Dan, thanks for the comment. It was heartbreaking for sure. It was pulling like a freight train and I thought it was in the bag. I short shifted to 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, then wound it out for the shift to 5th. Eased out of the throttle, pulled in the clutch, gave a firm tug on the shift lever, let out the clutch as I rolled back into it, expecting to feel the familiar forward thrust, and there was nothing. No noises, no smoke, no nothing, it was like I hit the kill switch. The pinion side of the crank broke clean off. Gotta go back and rethink a few things in the plan.
Scott, it's really hard to argue the boosted and fuel numbers. VE is no longer the limiting factor when you go that way and it becomes an exercise in keeping it together rather than making the power. Or rather, the two become very interrelated, i.e. you've got to figure out how to get the most out of the motor with an acceptable level of reliability. And "acceptable" is subjective, as well as wallet-driven.
On gas & normally aspirated though, it's not so hard to figure out. I think you can make pretty reasonable estimates of hp per ci. XR750's are at about 2.0. It gets harder as the motor gets bigger though and 1.5 per ci is doing pretty good at the bigger sizes. I'm talking Dynojet rwhp numbers here. And of course pushrod twins.
We all know about what hp it takes to break 200 with a good fairing, and the power needed to get to any other speed is easily calculated from that using the cubed relationship between hp required and speed.
I have many many thoughts on the subject beyond all this but I'm reluctant to post them here, for a variety of reasons. I'd like to address more of the things you brought up. Are you going to World Finals? Maybe we could sit down and talk in the evening. I'll buy you dinner.
I appreciate the size of the problem you're faced with. It seems daunting given the number of variables in terms of motor sizes, streamlining, fuels, forced induction, etc.
It almost seems like a person could come up with a mathematical formula to do it. Come up with a correction factor for each of the variables, and the motor/power affecting variables would need to be included in a fashion that reflects the cubed relationship. It could be done. Then the subjectivity of the whole thing would be reduced to the number of correction factors (one for each variable), instead of spreading the problem out over a couple thousand classes. You'd just publish a formula and some constants to plug into it.
