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Hidden motors for road bikes

cyclingtips.com

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Re: Hidden motors for road bikes

#61

Post by fudgie »

mring33621 wrote: post #36
dabeeeenster wrote: post #6

There are two videos on Youtube that have been regarded by bike fans as suspicous. I will let HN readers make their own minds up! https://youtu.be/8Nd13ARuvVE?t=3m35s and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ideiS-6gBAc I would love to hear smart people's thoughts!

That second one is either a motor or a flywheel. No way a normal road racing wheelset could spin a fallen bike like that. Just my gut talking, though. I could be wrong...

All know motors for race bikes rotate the cranks when engaged, and his are stationary. You can also see another example here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7TWDNhWDlY#t=41

Re: Hidden motors for road bikes

#62

Post by rblatz »

duskwuff wrote: post #13
rblatz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a nonlinear junction detector? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_junction_detector

Any contact between two dissimilar metals (e.g, steel and aluminum) creates a nonlinear junction. Bicycles are full of those.

I thought most competition road bikes were almost entirely carbon fiber. At least in the frame. Where it sounds like you have to hide the motor, batteries, and wires.

Re: Hidden motors for road bikes

#63

Post by bliti »

arprocter wrote: post #56
bliti wrote: post #34

I'd never would have thought to use a worm ring geared motor hidden in the frame. Reminds me of how nitrous bottles are hidden inside roll cages and cooling systems in racing cars. Cheating is an art of itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Celica_GT-Four#ST205_.2... "During the 1995 World Rally Championship season, Toyota was caught using illegal turbo restrictors at the Rally Catalunya and were given a one-year ban by the FIA. FIA president Max Mosley called the illegal turbo restrictor "the most sophisticated device I've ever seen in 30 years of motor sports.""

More details on the illegal modification: http://homepage.virgin.net/shalco.com/tte_ban.htm

It is quite brilliant. Think of it as a software backdoor. :)

Re: Hidden motors for road bikes

#64

Post by davidw »

Grishnakh wrote: post #57
davidw wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Messing with the height of someone's seat by pulling it out before a race would ... not be seen very well. A lot of people can tell when it's off by a few millimeters. But yeah, they are doing inspections these days.

Bike seat height adjustments are very simple: the seat is mounted on a tube, which fits within the slightly larger seat tube and then is clamped. Getting the exact same position is easy: just use a Sharpie marker on the inner tube to show where it fits in the outer tube. Draw a second, vertical line across both tubes to make sure the orientation is the same.

Yeah, but if you do that before a race... someone's going to do it quickly and not do a great job. Like I said, it's not that difficult to detect a difference of a few millimeters, and it's annoying.

Re: Hidden motors for road bikes

#65

Post by shpx »

jseliger wrote: post #26
orik wrote: post #5

I remember a Kickstarter that was popular that had a bicycle wheel with a motor in it that you could fit most bikes. I'd be far more interested in a solution like this for a daily commute, seems very elegant.

I remember a Kickstarter that was popular that had a bicycle wheel with a motor in it that you could fit most bikes Yeah. Kickstarter has had a lot of interesting bikes in the last year. One YC company, Vanhawks ( http://vanhawks.com/ ), came up through Kickstarter, and they've been shipping smart bikes in the last couple months. Still, prices among electrically assisted bikes remain high. For example, the Faraday el…

You can buy $200-400 conversion kits (and a battery) and convert a bike you already own into electric.

http://www.ebay.com/bhp/electric-bike-kit

Re: Hidden motors for road bikes

#66

Post by bch »

Retric wrote: post #44
mring33621 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That second one is either a motor or a flywheel. No way a normal road racing wheelset could spin a fallen bike like that. Just my gut talking, though. I could be wrong...

Rotating a light bike like that takes a lot less energy than you might think. Kinetic energy is also V^2 and the out edge of that wheel is probably doing 30+mph as it's down hill, so IMO it's actually believable. Granted, it would be much easier to get a motor to do the same thing.

Rotating a light wheel that takes less energy, too, but that means too that wheel isn't a big power store. A light weight wheel is precisely the opposite of a flywheel; it should stop nearly immediately because it's _not_ a heavy rotating mass with lots of stored energy. If we're talking about Ryder Hesjedals video, he's still attached (right foot) to his bike, everything appears to be static (he's not sliding anymore) and his rear wheel appears to be pressed into the ground. Then when he unclips his foot, his bike starts spinning around. Weird[0].

[0] Conclusion based on watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynLMfzLTc8M at 0.25 speed.

Re: Hidden motors for road bikes

#67

Post by QuotedForTruth »

Someone1234 wrote: post #53
zymhan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the same exact case GP is talking about. Femke's spare bike was found to have the motor, not the one she was riding during the race.

That isn't what Wikipedia says at all: > During the race, the UCI checked the bicycles of Van den Driessche and found a motor in the bicycle she was riding. And: > “After one lap of the world championships, UCI took Femke’s bike in the pit area and tested it with some sort of tablet,” said Sporza journalist Maarten Vangramberen. “The bike was immediately sealed and taken. The UCI then called in the Belgian federation…

In cyclocross your pit bike becomes the bike you are riding. They switch bikes out to clean mud buildup off of them. So she never used this bike but only because she didn't have a chance to. They discovered it on the first lap.

Re: Hidden motors for road bikes

#68

Post by junto »

orik wrote: post #5

I remember a Kickstarter that was popular that had a bicycle wheel with a motor in it that you could fit most bikes. I'd be far more interested in a solution like this for a daily commute, seems very elegant.

There's this company in Austria too, funnily enough a work colleague sent me the link today:

http://www.add-e.at/ueber-add-e/

Re: Hidden motors for road bikes

#69

Post by davidw »

By the way, since this thread seems to have attracted the interest of the HN bike community, if anyone's ever here in Bend, Oregon, look me up. Always happy to go for a bike ride - road or MTB.

No motors, please.

Re: Hidden motors for road bikes

#70

Post by arprocter »

bliti wrote: post #63
arprocter wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Celica_GT-Four#ST205_.2... "During the 1995 World Rally Championship season, Toyota was caught using illegal turbo restrictors at the Rally Catalunya and were given a one-year ban by the FIA. FIA president Max Mosley called the illegal turbo restrictor "the most sophisticated device I've ever seen in 30 years of motor sports.""

More details on the illegal modification: http://homepage.virgin.net/shalco.com/tte_ban.htm It is quite brilliant. Think of it as a software backdoor. :)

The wording is a bit confusing - IIRC it was a way to bypass the restrictor (which all cars were fitted with) to sneak more air into the engine.
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