Donhou Top 10 // No.2 - Experiments in Speed bike
In at No.2 and the last to post from the top 10... The crowd favourite! Watch ‘Experiments in Speed’. There’s nothing else I need to say. It takes 2nd spot. But lets face it, this bike and the whole EIP project has a very special place all on its own.
Mk2 is down on paper, has been for years. This time designed with the record in mind, but the pressures of business has meant I've never found the time to re-focus on this project.
The record has been pushed a long way since we made this film… would need to check in on the size of my balls!
Continue reading for a more detailed look at the bike:
The 100mph bike, speed bike, or any one of the working titles that has been used for this project by the people involved. Its so far been an exercise in many things; bicycle design, back yard aerodynamics, car modification, planning, location searching, etc etc… So many things have gone into this thing being built, there really is much more to this story than the bike alone. But for now, lets talk about just that…
This “speed bike” always wanted to be a bicycle, it essentially wanted to be the same as the bikes that I build for my customers. Look past the heavy drop of those minimal bars and the huge chain ring and it is essentially a “normal” bike.
Built from opposed oval Columbus Max tubing for stiffness, reducing the chance of speed wobbles as we ride at speeds not really known about on a bicycle. The “Dog legged” drive side chain stay to give room for the 104 tooth custom machined chainring and still allow perfect chain alignment (wouldn’t want to drop a chain at 70mph plus). Custom bars to put me in the perfect position to tuck in behind the draft vehicle, nothing more needed than something to hold on to as tight as you can for the few minutes it takes to get the thing up to speed. Lots of trail built into the front end for stability at high speeds and despite the huge chainring a low bottom bracket to keep the centre of gravity as low as possible to further increase stability.
Component wise, there’s the 104 tooth chainring machined for us by Royce. The bike is fixed and the rear hub has also been supplied by Royce. The brakes have been supplied by SRAM and AVID, with the disc on the front to deal with the bulk of the slowing down; wouldn’t want to cook the carbon rims slowing from high speeds. That said there is a calliper brake on the rear, this isn’t for heavy braking and is essentially to help me slow the pedals down as there’s a lot of momentum with the large chainring and all the chain. Tokyo Fixed came through with the rest of the finishing kit.
August Wheelworks dealt with the wheel build and opted to run front and rear 24 hole, lacing the hubs to ENVE SES rims with Sapim CX-Ray spokes. They even went as far as de-anodising the E13 front hub and re polishing it to match the rear! Essentially the wheels are the only part of the bike that we needed to reduce the drag in. Drafting a vehicle means the rider and the bike itself doesn’t need to be aerodynamic. On the advise of both the rim and tyre designers we chose to run tubs as there is a risk of a clincher tyre being thrown off the rim as you go into speeds that aren’t tested on bicycle components.
In all, its a bike built purely for the purpose of going as fast as we can.
