Concept Bikes & Bike Innovation - for better or worse

http://nubikemfg.com/
Apparently this is the first major improvement in biek concept in over 100 years!

also apparantly makes the weather much hotter for women than for men..
what a bunch of knobs.

Well that look massively inefficient. What about the 'upstroke' you get on a conventional round chainset?

What's even stranger is the picture on the 'Product' page with a bloke riding the bike whilst two women jog next to him?

the first major improvement in biek concept in over 100 years!

It's actually the same concept as used on some ordinaries to permit higher gearing than the rider's leg length would otherwise allow, as well as other kinds of treadle driven cycles.

What about the 'upstroke'

Nobody actually pulls on the up stroke beyond about 40rpm, but treadle cycles are perfectly capable of turning upward pedal force into crank torque.

Treadles predate attaching the pedals directly to the cranks, partly for layout reasons before chains became available and I suspect partly because former locomotive engineers going into bike design thought of the legs as analogues of the pistons.

There are good reasons why attempts to improve on rotary pedals and roller chain drive have now resisted all attempts at usurpation for about 130 years.

The voiceover on this video sounds like Captain Disillusion (which is a great YouTube hole to fall down by the way).

True!
Classic example of engineers who do not ride bikes who thinks they have come up with a better solution and crappy marketing material.

Nicely put, that's basically what I thought when I took a look at it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itqc1mMlp_k

Spinergy Rev-X, hold my beer

Ooh that sound when he drops it off the curb 👌

I’m going to go with no, one $50 piece of cyclist equipment can’t REALLY improve your safety on the road

https://cyclistking.com/collections/all/products/signalvest

1 Attachment

FSA!

This junk gets "invented" every few years. The Alenax was the most well-known, but I bet Kickstarter has a few variations in the graveyard.

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/brandt/alenax.html

(Slightly off topic)

Bikeworks was about to launch Ride Side by Side to take people on trips on side by side cycles.
https://www.bikeworks.org.uk/what-is-ride-side-by-side

This was pulled for obvious reasons. Then we saw this idea (PDF) to separate people with a screen

We'd like to find a fabrication company in London/UK who could use this to make some so we can roll out the project. People isolated could get cycling if we can sort this.

Clamp is a standard design (e.g. https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/tube-clamps/4141509/ - £9 for a pack of 5 @ 38mm diameter)
Bespoke sheet metalwork - I've had some decent results from https://fractory.com/ but you'd need to have the CAD data

Hope this helps, PM me if you need more info or wish to discuss further

Will do thanks!

Burrows on Prolly: https://theradavist.com/2020/08/britains-fastest-self-powered-human-mike-burrows/

Hot take: Burrows is a stuck-up grumpy old fart. As a bike designer he's a failure because he refuses to compromise, and as a human he's exceedingly arrogant. Who cares how brilliant you are at sculpting a monoblade if you lack the humility to live in the real world.

Can't really see how you reached those conclusions.

I think his greatest success is his hair, so jealous.

As a bike designer he's a failure

Depends a bit on what you mean by "bike designer". I can see how his tendency to allow the best to become the enemy of the good could be annoying when it comes to making a commercial product, but the prototypes have been successful in their own terms and influential.

There's a link to a YouTube video over in the framebuilders thread with a circa 30 min interview with Burrows. The Giant TCR must be seen as a success? But I agree that he comes of as bit harsh in some aspects

Same here. He's up there with Rick Rubin