Found this on Minimalissimo from Russian designer Nikolay Boltachev. It’s pure concept, built around hubless wheels and magnetic bearings, and apparently he’s looking for help developing those ideas. Leave some comments with any ideas, and hit ‘more’ to see additional photos…
Note the shaft drive with a gear to drive the rear wheel…similar to another concept bike he’s done that we’ll show you in a forthcoming post.
Rear wheel should have a belt drive. the Wheels should have 2 chambers with roller bearings in between making the wheel function like a huge bearing. There should be at least 2 connection points to the inner race of the wheel (bearing) with one being on top where the wheight of the rider actually rests.
What is this fascination with hub-less wheels? There is no such thing as hub-less wheels, it’s just another fancy name for BIG hub wheel, the hub just gets bigger and unnecessary heavier. I don’t know if any of these kids from design school ever have to spec. or buy bearing…..well, the larger the bearing, the more expensive they get as well…. Let’s get on and design something real, either that or lets put an anti-gravity device on everything.
Hubless has been around in motorcycling for a while, the custom chops did it first but the extra diameter of a rim mounted needle roller bearings were heavy, and you dont want weight in the outermost part of wheels. – you got to centralize mass for better handling, dudes!
20″ wheels arent as good for big airs as 22″ ones so that’ll need to change too – in the future you hope the sport will have progressed to a more spectacular level.
If metallurgy takes a massive leap or ceramics catch on its possible the one-sided steering will work – but why all that extra long skinny leg on the fork – join it at the top duh!
Factional Character-The Cannondale Lefty Fork is very similar to this fork, built and designed for MTB. It is a left leg only, with suspension, and uses a specially designed hub/axle setup. The “one sided steering” works just fine, without used of better metallurgy or ceramics. Those two things do not need to make a better leap or catch on better for that to work, it already does extremely well.
I do agree about the longer fork leg, it does look out of place, but due to the “hub-less” design, I can understand it. Putting it at the top would put a lot more lateral stress on a lot of moving parts, causing failure more often.
Everyone else- This is a CONCEPT, not a guaranteed design that will be released soon. (Although if all you kids that want the super-low stand over height on your frame get your way, THIS is what BMX will turn into. So knock it off if you don’t like this.)
Doesn’t make any sence… First how are the tires suppose to move their bolted into the rim…Second there are no places to put the pegs… Third the rims will eventually collapse…Fourth you can’t foot jam whatsoever… and lastly the pedal on the side of the back tire would connect with the tire.
Its not cool its really gay and pointless.
