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BikeE? (was: So we were drooling over the 09 Kona catalog as I stoppedby the LBS for coffee)
Chalo Colina wrote:
[...] What a non-cyclist considers fun and functional in a bike is likely to prove a whole lot less than fun or functional, to say nothing of reliable, for an actual cyclist. When the industry listens to non- cyclists, we get things like Autobike/Landrider, "Spongy Wonder" seats, BikeEs, and other anti-functional abortions. What is wrong with the BikeE [1] that a few minor tweaks could not have fixed? [1] The bikes that is, not the deceptive advertising nor the way the management handled going out of business. -- Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia “Mary had a little lamb / And when she saw it sicken / She shipped it off to Packingtown / And now it’s labeled chicken.” |
BikeE? (was: So we were drooling over the 09 Kona catalog as Istopped by the LBS for coffee)
Tom Sherman wrote:
Chalo Colina wrote: [...] What a non-cyclist considers fun and functional in a bike is likely to prove a whole lot less than fun or functional, to say nothing of reliable, for an actual cyclist. *When the industry listens to non- cyclists, we get things like Autobike/Landrider, "Spongy Wonder" seats, BikeEs, and other anti-functional abortions. What is wrong with the BikeE [1] that a few minor tweaks could not have fixed? [1] The bikes that is, not the deceptive advertising nor the way the management handled going out of business. Where do you "tweak" a bike that handles like you're trying to ride it backwards? Chalo |
BikeE?
Chalo Colina wrote:
[...] What a non-cyclist considers fun and functional in a bike is likely to prove a whole lot less than fun or functional, to say nothing of reliable, for an actual cyclist. When the industry listens to non- cyclists, we get things like Autobike/Landrider, "Spongy Wonder" seats, BikeEs, and other anti-functional abortions. Tom Sherman wrote: What is wrong with the BikeE [1] that a few minor tweaks could not have fixed? [1] The bikes that is, not the deceptive advertising nor the way the management handled going out of business. Chalo wrote: Where do you "tweak" a bike that handles like you're trying to ride it backwards? I'm no expert but for starts, the usual chaise lounge format is with 2 rails, one on either side, not one down the middle. -- Andrew Muzi www.yellowjersey.org/ Open every day since 1 April, 1971 ** Posted from http://www.teranews.com ** |
BikeE?
Chalo Colina wrote:
Tom Sherman wrote: Chalo Colina wrote: [...] What a non-cyclist considers fun and functional in a bike is likely to prove a whole lot less than fun or functional, to say nothing of reliable, for an actual cyclist. When the industry listens to non- cyclists, we get things like Autobike/Landrider, "Spongy Wonder" seats, BikeEs, and other anti-functional abortions. What is wrong with the BikeE [1] that a few minor tweaks could not have fixed? [1] The bikes that is, not the deceptive advertising nor the way the management handled going out of business. Where do you "tweak" a bike that handles like you're trying to ride it backwards? I found the BikeE (particularly the FX) very easy to ride. The only exception was the E2 tandem, which was very easy to ride solo, but scary with a stoker. I suspect that Chalo's problem with the BikeE was related to being too heavy and tall. The BikeE's were not designed for 99.9999th percentile sized people. -- Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia “Mary had a little lamb / And when she saw it sicken / She shipped it off to Packingtown / And now it’s labeled chicken.” |
BikeE?
"A Muzi" wrote
Chalo wrote: What a non-cyclist considers fun and functional in a bike is likely to prove a whole lot less than fun or functional, to say nothing of reliable, for an actual cyclist. What is an "actual cyclist"? How was BikeE design not reliable? (implementation had its glitches with some recalls for forks and swing arms, etc...) Tom Sherman wrote: What is wrong with the BikeE [1] that a few minor tweaks could not have fixed? Chalo wrote: Where do you "tweak" a bike that handles like you're trying to ride it backwards? I never experienced a feeling of "handles like you're trying to ride it backwards" on my BikeE. Nor did apparently and of the dozens of people from age 7 to 70 who tried mine. All able to ride it within minutes of starting... Of my three recumbents, the BikeE has the best low-speed tight handling characteristics. For me it seems a matter of center of gravity, wheelbase and lack of heel strike... I'm no expert but for starts, the usual chaise lounge format is with 2 rails, one on either side, not one down the middle. The mesh back seat is well proven by bikes from Easy Racers, RANS, etc. Jon |
BikeE?
Jon wrote:
A Muzi wrote Chalo wrote: What a non-cyclist considers fun and functional in a bike is likely to prove a whole lot less than fun or functional, to say nothing of reliable, for an actual cyclist. What is an "actual cyclist"? Someone who actually rides actual bicycles, often and long enough to have a good sense of what a bike actually does. How was BikeE design not reliable? *(implementation had its glitches with some recalls for forks and swing arms, etc...) It is reliable in that you know with absolute certainty that you are completely hosed if your hands leave the grips for a fraction of a second. That much I know from trying to make a BikeE CT my around- town transportation during my first stay in Seattle. Tom Sherman wrote: What is wrong with the BikeE [1] that a few minor tweaks could not have fixed? Chalo wrote: Where do you "tweak" a bike that handles like you're trying to ride it backwards? I never experienced *a feeling of "handles like you're trying to ride it backwards" on my BikeE. *Nor did apparently and of the dozens of people from age 7 to 70 who tried mine. *All able to ride it within minutes of starting... I have built and ridden enough choppers and other improvised vehicles to make a distinction between a bike that _can_ be ridden and a bike that rides well. The BikeE can be ridden. So can these bikes: http://dclxvi.org/chunk/meet/springy/index.html Of my three recumbents, the BikeE has the best low-speed tight handling characteristics. * That pretty much sums it up, doesn't it? "Of my three genital piercings, the Prince Albert is the most comfortable and convenient." Chalo |
BikeE?
Chalo wrote:
It is reliable in that you know with absolute certainty that you are completely hosed if your hands leave the grips for a fraction of a second. That's true of many bicycle designs with no or very limited trail, which includes a lot of recumbents. "Doctor! Doctor! It hurts when I do this!" "Then don't do that." I have built and ridden enough choppers and other improvised vehicles to make a distinction between a bike that _can_ be ridden and a bike that rides well. Differrent people have different ideas of rides well. The Brompton has minimal trail and many riders complain it is twitchy. I like it because I find the steering responsive. One man's meat, etc. That /you/ don't personally like it doesn't make it an objectively bad machine. Of my three recumbents, the BikeE has the best low-speed tight handling characteristics. That pretty much sums it up, doesn't it? "Of my three genital piercings, the Prince Albert is the most comfortable and convenient." Well, no, not really. "Best low speed tight handling" could well mean "star of the show in dense urban traffic". Pete. -- Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK net http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/ |
BikeE?
"Chalo" wrote
Jon wrote: Chalo wrote: to say nothing of reliable, for an actual cyclist. What is an "actual cyclist"? Someone who actually rides actual bicycles, often and long enough to have a good sense of what a bike actually does. How about more than 15,000 miles of recumbent cycling? Is that an actual cyclist? But you tell me, what does a bike "actually do"? How was BikeE design not reliable? (implementation had its glitches with some recalls for forks and swing arms, etc...) It is reliable in that you know with absolute certainty that you are completely hosed if your hands leave the grips for a fraction of a second. How come my son and wife, and many other riders have fallen for exactly that reason on while riding upright bikes? That much I know from trying to make a BikeE CT my around- town transportation during my first stay in Seattle. I'm certainly willing to believe that for some people, perhaps many, for some applications, a BikeE CT wouldn't be the best bike. All bicycle designs represent compromises. Are there upright bike designs better suited for self supported touring than others? Are there upright bike designs better suited for gravel roads or muddy trails than others? Where do you "tweak" a bike that handles like you're trying to ride it backwards? I never experienced a feeling of "handles like you're trying to ride it backwards" on my BikeE. Again you offer no meainingful support for the assertion that the BikeE "handles like you're trying to ride it backwards". If there were true, how is that so many people found it so easy to ride mine the first time without any problems? distinction between a bike that _can_ be ridden and a bike that rides well. The BikeE has different handling characteristics than an upright bike. I can and did ride it well for a number of years as my only bike. And I still do ride mine. For a jump on and go bicycle, for short errands, 4-5 miles, it's hard to beat. For self-supported touring, it's not my first choice, my Tour Easy is. For 60 mile hilly rides, the BikeE is not my first choice, my Voale is. But I did self-supported weekend tours with my BikeE and I road it on many long rides with upright riding friends. The BikeE can be ridden. So can these bikes: http://dclxvi.org/chunk/meet/springy/index.html Ok, so now I know you're not serious. Of my three recumbents, the BikeE has the best low-speed tight handling characteristics. That pretty much sums it up, doesn't it? "Of my three genital piercings, the Prince Albert is the most comfortable and convenient." Once again, a demonstration of your intent to avoid actual discussion. You assert the BikeE is an unqualified failed design inspired by non-cyclists, but the only substantiation you can offer is that the BikeE cannot be ridden hands free? Come on. I *like* the BikeE and I can make better design criticisms than that! Nothing, however, that makes it not fun, not functional, or not reliable, though. Jon |
BikeE?
Jon wrote:
Chalo wrote: Jon wrote: Chalowrote: to say nothing of reliable, for an actual cyclist. What is an "actual cyclist"? Someone who actually rides actual bicycles, often and long enough to have a good sense of what a bike actually does. How about more than 15,000 miles of recumbent cycling? Is that an actual cyclist? No, it's a recumbent cyclist. Just like riding a unicycle 15,000 miles would not give someone much of an appreciation of the handling qualities of a bicycle, riding a 'bent doesn't by itself give the rider a sense of the capabilities and characteristics of a normal bicycle. 'Bents seem to be in a state of development comparable to where normal bicycles were in the 1870s-- there is no real consensus as to the best configuration for a 'bent, and nobody has yet succeeded in making one that clearly demonstrates the inferiority of other basic designs. Enough time has gone by that the evidence now suggests a two-wheeled 'bent cannot be made as stable, maneuverable, consistent, or precise- handling as the average normal bike. But you tell me, what does a bike "actually do"? In the context I originally used that phrase, it was tautological. A bike actually does what a bike actually does, which a non-cyclist doesn't understand because he or she does not ride. When folks who don't ride set out to design "solutions" to a bike's "problems", their designs are often nonsensical and usually create new real problems. In the context you an I are now discussing, a normal bike actually does some things a 'bent does not. A normal bike, in its design speed range, automatically does a lot of the work of balancing itself and its rider without active input on the part of the rider. When 'bent riders (whose bikes don't do this work) design new bikes, the new bikes inevitably lack this important self-stabilizing quality which constitutes the main reason a conventional bicycle layout is conventional. How was BikeE design not reliable? (implementation had its glitches with some recalls for forks and swing arms, etc...) It is reliable in that you know with absolute certainty that you are completely hosed if your hands leave the grips for a fraction of a second. How come my son and wife, and many other riders have fallen for exactly that reason on while riding upright bikes? Clumsiness? Bad bike design? Fork mounted backwards? Who's to say? *That much I know from trying to make a BikeE CT my around- town transportation during my first stay in Seattle. I'm certainly willing to believe that for some people, perhaps many, for some applications, a BikeE CT wouldn't be the best bike. *All bicycle designs represent compromises. *Are there upright bike designs better suited for self supported touring than others? *Are there upright bike designs better suited for gravel roads or muddy trails than others? Where do you "tweak" a bike that handles like you're trying to ride it backwards? I never experienced a feeling of "handles like you're trying to ride it backwards" on my BikeE. Again you offer no meainingful support for the assertion that the BikeE "handles like you're trying to ride it backwards". The BikeE is violently unstable. Its front end has an intrinsic tendency to whip to the side and dig in at an oblique angle from the direction of travel. If this were allowed to happen at speed, it inevitably would result in a crash. The range of steering angle within which it does not try to flop the front wheel one way or the other is so narrow as to be like balancing on a knife edge. Increasing speed does not have a pronounced stabilizing effect on the BikeE as it usually does on a poorly configured, unstable but otherwise normal bike. Since you may be lacking in recent experience with normal bikes, I'll point out that a well-configured normal bike is self-stabilizing when moving in the forward direction, and self-destabilizing when moving backwards. That is what I mean when I say the BikeE handles like you are trying to ride it backwards. Nowhere in the riding envelope do the bike's intrinsic steering characteristics displace the rider's active intervention in keeping the bike upright. If there were true, how is that so many people found it so easy to ride mine the first time without any problems? I managed to ride a BikeE all over Seattle without crashing it. That is _not_ the same thing as the BikeE being easy to ride. I have ridden this bike I made all over Seattle and elsewhere without crashing it, too-- and anyone who has tried it can tell you it is not a sweet-handling contraption: http://datribean.com/chalo/images/x-plain1.jpg In my opinion, it handles about as well as a BikeE. I think that folks who have inured themselves to the handling deficiencies of recumbent bikes, just like those who have gotten used to chopper bikes, swing bikes, tallbikes, unicycles, etc., tend not to see their preferred machines as ill-handling or lacking in capability. They come to judge their rides of choice by a separate standard, which is appropriate. But judged by empirically observable criteria (time required to learn, turning radius, no-hands capability, dynamic stability, ability to maintain a constant radius through a turn, "stall speed", bump reaction, etc.) there is no real comparison to be made between novelty machines like choppers, unis, and 'bents versus normal, technologically mature bikes of conventional layout. Chalo |
BikeE?
On Fri, 5 Sep 2008 10:05:42 -0700 (PDT), Chalo
wrote: 'Bents seem to be in a state of development comparable to where normal bicycles were in the 1870s-- there is no real consensus as to the best configuration for a 'bent, and nobody has yet succeeded in making one that clearly demonstrates the inferiority of other basic designs. Dear Chalo, That's an interesting comparison. Velocipedes were the first bicycles with pedals. They appeared in the 1860s and looked like huge, clumsy modern bicycles with a crank attached to the front wheel. By the early 1870s, velocipedes had evolved into highwheelers. The front wheel grew larger and larger to provide decent gearing, the rear wheel shrank to allow easy mounting and to save weight, and the seat moved up higher and higher for comfort and leverage, so the rider ended up perched close enough to the front axle to tumble forward on his face if he braked hard or hit a bump. Safety highwheelers were developed at the same time, since the danger of a header became obvious as soon people started riding highwheelers. The safety versions were either dwarf highwheelers with mechanical gearing to overcome the limits of a small front wheel, normal-size highwheelers with mechanical gearing tricks to move the rider back toward the rear wheel, or reversed highwheelers, with the big wheel in back. The safety highwheelers were never very popular, even though they were prized by collectors. The primitive mechanical gearing tended to fail outright or else wear out quickly, it cost far more than a simple solid crank, and there was some stigma attached to riding a small wheel bicycle when real men fearlessly rode 56-inch wheels. The triumph of the highwheeler around 1880 was clear--it was known as the ordinary because the brick-simple highwheeler was indeed the ordinary bicycle, and everything else was just a silly contraption that was less reliable, more expensive, and so on. Like recumbents, the safety highwheelers did well in competition, often winning races. The victories of the safety highwheelers had about the same effect on their sales as recumbent victories have today--the Tour de France is not likely to switch to recumbents, no matter how fast the Varna Diablo II goes. In 1884, half a dozen or so bizarre versions of the modern safety bicycle appeared, most of them using chains, sprockets, and steering borrowed from the thriving tricycle world. Tricycles were enormously popular back then. Uncle James Starley is famous because he came up with tangent lacing for highwheelers in the early 1870s, but most of his production was tricycles, not highwheelers. (And Starley's tricycles mostly used radial lacing. In fact, most highwheelers ignored tangent lacing until 1885.) Why were tricycles so popular? First, tricycles were much easier to learn to ride. Nowadays, anyone who tries to ride a highwheeler already has has years of experience riding safety bicycles. Back then, the typical bicyclist was a grown man who had never balanced on two wheels or turned a pedal. Next, tricycles were much safer. They didn't fall over, anyone could get on or off them, and they didn't go very fast. Just learning to mount and dismount a highwheeler on flat ground usually involved a number of falls. Most of all, tricycles handled hills much better. You could climb hills with a tricycle and pass highwheelers whose riders had gotten off and were pushing. Then you could turn around and go back down, comfortably and safely, while the highwheelers were careening out of control past you, unable to brake safely and liable to being thrown over the handlebar if they hit a bump. That's why so many old books have titles that mention bicycles _and_ tricycles--the tricycles gave bicycles serious competition for just riding around in the 1880s. But 1884 was the beginning of the end for tricycles and highwheelers. A spate of weird-looking two-wheelers with tricycle gearing and chains and steering erupted--Humber, Marvel, Antelope, Pioneer, BSA, and the prototype of nephew John Starley's Rover with remote steering, which was improved in 1885, and soon we had the modern double-diamond safety bike. Curiously, nephew John Starley later wrote that he had hill climbing in mind when he built the Rover, not safety. Looking back, we tend to emphasize the obvious safety of sitting between two wheels, while our great grandfathers took the highwheeler's dangers for granted and cared more about getting up those damned hills. The safeties quickly evolved to the classic double-diamond, with inflatable tires appearing in 1889. Again, our modern notions lead us to the wrong impression. The cushioning advantage of the pneumatic tire is so obivous to us that we assume that Dunlop was looking for comfort, but in fact his first experiments were aimed at showing that an inflated tire rolled faster and farther than a solid rubber tire, and the early pneumatics were used for racing. By 1894, a decade after the first horde of chain-driven designs appeared, the modern bicycle design was practically set in stone: http://www.nostalgic.net/index.asp?S...2D94pg00%2Ejpg Page down past the aluminum bicycle ad at the top and look at the 25-lb 1894 Warwick. It's a fixie with wooden rims, balloon tires, and inch-pitch chain. The big chain disappeared first, the wooden rims lasted longer, and many riders still use big tires for comfort (and more riders would use wider tires if the roads were still unpaved). Caliper brakes, rear hub brakes, hub gears, and derailleurs were all available before 1900. It took only ten years for safety bicycles to wipe out the highwheelers--1894 was last year that highwheelers were produced. Since then, the safety bicycle hasn't really changed much in 120 years. We have more gears, lighter frames, fewer spokes, thinner tires, and so on, but 99% of the pedals are still attached to upright double-diamond designs. A few illustrations . . . Velocipedes with two big wheels and front crank: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:T...Velocipede.jpg Highwheeler with small rear wheel and lamp hanging under front axle: http://i12.tinypic.com/4tz3tp0.jpg A dwarf Kangaroo safety highwheeler, with coasting pegs sticking out front and chain gearing hanging below the axle: http://tinyurl.com/5ugd6o The Star safety highwheeler, which put the big wheel in the rear: http://tinyurl.com/5ugd6o Starley's first remote steering Rover with a 36-inch front wheel: http://books.google.com/books?id=VDl...ntcover#PPP237 The more sensible Rover: http://i13.tinypic.com/4v67a5z.jpg Again, Chalo makes a good point--the enormously popular upright bicycle went through its bizarre variations in about ten years and then settled on the modern bicycle design that hasn't changed much in over a century, while recumbents have been wavering between various designs since the 1930s (or earlier) without ever achieving much popularity. Cheers, Carl Fogel |
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