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Interesting, but you are going the fastest when you are in the drop position. This concept provides less leverage for the brake lever precisely when you need it the most (when you are going the fastest)!
“One more benefit is that the “drops” are ergonomically shaped like a pistol grip, fantastic for tough sprints.”
This guy has never been in a sprint. The exact part of the bar you grip when sprinting (the last 5″ or so) is the least ergonomic element of this design, and the brake lever attachment is right in the way of where most people’s first finger would be.
“The seat-tube is split diagonally and fitted with a dense elastomer. Doing this essentially turns the seat-stays and top-tube into an enormous leaf-spring, resulting in a limited amount of suspension. ”
So you put a dampening element in the middle of the common leg of the two triangles that are the whole reason that a traditional diamond frame bicycle is able to be so rigid with so little material? That strikes me as a bad idea — what does the FEA say? I’d be more interested in a similar design that brought the stays in under the dampener, making the whole top tube like a mild version of a Softride frame. You’d of course need to beef up the joint between the top and head tubes, but probably not much more than you would need to in order to make the design work as proposed.
Like that you can change the geometry of the “drops” by sliding the attachments up and down the “ends,” but worry that there’s a physical connection there — what happens if a bolt pops loose while you’re sprinting in the drops? You lose the very part of the bar you’re holding on to, and it’s face-plant time.
These all look like great ideas. “Most people” prefer their own bikes and aren’t looking for anything new. The integration of his genius rearview system seems top notch, and I believe I see an LED headlight system shaded underneath. We simply must stop looking at traffic lighting of bicycles as some kind of afterthought. Flat copper or silver wires can be ‘taped’ onto any bicycle invisibly, but carbon can integrate ultralight LED wiring throughout the machine adding strength to the frame and, yes lighting it up like a Christmas tree/Hanukkah bush. Extensive LED wiring should be standard on all frames meant for traffic.
“lightweight training wheels” made me giggle. How much weight do I save if I use streamers?
The ‘cow-horn’ bits on the bars won’t be UCI-legal for mass start races.
Re- the brake lever design – you can achieve the same good leverage with cow-horn bars, TT brake levers and buttons for the electronic shifters, but the bars wouldn’t be legal as noted above.
Not that I’ve found my baking leverage deficient when I’m in the hoods, except when using cantilever brakes on my cyclocross bike. And the UCI have solved that by making disc brakes legal in ‘cross races.
Good luck making any adjustments to those brakes.
I Love The Design…Awesome!!!! Where can you buy them and how much are they…???
The old AMP linkage forks may not have survived, but I don’t think they were nearly as bad as you describe. Don’t you remember other forks from that era? Certainly Horst Leitner knew a thing or two about suspension. Without his innovative AMP Research designs, full suspension mtb technology would not be where it is today.