Recumbent-gallery.eu

Every time I visit ukrainean recumbent page called www.velodreamer.com I am surprised by their projects and the way how fast they can change their ideas to reality.The main man behind the page is Alexey Ganshen and his wife Karina Achmedova has made few nice recumbent cartoons. She writes on the page, that she admire Varna streamliners and that Sam and Barbara are her idols. That´s why you can see so many streamliners of Varna shape on her cartoons.

See all of them here.

Bentrideronline has posted a message about one hour speed record of 91,556 km. The rider was Francesco Russo from Swiss and his bike Eiviestretto. The machine itself is pretty interesting as it was built in cooperation of Francesco and Demjan Zabovnik. Both of them have lot of experiences in building and riding very very very fast bikes. The story about the record can be found here and here we have a story about the bike iteslf which can be found on the same web page too.

Well done Francesco and Demajn!

After the Dekra-Event 2010 Damjan Zabovnik and me joined together to build a streamliner and brake the One-Hour-World-Record. The result is a team who is very experienced in building and riding speedbikes. Exactly one year after our decision to go this way together I set the World Record.

The Eiviestretto (Eivie + Ristretto) is based on Damjan Zabovnik’s Eivie III. So the rider goes backwards, head first and lying on his back, he uses a mirror for navigation. The shape is slightly modified, as I am taller and have longer legs than Damjan. We improved steering mechanism in cooperation with Leon Plestenjak (company 3D konstrukcije), to make more space for the helmet and head. I am very tight inside the vehicle, but I still can steer, breath and pedal normally. Tolerances are within milimeters. The transmission was also redesigned, using different configuration of bearings and better materials, so it provides more efficient power transfer to the rear – driving wheel. Front wheel – steering wheel has a shape of a plate and is not symmetrical, inside the front wheel are steering bearings, instead of the head tube above the wheel as by ordinary bikes. Eiviestretto also has no steering cables, but it has a push-rod instead.

Students at Delft Technical University have developed a recumbent bicycle with which they hope to break the current bike speed record. The bicycle has an oval, aerodynamic chassis to reduce air resistance. The record attempt will take place in the desert in the US state of Nevada in September.

The current world record is held by Canadian Sam Whittingham, who reached speeds of 133 km per hour in 2009 in his Varna Tempest.

The students hope the aerodynamic chassis will help them break the record. The chassis has been remoulded 30 times to reduce air resistance by 20 to 30 percent. The actual bike is larger than the record holder’s bicycle so that it can accomodate a larger and stronger cyclist.

The bike is being tested on a disused runway in Soesterberg today. It will be raced in Germany at the end of July.

source: www.rnw.nl

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.

In the post about the K24 race in the Czech Republic you could read about a home made streamliner built by Nink. In the following gallery you can see couple of pictures of this unique and nice bike. Couple of points are really interesting. The front part shape is made from plastic children bath. The bike is equiped with side light as same as extremely strong front and rear LED lights. The sight light you can see next to the mirror and its controllers are mounted on the bars. The bike also has a “pee system”, because it is not easy to get on and get off and during such race you have to save as much energy as possible. The little tube going outside the shell just above the rear wheel is part of this system as same as the black bowl inside the bike.

The builder of this bike and many other is an aviation engineer so he has close relationship with aerodynamics and speed. His next project should be a fully faired carbon fibre recumbent.

Where you can continue:
- 24 hours race in the Czech Republic
- Recumbent trike fairing