News and Events

Keep up to date with the latest news and events of Modular Bikes.

Sunday, February 24, 2019

World Record Attempt @ Darebin

Will holds court.

Timing Strips etc.
Pre race Confab.
Off!
Tim lets Kyle know the distance covered.

Peter Gordon......

scrutineering


Live-Stream facebook setup

As organised by Nick Chau

Done!

Done, Rob Leviston and Tim.

Done!
Done!

Facebook stream

Done!
Everyone.
Hi

 Last night Kyle Lierich raced a Tim Corbett - made trike to attempt several Human Powered Vehicle records, the Australian Human Powered Vehicle Hour record and the World Unfaired multitrack hour record.  Both records stood at around 45kph, and Kyle was aiming for 50 ks in a hour with this run.  Anyway, he came close to 50 and easily surpassed 45.  The stats of the event will be  subject to official scrutiny before any records can be declared.

I did a back of envelope (ok, excel) calc of how far Kyle actually went.  The black line represents a 250m lap and riding above it in a wide trike (say 600mm between front wheels) will mean the trike's back wheel or centreline will actually travel more than 250m per lap because the radius travelled on the curves is larger by half the track width.  The direct distance on the track can't be used for this calc as the track is banked, rather the distance multiplied by the cos of the banking angle should be used. Wikepedia lists the banking angle as 42 degrees but I think this is a maximum and  I have used 30 degrees in my calc.  The track has straights and this must be allowed for as well.  Anyway here is my calc, you did an extra lap, Kyle!


Well done all, regards  Steve Nurse


Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Cobram “I don’t do Hills”

Bit of seat repair before the start.
Early Morning start from Cobram Willows Caravan Park

Close to start time

Simon and Richard

Simon

Phil, John and hay bales

Simon

Possibly a bit of photoshopping would help this! Its me.

Digging ditches for irrigation pipes

Simon and Silo in Nathalia

Youanmite Silo

Zoomed in, tractor advertising a farm near Youanmite, and

Zoomed out.

Silo in Tungamah.

Hi

A few weeks ago I was part of an online conversation about this Audax ride: a few of the Ozhpv committee were meeting in Cobram, making a weekend of it around Rodney Cruz’s Audax rides on the Saturday.  I was happily roped in and had the added incentive of being able to hand over OzHpv’s gazebo to Dome Deli at the same time.  Dome and a few other New South Wales crew will host a stall at The Sydney Classic Bike Show in Sydney in late March and he needed it for the event, I was happy to have it not occupying space at the top of our cupboard at home. Simon had booked a cabin in the caravan park, so it was all go.

Despite starting a few small projects to make the trike go faster including a front fairing, nothing new was ready, so the trike was the same as the one I took on Buckley’s Ride except for a bit of seat repair. Prep included downloading the Ride with GPS Map for the course into my Garmin 520 bike GPS unit and tweaking my spares and repairs kit, and making sure I had a rainjacket and waterbottle on board.

I arrived in Cobram at 6pm on the Friday, chatted and had dinner with Simon and Richard and went to bed.  Dome came in a bit later, he is a very keen cyclist and had driven 8 hours from Sydney to Cobram for the event. 

We were up early and left our cabin at 6:40 for the 7am start.  Rodney gave the usual ride introductions (“Apologies in advance for the headwind”), but really most of us were just happy to be riding on a cool (20 degree) summer day when most of the last month in Cobram had been 35 degrees plus.  So off we go!

Soon I fell in with Simon behind everybody else, and we slogged our way into a headwind to Nathalia where we saw a few other riders and stopped for coffee.  We had a tailwind (Whew) out of Nathalia, but about 12k into this stretch, Simon slowed down, he had felt his heartrate rising and his heartrate monitor confirmed his ticker had been going fast for a while.  He decided to bail it back to Cobram making his day 100k instead of 200, and that left me to plug on through the rest of the course by myself.  

And I managed this! The course was a little bit rugged with 2 rain squalls, 1 puncture and 40k of headwinds but this is par for the course for Audax rides really, and there were no navigation difficulties, it wasn’t too hot or too cold, I managed not to get too hungry or thirsty, most of the passing traffic was friendly, and it didn’t get dark while I was riding, which are all standard Audax occurrences.

Anyway, I got in about 6:30pm, which was about 2 hours after Dome and Richard and 5 hours after Simon who made it in safe. Rodney was organizing a dinner and as I came in to the caravan park everyone else was heading off to it.  I was a bit tired and passed.  Anyway, I was very happy with the ride.  Next morning there was a brief Ozhpv committee meeting and after that Dome did a 100k ride with a few other Audaxers, Richard rode home to Tungemah, and Simon & I drove home.

See you soon, Steve Nurse

Sunday, February 3, 2019

Hardshell Seat Mount

First construction from my 3d printed hardshell bikeseat mounting parts. Woohoo, exciting!
Ice trike with hardshell seat

Performer bike with hardshell seat

My leaning trike with aluminium rhs frame and load carrying timber combined tailbox and seat.
Timber mounting for tailbox alongside 3d printed parts.

The design includes a compression plate (orange on black parts, black in orange parts) which sits below the frame and stops the parts bending.  The orange parts are my trial home 3d printed parts and the black parts are the real deal, carbon fibre reinforced onyx plastic from Emona.
Roughly the whole assembly.

Top frame mount.

Another view.
Hi

Today I have been working on a lightweight hardshell seat mount for my leaning recumbent trike.  I have perfectly good timber seats for the trike but these can be a bit heavy and unaerodynamic for long distance hilly rides. As well I have a hardshell seat in the shed I had only used briefly, so I will be making use of this.

Several months ago I attended a Solidworks, and Matt from Emona was one of the exhibitors.  His companies printer seemed capable of making some parts I'd been thinking about so I worked on some parts and eventually ordered and received them.

Photos above show the initial results, I had a diversion along the way and made a robot sculpture.  There is still a bit of work to do but I will post updates. Next post here

Regards

Steve Nurse