Author: James
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Air powered trials bike
Peter Queckenstedt is a Canadian designer currently studying for his master’s degree in transportation design at the Umea Institute of Design in Sweden. He sent me sketches and renderings for a project that he recently worked on, a trials bike driven by a rotary air engine. Normally, I don’t post bike designs that are not…
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Klunkerz
Quite some time ago, I wrote a post about Charlie Cunningham and the early aluminum mountain bikes that he designed. In a comment to that post, Billy Savage mentioned his film Klunkerz, a documentary about the early evolution of the mountain bike. I had heard of the movie before, and it seemed like something I…
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Cardboard bike
Several readers pointed me to this BBC interview with design student Phil Bridge who designed the $30 recyclable cardboard bike seen here. As Phil points out, “If you make a bicycle from cardboard, no-one will want to steal it!” I guess that is one way to solve the issue of bike theft. You can read…
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A design award for SRAM
I just received the July/August issue of ID Magazine, the 54th Annual Design Review. This year, a panel of designers from different disciplines reviewed over 2,000 designs and chose the ones to be featured as the best work that was completed or introduced on the market last year. The iPhone took the top spot in…
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Go with me, the Whike, and more
Posting has been light this week, but I want to quickly pass along a few links that I have run across lately. The Core77 blog featured this “electric bike train” concept from the Coroflot portfolio of Jiang Qian. The concept is intended to be modular so the bike can be used individually or strung together.…
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Links and troubleshooting
A reader, Jim, sent me a couple of interesting links that I want to pass along to all of you. The first is an article in Design Engineering magazine about the development and engineering of a Devinci downhill bike. The amount of data they collected to measure forces at various points on the bike is…
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Cable drive transmission
Some of you may recognize this chainless bicycle design. The bike received a lot of press coverage when it was new in the early 80s and was even featured on Good Morning America at one point. The bike’s designer, Steven Tidcomb, sent me a link to a page on his website, which provides some historical…
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4-dollar gas- a design opportunity?
All morning I have been hearing the news that the U.S. national average for a gallon of gas topped the 4-dollar mark. Most people don’t seem all that happy about that milestone, but climbing gas prices are certainly something you won’t hear me complaining about. In light of the recent attention to 4-dollar gas, I…
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The G-max blog
Coralie Drouin, an engineer at the French bike company Gir’s, recently sent me a message about a new road bike that they are developing called the G-Max. The bike will be launching in September and they showed a model of the frame at the Salon du Cycle in Paris last year. The company worked with…
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Interview in BikeBiz
I usually refrain from posting pictures of myself, but I will make an exception today. Here I am looking very serious while working hard to bring you the absolute best content that I can find on the subject of bicycle design. OK, maybe that is a stretch, but this picture of me staring blankly at…
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Dwell, the Trailcart, and a challenge
I like to mention bike content in general design magazines when I see it, so I want to point you to a Dwell blog post about handmade bicycles. The post dates back to February, but it was new to me when I discovered it today, so I assume some of you missed it as well.…
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Dura-Ace 7900
I don’t have time for a full post today, but I want to quickly mention the new 2009 redesign of the Dura-Ace group. Overall, I think the 7900 series Dura Ace group looks good; I especially like the new brakes. The new crank, which includes a compact option, looks nice as well. I like the…
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My ride with Hindsight
I posted about Evan Solida’s Cerevellum concept in December of last year. If you didn’t see that post, check it out before you read on and take a look at the Cerevellum website to familiarize yourself with the concept. One of the distinctive components of the modular Cerevellum system is the Hindsight feature, which allows…
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Cannondale D-Tank and more
Check out the Cannondale design sketchbook for a new entry. These three urban bike concepts were a collaboration between the in-house Cannondale design team and D-Tank, a design studio based in Barcelona. The guys from D-Tank studied transportation design at the Elisava Design School with Torgny from Cannondale and in recent years they have done…
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Bike Tree and other links
Many of you may have already seen this bike tree concept, by Abhinav Dapke, elsewhere on the web. I like the rendering, so I want to pass it along too. I am not sure if the entire concept is feasible or not, but I do like the fingerprint entry/release idea. I use a fingerprint recognition…
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Reflectivity, why not more?
This picture, from our local bike to work day breakfast last week, shows one of the red blinkie lights on the back of my commuter bike. I have one on my rear rack trunk bag as well and when I am riding during rush hour, I always have at least one of the lights flashing.…
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SwissBike and a few links
I haven’t been able to post for the last few days, but I do have a few things to quickly pass along. Luckily for all of you, I am in a hurry this afternoon, so you will get these links without much commentary on my part. The folks at Montague recently came out with a…
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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
I guess that explains why this early nineties carbon fiber Ferrari Colnago C35 with gold plated C-record components is up to 6 grand on eBay with 2 days still to go. When I saw this bike earlier today at a Cozy Beehive post, it brought back memories of the late 80s when ads for Italian…