Huskey

Hey all, this year I've set myself some goals, get sub 12sec in the flying 200m, sub 1:15sec in the kilo ect... but one that I've been wanting do do for a while now is to build a starting gate for our local track.
Now I know it's not going to be anything as fancy as the official starting gates they use, but it would make it easier for my wife to help me do standing starts when we're out there by ourselves (she struggles to keep me upright and with my feet locked in I cant always focus on the start) and would give some of the riders a bit of experience using a starting gate or at least something similar, before they head off down south and are expected to pull a pb when being on an indoor track and using a gate for the first time.



I was hoping someone on here may have plans for one, has made one, has a few basic dimensions for one. I could probably get by without as I'll probably tweak it a bit to suit how i'm going to build/use it. But something to start with would make it a lot easier.

I'll most likely use 2mm-3mm thick box steel and a regular road brake to hold the wheel in place.

Quinn8it

this topic has come up a few times over the years- probably more over at Fixed Gear Fever...
Some people have figured out some pretty clever gates and put a lot of effort in to constructing them.

Not to be negative- but I don't really think it's worth the effort.

The main goal people have is to practice gate starts at their home track so they don't struggle with them when they show up a championship races. I get it- everyone wants to train what they will race. The issue is that what trips people up about the starting gate is not the part where your bike is being held in a very stable and solid gate. Where people repeatedly fail on the gate is with the release, which is connected to the count down timer. Not only can you not move your bike early- if you do it wall actually penalize you.

Ultimately what you are training when you do gate starts is your timing with the countdown timer. I would think replicating that in a DIY gate would be nearly impossible..

Huskey

I hear where your coming from, not to most accurate thing to practice on but still better than nothing. I enjoy making things and this seems like a bit of a challenge to me, so i figure why not?

I'll have to have a search for those old threads another day (its 2am here), I had a quick search on this section but didn't thing to search the whole forum.

dunderhi

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Nothing wrong with building a starting gate for your local track, but don't blame your wife! Show her some love for helping you out. Work on your balance and she should be able to support you easily while you concentrate on the task at hand. Here's a pic of me and my misses at a competition last year. Notice that I'm still clipping in and she has all 260lbs of me without straining. She was comfortable enough to chat with the official while we waited to start.

carleton

I say go for it.

One day, someone will make a clever and simple design that is easily replicated. Then every track will have some.

I bet the breakthrough will come from some pre-made thing that it tweaked as opposed to making something from scratch (which is where all of the time, money, and labor come in).

queerpunk

a guy at my track made a home-made one. It grabs the seatpost with a workstand clamp. and has a few other nifty hacks. i'll see if i can dig up a picture.

brawlo

https://www.bikeforums.net/track-cycl...l#post15816288

Have a look here, with a good video at the end. I had such aspirations a couple of years ago, but haven't seen myself with the free time to do something about it.

Huskey

Easier said than done, she's not strong or confident and has a tendency to start leaning you either way. So it's easier to just not put her in that position, where she's uncomfortable. Normally I just do a rolling start and come to a stop for a split second before taking off.

McRussellPants

If you could fabricate the steel frame yourself you could get all the components for that for 120 or so off ebay. If you were feeling lazy just order a motorcycle air shifter kit, then your spotter could use a spare drill battery to contact/trigger the solenoid if you're lazy. or if you're fancy you could setup an ardino to switch it on a timer with a display/countdown buzzer

that red one including wheels and steel and air setup is a 300$ project assuming you have access to a welder/drill/chop saw. seems fun.

seems more like a fun garage nerd project that something particularly useful though.

dunderhi

Practice certainly does help, but if she is too nervous, then maybe she's too nervous and a gate is possibly a good solution.

I taught my wife last Summer in a parking lot in about 15 minutes. The lesson was simple: All she needed to do is to lift upward with a modest amount of effort and never try to correct my position. Sure, she wanted to correct my position the first couple of times, but that's why it took a whole 15 minutes before she figured it out. She had to trust me that I wasn't going to fall over and if I fell over it was my fault, not hers. (BTW, I didn't fall over) I've had strong men, well... uh... sprinters , hold me and man-handle my position with no where near the success that my wife had. Why? They wanted to be in control my position rather than let me control it myself. The cyclist should be in charge of the positioning, since a guy on a bike should have a better sense of the vertical plane than a guy standing with his feet at different heights on a banked track.

For your part, if you are going to do it alone for a while, please consider using it as an opportuinity to work on balance. When you roll to the start, try to stop for more than a split second. Launch yourself only when your balance starts to fail. When you can pause confidently for more than a couple of seconds, you should start to notice when held by a holder that the holder's technique is far more important than his or her strength. When I hold people, I usually only use one hand useless they are new, nervous, have no balance, or all of the above.

Good luck.

Huskey

I can weld up the frame reasonably easy, I've got a little gasless mig that I've used for a few projects.

Might look into an air setup, but cost will be a big factor. Steel is reasonably cheap and I have a few spare bits floating about that I can use. Still it would be pretty cool to have a countdown timer and buzzer wired into it.

Dalai

At our club we have one identical to this; actually think it was built by the same person.



If it helps, I can try and remember to take some photos this Saturday?

As nice as it may be to have a starting gate, I don't think I've seen ours wheeled down onto the track in all the years I've been racing...

Quinn8it

Maybe because it takes 2 people to run the gate and it still doesn't simulate the timer coordinated release?

queerpunk

in the meantime, this might be helpful:

Dalai

Not even bothered with at club champs!

Well there is proof it has been rolled to the infield at least once. Footage is at my club's track and with the starting gate visible a few times in the clip!