Adding forced air cooling

To get slightly back on topic with this idea. I have been figuring out solid works as I have been interested in getting a 3d printer. I had an idea a while back that this reminded me of that would be moderately achievable with a 3d printer.

My idea was to print a new left side cover with a bearing in place in line with the crank, and then create a nut/shaft that bolts down in place of the nut that secures the magnet, passes through the bearing, and has a threaded hole or threads of it's own. On that shaft an impeller/turbine that spins with the motor, and then a housing and simple duct to force air across the cylinder and head.


As for the weather. We have had a freak cold front swoop down, and for the last 3 days it's been in the 70's and I have been loving it with all of my windows open.
 
personally I wouldnt try to enclose your cylinder to direct forced air the cylinder will actually get hotter. The natural air that passes when riding would cool it off better than the fan
Some plastic cutting board shaped to direct air over the engine could work too.
To get slightly back on topic with this idea...

My idea was to print a new left side cover with a bearing in place in line with the crank, and then create a nut/shaft that bolts down in place of the nut that secures the magnet, passes through the bearing, and has a threaded hole or threads of it's own. On that shaft an impeller/turbine that spins with the motor, and then a housing and simple duct to force air across the cylinder and head.
Sounds like it'd work, gets me thinking about a small water pump mounted the same way to have water cooling but that would require a simple hydraulic circuit with a bypass for excess pressure and a valve that opens once reaching the desired temperature.
 
Thank you Moderator ImpulseRocket for sharing your idea. That was an insightful answer to the topic of this thread. I believe it would take work, time and money for materials to manufacture the left side cover with bearing, the new nut/shaft, impeller, air box housing with duct and time for measuring and figuring so it works and fits good.

Wow, I'm thinking at 6,000 engine rpm your impeller would be spinning at 100 times per second, that should be adequate cooling for riding one or two hours non stop. Am I right about that? I think initially it would make money until your very good idea would be cloned.

Maybe your contraption that you call a 3d printer will enable you to remain competitive with businesses that sell the cloned product. At any rate, if you could manufacture a few dozen of those, I believe that would put you in an elite club of 3 or 4 people who have manufactured and sold motorized bicycle engine and drive train parts over the years.

To my recollection none of them have maintained a profit for more than a year or two because of cloning. If you could sell your product and remain competitive after your product is cloned, wow, that would be something no one else has done.
 
Sounds like it'd work, gets me thinking about a small water pump mounted the same way to have water cooling but that would require a simple hydraulic circuit with a bypass for excess pressure and a valve that opens once reaching the desired temperature.

If I were going to go with a water pump drive, I think I would swap to driving off of the bevel gear on the other side. The space in front of the motor and the bevel gear has room, and the front cover could be modified and opened up to allow another gear on a pump to mesh with it.
 
Thank you Moderator ImpulseRocket for sharing your idea. That was an insightful answer to the topic of this thread. I believe it would take work, time and money for materials to manufacture the left side cover with bearing, the new nut/shaft, impeller, air box housing with duct and time for measuring and figuring so it works and fits good.

Wow, I'm thinking at 6,000 engine rpm your impeller would be spinning at 100 times per second, that should be adequate cooling for riding one or two hours non stop. Am I right about that? I think initially it would make money until your very good idea would be cloned.

Maybe your contraption that you call a 3d printer will enable you to remain competitive with businesses that sell the cloned product. At any rate, if you could manufacture a few dozen of those, I believe that would put you in an elite club of 3 or 4 people who have manufactured and sold motorized bicycle engine and drive train parts over the years.

To my recollection none of them have maintained a profit for more than a year or two because of cloning. If you could sell your product and remain competitive after your product is cloned, wow, that would be something no one else has done.
Oh, I never wanted to do the idea for money. It's a neat idea for sure, and if I ever came up with an effective design I would have to file a patent, which would cost me money. All for an idea that, if we are honest, has a lot of flaws and potential failure points.

As for the airflow output of the impeller. It wouldn't be a very big one, maybe 3 inches in diameter, so it wouldn't be putting out large volumes of air. If the design is good enough it could at least allow an engine at idle or low speeds to stop from reaching critical temps. Since the RPM range it would need to spin is known, however, that also means the impeller could be designed to work more efficiently at low speeds to try and make up for it's lack of diameter. Or, the cover could be re-shaped to allow for a larger diameter to be placed.

My main goal was to try and prevent adding too much width to the engine while also providing sufficient airflow. Tricky engineering challenges, and one reason I am trying to get decent at solid works, because it has simulation capabilities to test different designs.

The idea to drive a fan on the clutch side like shown in the OP would allow a bigger fan for more airflow, but being driven by the clutch also means the fan will be turning 1/4 of the rpm of the engine thanks to the 4.1:1 gear reduction.

Between the two design ideas in the thread means that at a 2000rpm idle you would have either a 3 inch impeller turning 2000rpm, or a 4-5ish inch impeller turning 500 rpm. That means the impeller design driven off the clutch side would have to heavily favor airflow at low speed, which tends to mean larger and very aggressive impeller blades to move a lot of air.

All of that aside, there are other problems to overcome. Chief among which is the duct side of things. Each one would have to be specific the the type of cylinder being used as they are all shaped a bit differently. Especially true when it comes to the heads. Some head designs would also require the head to be installed sideways in order to function.
 
I wonder if you could use a 50cc water cooled dirt bike cylinder and do what ImpulseRocket was talking about with a water pump off the beveled gear.
 
water cooled KTM 65cc on a bicycle
DSCF9284.JPG


 
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