Redesigning the Bicycle
This project began a thousand miles from home at that sentimental moment on a long bicycle tour when it was time to turn around, time for the long journey back to “normal” life, somehow to make a better world, somehow it seemed with bicycles.
Melt it all down and there are only a few things that matter to riding a bike a long way, one is comfort, another is efficiency and the last is the aesthetic.
The aesthetic is the bicycle is being ridden, from utility transport to Tour TT machine, it’s why people use and appreciate the machine for its simplicity, but it’s also high-tech with all the specialty riding of today in between, places and ways to ride and the machines built for each.
The efficiency is usually broken down into weights, transmissions and aerodynamic drag.
- Weights are all-up-weight or rotating ones like wheels adding inertial affects to consider.
- Transmissions normally are assumed to be chain-to-gearing with shifters. Having stumbled into fluid drives from the idea of shifting less, if at all, which became a drawing in 1988, and then over a decade later having a utility patent on using drag to transmit power, this not ultimately as efficient as chain-drive but offering a real versatility in what they can do. For example, fluid drives can be made to start in low for kids, or as a full-automatic where the rider never has to shift at all, a beach cruiser that can climb a hill without the rider having to walk.
Figure 1: Early Drawing of a fluid drive using a cable to "shift".
Fluid drives for racing are designed as hybrid cassettes with limited slip to reduce shifting but not enough slip to waste too much energy to heat, a major concern. These are hot ticket items and will compete with standard cassettes on price because they deliver on performance in such sports as cyclocross and downhill, where either the mud has packed out your gears so you can’t shift at all, or you don’t want to think about shifting as a distraction might mean a crash.
Riding fluid drives for distance or commuting, all of the hybrids have static gears for climbing hills where a fluid drive isn’t very efficient, and none for the two smallest cogs where there’s no room for an fluid section below them. Theses hybrids, a combo of static gears and semi-automatic gears in between reduce the amount of shifting a lot, but also can be easily tuned by the riders for a particular race course by adjusting viscosity.
Fluid drives are made to be replacements for anything from standard cassettes to 5-speed freewheels and single-speeds. Fluid drives have no gears so are relatively inexpensive to make and can compete on price with gearing. This will appeal to a lot of riders that don’t like to shift, or can’t shift, and like many drivers, many cyclists don’t want to “drive a stick shift” on a bicycle.
One thing leads to another, the next thing was a rear wheel that takes a lot less time to change for racing cyclists since the average for a pro mechanic is 6-8-seconds for a rear wheel. This setup will take less than two seconds. Then, after getting a feasible design on paper for a fast-change front wheel system, it really gets obvious how much the bicycle has lingered in the tradition, not able to break out of its use of old ideas.
An Improved Geometry for BicyclesEverything must begin with the frame. At the time I was doodling with the first ideas about transmissions I was also doodling with frame geometry. On one sheet of graph paper I put down about 7 frame designs that were more aerodynamic than a standard diamond frame, not a difficult thing to do.
One basic design I liked most was a simple change to the diamond frame, and that’s to move the downtube above the front derailleur area. That’s it, the only change made to the frame and this reduces the overall drag so much it’s pretty close to a fancy TT frame in the wind tunnel. Cheap thrills, but it also looked to be tunable to a softer ride by playing with the seattube wall thickness and things like that.
The inspiration from my touring and distance riding is for a more efficient and comfortable frame for long rides, it’s my want as a cyclist without regard to any rule. I want it to be the most efficient for the bucks to ride a 300-miler as fast as possible, or, like I did once before, to try for a high daily total motel-to-motel tour unsupported on a road bike, a most awesome way to travel.
Moving the downtube violates the UCI rule but makes total sense to try for a more comfy efficient geometry that also has a lot less drag in the wind. Much of the shock on the downtube is transmitted to the seattube nearly at right angles so dissipates what normally travels around the frame, adding a touch more flex to the ride that’s noticed by the rider as more comfortable on rough roads.
Two major improvements, comfort and reduced drag, in one move of one structural piece from the diamond standard.
The only reason to not do this is weight. If you add so much more that you give away some climbing speed, forget it, but in this case all that’s needed is a new lug at the joint, shortening the downtube a bit so it’s a bit lighter, and the bottom bracket loses a bit of lug weight so it’s not enough to worry about vs the improvement in reduced drag for distance riding.
So, what is happening from all these long-term tries at improving the bicycle is that they are coming together to create a whole new class of machine that’s close to a slick as a TT or Tri frame in the wind tunnel and can be made by any framebuilder out of classic steel tubing in the traditional way.
The concept is to use steel to prove the geometry, not expensive composites. It’s the placement of pieces that matters to the wind most, after that you can improve the cross-section from circular to oval or teardrop in increasing efficiency.
Then add a wheelset that is really fast and easy to change wheels into the frame.
What I see now in the drawings is a new standard bicycle, similar to the diamond frame enough to not look too much changed but overtly better in a wind tunnel and more comfortable to ride, perfect for a favorite epic ride, a “Triple Pass” circuit from Seattle-to-Seattle over three mountain passes, 256 miles, never beat 20-hours, always under 23 hours. With the new design may go under 19-hours, get over the last pass before sunset!
A Lotus frame is more astute but too radical so easily dismissed as not “standard”. However, this geometry is simple to make for the average framebuilder, the form is similar to polo bikes that had the downtube moved to swing a mallet between the cranks and front wheel, so isn’t unknown, most of these were like UK, late 1960’s.
As a designer I’m looking for improvement on every part of the machine, keeping the geometry of the frame simple and effective is where you start.
Now, looking back, every part of the bicycle has been changed with aerodynamics, ease-of-use and comfort as the priorities, built on the tradition and going beyond that when needed.
It’s a new look, similar enough to the old diamond to see its lineage, but it’s a step ahead in every way. There’s a lot of detailing work yet to be done on this, but it’s to where the whole thing is a coherent machine now, all the parts building a fast, fun and comfortable bike for going to distant places, seeing the planet from pedal level ... you stop at the shady, damp gully between long stretches of desert, to blasting down a hill on a big sweeper 270° turn at 40-mph, payback for the climb.
