A whole lot of Hanseeno
Adam Hansen is building his own radical time trial bike | Cyclingnews
thinking way outside the box, love it
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28mm wide is nuts. I’m eager to check out the drivetrain and how it integrates. And by integrate I mean how fussy is it to work on.
Point of clarification that always bugs me…
a TT bike can always be a triathlon bike but a triathlon bike is not always a TT bike.
It might be picky to point out UCI rules, but even for USAC stuff I don’t think you can show up to a Cat 3 or faster TT on an Andean, Ceepo, or this thing.
NOT a TT bike. This is a triathlon superbike. I’ll head back to my porch now with my walking stick.
"Adam Hansen is currently in the process of designing and manufacturing his own radical-looking time trial bike, which he hopes to race in Ironman events this season. "
Someone get Ed O’Malley in here.
Point of clarification that always bugs me…
a TT bike can always be a triathlon bike but a triathlon bike is not always a TT bike.
It might be picky to point out UCI rules, but even for USAC stuff I don’t think you can show up to a Cat 3 or faster TT on an Andean, Ceepo, or this thing.
NOT a TT bike. This is a triathlon superbike. I’ll head back to my porch now with my walking stick.
"Adam Hansen is currently in the process of designing and manufacturing his own radical-looking time trial bike, which he hopes to race in Ironman events this season. "
There are quite a lot of time trial organizations that don’t adhere to USAC/UCI rules for time trial bikes. WUCA (ultracycling organization) being a big one among others. I wouldn’t have had much of a problem taking my TriRig Omni to a fair bit of time trials I was hoping to race in 2020 (which never happened).
Got to give him credit for trying. Though the Ceepo and Diamondback do not do much for me. Is not the Ironman bike course record on Pinarello. And Ganna holds the IP record and the current TT champ as well on a Pinarello.
who knows how it will turn out but it sure should be interesting and a whole lot more innovative than what anyone else is doing - the whole may well be a fail but there are likely to be elements that are winners. i’d be interested to know how he is doing the design - CFD, prototypes and tunnel or just using his eye
i’m asuming BTA and BTS bottles, custom mounts of course.
“The widest part of the bike, excluding the forks, will be as wide as the front tyre, at 28mm” - i’m guessing this is only referring to the main “triangle” and even then not including the bottom bracket area which seems to integrate into the width of the chainstays. the front fork/stays looks like a real wind catcher, i would have thought a conventional fork would be better
the custom deraileurs aren’t shown in the image. these will be challenging but potentially very interesting and beneficial.
If I had to guess, its gonna be kinda meh for aerodynamics. Not my area of expertise though. I’m a little concerned about its structural integrity, would like to see how he’s doing that side of the design as well.
How is he going to design and manufacture bespoke derailleurs, a crank with a novel feature, and a frame that requires a differentiated material or at minimum a different layup process? While training for Ironman?
There don’t seem to be any accommodations for food/drink/flatkit (and at 28mm, it’s kinda hard to fit things inside the frame). Interesting to see what it looks like equipped for a 140.6, and if he makes any interesting modifications as a result.
This is awesome. Talented guy.
Someone get Ed O’Malley in here.
Haha!
Well, I think it’s great that he is working on a bike. I give him a 0.1% chance that he’ll be racing on one this year. Especially if he is making his own integrated derailleurs. I hope he proves me wrong! There is a very very long way to go from having some cool CAD renderings to making a fully-functional bike prototype. Then about 30 times further to go to get that bike into production.
I have heard that having the front wheel - or Ceepo-esque fork - conform so closely to a downtube cutout is quite bad aerodynamically when the wheel is anything other than perfectly aligned with the downtube - even when the front wheel is turned even just a small amount. I have noticed many of the best bikes out there these days are going for a big space between the front wheel and the downtube. I presume that this is to let the air that has been slightly disturbed from the wheel get reorganized and as laminar as possible before it encounters the down tube. I have not done any analysis or testing of this myself, it’s just my conclusions from seeing how bike design is progressing and having a little bit of knowledge of such things.
I think the bike looks great - he has style. He is a guy that gets things done. I’m rooting for him.
Not sure why he’d hamstring himself with such a narrow frontal area? It will make for a huge engineering challenge and seems it’s a basic tenet of aerodynamics that a good aero shape is way more important than narrow frontal area. The floating front crankset is a cool idea but have no idea how he’d actually make that work and the complexity involved could easily entail downsides that would overwhelm the minor efficiency gain. Seems better to stick to off the shelf components and gearing chosen to maximize efficiency and with good shifting choices.
I do think going for a narrow Q-factor could have aero benefits for his body position but he could do that without going to the extreme of a 28mm wide frame.
I think this is a really cool concept but he’s going to need to get significantly more realistic with his goals to make it work. I’m not totally convinced there isn’t still progress to be made in more aerodynamic bicycle design despite all the hoopla about “peak aero” but it remains to be seen if he can actually achieve that goal with limited resources, I wish him success.
How is he going to design and manufacture bespoke derailleurs, a crank with a novel feature
This was my initial reaction too. Making a frame is one thing, but it seems do-able with experience working with carbon fiber. you see a lot of bespoke frames by lots of DIY-ers or very small custom makers. however, derailleurs? a crankset, let alone a “floating” one? i’ve never heard of anyone making their own bespoke drivetrain (not just one drivetrain part, but a whole drivetrain system), it seems sorta insane. but you gotta love the effort, i hope it works out for him.
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If his 28mm width restriction includes the bottom bracket, I cannot see that working… how wide are the races for crank bearings? Can you even fit 2 bearings within 28mm? The moment applied to the carbon will be very large in that area.
I think the bottom bracket is inline/same width as the rear fork (which need to be wider than 28 mm to get around the wheel) so I think he’ll have decent room for the BB. But still, agree with everything you and others have said… this is a huge undertaking! Cool design though.
If his 28mm width restriction includes the bottom bracket, I cannot see that working.
There are many places 28mm doesn’t work.
The only part that looks narrow relative to a conventional TT bike is the headtube. The BB and front and rear forks stick out farther. Otherwise the main frame on my bike is 28mm wide as well.
There are issues to trying for a low Q as well as perfect chainline (floating ring). On my bike with a 135mm Q and centered ring the chain nearly hits the crankarm in the 11t… and that’s with an old solid aluminum DuraAce crank. You might be able do a few mm better with high strength carbon, but not much. Maybe he will use only part of a cassette to improve that situation.
I suspect he may find that improving on the aero drag of modern bikes is not that easy. Hidden derailleurs are a cool idea, but in practice how does that really work? Is there a big carbon shroud covering the mechanisms and gears?
What’s the current narrowest tri bike? I recall Look having a really thin bike but I was struggling to find details. My Omni is ~38mm everywhere but the fork, stays, and bottom bracket. Hard to imagine going thinner than that. Also, in theory the benefit of the side fork was hiding the rotating tire from the wid. This leaves just as much tire exposed. Maybe Ceepo got that one wrong though.
Also, in theory the benefit of the side fork was hiding the rotating tire from the wid. This leaves just as much tire exposed. Maybe Ceepo got that one wrong though.
For whatever it’s worth, testing that I have been present for showed a Ceepo-like fork fairing had no impact on aerodynamics, but fairing the rear of the front wheel as with this design, Dimond Mogul, Diamondback Andean, P5X, etc. had a large positive impact on aerodynamics at yaw (but not at 0 yaw).