Bicycle Technology and Patents » Wheels

Wright Brothers Cycles Reborn

shaver — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:23:00 +0000

The Wright brothers’ Van Cleve mark lives on in a modern namesake, the Van Cleve bike built by Cycles Gaansari of Springboro Ohio. Here is what Gary Boulanger of Cycles Gaansari adds:

Much is known about the Wright Brothers’ aviation results, but little has been told about how the men designed and tested their theories, and how big a role bicycle technology played in their research and development. Like most self-sufficient and frugal bicyclists, the brothers scrounged discarded bike components to make something useful out of something lying around the shop. In this case, it wasn’t a fixed gear or townie bike, but the airplane that was created, born from Wilbur’s vision for flight in the 1890s.

Cycles Gaansari was born from the need to provide reliable service, durable goods, and exciting products to the Greater Dayton cycling community. We’re housed in a former livery stable/barn built in Springboro in the 1850s, just three miles south of the Wright Brothers Airport, and across the street from the Jonathan Wright House, now a popular bed & breakfast, built by the founder of Springboro in 1815.

To many, the bicycle is a tool for transportation, adventure, freedom, and recreation. Little did the inventors of the bicycle know what impact they’d have on millions of people. Then again, little did two bicycle manufacturers from Dayton, Ohio realize where their dream of manned flight would catapult both them and the fruit of their labor.

Harry Lawson’s Bicyclette

shaver — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 01:00:00 +0000

James Starley’s Rover of 1885 was the first successful bike in which pedals and a crank drove the rear wheel with a chain, but he was not the first with that design. In 1879 Englishman Harry Lawson designed and patented a version of a large front wheeled bike with a smaller rear wheel driven by cranks and a chain. Lawson’s bike was not very well received, and he went on to design bikes using levers for power transmission. The Bicyclette was a commercial failure, but he had hit upon a superior design feature.

This artwork of the Bicyclette is a version featured on cigarette cards. This and other bicycle art is found at bicyclegifts.com. Framed versions of these beautiful cigarette cards, posters , cards, and other bicycle art recognize that brilliant design is art.

A Bad Case of Drillium!

shaver — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:25:35 +0000

Bruce went crazy with his drill press, and removed, if I read his notes correctly, about 13.7 pounds from the normally 30 pound Catrike Speed! This is Catrike #CS754, named Holey Spokes.

Now we need to see that thing assembled, a final weigh in, and a test ride to see if it whistles. Its just remotely possible that Bruce has too much time on his hands. One last picture:

Spring Cushioned Front Forks, 1891

shaver — Sun, 24 May 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Those old bike designers tried a lot of ways to cushion the ride of the safety bike on the rough roads found at the end of the 19th century. Here is a different way to employ springs on the front forks to cushion the ride.

Setting Toe on Front Wheels of a Trike (Catrike)

shaver — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 04:08:42 +0000

Mikey says: Toe is a measurement of the horizontal diameters of the two front wheels, and how close to parallel they are to each other when the wheels are pointed straight ahead. If they’re not parallel, the wheels either “toe in” (the fronts of the wheels are closer together than the backs of the wheels) or “toe out” (backs are closer). I’ve seen people use a tape measure, piece of string, Catrike flagpole, trammel points, framing squares, or (last resort) a special tool. Once you’ve got a way to measure the inter-wheel distance front and rear, just fiddle with a tie-rod end to tweak the wheels to make the distances equal, or at least within about 1/16″ of each other. Loosen the stop nut, disconnect the tie-rod end from the bracket on the wheel, turn the rod-end in (adjusts the toe “out”) or out (adjusts the toe “in”). The finest adjustment you can make is a half-turn of the rod end, so you may have to settle for a tiny bit of toe. Some people prefer toe-in, others toe-out if they can’t make it exactly neutral, and some people don’t want it exactly neutral anyway. Once you’re happy, reconnect the rod-end to the bracket, tighten the stop nut, and go riding.

trikebldr adds this about toe:

Basically, toe-in gives better stability at higher speeds, but higher tire wear. Toe-out will give more nimble, power-steering feel, with more tire wear. Neutral toe will give a balance of the two, with very little tire wear.

To explain the stability issue, think of it this way; with toe-out, each wheel is trying to pull the trike in it’s direction, and when you try to go straight and hit even a tiny bump with one wheel, that wheel gets a traction advantage over the other and begins to turn the trike it’s direction. As it does so, the weight advantage transfers to the other wheel. And, this cyclic action happens over and over, making the trike feel very unstable. Example: left wheel hits a bump, gets more traction than the right wheel and the trike starts to turn to the left, shifting the weight over to the right wheel. Now, the right wheel has more traction than the left, so the trike starts to turn to the right, shifting the weight over to the left wheel. This cyclic action happens over and over, creating an unstable, unpredictable feel for the rider. It manifests itself as a tendency to wander from side-to-side.

With toe-in, when one wheel gets a weight advantage and tries to turn the trike, that action only adds more weight to that wheel and nothing changes, giving a feeling of stability. No wandering!

Absolute neutral toe tends to feel more like toe-out at very high speeds, so just a touch of toe-in is preferable for most riding conditions, but not so much that it causes tire wear. That’s where it gets tricky! I run all of my trikes at zero toe when unloaded (in the work stand), and that gives it just a hair of toe-in when I sit on the trike. My original set of Stelvios on my ‘07 have over 9000 miles (YES! NINE THOUSAND!), and are still useable. I replaced them only because Tickle Pink was going to be riding that trike during the rally week this year, and I wanted it to be absolutely trouble free. I think this setting has well proven to be optimal for at least my ‘07 Speed. Tire wear on my ‘08 looks good so far, too, with this setting, and it has over 2000 miles so far.

Here’s a little bit about setting toe. The trueness of the wheels can kill an adjustment completely!!! If each wheel wobbles even 1/32″, and they are in just the right position to each other during the toe setting, that could affect the setting by 1/16″, and that is all I would recommend as a maximum toe-in value. So, even if you actually have neutral toe, it COULD look like 1/16″. The only way to eliminate that is to bind the wheels slightly by adjusting the brake pad just enough to hold the wheel from spinning freely, but allow you to rotate them during this operation. Now. working from the right side, take your toe reading, front and back. Write it down. Now rotate only the right wheel 1/4 turn and take the toe reading again. After doing this at the four “corners” of the right wheel, rotate the left wheel 1/4 turn and start over on the right wheel. This means you will be taking sixteen readings total to see how much your wheel trueness affects the real toe setting. An average of all sixteen values will be a very accurate reading!

This is all very tedious, but if you like a very accurately tuned machine, it is worth it. And, once done to this accuracy, it shouldn’t change unless you take things apart or bend something. My ‘07 never changed, and it was never apart in over two years until I recently took it completely apart for “surgery”. My ‘08 is now almost 18 months old and has also never changed.

Ceramic Bearings for Catrike Front Hubs

shaver — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 05:06:46 +0000

Bruce on ceramic bearings: I’ve replaced the stock Catrike bearings with ceramics bearings on both of my Speeds. Front and rear. In a year and a half I’ve burned up two of the stock bearings, so I was looking for something that is more durable and that I wouldn’t have to worry about again. It just so happens that they really improve the coasting abilities of a trike, which also means they reduce pedaling effort. But, they ain’t cheap! PRH has just done the ceramic swap in the rear of his trike, and is awaiting the arrival of his new fronts. He felt the improvement from just the rears. If I recall, they are about $50/bearing, and there are four of them in the two front hubs. It takes about ten minutes to replace them in each front hub. Here’s a link to my section on Flickr where I keep my pix of the guts of a front hub, showing the bearings and how they fit. For information on how to remove these bearings, check out this post. It’s easy!

Click here to see pix of a front hub disassymbled.

ABEC stands for Annular Bearing Engineers’ Committee. This committee works to determine the standards for bearings for the Anti-Friction Bearing Manufacturers Association (AFBMA).

The ABEC scale classifies different accuracy and tolerance ranges for bearings. The first column of this table lists the five ratings in the ABEC scale.

ABEC Ratings ISO Class

ABEC1 Class 0
ABEC3 Class 6
ABEC5 Class 5
ABEC7 Class 4
ABEC9 Class 2

The ABEC rating of a bearing is determined by the following (for a 608 size bearing):

1. How close the bore is to 8mm in microns
2. How close the outer diameter is to 22 in microns
3. How close the width is to 7mm in microns
4. The rotating accuracy in microns

Thanks to PRH for this latest info on these bearings! These are the bearing and part numbers to order them from VXB Bearings. You will note that these are also ABEC-7 bearings, as well as ceramics.

Kit8041 6904-2RS Bearing 20×37x9 Si3N4 Ceramic:Stainless:Sealed:ABEC-7 Quantity 2

same bearing from BOCA Bearings

Kit7660 6805-2RS Bearing 25×37x7 Si3N4 Ceramic:Stainless:Sealed:ABEC-7 Quantity 2

same bearing from BOCA Bearings

For standard Catrike rear hubs you need one of each of these kits from vxb.com:

Kit7653 6000-2RS Bearing 10×26x8 Si3N4 Ceramic:Stainless:Sealed:ABEC-7 (about $30)
Kit8160 6200-2RS Bearing 10×30x9 Si3N4 Ceramic:Stainless:Sealed:Nylon:ABEC-7 (about $33)

I believe that all current Catrikes use the same hubs and bearings. The older front hubs used two of the 6904 bearings, but all of the current models use one each of the above bearings in each hub.

An excellent step up from the stock bearings on a Catrike would be to good stainless steel bearings. The next step would be to stainless ABEC-7 bearings. The next step would be to non-rated ceramics. The top of the line (well, almost!) would be ABEC-7 ceramics. You will note that “Stainless” is listed in the description. That’s because the globes (balls) are the ceramic component, but the races are stainless steel.

The best analogy I can give of the difference in ceramic versus steel balls is the difference between a golf ball and a ping-pong ball, as far as smoothness.

Unless you just have a bunch of money to spend, I would recommend running the stock bearings until one of them gives you trouble, then replace them all with ceramics, keeping the stock ones for spares.

Concerning sealed bearings, they can be lubed. That process is discussed in a separate post located here.

My experience (Bob’s) with ceramics has been that they make a 2-3 mph difference in my riding. I found a roll out hill with a straightaway below it, and I coasted my trike on the test track before and after installing ceramic front bearings. Over about a 300 yard run, the trike went 40 paces (120 feet) further with the ceramics. On all the “go fast” sections of my regular route to work, over the next week I set new personal best times on every section, by about 3 mph. On one section, the new speed ability made me try to complete a 6 block section at speeds above 20 mph. I was successful at that. My usual speed over that route is more like 17, and on some areas I usually drop down to 13 or so.

Bruce says the bearings will get better after 200 miles of run in, so I’ll retest them later.

If you install ceramics looking for speed, you should remove the seals, clean out the grease they come with, add replacement grease, and replace the seals. Excess grease would be displaced by the bearings as they rotate, and would come to rest on the bearing cage. During use, oil from the grease would seep out and lubricate the bearings. But if there is so much grease that the bearings have to continually push it aside you will lose any speed advantage the ceramic bearings might have given you. When you replace the grease, you can also make a batch of “thin” grease to pack the bearings with, made of 70% grease and 30% 3-in-1 oil. The picture below shows how much “thin” grease I added.

John Dunlop, Pneumatic Tires

shaver — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 15:59:21 +0000

A ten year old boy in Belfast Ireland rode his tricycle on cobblestone streets, but its solid rubber tires made the ride uncomfortable. His father, a Scottish veterinarian named John Dunlop thought of an idea for making the ride smoother. He took lengths of rubber garden hose and fitted it around the rim of the tricycle’s wheels, and glued the ends together to make a tube. Then he put an air valve in the garden hose, and pumped up the hose with a soccer ball air pump. The ride was greatly improved, but the tricycle was soon set aside for other toys. About a year later, it was noticed by a friend of Dunlop, a bicycle racer. A newspaper article attracted interest, and Dunlop and investors went on to develop an air filled tire for use by the "killer ap" of the day, bicycles, in 1888, soon to be followed by use in automobiles.

The pnuematic tire, combined with Starley’s basic bicycle design, made a modern one speed bicycle. The early bike tires were tubular, and glued or wrapped onto the rim, which was dished to accept the tubular tire. Clincher tires came later.

The pneumatic tire had actually been invented earlier by engineer Robert W. Thompson, in 1845. However, that was before the huge popularity of bicycles, so the invention went undeveloped.

Replacing (Catrike) Wheel Bearings

shaver — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:21:23 +0000

Says Bruce:

With the wheel removed from the trike, remove the six screws that hold the brake rotor on and set the brake rotor aside. Now, remove the black, stepped-spacer that slips onto the end of the bearing spacer tube. It is being held on by the o-ring inside, so it may be a little stubborn to slip off, but it will come off with just your fingers.

You are now looking at the side of the inner bearing, with the end of the bearing spacer sticking through it. With a leather or plastic mallet, gently tap on the protruding end of the bearing spacer tube until the outer bearing at the other end falls out. Push the bearing spacer tube the rest of the way out and turn it around to use to drive the inner bearing out. Just be very careful when tapping on this tube because the shoulders that the bearing inner races ride on is very critical to bearing placement within the hub. Maybe using a wooden dowel of the same diameter would be better to drive the inner bearing out. The inner bearing keeps the bearing spacer centered well enough to use it as a driver for the outer bearing. Now, your bearings are removed. The bearing spacer and the two bearings that go on either end of it, and the stepped spacer, are shown below assembled and disassembled.

At this point you can relube the old bearings, or install new ones. To relube the bearings, you remove the plastic seals, clean out the old grease with thinner, add new grease, snap the seals in place, and install the bearings. These pictures show those steps. Bruce says that someone who is trying for maximum speed out of a bearing, whether it is a ceramic of a steel bearing, should avoid putting too much grease in the bearing. Real speed seekers can even thin out their bearing grease with 3-in-1 oil, with oil forming 30% of the grease mix, and pack the bearing lightly with this “thin” grease.

To insert your new bearings, start with the outer bearing, insert it by hand and get it as squared up as possible before driving it all the way in. Slide the new inner bearing onto the protruding end of the bearing spacer and drive it all the way against the shoulder on the spacer. Now, insert that bearing into the hub on the brake rotor side. Using a 1/8″ pin-punch, SLOWLY drive it in, working around the outer race 1/8 circle at a time. Don’t use any kind of press, unless it is a precision press that drives absolutely flat against the bearing. If you get the bearing cocked even a little bit, it wll distort the hub’s recess for the bearing. Not good! Both bearings will be slightly recessed when they are fully seated, with the inner bearing being moreso.

Before starting this process, make very sure that the shoulder inside the hub for each bearing is absolutely clean. Again, this is very critical to the bearing’s location within the hub. Any dislocation of either bearing will cause a preload on both bearings when the wheel is back on the trike. This will create bind and make the trike pull to one side and cause premature bearing failure. Once the bearings are both back in the hub, slip the black, stepped-spacer back onto the bearing spacer tube protrution, making sure that the o-ring inside is in good shape. Now, put the brake rotor back on and you’re done!

When both bearings are inserted correctly, if you spin one bearing, the other should spin with it. The black, stepped-spacer shouldn’t rub on the brake rotor tabs. Once you get the old bearings out, do a thorough cleaning of the inside of the hub, especially inside the machined pockets where the bearings fit.

For more pics of the hub disassembly, refer to trikeblkr’s hub photo archive here.

SlowWheel Cycling innovation

shaver — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Nathan Womack is a serious bike rider, serious enough that he wanted to ride at a training pace on rides with his girlfriend. The trouble was that his preferred pace for training for triathalons was about 20 mph, and his
girlfriend’s pace is more like 15 mph. He had the bright idea of making a wheel that would give him some resistance in his rides, so that his speed would equal his girlfriends speed, yet give him the training he wanted.

His solution developed into a bike product called the SlowWheel. The SlowWheel is a replacement rear wheel for a bicycle that allows the rider to increase the resistance of the wheel (in order to slow the rider down). Using the SlowWheel, Nathan and his girlfriend are able to ride together, and both get a workout! The wheel can also be set to no resistance at all, for maximum speed.

Additionally, Nathan looks to have a children’s model out (for children under 5) that will go on a small bike with training wheels to help "slow" the child down as they learn to ride a bike. This will help in coordination as well as be an incredible safety device (as the children will not be able to get going so fast they get out of control).