Next week and weekend

Next week I should have a packet with some of the items i need to be able to build a mockup of a streamliners basic lines. It would tell a huge amount of information about the whole project, it's measures, my pedaling position and I really get the first feeling of the vehicle. Up to now, everything has been pretty much just an image of the concept, but soon that all will be put into some form. So the next few weeks are really, really interesting.

Until then I'v put my effort into training, this weekend was exceptionally hard. We had a coach from Denmark to put our physical abilities under a test. 16 hours of training, theory, all technical stuff and finally a brutal strenght torture..

Low steering..

Front suspension, well I'v seen them a lot, but not like this. This is a idea that came from center pivot suspension. But instead of using center pivot hub I made one idea of using regular hub and using linear arms to replace the regular fork. This setup would be more sturdy, but because of many joints and bearings, definately will be more heavy, but what ever we wish to accomplish, ther's an idea behind it.

Few words about the design, hub is joined into arms by 4 bearings, and the arms are joined into control arms by aother set of bearings, control arm is joined into frame by bearings. The result is that when the arms are moved back, the other one moves forward, hub turns into desired direction and there we have a steering. I could say this is a low side steering or arm-steering.

Offcourse when upside fork is removed, we loose the upper frame where we can attach the transmission, but instead of putting it into above the wheel, in this idea the transmission is below the wheel, actually on side of the wheel.

Actually Im not sure is this any where good way to build a steering, but one advantage is that it is slim, very low in construction, but probably the heavy side because of the bearings and arms, at least its more heavy than regular upright fork.

Model is very simple, just to test the idea and see what is there to go wrong, and without testing, hard to say anything more about it.

Adjustable cranks

Carbon cranks with adjustment from 150mm up to 180mm. Q factor is 135mm, but easily adjusted by lenght of the spindle. BB is with no threads, and oversized for strenght. Spindle is hollow titanium tube. Spider is integrated. Chainring is with 130mm spacing. Weigh is 1000g including spindle, cranks and chainring, but it's still a solid object so weigh should come down when putting this together in real.

Why?, The reason is obvious, components with decent qualities aren't available, qualities such as lenght, weight, Q-factor, BB's etc. are not packed in one killer-product package, you should have 3-4 cranks, and combine those into one. Thats what is done in here. Adjustable lenght, sturdy BB, simple design, custom narrow, aero.

The cause is the world of standards where bikeworld stands, this is my little tiny snap into it's anxiousness to keep oldish axioms no matter how bad they are in modern standards point of view. Good example is the BB. The thread size and the shell radius is from the age when Adam met Eve. The shell and it's components were good for the use at that time, but today where DH, sick jumps and rude bashing is the use where bikes and it's components are put, shell is ridicilously underbuilt as is the bearings. Even that ISIS is great as a crank attachement, it lacks in BB, bearing balls are smaller than a head of the needle..
ISIS-Overdrive would be a perfect combination of strenght and easyness, sealed concept in a modern size.. but it lacks the support from the market, there are no bikes out there to use the standard, thatway ISIS-OD BB's are not widely available, if not at all. Dynamic bike world, where the wheel is allmost reinvented every year, some things never change.




I ran an FEA analysis to this part, material was 6061 aluminium.

Week off

So, to be short this time, being sick all week, really did't have too much effort to put into the project. But I managed to order my first components, also had some conversation about one another project I should go thru, so lots of stuff going on in here. And also made a really unique front wheel drive/steering system which might appear into these pages after i finish the idea in some level.
Next thing is to build a mockup with the components I'm having and also make some more designs.

-LRPilot

24" front disc wheel

Since I have long legs (95cm inseam) I'd like to go with bigger front wheel too, front wheel is normally 20", but since my physical size accepts bigger wheels, I'd rather go with better rolling wheels than leave that advantage unused.

Many tests have shown and also practise, that the most aerodynamic wheel is a disc. On upright bike TT races, tens of seconds can be won with discs, and comparing the other things you CAN do to decrease your air resistance, is the helmet, frame, suit, shoes etc, minor things. But since we are not making upright bike here, helmet and suit is irrelevant issue.

No question wheel aerodynamics is important issue, so lets buy an aero disc ...ok..what are we talking about? Let's first see the requirements we have. Let's assume that the regular 8-10 cassette is too wide and you keep banging your leg into it causing driving to be impossible, whats our next step? narrow the hub and make it single speed. How about disc brakes you want to use? no problem.. ok..we might find something to cover our requirements so far, but when we add one thing, 24" size, we have no options left. Even that world seems to be full of bike components and all the variations you might think of, thats hardly so. Bike world stands on standards and compatibility. Also the usage limits the manufacturing, why build something what is not needed? But when we are buiding radical vehicle for radical usage, should we stick with the standard products?, in some items we should, but when there is not what we need? Thats why, lets create unique designs to perfectly suit to our purpose. Here is my few hours of work, and here are the specs so far:

Disc:
Size: 24"
Tyre: tubular 24" x 1"
construction: Carbon on honeycomb

hub:
construction: aluminium, thread-on freewheel, double-flange design, 6 bolt IS mount
bearings: double SKF 6000
freewheel: White Industries ENO, 1.37 x 24 tpi
weight: 260g inc bearings, (exc. axel & freewheel)
width: 60mm (exc. freewheel)
axle: 10mm

Offcourse this would mean that the gearing must be elsewhere, but it's to be seen later..
Also put some colourfull graphics to tease the imagination, text is just what came to my mind at first..

moving into 3D

Exiting moment, shape actually got it's depth in 3D, and you can turn it around and actually see it in real, if you have a good imagination...

Lots of stuff can be seen in this early 3d-model. Pedal box in 3d, wow! I can guarantee that it's tight allright..
Also the overall shape from every direction can be seen. Back section actually was pretty difficult to adjust, shoulder width and very quick shape transformation into very thin tale made the mid-section wider because of the smooth curves I tried to achieve along the lenght, pretty much unexpected situation, but it gave more room for legs to move and the airflow is better now than in my model I made without the aid of 3D. So I think 3D saved a lot in here..



Wireframe-model, not telling much about the design as a picture.. but its there, hiding somewhere inside the messy chaos..

"LS"-project, what's that?

Perhaps many of us would think that this all is just putting ready made pieces together and building, but that's just the top of the project. In order to make things happen, you need a plan to stick with, you need to think, sketch, find out, sketch again, and at the same time keep yourself in a shape by doing hourly exercises, well back to where things start.

To be able to make things right at the first without endless iteration rounds, and costly material expences, you need to start from the scratch with no assumptions with no thoughts like, "yeah, I just do something and everything turns good, I think..", WRONG ! Streamliners are like individuals, unique designs made for one person only, the driver. What is good for someone, isn't necessary good for someone else, thats where you need sister-projects. But I found out that before you can start building your sister project I introduced few days back, I need "little sister"-project, which makes sure that sister project will be a success and I don't need to rip it apart because of some stupid mistake I forgot. So that is why I will do this, lets say "LS"-project before "S"-project.

LS-project is a first geometry construction where driver is planted into a machine and its geometry. In LS-project you make your first study of crank setup, seating position, seating angle, crank height, crank distance, your FOV and height and lenght study. When all these are, lets say, in some form, you need to confirm your decisions. Because the streamliner is a faired bike, you need to keep that in mind in every point of the project. No matter if you have the perfect seat and crank setup, you cant be sure if that is rational what comes to fairing. If your cranks stick out from the smooth line of fairing, what do you do? move cranks, or make fairing bigger? what if perfect crank and seat height will block your FOV (field of view)? what do you do, and with what costs?, do you loose your perfect crank position or do you loose your slick shape, which one is less worst? Anyone ever heard the word 'compromise'? xD

To avoid the worst, fairing and its design must be kept in mind all the time. When you have your crank and seat in place in this 'LS'-project, you need to determine the fairing aswell in this very early state. First things first, you need to determine your pedal box by rotating your pedals and making notes of your cranking.
I'v done several sketches and measurements of my feet and my pedal-box, but nothing beats the real world modeling.

Below is my LS-project. Actually it's a jig where everything can be adjusted to find the correct geometry. Once you have your pieces in place, you need to measure your pedal box and all the space you need to have inside the fairing. When having those measurements, you need to transform these measures into 3D world to be able to make a 3d-model sketch out of it, but that is just the half of the "LS"-projects story..

Wrap around

Wild sketching for fun. In my last post I introduced my first lowracer concept, I decided to play slightly further by wrapping it with a fairing and here is a result, 'lowliner', lol. It's a little bit different than previous sketch models, it's shorter and lower, and so unready, but I was in a creative mood, it's made to look like a mean mile eater machine :D

Lowracer concept - first appearance

'Sister-project' I would say, but to be able to make decisions, I need a good platform to test particulary driving position, which is the most critical and also unknown, how else you could ride hours unless you feel comfortable. However, these bikes are not ment to replace your livingroom sofa, but if you make a critical error in your positioning, you may not be able to pedal properly or get a good breathing. Also to driveability and manoeuvrability is very important to test, and does it have some bad habits. The design is different when it's a lowracer and not a streamliner, but at least you can have a hint of the future what's head of us. That is the meaning of the lowracer concept.

There is one thing that might look odd, it's mainly because the construction is different what it would be in a monococue streamliner, but the ground clearance is very low mainly because of the main tubing under the seat. The seating height represents the height what it would be in a monococue construction, you literally 'sit on the bottom', so that is where you need to sit in this lowracer.
Steering is something you can't deside before you have something you can fit yourself in, so that will be a matter of experimenting and it is left out at this point. Three different ways are possible, downbar, upbar or sidebar. Sidebar and 'side-steering' sounds complicated and strange.., but I feel I will give it a try :)

The height of the construction is very important, if you want to make it look like a typical lowracer, it would be much "flatter" , driver laying more in his back than sitting upwards, but streamliner is a vehicle of compromises. More upwards it means shorter lenght, better view, bigger overall height. Laying down means longer bike, low view, perhaps heavier bike. As we know now, pedal-box is the critical and most guiding issue in a liner where everything must fit inside the fairing and still make a good aerodynamics. So if you have a big pedal box like I have (big feet, long cranks), it's pointless to make a long vehicle because it also needs to be quite high. So before you think that more lower the better, maybe, but not in all cases.

Here we have a sketch of the lowracer design.

Narrow bottom bracket

Earlier I introduced you a narrowed ISIS spindle, but now here is a narrow bottom bracket construction which uses that spindle. While narrowing spindle just about 2 centimeters, I was able to lower my Q-value down to 115mm in my crank setup i introduced some time ago.

Why narrow? The width and the height of the streamliner fairing is mostly determined by the pedal box, which is cranks, BB, and your shoes rotating in a path of your pedal stroke. If we shorten cranks and narrow our BB the pedal box comes smaller and it fits into smaller space and we can make the front section smaller in our fairing.
When narrow is good, it has its own disadvantages. If the pedals are too close to eachothers, ther's very little space for steering, and taking corners has to be with big radius, otherways you may end up rubbing your cranks with your front wheel. So again, it's a balance between the shape and the usableness.

Why ISIS? ISIS-standard is a double edge sword, it's strong, and its weak. I would't blame the priciple itself, the spindle and the overall design is good with 10 tapered grooves, but the weakness lies in old shell standard which defines the space where bearings must fit in. That standard is probably 100 years old bottom bracket shell standard which is too small in diameter to fully cover modern requirements where everything must be strong and reliable. Designs and requirements have changed in these years, but the standard stays, which seems to be very odd in these modern days.
So if you wish to apply a strong thick axel, the drawback comes from the bearings. In order to fit bearings inside the shell, they need to be with very small balls, and smaller they get, weaker they are.

In this design, I did not have to go with the old bottom bracket standards, and I was able to adjust the shell size where ever i wished, thantway I maintained two different advantages: ISIS spindle, which is even thicker than the regular ISIS on it's center, and the free shell size which gives me an opportunity to use any bearing size I need.

There are many other standars for BB out there, the newest is BB30 which is a very good design with thick hollow axel and big bearings and the shell is with no threads, so the design is very simple, but for homebuilder they are problematic. If you wish to use BB30 standard in your design and narrow the spindle, you have a heavy task to modify the cranksetup because BB30 crank comes with the integrated axel and it's not removable, so you actually need to machine your crank, and what if something goes wrong..?

This design is probably the narrowest I can imagine to be usable, probably too narrow for the design..

Mid-transmission

Mid-transmission is to lead power from the pedals into a front wheel via a double chained "gearbox", and at the same time it channels chainline from above the front wheel and again to center of the front wheel into gear cassette. Construction consists of double bearings and highly lightened aluminium gears, addition to this, bigger gear is reinforced with carbon sidepanels. All is kept smooth with no openings, with no extra cavity to keep air drag at minimum. It's a long shot, but everything is based on small things, lets say that this is the "small thing" here ;).
Weight without bolts and axel is 160 grams. If the speed range of the bike must be changed during a competition day to desired range, the bigger gear is quickly replaced by opening the 6 bolts and pulling it out by hand, no tools are required and the chainline is untouched.
It's obvious that construction takes a lot of force into itself, so it's again a balance between strenght and weight. But as the strenght and credibility is very important on a racing bike which is attended to eat miles as fast as possible and taking few nasty bumbs and hits while doing so, I wouldn't risk it for a few tens of grams. Loose spinning gear inside your closed cabin would be a unpleasant surprize..

One teeny-weeny detail must take into account, how close to the gear you will go during your pedaling is still unknown, I would mind hitting my feet into high rpm razorblade ;). This will go around about 4+ times per second at 80 rpm cadence and it's as close as few centimeters away from you!

Picture is a projection from two different sides of one unit and it does not include axel, bolts or any other attachement elements.

Narrow Spindle

Came up the idea that I need a narrow Q-factor cranks and since there are no real options on the market, I went with designing my own. No cutting existing spindles, no welding joints, it's totally new one! This time with ISIS type of splined spindle. With this I'm able to lower my Q-factor down to 115mm with FSA AERO TT cranks which again helps me to narrow my liner. At this point I skip custom crank designing and stick with the ready made ones, but perhaps in the future, (ideas allready bouncing around in my head).. The new spindle is only made shorter while keeping the rest as standard, other parts comes from commercially available BB. Spindle is supposed to be done from titanium alloy (wooo!) and is milled to precision ;), M15 crank bolts would add the weight-wheenie points, but I'd rather stay on the safe side and keep M12 bolts as a standard, nothing beats the strenght! Spindle alone weights 100 grams, and this could be the first narrow ISIS bottom bracket in the world.

Chains and ratios

Time to think what speed I wish to ride on TT, that's why I need to calculate gear ratios. I think that 50km/h is very good top speed, and to make some calculations I end up doing Exel sheet of graphical diagram of how the speed will vary in different ratios. Wheel size, cadense, and all gear teeth's can be added and put into diagram.

A picture how I will put my chain go thru into front wheel is here.




Here we can see a diagram with a candence of 80 rpm. Gear ratios are 12-27, main ring is 44T to keept it small. Still I have to figure out does my feet bang into derailleur, then I have to go with my plan-b.
Speed increment is very linear as they usually are, which is very good. Speed starts from 20km/h to be able to start from launch wheels and topping to 50km/h. Hopefully I need to change gears to suit better to 60km/h ;-)

More shapes !

New fairing sketch is here ! after some brainstorm :D, I went with cranks down to 110mm Q-factor, thatway I managed to narrow the pedal box few centimeters. I also went to 170mm cranks which I'v tested on my road bike 8 years ago. That also made it more narrow and also lower. Lenght also was cut to 260cm because of the rear wheel was moved towards. Front section is also a bit lower to make better view. Iteration will happen in few days again when I get more ideas and get some ideas of the parts I will need. Also tilt angle was increased to 40 degrees to get the corners !

Measurements are:

lenght: 260cm, 102"
height without canopy: 73cm, 29"
width: 49cm, 19"

Cranks..

Next I tried to think what would be the optimum crank setup, and I started to search them online, I would like to pass the old tapered type of BB and go directly to ISIS-type to be more rigid. I found an ultimate crank, FSA TT AERO, and with 108mm BB Q-factor would be 135mm, (and with very low price), but... ISIS type of BB's are not manufactured less than 108mm :(. Odyssey Black Widow Lite Arms are quite nice, but uses a tapered BB.. Suigino RD setup comes with the 103mm BB but is a tapered one :(. I quickly sketched one solution, what's your opinion about a crank setup of this:



Dont know are these available anywhere, but would be easily made and relatively sturdy. In some old upright bikes these were used, say years back..
Big plus would be the chance to deside the width to your specs very easily. This is not a splined one, which seems to be available with the same concept, but very hard to make yourself. If someone could offer a splined ISIS BB with different widths, that would save a day or two..

Found also very good site about BB's and cranks:
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/bbsize.html


These cranks are quite nice and narrow, Q-factor is 135mm with 108mm BB. Weight is 600grams + BB (~200grams), ISIS center, lenghts from 170 - 180mm.

The very beginning

First sketch is here, just the very beginning, It's a streamliner !

Intention is to go fast long races of up to 6+ hours. Shell is monocoque, front wheel drive, partially clear bubble for view, disc wheels, "launch wheels", liner can be operated by the rider alone. It should handle well in turns, tilt angle is kept in 40 degrees, turn radius is to be defined later..

The concept is obviously based on some previous existing models, but this is bigger than most to fit myself inside. Pedal box is very large, it's been made for 180 crank lenght !!! I'm planning to make it more narrow with custom BB so I'm able to make fairing a bit lower/narrow. But need to finish the sketch first and make a cardboard model from those critical areas to see how my legs will fit to turn those huge cranks (shorter cranks are offcoure possible).
Front part looks too fat, I need to tune that.. :)

Measurements:
Height with canopy: 37"
Lenght : 114"
Width : 19"
Rider : 6'6", 192lbs

Click the picture to see it bigger. Comments are welcome!!