The other day I finally got to do some more tourist stuff here in Australia. My father is here to visit me and we rented a car and went on “The Great Ocean Road”. For sure worth doing if you like cool scenery. Click the thumbnail below for a photo of one of the more spectacular views.
I never cease to be amazed at the level of intelligence flourishing on the internets. Just saw the above bike thing, the see-saw bike, on TheComeUp. Checked the post out and read some of the comments… and fukin hell! Some people seem to think it’s an actual product and not just a “conceptual” or “artistic” project.
2 examples:
Basicvisual
This design is obviously of the “artistic” representation as a tandem bike in such a style would not work very well in a real world environment. (Are you sure?!) First there is far too much weight on the front end of the bicycle with whoever is trying to actually steer at the time. (No shit?!) You will also have to be aware that the back end of the bike which is in fact the point of propulsion will be at risk of loosing traction at any moment causing the pedaler to “miss pedal” and jerk forward causing the entire thing to tip forward in a very rapid motion. (And this is something you feel needs to be explained to people?)
This = Utter Fail (Actually… YOU = Utter Fail)
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Optimus-Prime
looks like the bike would have to change direction every time a different side went down. (Duhhh…) The pedals should power the center wheel and have an extra gear one side to keep everything going in the same direction. (And you think it’s supposed to actually be ridden as a working bike?!)
though, it doesn’t look like much thought went into this on a lot of levels. (Probably more thought than you think, on an artistic level, dumbass!)
I believe most people who visit this site knows that I currently work at a bikeshop. I’m pretty much doing all of the mechanic work there and of course I get to assemble/swap/service a lot of cranks. New and old. One thing that frustrates the hell out of me is 48-splined cranks. I can’t believe that they’re still around, and don’t give me that shit about “it’s well proven and works” because that is bullshit. Sure, they do get the bike moving forward once they’re assembled, but everything leading up to a fully working 48-splined crankset is a fucking pain in the ass. And that most manufacturers of 48-spline cranks does not include a crank mounting/removal tool (or even have one available to begin with) is also an outrage.
Seriously everything about 48-spline style cranks is shit. Either the crank slides on nice and easy (so far so good) and works good for a while, but eventually they will develop the inevitable wobble that can’t be fixed by tightening the spindle bolt further. Because face it — the splines are not tapered, tightening of the bolt will only add some extra friction from the bolt being tighter, it won’t address the problem and keep the cranks from moving on the splines (i believe that this famous wobble even has got a nickname after one of the more leading crank manufacturers out there).
Some manufacturers have addressed the problem by making the splines really tight. In this case the problems arise from the start. They’ll be a complete bitch to get on the spindle, even if you use insane amounts of anti-seize (copper grease compound stuff) you still have to pound away with a rubber mallet to get the spindle even halfway into the arm, after which you can start cranking down on the spindle bolt to pull the spindle through further. But let’s hope you’ve got a long, good quality allen key, otherwise you might round out the bolt and/or bend your allen key. To make matters even worse, some crank arms have not been properly masked before painting and have paint in the splines making it even harder to get the crank onto the spindle and aligning it up with the other crank nicely.
Let’s say you managed to get the cranks on there without putting nasty marks in the paint, or destroying your knuckles from slipping allen keys — well done and have fun riding! But I’m sorry, if you for any reason have to remove the cranks at some point you’re gonna realize that the assembly part was easy compared to getting the cranks off. Even if lots of anti-seize was used during assembly you still might have to spend an hour or so pounding away on the crank and spindle to get it off. Have I mentioned that most cranksets don’t come with a removal tool? Brilliant isn’t it?
Crank arms with pinch bolts is a lot easier to deal with when assembling/changing/servicing, but there is not one single design to date that looks good and is not stupidly bulky. This is because it seems pretty much impossible to make a nice and clean looking pinch bolt design. Besides, it doesn’t matter because pinch bolts is not the solution anyway. They also have flaws, apart from the aesthetics. Pinch bolts tend to come loose, crank arms tend to creak and retards tend to never touch the cranks which means that the splines gets worn/rounded out (in the case of steel 8-splined cranks, Primo-style arms just get rounded out because of the alloy material).
And yet no other manufacturers apart from G-Sport/Odyssey have gome up with a design that addresses all these problems. I know that the Wombolts suffered some problems as well, but I do truly believe that most instances where the crank arm cracked around where the wedges go actually was due to installation error. I’m on my second set of Wombolts (only changed because I needed the LHD version) and I’ve had zero problems.
So I guess my question to the BMX-world and manufacturers is: Why are there no other good crank designs out there? Everyone seems to want to “innovate” and come up with “one less part” solutions and spend huge amounts of time developing other things. Why does everyone stay away from cranks, or in the case they do make cranks, choose the mongoloid 48-spline thing? Why is there so much “innovation” for other parts of the bike, when in the case of cranks we’re supposed to make do with the same old shit that’s been around forever.
New edit from one of Simple Bikes teamriders, Eduards Zunda. Kid’s got skills and good style. I like.
From the driving forces behind Focalpoint comes Defero video mag that will showcase a wide variety of riders all around Australia. Read all about it on the Defero site after watching this promo video.
… to the American nation who have finally elected a worthy president. I guess they learned their lesson after electing the biggest idiot of all time twice.
I truly believe that this is a change in the right direction for the US.
