American Motorcycle Dealer AMD 215 June 2017 | Page 34

™
The carbon fiber itself is all laid by hand. We
use dry fibers, it is the same fiber Pagani
uses for the Huayra. On such large double
curved surfaces like the monocoque, it is
very complicated to maintain the beautiful
structure of the dry fiber. This takes a lot of
craftsmanship and patience.
“We add resin by vacuum injection. We built
our own oven to cure the fiber. We have all
kinds of data loggers to keep track of
temperature, pressure, humidity, etc. We do
everything ourselves, in our own workshop.
The only things we have outsourced are the
manufacturing of the moulds, and the
manufacturing of the metal parts (e.g. the
footpegs).
“We chose carbon fiber for both, cosmetic
reasons as well as for practical reasons. The
handling of the bike played a pivotal role
during the development process. Carbon
fiber allowed us to develop a very
lightweight yet reliable monocoque chassis,
with a low center of gravity and excellent
weight distribution.
“In fact, carbon fiber provides an incredible
amount of engineering opportunities. For
example, the carbon monocoque – which is
one piece from front to rear – serves as
chassis, fuel tank (24 liters of fuel capacity)
and bodywork.
“At the front end, we have girder forks
34
AMERICAN MOTORCYCLE DEALER - JUNE 2017
linked to a double wishbone, which is
attached to the front shock via pushrods
and rockers. The front and rear shock are
positioned in line, which allows them to
eliminate opposing forces. This reduces
stress on the chassis. We have applied a
patent for our suspension system.
“In the standard setting, the response is
almost equal to an upside-down fork, only
with less dive under braking - this helps to
stabilize the bike under braking. Because
the bike is more stable, you can brake
harder and later, and since we do not use
the entire stroke of the front suspension,
there is plenty of stroke left to absorb
bumps under braking.
“We can adjust almost anything. From the
standard “dive under braking”, to “no dive
under braking”, to “anti-dive under
braking” (what you obviously don’t want
because of the weight distribution). We can
change the length of the wishbones, the
wheel base, and via the pushrods we can
adjust the reaction of the front suspension
(more/less progressive dive) - and you only
need an Allen key to adjust the rake angle.
“Some ask us about the origins and
inspiration for our suspension system, and
we describe it as an evolution of the Fior
front end.
“To our knowledge, we have created the
very first street legal 100% carbon fiber
motorcycle ever. The first production run
will be limited to only 25 hand-crafted
bikes. Over the last few years we have
gained so much experience with the carbon
fiber, the production process, and the
suspension that we have been able to fine-
tune our workflow in such a way that it
partially can be done by robots.
“Actually, time and cost reduction by
automation of the production process is a
very relevant theme for us - one of the
challenges of working with carbon fiber is
that it is time consuming and labor
intensive. We want to change that.
“Another interesting direction we can
explore is the fact that our suspension
system can be mounted to every kind of
chassis. In the future, we might build a
‘Gentleman’s Racer’ with our suspension
system in a ‘standard’ aluminum chassis.”
We here at AMD are always humbled by the
creativity, design innovation and
craftsmanship that our competitors bring to
the AMD World Championship, and no less
so than in the case of Rolf and Sjors van Der
Heide and their exquisite and revolutionary
superbike. We have one simple message
boys - “thank you for choosing us”!
www.vanderheidemotorcycles.com
www.AMDchampionship.com