You are reading a single comment by @gbj_tester and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@gbj_tester
ftfy
I think if you took your head out of your arse, you'd see that I've been quite restrained in the matter of piss taking. I thought I had the whole thing covered with "Very interesting...but stupid", and I suppose it's no skin off my nose if you pursue the delusion that you've achieved any more than that.
It's no surprise to anybody who has made even a cursory examination of single track vehicle dynamics that you've made something ridable, since the feedback mechanism of human pilots maintaining and directing the course of a bicycle is already highly attuned to various kinds of inherent instability.
Your proposition that finding a way to have all of the tubes of a cycle frame lie in a single plane is some kind of advance is where you fall down. For almost any imaginable scheme of manufacture, there is almost no cost saving in simplifying the main frame jig, and what there is is more than offset by the jigging and manufacturing complexity of the single sided wheel mounts. There is no structural advantage - supporting the wheels on both sides is very efficient in use of material, and to do otherwise results in heavier or weaker structures. There is no advantage in systems integration - you haven't even managed to get brakes on it yet, and most practical bicycles need some form of variable gearing. Both issues have been successfully tackled in single sided designs, but rarely in an elegant way. You also haven't properly solved the problem of having the crankshaft not parallel with the final drive axis - I have made a serious and, I hope, helpful suggestion in this regard, but others are available. On your 'proof of concept' build, twisting a standard roller chain is acceptable, but the accelerated wear on drive train components and increased friction will not be acceptable on a finished design.
In short, it is interesting that you have chosen to prove in metal what the rest of us would simply have accepted as the probable outcome after only a few moments of consideration, but it is stupid that you think you have made a useful advance in the field of bicycle design.