Showing posts with label full-suspension bikes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label full-suspension bikes. Show all posts

13 February 2016

His Spirit of Innovation Wasn't Suspended

The other day, I wrote about some bicycle suspension systems that were patented nearly a century before Rock Shox or Girvin Flex Stems came bouncing down the trails.

It's not as if the idea of cushioning the ride and rider died with the fin de siecle Bike Boom.  Indeed, some of you rode balloon-tired Schwinn, Columbia, J.C. Higgins or other bikes with a big spring in front of your handlebars.  That spring was attached to a bars that were, in turn, attached to the front fork.  How much that actually absorbed shock, I don't know.  I have long thought that they--like the "banana" seat struts attached to shock absorbers on bikes like the Schwinn "Krates"--were really intended to enable kids' fantasies of riding a "chopper" on the flats of Daytona.





Around the time that boys (and, on occasion, girls) were tearing up and down driveways and cul-de-sacs, one of the few American adults riding at the time was thinking about real, functional suspension for bicycles.  Having been one of the first commercial pilots (for American Airlines), he no doubt saw the value in keeping his bike stable and upright (the real purpose for suspension on cars and motorcycles) in turbulent conditions.

If you've on any kind of organized bike ride for, say, the past half-century, you have heard his name.  More precisely, you have followed his directions.



Yes, there was a real, live Dan Henry behind the "Dan Henry arrows".  While he is best remembered for his system of road symbols, his most interesting contributions to cycling may well be in the ways he made his bikes more comfortable and stable.  



I remember reading about Dan Henry's bicycle in an issue of American Cycling, the magazine that became Bicycling!  As I recall, the bike was a Rene Herse or Alex Singer--or that of some other prestigious French builder.  He made the mechanisms himself from springs and bar stock he obtained in auto-repair shops.  Again, if memory serves, he said that this system allowed him to ride the lightest tubuar tires and rims under nearly all conditions without getting flats or dinging his rims.

(Interestingly, he would later convince Clement to make tubular tires with butyl tubes, which are more durable and retain air longer than the latex tubes commonly found in high-quality tubulars.)

Another part of his "suspension system", if you will, was something he made himself--from a pair of handlebars, a tandem "stoker" stem and some canvas webbing.  




It seems that every decade or so, someone re-invents this saddle.  When I first became a dedicated cyclist (around the time I found that copy of American Bicyclist in the local library), a similar saddle called the "Bummer" was advertised in Bicycling!  I think one of the magazine's editors test-rode it, probably unaware of his perch's provenance.  

Perhaps it's not surprising to know that Dan Henry was also one of the early proponents of recumbent bicycles, and that he designed and rode such a machine.  I guess he was one of the first cyclists to see that high performance and all-day comfort needn't be mutually exclusive--and, as an engineer and pilot, was one of the first modern cyclists to have the background and skills to realize such a vision.

He died nearly four years ago, just short of 99 years old, riding almost to the end.  I wonder what he thought of some of the suspension designs--especially for downhill bikes--that have come along.

03 August 2015

They Have Been Done; They Will Be Done Again

Who made the first dual-suspension folding bike?

No, it wasn't Dahon.   Nor was it Montague.  Even Moulton's double-shock folder has antecedents.

We may not ever know for sure who made the very first bike of this type.  I did find out, though,that one was made 100 years ago by a company that's still making bikes.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it was developed for use in war.  Some of the earliest foldable or collapsible bikes were made for soldiers to carry on their backs. Some, like the one I'm about to mention, even had mounts for guns or rifles.

In 1915, all of the major European powers were embroiled in World War I.  Some of the best-known developments of that conflict are the machine gun (which is said to have inspired the ratcheting freewheel) and chemical weaponry.  It may also have spawned bicycles with suspension and some of the earliest foldable bikes.

Bianchi Dual-Suspension Folding Bike, 1915


A bike that could both bounce and fold was created for the Italian Army by--you guessed it--Bianchi.  The company claims that it was the first of its type.  That may well be true, but it's always difficult to say that anything was a "first" in cycling because so many designs simply disappeared without a trace only to be resurrected, sometimes by "inventors" who had no idea of their previous existence.

Still, I don't think folks at Bianchi are stretching the truth very much, if at all, when they say the dual-suspension folding bike they created for the Italian Army in 1915 was the first of its kind. There don't seem to be any records of bikes with dual suspension or folding bikes much before that date. Also, it's hard to imagine that the technology of the 19th Century--in bikes as well as manufacturing techniques--could have made suspended or folding bikes practical or widely available much before that date.

Whether or not it was the first bike of its kind, it's yet another example of how this passage from Ecclesiastes applies to the bicycle world:

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun. 

15 January 2011

Pro-Flex Reflection

Today I took a very short ride along the river to the Long Island City pier.  Along the way, I saw someone riding a bike I haven't seen in a long time.  


Back in the day,  a couple of my riding buddies had them.  I even knew a guy who raced on one.




If you were a National Off-Road Bicycle Association (NORBA) member in the early to mid 1990's, as I was, you knew someone who rode this bike if you weren't riding it yourself. This bike, the Pro Flex, was one of the first mass-marketed full-suspension mountain bikes.  




The first time I saw one of those frames, I thought that the rear was something Salvador Dali might've made if someone had stolen his palette and brushes and left an Erector set in their place. 


I never owned one, or any other full-suspension bike. However, I did have the chance to ride it.   I was not prepared for the springiness and cushiness of the ride, accustomed as I was to hardtail mountain bikes and very stiff road bikes.  In fact, I found the bike's bounciness disconcerting--like something I might expect of a pogo stick on wheels.  


I suppose that had I raced off-road, or simply become a more dedicated off-road rider, I would've appreciated the Pro-Flex or some other full-suspension bike.  But having such boingy ride was rather distrubing to me:  I felt that I had less control over the bike.  


Plus, I came to feel about this bike, and full-suspension bikes, the way I came to feel about carbon-fiber bikes: They're great if you're willing and able to replace them every couple of years.  (I was riding a lot, and hard, in those days.)  A year or so after I first saw those bikes, the suspension mechanisms broke on some of them.  Once, during a ride on a trail upstate, I saw a guy lash the ends of his frame together so he could ride his suspensionless suspension bike back out to wherever he parked his car.






Later versions used elastomers.  They were shaped sort of like miniature tires, and performed one of the functions of a tire:  shock absorption.  The problem was that, in time, the elastomers either hardened or they collapsed like deflated tires.  In either case, they no longer absorbed shock.  They were replaceable, but not easily.  Plus, they were a proprietary part.  Thus, anyone who still has one of those bikes would need to find replacements on eBay or, as "Citizen Rider" did, improvise new parts.


I'm guessing that ProFlex bikes have been out of production for at least a few years now.   That would account for their relative rarity these days.  Plus, performance-oriented mountain bikes simply don't last as long as good road bikes because they get more wear and tear.  I know that because I  wore out more chains and sprockets, and broke more parts, in my first two years of off-road riding than I did in twenty years of road riding.


It will be interesting to see whether this bike develops "cult" status and collectors start buying them.  That brings me to another parallel with carbon-fiber bikes:  They date themselves, which means that they don't grow old gracefully.  A quality lugged steel road frame will always look and feel right, whether it was made in 1930 or 1960, or just last year.  The same can't be said for a full-suspension bike from 1990.  That means, I believe, that neither the Pro-Flex nor any other full-suspension bikes will become "classics" in the way some iconic road bikes have.