[trailin'me]

Ive been debating on taking a cast of these douglass 11" wheels (with their permission of course) and creating a titanium alloy/carbon fiber wheel. Of course this is just a trial and error type thing, but with many of the machining shops in the stl and chicago area standing idle ..and my experience with CAd ... and g/f a mechanical engineer ... i think its truly possible to make something that might work... i have no idea....

its cold outside ..and with a previous broken neck (titanium alloy right on my cervical spine) i have plenty of time to dick around...

i figure if titanium is indeed strong and very light ..and is good enough for my neck ... should be good enough for a wheel ... if not tungsten would be my next metal of choice to brace the carbon fiber ...

I dunno ... i just think very very deeply while taking xanax to relax my neck muscles enough to try and sleep.

Im not a great "creator" of things , but I've always excelled at making things better. Maybe us guys could get a think tank together to come up wth some kick ass stuff ... hand made ...and possibly manufactured later and market it through this website.... kinda like "created for atv riders by atv riders" where everyone has a say and an opinion on what is created.... and shit we wouldn't have to give it to some arrogant factory rider to test.... we could go put it through hell all across the country in every imaginable environment in a few days .. not weeks and years.

At the end of the day ... sport atv riders want to be noticed ... they want shit to work ... they expect to work and depend on it ...and IT MUST LOOK GOOD.

shit ..carbon fiber would work great sandwiched with tungsten would make a great engine block... even if it was just the sleeve or the underside of a piston... a tungsten/titanium chain would never stretch ... a sprocket machined from titanium with hardened tunsten teeth would never wear out... see what im getting at about the think tank.

lastly ..i dunno why tungsten hasnt been used in more things ... maybe its expensive? I do know something machined from forged metal is much better/stronger/lighter than something cast in a sand mold.

i think you could theoretically make an entire fuel injection/intake/ and maybe even drive shafts with reinforced carbon fiber... haha maybe i just need to sleep.

 

[scuzz]

The thought of Titanium wheels makes me hot.

 

[Admin]

Definitely a good idea, although I'm thinking it may be too expensive to produce...

 

[trailin'me]

well ..its not really expensive if only a few are made so to speak ... i think if one were to charge the labor involved yes ..they would be expensive.

there is a place in stl that has the necessary vacuum stuff for carbon fiber ... so ill start with making a mold of the stock honda rear wheels ... or even a copy of them with the cad laser eye thing ..and see if some cannot be machined out of a block of titanium

i do however feel that this method would be pricey ... and would be less expensive to cut out thinner reinforcing titanium braces to support the carbon fiber wheel.

i am really considering it. if it fails oh well ... what the hell else can i do with my time ya know.

 

[smo0oth1]

Would they be repairable?

 

[trailin'me]

well it may be a long-off pipe dream .. but theoretically i think it would be nearly impossible to break the titanium. Carbon Fiber does flex some ...and the problem with hyper wheels is that the entire outer diameter of the wheel is carbon fiber ... so they dont really bend ..they shatter and explode...

im thinking you could cast vacuum mold an entire carbon fiber wheel and have a very thin titanium skeleton ... maybe a 2 or 3 piece wheel that fits together much like legos do.... both complementing each others strengths... carbon fiber weighing nearly zero and titanium weighing much less than steel and aluminum but much stronger... i dunno... or i guess you could make a skeleton of titanium then go ahead and vacuum cast the carbon fiber around it... much like the way they put rebar in concrete.

and i really dont know why someone else hasn't made one like that .. the hyper wheels are so archaic and basic ya know... the technology is definitely there to make a much better product.

obviously .. our machine (the 700xx) was made for gncc/baja type riding... which the carbon fiber wheel is notorious for exploding due to the uneven and unpredictable nature of the surface/terrain we ride on... and they only explode because they have no backbone to keep them from flexing past their breaking point ... and aluminum bends which isnt any good either but sure beats exploding. Titanium doesn't flex and will break, but only under very extreme loads ... i guess the trick is finding out how much pressure it takes to break titanium at a width/dimension that would benefit a wheel.

ill keep researching it and looking into someone that is capable of a. knowing the issue and understanding the nature of metal/cf strenghs or b. find someone that can.

If i can find a machine shop with the proper tooling to either cold press or forge titanium parts for the 700xx ..the possibilities would be nearly endless in DRAMATIC weight saving. Hell .. just the crank case cover would save a bunch ... imagine a titanium link o-ring chain ..would basically weigh nothing...and i dont think a chain would be difficult to make... but if it somehow broke ..a titanium chain would f**k shit up lol... would be like a chain saw blade that wouldnt ever break or dull slamming against your machine.

i dunno ...for me its kinda fun and interesting to think of things like that. I wish i has a factory or foundry full of shit to use at my leisure.

as far as fixing ... if there was a design that worked ...say the carbon fiber exo-shell simply bolted on the titanium inner skeleton... slid on or over it somehow ..and something broke ..it seems like it would not be so difficult to fix or replace... much like the magnets they put on those huge JL 13w7 woofers... just pop one off and put another on.

maybe ill have my g/f spit out a real schematic jpg image from cad with the basic idea of what im thinking and if anyone is interested maybe we could go from there... if not .. its just fun to think about... and well ... this is really how innovation begins ya know.

lastly i do worry about cost... it bugs me that shortcuts are taken with stuff for the sake of price.... and it bugs me to think that everyone in the food-chain must make 20-50% profit... what ever happened to just doing something because you like it ya know.

 

[scuzz]

If there ever was a time to build something out of titanium..it's now: