Misc: Electric Starters Mark Cooper Rapide Electric Starter

[greg brillus]

Most of the time the engines crank with no issue at all.........but at some point, they can and do struggle........with a powerful starter and a descent battery, it can do damage to either the ring gear and/or the starter itself....... i rescently finished off the long term build of a Norvin that was built by a local Brisbane member using a new RTV engine......... He had gone to some extra effort to install a better starter motor, it was from a Honda car engine from memory, and he had a super expensive and large Lithium Ion battery under the rear seat hump.......This engine had the solenoid decompressor release in each head.........It cranked over extremely well and most all the time, it did not even need the use of the decomp valves.......It seems to me that running the Vincent ESA can make or break the starter set up........ The massive load of the starter turning the engine over, then once the engine fires.......the ESA goes from fully ramped one way to fully the other way........This can and does send a massive shock load back to the starter/ring gear and it seriously sounds like you are hitting the starter with a sledge hammer........The resulting damage can be instant.......so running a belt drive with pullies and no ESA seems to work far better. The only issue then is you have no cush drive in the system........The pounding pulses from a V twin can be destructive on the drive train, so a cush drive in the rear hub would be better than nothing........The starter set ups that use a belt drive don't seem to suffer so much verses a chain driven primary using the stock ESA. This has been my findings so far, on the electric starters that turn the clutch chain wheel or pully........Cheers.

 

[roger v]

With regards to the starter instalation, apart from the Grosset starter, any other set up is going to take considerable mods of some description to the crankcase to install it........I have just bought an entire starter kit like the new ones that the Godet boys are doing on their engines now, but this involves machining a hole into the rear lower corner of the primary area........It is no big deal to me because i am using a set of new cases, but i serously doubt many would want to do the same to an original set.

Does the Godet unit have a belt drive of the double sided type for the alternator pick up and incorporate an engine cush drive

 

[roger v]

This particular front sprocket has fitted inside a regular cover with no spacer. The primary case has had to be machined in order to make it work, Mark was determined to have a bike that looks like fairly standard.

The starter cranks beautifully I tried to upload a video but alas I could not get it to load. I’ll post it as a link for all to see.

Yes please add a link to your posting

 

[roger v]

I think that there might be a reason for the idler other than limited availability of different length belts. I have used double sided tooth belts in a new type of telescope drive I designed, much less robust than the ones in these photographs, and a huge range of length is available. Instead, I suspect that by using the design they have the belt covers a larger area of the main shaft and clutch sprockets and thus spreads the load over more teeth.

How do I get to view your belt drive arrangement , as I am starting out from scratch and would like a self starter with a dry chaincase and alternator drive

 

[timetraveller]

Roger, to make it clear the double sided tooth belt drive I designed was to drive a telescope built in 1860 and about five metres long, weighing well over a tonne to be interfaced to a modern stepper motor drive and controlled by a computer. On the alternator kits I supply, known as the Walkernator, I use a poly vee belt to drive the 40 amp alternator, definitely not a toothed belt, as they are known to destroy the Vincent dynamo drive sprocket. To revert to the original 'starter' theme; a lot of modern bikes use a shock absorber built into the sprocket at the back of the clutch. These are rather like car clutch shock absorbers with two sets of springs, some working in one direction and the other set in the other direction. I can't see that it would be too difficult to build that type of shock absorber into a belt primary drive and thus get rid of any shock loads. The outer teeth of the belt could be used to drive an alternator in the normal dynamo postion. I would be worried about using a starter motor on the outside teeth of the belt as it would take some design trick to ensure that the starter torque was spread over several teeth of the belt. If only one or two teeth were used then I imagine they would have a short life. Although you want a dry primary drive there are plenty of different materials available in the toothed belt market and it should be possible to find one that will withstand oil. Come back to me on this if this is of any use to you.

 

[Bill Cannon]

Roger, to make it clear the double sided tooth belt drive I designed was to drive a telescope built in 1860 and about five metres long, weighing well over a tonne to be interfaced to a modern stepper motor drive and controlled by a computer. On the alternator kits I supply, known as the Walkernator, I use a poly vee belt to drive the 40 amp alternator, definitely not a toothed belt, as they are known to destroy the Vincent dynamo drive sprocket. To revert to the original 'starter' theme; a lot of modern bikes use a shock absorber built into the sprocket at the back of the clutch. These are rather like car clutch shock absorbers with two sets of springs, some working in one direction and the other set in the other direction. I can't see that it would be too difficult to build that type of shock absorber into a belt primary drive and thus get rid of any shock loads. The outer teeth of the belt could be used to drive an alternator in the normal dynamo postion. I would be worried about using a starter motor on the outside teeth of the belt as it would take some design trick to ensure that the starter torque was spread over several teeth of the belt. If only one or two teeth were used then I imagine they would have a short life. Although you want a dry primary drive there are plenty of different materials available in the toothed belt market and it should be possible to find one that will withstand oil. Come back to me on this if this is of any use to you.

Re the belt drive with oil, things may have moved on but when I first got my bike it was fitted with an oil resistant toothed belt but it lasted about 200miles before self destructing.
I fitted a crank end seal and a new non resistant belt and it has lasted many thousands of miles.

 

[roger v]

greg, only major with the way mark did his is the hole needed on the cases. He kept the piece so it could be welded back into the case should someone want to covert it back to standard. Great thing is it removes the Vincent esa and generator is now run off belt.

mark’s thinking about making some starter kits
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greg, only major with the way mark did his is the hole needed on the cases. He kept the piece so it could be welded back into the case should someone want to covert it back to standard. Great thing is it removes the Vincent esa and generator is now run off belt.

mark’s thinking about making some starter kits
View attachment 54008View attachment 54007View attachment 54006View attachment 54005View attachment 54004View attachment 54003.View attachment 54009

Hi

 

[roger v]

Hi Gene Do you have the address for Mark so I might contact him .

 

[Gene Nehring]

I’ll send you a direct message for you to be able to talk to mark.

 

[Vincent Brake]

Godets, use a standard triplex chain and D ESA. And as Greg says here, the esa is killing the chain and gear. So we ve changed that set up to to a different esa, with much much less travell. And a (CURSE)HD solenoid decompressor, now the starter big gear stayes in one piece.