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Mr. Freehand’s homebuilt carbon bikes
I have posted homemade carbon fiber bikes before and I always find it very interesting to see composite bicycles that people design and produce in their garages and living rooms. Svetlyo Kostov (aka Mr. Freehand) first learned about carbon fiber construction at a young age building racecars, motorcycles, and airplanes. Recently, he decided use the…
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Urban concept bikes, a watch, and an e-velomobile
I am busy working in China this week, so I haven’t had the chance to post anything on the blog. I do want to quickly pass a long a couple of interesting things before I get started today though. Jukka Kalliomäki is an industrial design graduate student at Lund University in Sweden. His thesis project…
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Lots of unrelated links
“The Beast” by M55 Bikes is an aggressive looking pedelec with a claimed 40 mph max speed. I think this is one of those electric bikes that begs the question, how fast is too fast? Isn’t this really just a motorcycle with pedals? Also recently posted at Yanko Design, re:energy is a front wheel concept…
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The Smart ebike by Hussein Al-Attar
Last month, I briefly mentioned the pedal assist e-bike, designed by Hussein Al-Attar, that Smart unveiled at the Paris Auto Show. In particular I mentioned the iPhone/smartphone based control center on that concept bike, a feature I had read about in a Cyclelicious post. There is much more to this Smart ebike than that iphone…
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Beixo Share
I mentioned the African Bicycle Design Competition a couple of months ago. I am honored to be one of the jury members for the competition, and I am happy to be able to say that we have completed voting to choose the five winners of Phase 1 (Open Wiki-Bike). The winners of this first phase…
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Camioncyclette by Christophe Machet
A recent GOOD Design post asked the question, “What if Your Bike Was a Station Wagon?” The bike that they featured in that post, Camioncyclette by Swiss designer Christophe Machet was designed to carry loads up to 150 kilograms (330 pounds) in the big yellow integrated front and rear wire baskets. “What do you get…
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Archibald Sharp’s classic ‘Bicycles and Tricycles’
I have mentioned Archibald Sharp’s 1896 book Bicycles and Tricycles: An Elementary Treatise on Their Design and Construction on this blog several times before (here is one post that comes to mind). I personally have a pretty big collection of books about bicycles, but Sharp’s classic stands out as my single favorite. When it was…
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One of these trikes is not like the other
A reader, Tim, who owns a Baccura Airlite from the last batch made, describes it as “a beautiful lean steer trike that mimics the simplicity of a bicycle.” Baccura.com, an unofficial site that was “developed to showcase the lightest, fastest recumbent trike ever made” refers to it as the “only successful lean steer trike design…
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Come and Gone by Joe Parkin
I was on vacation at the beach last week, so I didn’t get a chance to post any new content on the blog. I did get a chance to finish reading a good book while I was lounging in the sand though- Come and Gone: A True Story of Blue-Collar Bike Racing in America by…
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A long Friday link post
Well, it’s Friday… the end of another busy week. I am pressed for time, but I want to quickly pass along a few of the links that I have noticed in the past week or so. So in rapid-fire fashion, here it goes. I mentioned jruiter +studio’s city simplicity bike in a past post. Now…
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SR Suntour Swing Shock
Suspension for the road is not exactly a new idea. Many of you probably remember the Paris-Roubaix SL fork that Rock Shox introduced in the early 90’s. Prior to the Roubaix fork, a hundred or so years prior to be specific, there were many other ideas floating around for suspension systems to take the edge…
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New and old pedal powered monorails
An Inhabitat post this week pointed outs that Google is investing $1 million in Shweeb, a company working on a pedal powered monorail system. The company was selected as the “innovation in public transportation winner” in Google’s Project 10100 program, which aims “to change the world by helping as many people as possible.” Shweeb has…
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A 6-pound road bike
I have posted some pretty light bikes in the past. In 2006, this 7-pound Crumpton fixie seemed unbelievably light to me. A couple years later, German cyclist Gunter Mai built a geared road bike that was roughly the same weight (3195 grams). Gunter didn’t just built that bike for show either… he claimed to ride…
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OOPHAGA trike and a homebuilt wooden frame
I’m back from an extended weekend of mountain biking and kayaking at Tsali. I didn’t have (or want) phone or Internet access while I was out in the woods, so I am just now starting to look at some of the coverage from Interbike last week. Bike Rumor is one place where I have found…
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Interbike, Bike 2.0, and thoughts on imagination
It’s that time of year again, Interbike is getting underway today in Vegas (for the last time in a while at least). I had a great time at the show last year, but unfortunately I couldn’t fit it into my schedule this week. Instead of being there to see everything in person, I’ll have to…
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Enter the African Bicycle Design Contest
I mentioned the African Bicycle Design Contest in a previous post, but I want to remind you that the deadline for submitting an entry is just over one week away (September 30th). If you have any ideas about how a bicycle can be designed or modified to make a difference in Africa, I encourage you…
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Ben King’s Trek-Livestrong Madone
After a long day back at work, I am still coming down from the excitement of another great US Pro race weekend here in Greenville. It was great to see 20-year-old Taylor Phinney from the Trek-Livestrong U23 development team pull off the time trial win on Saturday, but his 21-year-old teammate Ben King’s victory in…
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5 years…wow!
It is hard to believe, but it was five years ago today that I started Bicycle Design. As I mentioned in a post at the 2-year mark, I started the blog on a whim back in September of 2005. I found a few of my old bike renderings on a CD that day, so I…
