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Arvil Porter in his Rocket Bike in a exhibition run at night in 1975
This bike was stolen in Florida after very few runs.
When I commented with Arvil my desire to built a rocket kart like the one he made for Jack McClure he told me, why not a rocket bike?, he has the plans and the jig to make the frames for rocket bikes like the ones he did some years ago in the late 70´s and he considered this bikes to be much safer than the kart.
He don´t have to twist my arm to convince me of the bike idea because all my life I have ridden bikes and in the past I raced dirt track and speedway motorcycles, so I feel like fish in the water riding on two wheels, he told me that he wanted to built another bike for himself because his bike was stolen from a barn in Florida many years ago, so we could make two identical bikes.
After some arrangements we agree that he will built the frames and each one will make his own rocket system and at the finish we will meet and have race for fun to see who will pay for the dinner.
Could you imagine the sound of four rocket engines fired at the same time?
I am very exited with the idea of the rocket bike and I started designing my rocket engines, I decided to make the rockets so I can increase the power by only changing the nozzle diameter, my rocket engines have a thrust of 1100 lbs each (2000 hp each).
I started the machining of my rocket engines and now I have the rockets finished, I will wait for the frame to make the peroxide tank to fit in the frame and in the meanwhile I will test my steam rocket for the car.
The frame is built of TIG welded chrome-molybdenum 4130 tube of 1 1/4" and some reinforcements with 1" , for the front suspension we are using the Honda CBR600 because this is the strongest of all the suspensions, the wheels we use are also stock CBR600 wheels because they also are stronger than the racing wheels, they weight a little bit more but we have some extra power!, the tires will be racing slicks capable of speeds of 200+ mph
In this bikes there is no traction to the wheels so you don´t have any benefits by using wide tires, anyway the tires in a straight run will be rolling only in a very narrow center part of the tire.
The racing suit is a custom suit made of two layers of special leather with steel cloth inlay reinforcements in all the possible contact points to resist the grater abrasion, with gloves and boots too, in the back of the neck we wear a special body parachute like the one Arvil wears in this picture, this parachute has an harness that is connected to the handle bar of the bike and in case of separation the parachute opens braking the pilot body in his sliding path (hope never test it).
This parachutes has been proven two times with success and the pilots are alive to tell it.
In this bikes the only power limit is the pull a pilot can sustain in his arms at the start, because you can use too much power but you can end in the ground and the bike be launch without pilot!
This is an Arvil comment about his rocket bike:
"I figured out about how many runs I made on a drag bike , I could not
believe it well over a 1000 runs and only a few on my rocket bike!, I
sure will be glad to get another rocket bike,
It to me is by far the safest and fastest bike I have ever ridden.
If you can imagine sitting at the line with no motor running and turn the
throttle what you hear is the tire squealing like when you spin your car tire,
but instead of spinning the noise you hear is the tire trying to catch up to
the speed of the bike, it is very strange,
the first time I ran and it did this I though the rear brake was locked up,
after checking everything I made another run but did the same thing, then I
figured out what was going on with the tires".(Arvil built and raced for some time the alcohol burning Chevy dragster V-8 bike and later he built and raced rocket bikes, visit his site in the links page)
This was the first rocket bike built by Arvil Porter specially for Larry Welch, this bike reached speeds of 200 mph in the quarter mile in 1975.
Many told me that they saw many times in the rocket bike runs that the pilot wrapped his legs with duct tape as a poor man G´s suite, to tolerate more G´s in the legs and keep the blood in the brain, so I start searching for a surplus G´s fighter pilot suite and I got one from Russia, the G´s suit is new and I bought it at a very low price.
This G´s suite will be connected to the nitrogen regulator and a special valve in the throttle, when it inflates at a certain pressure it keeps the blood in the upper part of the body.
Some very close friend and team member of the late Elmer Trett told me "talking to the few T/F riders
who saw the TNN tape and there was only 4 guys who saw it, they each told the
same basic story "It looked like he went to sleep on the bike", "I will always believe it was the Gs that caused him
to passout".
It was due to the great G´s of acceleration Trett was doing to break his own record, he still holds the speed record in a top fuel dragster bike.
This is the G´s suite I bought from Russia, this is not me, this is a fighter pilot picture, the G´s suite is just the chaps over the pants from the waist down to the ankles.
ThisG's suit inflates with the same nitrogen of the fuel tank inflating in the legs when I push the button to fire the rockets, this keeps my blood in the head and not in the legs
Also I am working on the design of my special suit, it will be made of Keprotect cloth from Schoeller, this cloth is a mix of Kevlar with other synthetic fibers.
This fabric is apparently ten times stronger and more abrasion resistant than leather since leather is incompatible with concentrated hydrogen peroxide it is much more suitable.
I will also wear a body parachute in case of separation from the bike but, of course, hopes never to use it...
Video of Eric Teboul Racing his Rocket Bike
Note that the track was wet in this run
Rocket Motorcycle Construction
Before Arvil started the frame I designed and built the rocket engines, this are the two rockets for the bike, this rocket engines are capable of a thrust of 750 to 1100 lbs. each (1500 to 2200 hp each).
 
 
 
This are the nitrogen high pressure tanks used to pressurize the hydrogen peroxide tank
Here Arvil started the construction of the frame, note the heavy steel jig he used to keep the frame aligned and squared
 
This is the finished frame still in jig, tack welded before the final welds are done
 
This is the frame with primer I received from Arvil to start my rocket bike
 
This is the frame with the rocket engines and front end presented
 
 
I did the rocket engine bases, set the incidence of the thrust line and welded the bases to the frame.
The incidence is very important to stay on the ground and don´t take off!
In this pictures you can see the drawing of the engine base I did in the computer and the model I did in cardboard to check the clearance of the engine and the fit in the frame.
 
 
This is the picture of the 1/4" steel plate cutted in a pantograph with the drawings profile.
After many hours of work this are the finished steel engine bases
 
I set the incidence of the thrust line and when all was correct I did some tack welding, then I removed the engine to finish the welds, in the center of the base are two rosette welding to have more strength
 
This is the finished base after painted in matte black to avoid the corrosion
 
I leveled the frame over the work table and with plumbs and cords I aligned the opposite base and this was exact!
 
Here you can see the plumb lines used to align the rocket engines
In this pictures you can see the rear brake caliper installed and a dummy PVC fuel line just to check the route and space, over the frame the nitrogen tank
 
I did the design of the fairing and the seat in the computer, from this design I draw the templates of all the profile cuts each 2", I sent this plans to print full size to cut the templates in a saw to make the skeleton base to make the mold plug for the fiberglass.
This are the drawings of the profile templates to glue to a plywood sheet and cut every template to make the skeleton of the body.
This is a view of the plywood templates glued to the base to make the skeleton base for the mold.
Here I start pouring the poly urethane liquid to foam in the skeleton
I cut the foam to the approximate profile with a knife and I glued a coarse sandpaper to a board to sand the foam down to the plywood level.
After the foam is sand to the level I pour some more foam in the voids to plug them and sand it again.
After the foam is smooth to the plywood level, the complete mold is covered with body filler acrylic paste to seal the pores of the foam and make it smooth, after sanding the filler paste the part is covered with a finer filler, painted and waxed to make the mold.
This is the foam plug after two coats of body filler and wet sanding to a smooth finish before cover it with fiberglass to make the mold shell.
This is the finished fiberglass fairing, I have to trim and cut the body to fit in the bike and make the frame to attach it to the main frame.
I machined this special triple tree made of stainless steel and 6061-T6 aluminum plates, this is a super strong part, four times stronger than the stronger triple tree available.
I polished the stainless steel and now I will polish the aluminum plates.
 
This is the hydrogen peroxide high pressure stainless steel tank and it was hydrostatically tested to 1200 psi, the working pressure is 550 psi.
I will polish this tank also to a "chrome" finish.
After several years of dedicating all my work and money to finish the rocket belts, finally I flew them and I started again the work to finish my rocket bike.
You can see that I have now a much better digital camera too!
I started by cutting the front fairing that I already built several years ago to fit at the front and now I need to make the body for the back of the bike covering the rocket engines and making a very strong seat capable of hold several G's of acceleration force.
This are some pictures of the process of making the body.
The first thing is to glue some foam blocks to the rear of the bike to start to carve it into shape.
Here I am carving the foam to give the approximate shape I want, I always carve the foam fast and I try to get the best symmetry but this is not critical because this plug will be covered with fiberglass and then with body filler and with this is a lot easier to get a perfect finish because the foam is very rough.
The carving of the foam is finished and the winglets where added to the sides, now all this must be covered with fiberglass because is very fragile to work with the foam and it can broke so a hard layer of fiberglass is laminated over the foam and then a layer of body filler is poured over the cured fiberglass to keep working on it.
This is the foam covered with fiberglass, now this will be covered with body filler to get the final finish, in this step a perfect symmetry must be done into the plug before making the mold.
This is the finished model before making the mold.
The finish looks bad but it was wet sanded to glass like finish, tomorrow I will make the mold.
This pictures shows the partition line to make the mold, to make the upper, lower and back of the mold.
This pictures shows the mold with the first layer of black gelcoat.
Finished mold!!
The next are the pictures of the first carbon fiber piece made out of this mold, this piece must be trimmed, adjusted and then filled with more carbon fiber to cover all the details around the rockets, install the Dzus quick fastners and then I will assemble everything, like tanks, fuel and nitrogen lines, regulators, valves, etc. that are already done.
After everything is installed and tested then I will dissasemble it to paint the frame and the body, this bike must be running in two months.
Here are some pictures of the almost finished rocket bike and I think that the bike will be running next month so the next update will be of the actual testing of the bike pictures.
After I saw a video of an accident of a pilot that when he open the hand to apply the brakes the wind catched his hand and flipped him out of the bike at over 200 mph. I decided to add hand fairings to my front fairing and this will act also as small winglets to provide down force when the rockets are turned off.
After a lot work making the body and all the rocket system the rocket bike is finally finished, it took me several years but it was finished and the next step is to test it at the track or in a local dray lake with plenty of space.
This pictures are in the Cuernavaca Car Show on March 18, 2007
I was invited to show some of my work in this tent and a lot of people was attracted by my toys.
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