Recumbent-gallery.eu

I have the feeling that we often look at those beautiful expensive bikes, we dream about them, some save money to can buy them. We admire all those crazy speeds which you can reach in fully faired recumbents or velomobiles. But most often we just dream…

But russian guys who stands behind the velodreamer.com do not only dream about such bicycles, but they work to change their dreams into reality. And if you look into gallery here under, you see that they have built many different projects and they fullfiled many of their dreams.

Yes, you can see that the bikes are equiped by very poor components and also te look is not one which we would really admire, but what we can admire is that they do what they obviously love and that they can test their maximum speeds in homemade streamliners.

Let´s follow them, let´s fullfil any of your dreams…

This is probably the most interesting page from their huge web.

This is incredible video from Cyclevison. I am mostly impressed by the shots from inside of the streamliner no. 4 and how the bike lean in curves. Simply beautiful.

Well, this is not my video, but I could not find it elswehere on youtube or here on vimeo. I found it on russian web, but it seems it is not their video too. If there is anybody who knows more, please leave a message in comment. At least some parts were shot by xl-network.com (a youtube account here).

Cyclevision incredible from Jan Jan on Vimeo.

Just a small funny post about a recumbent which looks as an old Cadillac. This creation was built for Toronto Cycle Show. More info here.

recumbent with shaft drive

Timo Sairi is finnish designer who has developed and built a recumbent with shaft drive. Here under you can find his comments and few pictures of his bike.

“First of all let me tell you a litlle of my background.

I am an architect and a furniture designer and I have been working with industrially manufactured design furnitures.
Thats why perhaps my interest is always on simplyfying and to clear any design task given.

One year ago I got an invitation to participate on an exhibition dealing with ecological design, here in Finland.
So I decided to build a recumbent bike since I believe bicycles are very ecological indeed.

One thing that is bothering me with recumbents is often quite a complex and technical look of those (maybe also because recumbents are not well known)
So I wanted to do something about this as a designer, just to make them look a little bit more familiar.
To replace the front chain sprockets and to get rid of long chains sounded like an idea worth of thinking and for that goal a logical area to develop was a shaft drive.

My shaft drive system is based on an excisting component that is made for a normal upright bike.
Longer shaft with swivel joints and teleskopic adjustments was needed.

Advantages are obviously:
- maintanance free system
- very silent drive (especially great difference on a bumby roads where usually all kinds of rattles and noices are caused by the loose part of chain drive),
- clean and safe (estethically and practically)

Disadvantages are:
- high price due to need for special components
- some loss of power when compared with a clean, well oiled chain (though not measured yet, I havent noticed any remarkable difference)
- weight, that is about 1.5 kg more than a chain drive, most of it caused by a heavy hud gear unit.

The bike is equipped with shimano disk brakes, shimano 8 speed alfine hub, pantour`s front suspension hub.
The frame is aluminum and the shaft is carbon fibre. I havent yet calculated any exact prices for the bike but basically it has less parts than a normal chain drive.

The next step would be a foldable version since the system has quite a natural potentials for that, additional equipment like bags and mud guards and an invisible rear frame suspension (inside the frame) are under deveploment.
Also, I have plans for a trike, with the same system.”

www.pyora.fi

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If you look into the gallery of Fitser – velomobile producer from Belgium – your eyes will certainly stop on one of those really colorful velomobiles. They are usualy completely covered by thin printed foil which is same as the one used on cars. By such way, you can manage to have a superb look of the velomobile. Unfornatenuly the price of such upgrade is around 1000 EUR and Fietser itself has such possibility in their offer.

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