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[NoiseBoy]

Its come up for discussion a few times about acceleration so just a quick post.  We've had a 3 day motoring festival here in Jersey this weekend and the Friday night is 1/4 mile sprints on a closed off dual carriageway, so not a full drag strip, for vintage bikes and cars.  The local dealer ran a '13 S ZF8.5 as an exhibition run along with a Tesla Roadster.  The Zero did it in 13.65 seconds (@85mph iirc) and the Tesla was 1/10th slower.  It was the 3rd fastest time of the night and was running against 80's 1000cc+ sports bikes etc. and even some old Formula 1 cars so did pretty well.  It is also did well in the hill climb.

My feelings towards 0-60mph times etc. with the Zero is that litre sportsbike riders can chat all they like about how it can do it in 2.8 seconds or whatever but in reality, on the Zero you just twist the throttle and get a perfect start.  With an ICE bike unless you are a professional drag racer you will never get the revs, clutch and gear changes perfect enough to get anywhere close to the factory specified times.

[Richard230]

Interesting NoiseBoy.  I am impressed with the Zero's performance.  Thanks for posting that information.

[mehve]

Sweet! Would have loved to see a video of that.
What other two vehicles went faster? My co-worker riders all are on ICE bikes and often ask me about the numbers.  ;-)

+m

[dkw12002]

That's true. The 1/4 mile will not be good for the Zero though due to the low top end. For your average traffic light launch, it is unlikely anyone will beat you off the line. For one thing, they have no idea you are about to take off like a bat out of hell since you don't rev. the motor. The Zero is a deceptive little bike.

[TargeT]

That's true. The 1/4 mile will not be good for the Zero though due to the low top end. For your average traffic light launch, it is unlikely anyone will beat you off the line. For one thing, they have no idea you are about to take off like a bat out of hell since you don't rev. the motor. The Zero is a deceptive little bike.

Just do a 1/8 mile run and work the math out for the 1/4th... haha

lots of tracks in the states do this.

[vitaminC]

For comparison: http://www.motorcycle-usa.com/712/4145/Motorcycle-Article/Quarter-Mile-Times.aspx

[dkw12002]

Thanks for the info. It's that 60 ft. from the start time the article says is recorded at a drag strip where Zero would be one of the very fastest. For getting ahead of city traffic, that is the most important figure. After just a couple seconds from launch, the bigger bikes with their higher rpms, torque and hp quickly take over, but by then you are up to or over city speed limits. The trick is to get up to the speed limit and not go 10mph or more over before slowing down. I still look around for cops before I launch. 

[protomech]

13.65s @ 85 mph is quite good. The lighter ZF8.5 helps it get a small ET even with a relatively low trap speed.

Some relatively comparable 1/4 mile electric records from NEDRA:
DMC/F, "TRON" 128V twin AC, 9.835 @ 139.29 mph
DMC/G, "TRON" 93V, 11.693 @ 104.53 mph
MPC/F, tiger eboxer 106V AC, 14.291 @ 90.58 mph

Quick conversion from 1/4 mile to 1/8 mile shows about 8.7s. Here's 1/8 mile times:
DMC/G, Silver Bullitt 96V, 6.756 @ 96.47 mph
DMC/F, "TRON" 106V, 6.913 @ 100.71 mph
SMC/G, Juiced II 96V, 10.195 @ 64.67 mph
PMC/H, E-Boxer 72V, 11.73 @ 56.26 mph

DMC is a drag-specific bike. PMC = production MC, MPC = modified production bike. NEDRA has a HUGE array of classes; the 2013 Zeros would probably be PMC/F.

For reference to the gas world, a 500cc gas bike will typically be around 13 to 13.5 seconds in the quarter mile. Faster than most cars on the road.

[NoiseBoy]

The Tesla did it at 115mph IIRC.  Shows how much quicker the Zero must have been off the line.  I didn't get to see it myself. 

Also interesting was they took the S and DS for a few laps of a small exhibition circuit and I heard 3 people around me say 'Oh....they're quite fast aren't they'.

They will publish a timing sheet of the event at some point.  The bikes most likely to be faster would be late 70's race modified 1000cc bikes.  Things like Suzuki GS1000 or Katana etc.

[emotofreak]

FX should do it even faster ;p

[Doctorbass]

The FX with sevcon size 6  and replaced battery by 28s2p of 5000mAh Nanotech 65C  lipo  should give something pretty interesting!


and.. al longer swign arm as well

Doc

[trikester]

I'm assuming that the Sevcon 6 is quite a bit larger than the 4 so mounting it on the FX would probably be a kluge, but then a record attempt bike doesn't have to look pretty.

I'm in the process right now of "shoe horning" the Sevcon 4 into my trike. If it had been any bigger I would have been in serious trouble! I had to do some carving on the heatsink to clear objects in the frame. More about that in a couple of days on my gas trike conversion thread.

Trikester

[Richard230]

I saw Terry's Sevcon 6 (which was mounted in the usual position on his Zero) and it looked to me to be about 50% longer than the Sevcon 4 and maybe a little wider.

[BSDThw]

If you are interested a Sevcon Manual copy of the size " in mm!"

[trikester]

Hey, thanks for that! Good to have dimensions and yes, I couldn't have fitted the six into my trike, so it's a good thing I wasn't planning on using that one.

Trikester