could easily throw it around and still manage to lay down the power of over 60 horsepower.
 
OK my 2 cents without reading anything yet...... steel. Forgiving. Nice. Flex. woods. Nice. Aluminum. Rigid rigid. Wrists. Ouch ouch. Handling. precise precise. Better be in shape. For woods I'll take steel. If I were in better shape and a double a guy. Probably aluminum.... aluminum looks cool polished... woods riding...steel steel just 2 cents....
 
Never kept up with any of the street bikes other than look at pics of them. All that composite parts stuff sounds interesting ESP using beans and tomato skins :) ... We were once farmers and what a shaft they used to get ... Glad those days happened and glad they are over for me.

I've never heard of those companies making those bikes ... I guess it could happen but unless honda goes into this, it'll probably have its biggest days on web sites like this ...I'd guess honda and crowd are well aware of this stuff ... But change is very hard on a level like this ESP where the powers have no real reason to change anything.

Big Timmy said:
ray_ray, I think, if I remember the aluminum perimeter frames came out of need by the japanese from the crotchrocket crowd of japanese multi cylinder bikes before the dirt bike crowd got involved. The steel tube frames from the older kawasaki 1100s used to flex like crazy in the head area under the tank. I had triangulated this area with a couple pieces of fish mouthed tube on a few of them myself connecting the backbone to these 2 lower tubes about 7 inches behind the neck. The lower 2 tubes ran outward from the steering head under the sides of the tank then to the rear of the main backbone to the front of the seat area. Doing this triangulation mod stopped the ever present high speed death wobble for many of my buddies back then.

Then the perimeter frames came along. I look at it like this. Its an "Exoskeleton".
For instance A lobster may be fast in his own element. = (Honda/Motocross track.) but he ain't as agile as no snake. = (steel framed bike / in the woods.)

You know what I'm saying? although both will Molt and shed their skin several times in their life time.

I myself can't wait to see what comes of all the composite materials being brought to market. Soy bean based plastics for John deere tractors you can smash with a sledge hammer and run over with a car and pick it up unharmed so they can grow more Soy beans. Now parts for cars like mirror housings and other plastic parts are being made from Tomato skins for the sake of saving the planet or whatever. I think thats great.

I've repaired 50cal. bullet holes in Harrier jump jets with resins and micro balloon mixtures and honeycomb that was equal to the weight of the material per square inch of area being repaired from being shot up. Even on the wings control surfaces on these jets. They can even be repaired in this manner.

I say bring on the plastics,bonding agents,composites of all types and lets get some newer modern technology available at affordable pricing. There haven't been much of any technological signifacant advancements for several years in dirt bike design. I mean just look at the 2 bikes above the UNIT is awesome but I don't know what I would do with that thing. They should build stuff like that for the average dirt bike rider too. So we old farts could easily throw it around and still manage to lay down the power of over 60 horsepower.
Click to expand...
 
ray_ray said:
Never kept up with any of the street bikes other than look at pics of them. All that composite parts stuff sounds interesting ESP using beans and tomato skins :) ... We were once farmers and what a shaft they used to get ... Glad those days happened and glad they are over for me.

I've never heard of those companies making those bikes ... I guess it could happen but unless honda goes into this, it'll probably have its biggest days on web sites like this ...I'd guess honda and crowd are well aware of this stuff ... But change is very hard on a level like this ESP where the powers have no real reason to change anything.
Click to expand...


ray_ray,

All the old KZ 900,1000, 1100s from kawasaki after my friends did big bore kits to them from Denco and Yoshimura back in the late 70s were famous for flex and really needed some attention to ride after you were going into the triple digits. The dreaded High speed wobble wiped out more than I can count on my hands. Witnessed by myself on my Harleys a few times, sad really. I welded on those bikes all the time and made quite a few 4 into 1 headers and megaphone collectors for a few of them when they crashed if they came out alive. Those days are long gone and so are many of the riders. I can't blame it on steel frames though.

I was always a Harley guy on the street wouldn't be caught dead on one of those Jap multi's. The closest thing to that I owned was a 69' BSA Rocket 3 750 and its now in a museum here in AZ.
I still am a Harley guy.

I believe the first parts made of plastic made from tomato skins was the common cup holders in the console of a few of the newer cars. I can't recall which brand maybe they did this because if it failed it could be replaced easily or if the cup you had in it failed you could have a cup of tomato soup with your drink.LOL MMM. Nutritional commuting!

Bring on the composites and keep bringing on the Aluminum frames. I pay a flat rate for my Electrical bill at my shop every month whether I use any power or not. They can't charge me extra if I'm running that "Lincoln TiG" on my days off. Plus I like to go over and visit the old friend ( Mr. Lincoln) . He's made me alot of money over the years. Oh yaa, I have to go over there to feed my shop Pit Bull (Chicken Head) anyway. He likes visitors too, just try climbing the fence some night. As my neighbor "Maria"has called me more than once to tell me he likes visitors.
 
what makes someone think the factories don’t heat treat the alum frame’s and stress relieve them ?? just asking. if your a welder you know they have to treat it, i have yet to find anybody who has had the material in a alum frame get the material analyzed. would make a lot of sense if your gonna weld it.
 
They could have probably sold a few more of those unit bikes if they had put some kind of starter on it. No kicker and no electric start? :doh:
 
I never said they weren't heat treated, but what process do they use if so. There are many ways to do this. They aren't anodized as most all aluminum castings and some weld alloys will turn black during anodizing such as 4043 weld filler rod. Even if its clear anodized and the welds have been ground down and polished. I would guess that the material used is a 6061 alloy and is heat treated to a T6 condition I haven't heard of anyone taking a hand full of filings and going down and having them analyzed before welding either. Who the hell could afford to do such a thing.

The simple fact you would not be taking a section of the frame itself and taking it to a shear and shear off a sliver of its own parent metal to use as a piece of piece of perfectly matching filler rod to do the repair would force any welder to have to use a welding filler rod out of a tube of rod that may not be of the same alloy exactly any way. Different heat numbers, different lot numbers etc. Even if you knew the exact alloy. This is where the dilution of the parent metal takes place, at the factory and at the local weld shop. Plus the fact again I will say that aluminum melts at 1214 degrees fahrenheit and it only takes about 500 or less degrees to turn a stiff T6 piece of heat treated aluminum to a dead soft T4 piece of useless aluminum for this application (A motocross frame) if heat input isn't controlled during any repair correctly.

Some people don't want to pay for this service or knowledge. I've been doing aluminum welding since 1975 and bought my first Tig in 1978 and have read many books on the subject from Alcoa and many others and worked in the aerospace,nuclear,defence, race car fabrication industry for years in Non-ferrous shops and I don't even consider myself an expert and never will. There are just to many types of aluminum alloys, some of which don't lend themselves to welding well at all. First numbers in the alloy designate the chief alloying agent. Pure aluminum is to soft to do much of anything with, other than warding off corrosion on its own self. Thats why they have made "alclad" aluminum sheet for airplanes. You know like the Cessna old tail draggers that are polished and left unpainted. It has a layer of pure aluminum applied on top of the stiffer alloy so it won't corrode. Most all other alloys will corrode like crazy because of there dissasimaler metal content within its own chemical make up. especially in the air because of the ststic electricity. I've seen a small dent circled with a pencil for future repair once and it got into the hanger for that repair a month later and the whole circle fell out nearly by itself after flying it for a month from the pencil mark causing corrosion.

On the other hand most of the engineers and metallurgists I've worked around didn't know the final analasys of most of the assembled products we made after joining things together or could foresee its intended life span either and none I ever worked with were welders. They usually asked us welders questions as to what would be the best filler rod alloy to use for the welding.
 
I believe the CRF frames are anodized (clear). Also getting metal analyzed and a report is not as expensive as you might think. I have had to do it a few times. When I worked at Fastway we had footpegs cast in Ti and 17-4 SS. We had some rust which they should not and took them to the metallurgist to find out what crap our vendor was using. It was eye opening.
 
Big Timmy said:
I never said they weren't heat treated, but what process do they use if so.
Click to expand...

Sounds like the ALUM process needs very good on the spot QA and a very well SPECed out plan for the metal in the ALUM frame... Honda probably does this work in house?

Since I'm so cluess on frame building, just as WAG, if all things are equal, which frame type, steel or ALUM, costs the most to make? Just one a 1 frame thing... Not Honda buying a million or what ever.
 
I dont know if this is true or not but have been told by several people who might know that the Aluminum frames are fare cheaper to build. A big part of that is many of the parts are cast and complex and include mounting points and such. Then those are welded to the spares and you are done. Makes building them EZ and quick. A steel frame needs lots of welding, tabs for mounts, gussets welled over sections etc. Metal is sold by weight. Aluminum is more expensive but 1/3rd the weight.

Yamaha, BMW and I;m sure every big manufacturer now has new processes for casting aluminum that allows them to makes crazy complex forms used in frames. Look at a modern Yamaha street bike and see lots of amazing cast parts. Makes it really simple when you can CAD design a frame, stress test it on the computer and then cast it as one or a few parts.

"Aluminum is light and highly rust (oxidation) resistant and easily manufactured, which is why it is used abundantly in motorcycle and outboard motor parts. However, with conventional die casting methods (*2) it was difficult to manufacture aluminum parts that were both large and thin-walled, and this remained a technological problem in the industry. When Yamaha succeeded in the development of its exclusive CF Aluminum Die Casting Technology this important hurdle was finally cleared and the way was opened to next-generation mass production methods for aluminum parts. With this CF Aluminum Die Casting Technology, the number of pieces needed to make components like motorcycle frames can be greatly reduced along with their overall weight. This also simplifies the manufacturing and assembly processes. In 2007, Yamaha also succeeded in the development of a CF Magnesium Die Casting Technology that made it possible for Yamaha to introduce the world's first magnesium rear frame on a production model for our YZF-R6."

http://global.yamaha-motor.com/news/2002/0205/innovation.html
 
If the stock frames are anodized clear they must polish all the castings and forgings to a nearly mirror like finish first or it will look like its dull gray with dark to black colored welds even if the welds are completely ground away and sanded down and polished you will still see all the ripples in the welds when done clear. You'de have to do this as well to all the Extruded Tubing used to connect all of this together. It won't come out anywhere near consistant in color from castings to forgings and tubing unless you elect to go with a dark anodized color so these imperfections don't show up so noticable. It can be done and has been done I'm sure. All the steel Nutserts and any other metal that might be permantly attached to the frame must be drilled out to do this as well as all bearing races bushings etc. Clear anodizing would come out the worst for this type application Black, Red, maybe dark blue would be better.

Anytime I've welded on them I've experienced no contamination from clear anodizing prepped or not and anodizing will sort of fizzle and leave a black edge when welded. It will burn away about a 1/4"to 1/2"inch back from where you weld and it can clearly be seen doing this through the welding helmet while it does it even after the weld arc is terminated for about a second. It will do this while you are still post purging the weld as it cools.

Honda is now clear anodizing the CRFs? Frames maybe so. I would think they may have a clear coating of some kind I'll have to look more closely to my buddies bikes soon. The parts that aren't worn off the whole sides of the bike that is. Maybe he'll let me take a heat gun to it in a hidden location to see if its clearcoat paint so I can see it turn brown. His 2 look more like an aluma etched finish or what I would call pickled.

Kelly, You're in the manufacturing business to make trick parts out of exotic metals and have outside foundries doing exotic metal casting for you right? I would hope you would have to have things analyzed to solve a Problem with a large production run ( or small production run). Part of that analysis comes out of the cost of correcting the production run itself if theres a problem to keep your foundry doing what you need them to do and remain a resourse for your continued business revenue.

I'm referring to the local weld shop correcting a cracked part for some dirt rider who would rather be out riding and he doesn't even want to dissasemble his bike to have it fixed. You know what I'm saying?
 
This is a little off topic of the bikes but still frame work... I'll post more on these bikes in another forum ..

Heart of the Ace is an aluminium frame machined from solid billet with welded construction which is common to all variants of the Ace providing mounting points for various subframe, fuel tank, body and suspension options. Never before seen on a production motorbike the detailed engineering and beauty of functional form apparent in the frame follows a tradition established by Ariel with the Atom.

The load bearing frame, which exceeds industry rigidity standards, carries the engine, various seat packages, front and rear suspension as well as providing a safety cell for the fuel tank. Made from 6 individual billet aluminium sections each frame takes over 70 hours to machine before being welded together. Every frame is then anodised for protection and different colour finishes are available to increase customer choice and individualise the frame to each bike.

--

I'd hate to be the guy who screwed up welding this after almost 2 weeks to make sections..
fRAME_.jpg
 
Machining those parts is the wrong way to build them. Very wasteful and time consuming and costly. Dumb. Yamaha could build that same from for a 10th of the cost and time.
 
Yup but arial like to do stuff ass backwards, why else would they have made a car with no weather protection just dumb its a company that dont make sence.

Thats who i assume has manufactured the frame.
 
It's never before seen because the cost is astronomical. :eek:

Also, the Ducati trellis frame that they have been using for years is very similar in function and appearance, so not sure about the never before seen part.

Would love to see some analysis showing how/why it's superior; for example, weight vs stiffness, etc.

The Atom frame is welded tubes, which is much more sensible.
 
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