Better late than never ... and more about the belt

You never realise how much you depend on your computer until it breaks. My old workhorse had been groaning and complaining for the last few months, but finally gave in last weekend - simply refusing to boot up and leaving me quite distressed. I managed to get back online in a fashion by swapping in a spare hard disc and installing Ubuntu, but it was touch and go which made me think it was more likely a hardware than a software problem.

Fast forward a week and I have a shiny new "ultra-portable" laptop which works a peach, making me a happy camper. Anyhow, you probably aren't reading this for laptop reviews, so I'll just get on with it.

The belt itself has been a revelation. I've always thought the best inventions are those that you don't really notice. Take electricity. You flick the switch and you have light. While you are in the lit room, you don't think how great the electricity is. But when it isn't working you really notice it is there.

To me, the belt drive is kinda like that. When you ride it for the very first time, it feels very smooth, but before long you stop noticing it. You just get about your ride, the bike feels great - like it's just had a good lube - but otherwise you hardly notice it is there.

Then you ride with a friend and suddenly you hear the whirr (and occasional clatter) of the chain. A noise that was once taken for granted seems suddenly so invasive. The same goes for the feel; hop onto a chain driven bike and suddenly you notice the mechanical feel of the chain meshing with chainrings and sprockets. Not that it grates; to the contrary, I enjoy the mechanical feel of the bike in the same way I like old cars. Just that the belt erases any transmission vibration and is simply smooth, which is lovely.

Ok, granted my belt is still very new and I am keen to see just how it wears, but so far I am very impressed. At the moment I have been running it as a single speed, but I plan to try it out with the Alfine in the coming weeks - something I am looking forward to a lot.

In terms of the proto frame, fitting the belt did present a few snags. Nothing insurmountable, but certainly issues that I'll aim to resolve in the next iteration. This will almost certainly mean a switch to sliding dropouts instead of the EBB for the belt driven application, though we will most likely keep the option open for fixed dropouts. I'd be interested to hear your views!

So, with a good few miles under the wheels of the first prototype, I'm busy revising the drawings for the next prototype. None of the changes (besides the new sliding dropouts) are major, so I expect the next prototype frame will be with us soon. Not much time if we are going to keep to our schedule, so I'd better get back to it!

ps. The green tape was a little fun, and I'm loving the bullhorns.

Smooth, like butter ... yum

Rides beautifully.  

A few snags during fitting, but nothing that either can't be designed out for the production version, or that isn't just part of the learning process.

Now, I really must get around to the less exciting stuff like fitting a rack and guards!

ps.  More to follow, I am just too knackered for now.

Ooooh oooh! Is that box for me?

The UPS man popped by this morning and dropped off another apparently empty cardboard box.  The box was from Universal Transmissions, the European agents for the Gates Carbon Drive system.  For those who don't know, Carbon Drive is the relatively new bike drive concept that replaces the oily, mucky chain with a clean, lube free carbon fibre reinforced belt.

From the start we decided that Such Bikes are all about technology that makes sense, and this is reflected not only in our approach to design, but also selection of technology.  Part of this philosophy is the Gates Carbon Drive.

I hope to get this installed this weekend (there are just a few small bits and bobs I still need to do the job properly); can't wait to try it out!  I will definitely post my impressions of the belt drive as I gain experience of it and put it through its paces.

Look where you're going!

Countless times I've ridden along, mesmerised by the yellow line or the crumbling edge of the tarmac. You know the situation, head down into a headwind, keeping up that just uncomfortable, but steady rhythm.

The situation was like this. I was running a touch late to get to my wife's show, so I needed to give it stick. I'd got onto the relatively uninterrupted expanse of Chelsea Embankment and was in the zone. I was happily watching the Red Route double red whizzing by as I blasted into the cold north easterly when suddenly the double red became a single red line, and then the grey bumper of a Jaguar XJ.

It is quite odd that you have enough time to think "This is going to hurt. Idiot! Nice Jag though. Good thing it isn't a van or an estate", but not enough to actually touch the brakes.

Wham! Chin hits the rear window - I tumble over the roof and land on the pavement. I must have landed on my feet because I didn't have a single scrape or bump, apart from my chin. I'd like to put it down to a childhood spent wiping out on my BMX, but more likely a lot to do with luck.

Damage check, OK but dazed. The Pig, my utility/hack bike, is looking very much the worse for wear. The Jag looks perfect, just a small smudge of the bar tape I had wrapped onto the bar ends. It would easily polish out, if not just wash off. Not a dent or a scratch!

Back to The Pig, the lights are still attached and working. The front mudguard is detached, the fork is bent so that the front wheel is tucked underneath. The saddle is bent, probably from the landing on the pavement. The wheels are still perfectly round and seem to have shrugged off the impact. But it is unrideable.

I wheel it over to the tube station, lock it up and get myself to the Islington theatre late but amazingly in just in time to see my Darling on stage.

Somehow I managed to ride into a car at full tilt and emerge pretty much unscathed; a) I am extremely lucky, and b) I am very thankful that I got to learn this lesson with only minor loss to both me and negligible damage to the car I hit.

Fortunately a few months back I picked up a nice early 90s Tange Prestige tubed GT frame with horizontal dropouts which has been begging for a new lease on life - I feel a renovation project coming on!

Riding in the city

Waiting for the train at Fenchurch Street

I am really enjoying testing the Battersea prototype. Apart from the warm feeling I get riding a bike I designed from tube sizes down to the exact location of each cable guide, I just really love riding this bike. But I guess you'd expect me to say that.

This past weekend was a bit of pottering but also a long ride on Saturday out to Box Hill. For the role of road bike, I stuck on a set of 25c road tyres and pumped them up to their maximum. The bike certainly felt much more alive than running with the 32c rubber, but this had more to do with the reduction in rotational mass rather than rolling resistance. The narrower rubber takes marginally less effort to get up to speed; once rolling though, it is a more agitated and I was hard pressed to notice any difference in rolling resistance. If anything, the larger volume tyres made riding feel easier as all the roads felt billiard-table smooth.

Tyre comparisons aside, the long run out to Box Hill (and the climb itself) was very instructional, and what I learned will definitely feed into the revised design. I was also heartened by the attention that the bike got at the cafe, it seems to be generally well received.

This week has also been about testing in the environment that a Battersea would be expected to spend a lot of its working life, on the commute. The disc brakes once again proved their worth. As would be the case, I was faced with two SMIDSY incidents (pulling out from side roads) within the first mile, and in both cases the ability to drop anchors was crucial. While you certainly can get by perfectly adequately with rim brakes (and many do), I found that the order-of-magnitude-better stopping power discs provide gave me a lot of confidence.

Of course, this testing lark isn't all fun. Puncture on Wednesday saw me pumping up my tyre with my mini pump (on a cold railway platform when already running late). Not sure how much longer I will be able to resist CO2 canisters!

The "Hardship" of Testing

One "hardship" of developing a new bike is having to ride it, a lot. So this past weekend was largely spent in the saddle getting some quality miles in.

Saturday was spent out with Andy and Ryan in the Chilterns riding the lanes out to a lovely pub in Stoke Row for lunch. It was a great opportunity for the guys to get a feel for the proto, and for me to get a taste of the Alfine; the Alfine is a great piece of kit and I can't wait to get it onto the prototype. I also can't wait to get my hands on one of the new 11-speed versions later this year.

A good few laps of Richmond Park was the order for Sunday. I had intended to head out to Box Hill, but bad weather and house guests swayed me to stay closer to home. The proto makes a very relaxed road bike; I'm looking forward to taking it out for a tour - I think it is going shine at that.

For this coming weekend it will probably be much of the same, but there are still many more testing outings planned - from loaded touring to a little cross country riding. Tough life, hey? :-)

The Battersea prototype rolls

This has been one crazy weekend!

The build in earnest started on Friday afternoon, but working with relatively unfamiliar parts (discs brakes, Gore Ride On sealed cables, ...) I took my time to make sure I got it all right.

Ryan was over to make sure the graphics were applied to the frame just so, Bryan was on hand to lend enthusiasm and and extra hand whenever needed. Come about 1:30am, the bike was just about right. Come 3am I'd finally got myself into bed, but still hardly able to sleep with anticipation of riding it the next day.

A misunderstanding the night before had me taking my darling to breakfast at Bertie and the Boo coffee shop in Balham (highly recommended, but warning - the place can get chockers for all the prams and the like). At first I was terrified of leaving the bike locked up, but fortunately I was able to just about see it from where I was sitting.

Then home for a bit more fettling before Bryan and I headed out for a nice ride around town, mostly inbetween drinking coffee. Ok, I am the designer, so you'd expect me to say good things about the bike, but I must say it handles much better than I'd expected. Mostly I love the way it feels planted and reassuring without being stodgy. In fact, if anything it feels chuckable. Ride quality is always going to be good on 32mm tyres, but a good deal of that must also be down to the frame. I was aiming at every road imperfection; sure you feel the bumps - but they don't pummel you. This is a bike I can imagine riding all day quite happily; good thing, because I have a 6-day tour planned - for testing purposes, of course!

It was interesting watching people's reaction to the bike when it was parked up. I was very pleasantly surprised how many people would stop to look at it, pointing to various aspects of he design. It has certainly given me a lot more confidence in what we have here.

After getting it back, and realising that I'd set the Avid BB7 brakes a little tightly, I gave the bike a once over to get it prepped for the London Cyclo Cross Team Championships. I was picked to run in the A-team, and was really looking forward to it. My performance on the day was, unfortunately, disappointing as I was troubled by my chest maladies, but the bike performed faultlessly. It proved an absolute hoot to ride, I was just a bit disappointed that the course didn't include more technical sections that would provide greater challenge to the bike! That said, the long downhill with a gentle, muddy sweep at the bottom was an absolute hoot and the brakes were a boon into all the tight corners.

I still need to get many more miles in on the bike, but my impressions so far are positive, I think we have a winner here. A rack and guards will soon be fitted and the bike tested in both real world, and some less than real world conditions. Geometry will remain the same, I'll just be tweaking some of the tube sizes, and altering the rear dropouts slightly.

But all that aside, not much comes close to the feeling of rolling out on a bike that you've created yourself. Thinking of how, just a few months back, this concept was just an in-progress CAD drawing gives me such a rush. And this is just the beginning!