e0richt

hi,
saw this on youtube and wanted to know if anyone has tried this?
Bike Capsule Shields Cyclists From Stormy Weather (inhabitat.com)

I looked at it and there are too many variables about tube sizes and such that I wonder if this really can work and then there are the possiblity of being driven by winds...
just curious if anyone else has tried it and what their experience with it.

thanks

rumrunn6

don't think so, but there is at least 1 BF contributor that has contracted what he calls a "fairing" for the front of his bike. it protects his upper & lower body from wind chill. sorry, but I can't remember where he posted pics last. I think it's blue

Darth Lefty 

There are tons of past threads about fairings and windshields and shells. This sort of thing appeals to we engineers, inventors, and other nerds. Just off the top of my head here on BF, Jeff Wills has or had some involvement with IHPVA, wphamilton put a full fairing on his upright, and hotbike made something from Coroplast signs. There's a brand of recumbent called a Lightning F40 that has an accessory fairing that zips up, I think it's Spandex and squeezes your shoulders. There's a brand of windshield called Zzipper (sic)

I do think the lack of enclosure is something that keeps ladies out of commuting. If you are wishing you had a shower at work, imagine you came out of the shower and had to do your hair and makeup. And you had to leave that much earlier to have the time to do it. If you just want something you can deploy when it rains it's tough to beat a plastic poncho. It's obvious that a rain jacket will keep the rain off your torso but on a bicycle you also need to shield your legs. There's a fancy minimalist version called a rain cape.

Crosswinds are definitely an issue. People using deep dish wheels experience it and that's on conventional racing bikes. Full fairings usually are truncated behind the back wheel instead of extending to an edge like a fish or an airfoil.

Another thing that becomes an issue for a full fairing, that you would not bother to consider for a dirty vehicle or a heavy one, is aerodynamic stability. Vetter listed below added ballast to the front of his enclosed scooter. I had a few hours to think about stability a couple days ago as I pulled my travel trailer up I-5 in a gale crosswind

https://www.bikeforums.net/general-c...-fairings.html
https://www.bikeforums.net/road-cycl...oad-bikes.html
https://www.bikeforums.net/bicycle-m...indshield.html
https://craigvetter.com/index.html Craig Vetter developed the fairing you see on a lot of larger 1960's-70's bikes. You may not know the original Honda Gold Wing was a naked! Vetter fairings made it what it became. In the 2000's he returned to the idea of making a super efficient enclosed motorcycle and did a full capsule fairing on a semi-recumbent scooter
https://www.facebook.com/ElectricTerry/ "Electric Terry" Hershner put a Vetter capsule fairing on his Zero electric motorcycle (with other modifications) and did a record cross country run
https://www.ihpva.org/home/

Daniel4

That article is dated 2009. If there's a market for it, it hasn't penetrated the Toronto market because I ride in the rain and hadn't seen any of these rain capsules on the road -at least not in my corner of Toronto.

Darth Lefty 

The one in the link is just a tent. It might also need a gap to see through. It's going to get hard to see if the water just runs down.

An umbrella of some kind clamped somewhere on the bike would be simpler. But umbrellas tend to be airfoils and then become parachutes. You may not notice it if you are used to using one, or may not have the knack if you don't, but you tune the pitch of an umbrella to zero lift. You can't do that if it's clamped to the bike and you are spending your attention steering. So maybe add the vents like a patio or beach umbrella. But then is it watertight? hm

google?

sean.hwy

As others have sad I think cross winds would be a huge PITA on a light bike.

Daniel4

I'm not the only one to miss this sentence from the article.

" The designers have gone through extensive wind tunnel testing to create an aerodynamic windshield that will stand up to strong gusts — and won’t act as a sail that sends you careening into traffic."

mstateglfr 

You click on the terribly sized pic of they guy with 2 condom shorn bikes and you scroll thru a bunch of randomness to a grass covered VW. Based on that initial website, I genuinely was not surprised to see a grass covered car.

Oh, and those rain shell capsules are goofy.

Leisesturm

I know they say that, but I don't really see how it is possible. Fairings (umbrellas) work well on tricycle platforms. Recumbent tricycle platforms. If they worked (well) on bicycle platforms this thread wouldn't be necessary.