Curious Components - Engineering Extravaganza

Dredge, but would love to know more about these.

Ive been riding around on these. Power pedals although nothing to do with measuring watts. Instead they only ratchet in one direction so as soon as you attempt to backpedal your legs lock. Proper lethal too in situations like stopping and putting a foot down and similar to using single sided pedal fixed gear. The idea was that they allow you to pull up on the pedals more convincingly - it may or may not have any merit but a 70 mile ride using them was fairly knackering. Theyre made of magnesium/titanium and have really nice bearings in them but are not lightweight and the cleat design is stupid - the front edge releases rather than the rear ie 90 odd percent of pedal designs out there. This leads to rather an uncomfortable rotation of the foot - heel inwards to release and pivoting the toes down to clip in.

Bit of late response but I love those forks!

Interloc Racing Design Switchback brakes on a Fat City box crown fork. Fiddly but nice.

https://www.atob.org.uk/pantour-suspension-hub/

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This dredged up a memory from the WizzAir in flight magazine:

https://www.stringbike.com/stringbike_bike_eline.html

No idea how or why though, and couldn't find an animation or video of it in action!

https://www.stringbike.com/_img/magic-stringdrive-01.gif

I’ve got none of these! came on a Brompton I bought. Really weird to ride… interesting concept though

Oh this is amazing! Thank you for sharing I am going to have a read!

Pantour hubs had durability issues. From vague memory, excessive bearing wear and splitting suspension elastomers. Replacement elastomers are rare.

Mind you, I have not owned a Pantour hub.

Who would've predicted sticking some boingy plastic into a bike hub wouldn't be durable...

Supre drive!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyqWMJieMOo&t=88s

so cool

Tipping this MTB drivetrain rethink will stick; it makes total sense.

Similar to the Brooklyn Machine Works system.

Stumbled upon one of these in the local classifieds a while ago.
The SRAM Truvativ HammerSchmidt 2 Speed Crankarms. They have a built-in planetary gear that can be engaged or disengaged for a neutral 1:1 or a 1.6 x ratio. Chain length and chain length remain the same so you could even ride it on an SSMTB I guess.

Some Reading here and here. And a very enthusiastic video from some bike fair in 2008(?)

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Why the extra gears though? Couldn't they do a similar thing without all the extra gubbins up front?

Ah, the suspension setup. So perhaps you could do a hardtail with a similar hidden RD but lose some of the extra gears up front for weight and drivetrain efficiency.

Another classifieds find. Something I didn't know existed.
Shimano Airlines - A pneumatic 1x7 Downhill groupset by Shimano. Powered by air pressure stored in a canister in your bottle cage and good for up to 400 shifts before you have to pump it up.

One NOS set for sale in Austria

Bikeradar: Screw Di2, I want Shimano Airlines!

Shimano

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From the link in the article:

I saw these recently. On here or... hmm..

There's also a cheaper one (incredibly poorly listed) for sale in Switzerland

Haha, cheers! Not really looking to buy them. Just felt like it belongs here.

LandRider Auto Shift - An automatic derailleur using flyweights and centrifugal force to move the derailleur cage outwards to shift into a higher gear when cycling at a faster pace.

More on Disraeli Gears and in this GCN video
.

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Completely forgot about these

Just stumbled upon Bike Drive cranks. Seems like they had a similar idea to those Rotor Cranks @PhilDAS posted a while back. They just made them look a bit more steam-punky with external springs and focused on the MTB market. Couldn't find that much info and most of it was in German. So I assume it was a failed German engineering startup? Not sure about that tbh.
The claim was up to 20% more power output but it was also about 25% heavier than regular cranks.

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