Sky + Boardman: Future Bike

sonny73
sonny73 Posts: 2,203
edited August 2009 in Pro race
I know it's been noted on here previously that Boardman don't have the budget to supply a pro team and particularly the new Team Sky, but could this recent projects relationship hint at otherwise do you think?
http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,15265_5486559,00.html

Comments

  • thamacdaddy
    thamacdaddy Posts: 590
    Sonny73 wrote:
    I know it's been noted on here previously that Boardman don't have the budget to supply a pro team and particularly the new Team Sky, but could this recent projects relationship hint at otherwise do you think?
    http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,15265_5486559,00.html

    Not really.

    A Concept project is a smaller amount of cash and more importantly time and resources then furnishing a pro team with around 160 top end bikes and support for the year (figures of what saxobank got this year).
  • bompington
    bompington Posts: 7,674
    Interesting bike though. Has anyone ever actually made a practical hubless wheel like that? Would you actually be able to make the bearings efficient enough?
    Anyway, the UCI would ban it like a shot.
  • bikerZA
    bikerZA Posts: 314
    Anything new and usual, they usually do.
    cyclecomparison.com
  • LangerDan
    LangerDan Posts: 6,132
    It's a little known bye-law in technical circles but designers are obliged to present hubless bikes at regular intervals. In the 90s it was the Zero bike, a few years ago there was a "fleet" of computer rendered hubless bikes, orginally attributed to Specialized and I think Franco Sbarro has rolled out the concept as well to go with his hubless motorbikes.

    TBH, I think its a marketing exercise as much as anything else - a few days to come up with a wishlist for such a bike, an outline design and a bit of CAD rendering. I'd be surpriised if any component of that bike exists in the flesh (or carbon, as it were) so the costs of such a project are very low.

    It would probably cost at least £1/4 million to keep a top team in bikes and components for a year and possibly double that. A concept bike can "produced" for a few percent of that.
    'This week I 'ave been mostly been climbing like Basso - Shirley Basso.'
  • mercsport
    mercsport Posts: 664
    The hubless bicycle wheel idea has been around for far longer than I can remember, and, surely it's about time someone at one of the techy uni's came up with the actuality and not computer renderings or static representations.

    Have just done ten pages of 'ImageSearch' in Google and have only come across a few for motorcycles, which, although graceful and beautiful are a wee bit chunky. Still, it augurs well for the future of the bicycle wheel as they've made it work for a few choppers.

    hubless-monster-motorcycle1.jpg
    "Lick My Decals Off, Baby"
  • Two sheds
    Two sheds Posts: 446
    For an everyday bike, it looks difficult to lock up.
    Put a hump in your back
    Shake your sacroiliac
    And ride on
  • paulcuthbert
    paulcuthbert Posts: 1,016
    Two sheds wrote:
    For an everyday bike, it looks difficult to lock up.

    Haha!! It's true. And kids wouldn't be able to have those annoying clickers on the spokes...

    Wait a minute... I LOVE THIS BIKE!!! That noise does my head in. Stupid kids
    The most painful climb in Northern Ireland http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs200.snc1/6776_124247198694_548863694_2335754_8016178_n.jpg
  • nathanbloke
    nathanbloke Posts: 28
    Can someone please explain, how do these hubless wheels work, and what advantages do they have over normal wheels?
  • nathanbloke
    nathanbloke Posts: 28
    Having done extensive research (I looked it up on Wikipedia), it seems that "hubless wheels" are, in fact, wheels with very big (almost as big as the wheels) hollow hubs, not hubless at all, except in appearance. Surely intuition suggests that the bearings in a really small hub are so much easier to produce, and less likely to go wrong, than these so called "hubless" wheels as to pee on them.
  • nick hanson
    nick hanson Posts: 1,655
    Can't see the UCI letting any pro team ride them! :D
    so many cols,so little time!
  • edeverett
    edeverett Posts: 224
    I would think that having to have such large seals would probably create a large amount of friction.

    But. I can see that hubless wheels might have certain design advantages for folding bikes where the space in the middle of the wheel could be used to create a neater folded state. The smaller wheels might be easier to make too.

    Assuming friction isn't massively increased, what would a wheel feel like when the moving part of the wheel weighs little more than the tyre? Maybe about 300 grams per wheel. Quicker acceleration, but would it be unstable through corners?
  • edeverett
    edeverett Posts: 224
    Oh, and just incase the Boardman/Sky bike wasn't futuristic enough, hubless wheels also come on amphibious recumbents:

    avb_designhuis_bikes_034.jpg

    http://tinyurl.com/mgp6mo

    (Just imagine - when there's a 'future UCI' - the sight of these racing down Alpine descents at 90kph! Not that I'm sure I want it, but it would look amazing.)
  • liversedge
    liversedge Posts: 1,003
    The lack of a chain caught my eye ... 'shaft drive' ... attached to what?
    --
    Obsessed is just a word elephants use to describe the dedicated. http://markliversedge.blogspot.com
  • Unsheath
    Unsheath Posts: 49
    and brakeless??

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