I ride his H-Bars, mighty tasty stuff, I hope some day to have the expendable income for one of his frames, and the wait, it's a small price to pay.....
They have a midget that balances the bike. He lets go and jumps out of the frame just before the photo is taken. Then he jumps back in to catch the bike before it falls. If the midget doesn't catch it before it hits the ground the photographer just shoots the midget and hires another one. Midgets are expendable, cables and wires aren't!
Heh, I'm sure it ride great. But you could buy a more traditional looking bike that rides as well for much much less money. If you can afford a bike like that and choose to ride it, good for you. I'll take an off the shelf double triangle bike and retire 6 months earlier. To quote Skookum: The art is in the ride not in the bike.
He's got some interesting ideas. It's guy like that who think outside the square that move this sport along.
hey capt ball licker, did you try to open any of the thumbnails in the riding part of the gallery? i hope his welding skills are better than his HTML skills.
aside from the debateable aesthetic of style, what features of this bike improve the ride from a technical perspective?
N8, you tell us to check out the riding pics, and the links are broken. were you spanked too hard as a child and can't take the cold truth?
*sigh* you missed the point of what I was saying.....He's got the balls to try somthing new, not just sitting back and saying "no one else does that so I'd better not try". And if you read the blurb on his website he is trying to make the bike able to flex verticaly but not twist or go sideways...so a form of limited travel pivotless travel....same thing with those springer style forks. Good on him for giving it a try I say
dave, don't get so defensive. it was an honest question. i was curious, from looking at that frame, what aspects of the design were 'outside the box' and would 'help move the sport along'. they weren't immediately obvious to me, so i asked. i didn't read the website blurb, so thanks for posting it. trying to restrict motion to only one plane seems like a tricky proposition to tackle.
I think its great he does stuff on those springer style forks that kids with 12" of travel are trying to do.
Your pathetic. Those bikes are so nice to look at in person. They are built about 15 minutes away from me and the owner always rides it at the local DH race. Pretty impressive what he can do on it.
You know, N8, even your opinions that are widely (on this board) disagreed with would hold a lot more credibility if you attempted some kind of meaningful discussion. Instead, you resort to smilies and pseudo-smilies like :crickets: Regardless, that is one interesting looking bike - of course, it's undoubtedly a poor execution of design from an engineering standpoint, but if it'll hold up to what it's supposed to and you don't mind paying whatever penalties you have to pay to get there, I guess it's better than buying crack Good for him for doing what he loves.
Oh, yeah, real ignorance Thin tubes are generally a poor solution on a bike, which needs a high strength:weight ratio. I realize what his rationalization is (strength in one direction and compliance in another), but it doesn't make it a good solution - it just means that he is willing to sacrifice either the weight (since the tubes need to be thick) or the strength (if the tubes are thin). Also, curved tubes are also not an ideal solution, for similar reasons. The bike looks very pretty, and may ride very well. From an engineering standpoint, though, it's not a good design. Typical N8 argument, though - making a statement that he can't back up...
Ah but most bike these days are "THIN WALLED" But the skinnier looking tube sets are often thicker walled so without getting one of those bikes and hacking it up. So I think your point is rather moot. Just looking at the pics of the bike..... thats a hella low bottom bracket hight. It'd be good for stability and the centre of gravity but Man I bet it gets a lot of pedal to ground contact even with running shorter cranks (less power output if you do that too).
Read my post again. I know that most tubes now are thin walled. A larger, thin walled tube increases strength without the heavy weight penalty you pay with a small diameter, thick walled tube. So, as I said, you either pay a weight penalty with a thick walled, thin tube, or you pay a strength penalty with a thin walled, thin tube. Hey N8, here's a thought for you... Some people who haven't built frames know something about it, and some people who have built frames don't necessarily know everything . You don't need to be a frame builder to understand physics.
I wasn't, by the way, trying to tear the frame apart here - I'm sure it rides nicely and is a fine frame. Was just saying that it's function following form, rather than the other way around.