The most outrageous bike I have ever seen
03-01-19, 03:52 PM
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From Bauer's Wikipedia page:
"For his 1993 Paris-Roubaix campaign, he had a bike built by the Merckx factory with "an extreme rearward seat position" to test his theory that it would "engag[e] the quadriceps more efficiently" and with it "more power to the pedals". He failed to make the top ten (finishing over 4 minutes behind the winner in 23rd place [5]) and never rode the bike again."
"For his 1993 Paris-Roubaix campaign, he had a bike built by the Merckx factory with "an extreme rearward seat position" to test his theory that it would "engag[e] the quadriceps more efficiently" and with it "more power to the pedals". He failed to make the top ten (finishing over 4 minutes behind the winner in 23rd place [5]) and never rode the bike again."
03-04-19, 01:53 PM
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03-04-19, 08:51 PM
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03-04-19, 10:12 PM
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The Most Outrageous Bike
that I ever heard about was more than forty years ago.
Back when I was a Boy Scout in the mid to late 1970s, the Boy Scouts of America printed a monthly magazine, Boy's Life, to which I was a subscriber.
The magazine had various articles about the Scouts, and would sometimes feature an individual Boy Scout in this issue or that issue (I can't remember if it was every issue or only from time to time) and some of the stories they had were weird, to say the least.
Anyway, one of the Scouts they featured in one of the issues (this would have been in the late 1970s, can't remember exactly when) was the son of an engineer at either CalTech or JPL or one of the other high-tech/engineering schools in California.
He was working on a merit badge for something or it was a school project or something like that, I can't remember now.
He and his dad took a regular ten-speed bike of the kind that I and other boys my age rode frequently, and "upgraded" it. There was a picture of him with this bike, and I am describing the following from the best of my recollection.
They lengthened the frame a little bit and modified the drive train.
Essentially, they added a whole bunch of gears to the bike. It had two chains, both of which wrapped around a weird, hybrid cassette/chainring thing in the middle, where the chainring would have been. The front chain went up to a (more or less) normal cassette thing on the front tube and the rear chain was around a (more or less normal) cassette in back.
The two chains shared the thing in the middle and it had four gearshift toggles, two for each chain.
I think the bike had something like 108 gears in total and the boy in quest said he could ride it but that it was rather heavier than a standard bicycle.
I remember thinking at the time (I would have probably been twelve or maybe thirteen at the time) that why would someone want to do something like that?
Well, if your dad works at CalTech and you want to impress your classmates and/or get a merit badge, you have him help you build an entirely impractical bicycle because, well just because.
Because you can do it, I guess.
Back when I was a Boy Scout in the mid to late 1970s, the Boy Scouts of America printed a monthly magazine, Boy's Life, to which I was a subscriber.
The magazine had various articles about the Scouts, and would sometimes feature an individual Boy Scout in this issue or that issue (I can't remember if it was every issue or only from time to time) and some of the stories they had were weird, to say the least.
Anyway, one of the Scouts they featured in one of the issues (this would have been in the late 1970s, can't remember exactly when) was the son of an engineer at either CalTech or JPL or one of the other high-tech/engineering schools in California.
He was working on a merit badge for something or it was a school project or something like that, I can't remember now.
He and his dad took a regular ten-speed bike of the kind that I and other boys my age rode frequently, and "upgraded" it. There was a picture of him with this bike, and I am describing the following from the best of my recollection.
They lengthened the frame a little bit and modified the drive train.
Essentially, they added a whole bunch of gears to the bike. It had two chains, both of which wrapped around a weird, hybrid cassette/chainring thing in the middle, where the chainring would have been. The front chain went up to a (more or less) normal cassette thing on the front tube and the rear chain was around a (more or less normal) cassette in back.
The two chains shared the thing in the middle and it had four gearshift toggles, two for each chain.
I think the bike had something like 108 gears in total and the boy in quest said he could ride it but that it was rather heavier than a standard bicycle.
I remember thinking at the time (I would have probably been twelve or maybe thirteen at the time) that why would someone want to do something like that?
Well, if your dad works at CalTech and you want to impress your classmates and/or get a merit badge, you have him help you build an entirely impractical bicycle because, well just because.
Because you can do it, I guess.
03-04-19, 10:50 PM
#59
Cycleway town
that I ever heard about was more than forty years ago.
Back when I was a Boy Scout in the mid to late 1970s, the Boy Scouts of America printed a monthly magazine, Boy's Life, to which I was a subscriber.
The magazine had various articles about the Scouts, and would sometimes feature an individual Boy Scout in this issue or that issue (I can't remember if it was every issue or only from time to time) and some of the stories they had were weird, to say the least.
Anyway, one of the Scouts they featured in one of the issues (this would have been in the late 1970s, can't remember exactly when) was the son of an engineer at either CalTech or JPL or one of the other high-tech/engineering schools in California.
He was working on a merit badge for something or it was a school project or something like that, I can't remember now.
He and his dad took a regular ten-speed bike of the kind that I and other boys my age rode frequently, and "upgraded" it. There was a picture of him with this bike, and I am describing the following from the best of my recollection.
They lengthened the frame a little bit and modified the drive train.
Essentially, they added a whole bunch of gears to the bike. It had two chains, both of which wrapped around a weird, hybrid cassette/chainring thing in the middle, where the chainring would have been. The front chain went up to a (more or less) normal cassette thing on the front tube and the rear chain was around a (more or less normal) cassette in back.
The two chains shared the thing in the middle and it had four gearshift toggles, two for each chain.
I think the bike had something like 108 gears in total and the boy in quest said he could ride it but that it was rather heavier than a standard bicycle.
I remember thinking at the time (I would have probably been twelve or maybe thirteen at the time) that why would someone want to do something like that?
Well, if your dad works at CalTech and you want to impress your classmates and/or get a merit badge, you have him help you build an entirely impractical bicycle because, well just because.
Because you can do it, I guess.
Back when I was a Boy Scout in the mid to late 1970s, the Boy Scouts of America printed a monthly magazine, Boy's Life, to which I was a subscriber.
The magazine had various articles about the Scouts, and would sometimes feature an individual Boy Scout in this issue or that issue (I can't remember if it was every issue or only from time to time) and some of the stories they had were weird, to say the least.
Anyway, one of the Scouts they featured in one of the issues (this would have been in the late 1970s, can't remember exactly when) was the son of an engineer at either CalTech or JPL or one of the other high-tech/engineering schools in California.
He was working on a merit badge for something or it was a school project or something like that, I can't remember now.
He and his dad took a regular ten-speed bike of the kind that I and other boys my age rode frequently, and "upgraded" it. There was a picture of him with this bike, and I am describing the following from the best of my recollection.
They lengthened the frame a little bit and modified the drive train.
Essentially, they added a whole bunch of gears to the bike. It had two chains, both of which wrapped around a weird, hybrid cassette/chainring thing in the middle, where the chainring would have been. The front chain went up to a (more or less) normal cassette thing on the front tube and the rear chain was around a (more or less normal) cassette in back.
The two chains shared the thing in the middle and it had four gearshift toggles, two for each chain.
I think the bike had something like 108 gears in total and the boy in quest said he could ride it but that it was rather heavier than a standard bicycle.
I remember thinking at the time (I would have probably been twelve or maybe thirteen at the time) that why would someone want to do something like that?
Well, if your dad works at CalTech and you want to impress your classmates and/or get a merit badge, you have him help you build an entirely impractical bicycle because, well just because.
Because you can do it, I guess.
This has a final drive in it's second 'arm-less' crank, and with the Sturmey CS-RK3 hub on my Merlin, and a triple crank for the front, i have the gears in my parts bin to put 297 on it. That lot would require four shifters.
But this bike has only 20 gears - and i only ever use one. The other 19 are pointless, let alone another 296, because it also has a powerful motor...
03-05-19, 12:07 PM
#61
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They lengthened the frame a little bit and modified the drive train.
Essentially, they added a whole bunch of gears to the bike. It had two chains, both of which wrapped around a weird, hybrid cassette/chainring thing in the middle, where the chainring would have been. The front chain went up to a (more or less) normal cassette thing on the front tube and the rear chain was around a (more or less normal) cassette in back.
The two chains shared the thing in the middle and it had four gearshift toggles, two for each chain.
I think the bike had something like 108 gears in total and the boy in quest said he could ride it but that it was rather heavier than a standard bicycle.
I remember thinking at the time (I would have probably been twelve or maybe thirteen at the time) that why would someone want to do something like that?
Well, if your dad works at CalTech and you want to impress your classmates and/or get a merit badge, you have him help you build an entirely impractical bicycle because, well just because.
Because you can do it, I guess.
Essentially, they added a whole bunch of gears to the bike. It had two chains, both of which wrapped around a weird, hybrid cassette/chainring thing in the middle, where the chainring would have been. The front chain went up to a (more or less) normal cassette thing on the front tube and the rear chain was around a (more or less normal) cassette in back.
The two chains shared the thing in the middle and it had four gearshift toggles, two for each chain.
I think the bike had something like 108 gears in total and the boy in quest said he could ride it but that it was rather heavier than a standard bicycle.
I remember thinking at the time (I would have probably been twelve or maybe thirteen at the time) that why would someone want to do something like that?
Well, if your dad works at CalTech and you want to impress your classmates and/or get a merit badge, you have him help you build an entirely impractical bicycle because, well just because.
Because you can do it, I guess.
03-05-19, 12:23 PM
#62
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03-05-19, 12:26 PM
#63
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Not so outrageous, but there were these:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...ry-fun-bicycle
Hard to guess whatever became of them; the most recent reference I've seen was of some for rent in Florida, without the suspension forks.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...ry-fun-bicycle
Hard to guess whatever became of them; the most recent reference I've seen was of some for rent in Florida, without the suspension forks.
03-05-19, 12:52 PM
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I don't remember the exact details, but as I say, I think the boy's dad was an engineer and I got the impression that they did it just to prove it was possible to make a bike like that.
but 108 gears would give you a hell of a gear ratio when climbing up very steep hills.
(although there is the not inconsequential issue of the extra weight of the extended frame and other components of the "upgraded" drivetrain to consider ...)
Since this was in the 1970s, my guess was that the bike was probably a steel-framed bike and was probably reasonably ridable on flat ground.
But going up an even moderately-sloped hill ...
I'll look around and see if I can't find that article online somewhere
03-05-19, 06:03 PM
#65
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Originally Posted by John HP 
Steve Bauer's bike for 93 Paris Roubaix.
Steve Bauer's bike for 93 Paris Roubaix.I found it very hard to believe that anyone could ride that Merckx bike in Paris Roubaix without getting dropped by everyone who hadn't crashed!
It's a ~recumbent, no?
I once thought that my semi-recumbent Pedersen was too far off to ever be used in a bike race, somehow I was wrong about that but the Merckx bike looks like it would be much harder to race on. Could he even get off of the saddle while riding???
I have to wonder how much time that Bauer spent training on it, I can't imagine that a racer's physique would be up to it without some serious adaptation(?).
Seriously, having seen it online many times before, I had thought all along that bike was meant as a joke, for exhibit, just to show to photographers.
Some things you just gotta try, to quantify the challenge I guess.
03-06-19, 02:50 AM
#66
Senior Member
03-06-19, 05:45 AM
#67
Senior Member
I could ride the A1A with that bike, I don’t even think it would be out of place. It flows so well, all those colours.
03-06-19, 11:08 AM
#68
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And if the rider has enough experience with any well-set-up bike, there would be no problem with balance even at the rather low speed.
The problem with pushing the bike uphill at one's fastest speed is that in most cases the body (calves and achilles tendons, especially if wearing any kind of cycling shoes) are unprepared for such an effort unless significant training has been done specific to that activity.
Last edited by dddd; 03-06-19 at 11:12 AM.
03-08-19, 08:08 AM
#69
Senior Member
If the gear is the right ratio for the rider and the grade, then it would never be an issue of not being able to pedal fast enough, so I would say still more efficient and faster to stay on the bike.
And if the rider has enough experience with any well-set-up bike, there would be no problem with balance even at the rather low speed.
And if the rider has enough experience with any well-set-up bike, there would be no problem with balance even at the rather low speed.
03-09-19, 09:19 PM
#70
Registered User
I'd say that Giant didn't get recumbents.
03-10-19, 07:09 PM
#72
Junior Member
I can't promise anything but my first flight training student to earn a private license tells a story from his teenage years of having fastened several model airplane engines and propellers to the handlebars of his bicycle and powering it to move, perhaps too slowly for practicality, on level ground I will attempt to get a picture of it in the unlikely event he has a picture of it in a scrap book somewhere.
03-10-19, 08:20 PM
#73
Senior Member
I have to say, it took some time to adjust the muscles in my legs for the semi-recumbent. About 6 weeks. I had been riding in a Specialized for a few years. But I kept crashing due to the fact the seat was so high for my bad knees I would fall over at a stop if I was seated, and had to jump off seat fast to not do that. I am happy to report I have not had one crash (couple close calls but due to being able to put foot on ground avoided crashing-knock on wood) Just a week ago in the dark I went off the cement path into mud and almost bit it. I am so happy to have daylight savings time again so dark rides are in the past, until next fall. One thing I have noticed while it might be safer on the roadway it is NOT good off road. And on uneven paths the frame is too long and heavy. for the flat gravel paths its not bad, but it took a while to get used to the front end. But my hands and shoulders are happy to not be leaned upon. And my bad back is overjoyed in the day 6. But a seat post with give would be perfect-and I will this year get one. In fact it is due for a tune up soon... I do that once or so a year.Think the back brake pads need replacing soon. I do wish they were the disc but well I'm just happy to be riding.
03-10-19, 11:06 PM
#74
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I have to say, it took some time to adjust the muscles in my legs for the semi-recumbent. About 6 weeks. I had been riding in a Specialized for a few years. But I kept crashing due to the fact the seat was so high for my bad knees I would fall over at a stop if I was seated, and had to jump off seat fast to not do that. I am happy to report I have not had one crash (couple close calls but due to being able to put foot on ground avoided crashing-knock on wood) Just a week ago in the dark I went off the cement path into mud and almost bit it. I am so happy to have daylight savings time again so dark rides are in the past, until next fall. One thing I have noticed while it might be safer on the roadway it is NOT good off road. And on uneven paths the frame is too long and heavy. for the flat gravel paths its not bad, but it took a while to get used to the front end. But my hands and shoulders are happy to not be leaned upon. And my bad back is overjoyed in the day 6. But a seat post with give would be perfect-and I will this year get one. In fact it is due for a tune up soon... I do that once or so a year.Think the back brake pads need replacing soon. I do wish they were the disc but well I'm just happy to be riding.
03-11-19, 12:10 AM
#75
Senior Member
I was wondering the same thing so I texted the bike Manufacturer and they told me a thud buster would work OK. I got new bigger wider (tougher-after 2 blow outs) tires and it helped quite a bit. And well they notice me in the dark....Not only a head light, tail light but blinky christmas lights. 
A well lit bike. Nightrides here I come.
A well lit bike. Nightrides here I come.
