Project Berlin Bike: The Far Ride - Teil Zwei

In the last post I showed some of the conceptual and colorways studies. 

Now we move onto choosing the frame design.  For the show bike we decided on a frame that is a mix of titanium and carbon fiber.  We wanted to find a way to bring two materials together to reflect a reunification or a joining together of disparate parts—east and west together.  It may seem a bit obvious as a representation of Berlin but I thought it would be a good beginning; a good base from which to start.

Next we focused on one of the more unusual design aspects of the bike:  the bar/stem/lighting system integration.  The headlight and taillight are designed into the frame and parts so that they are part of the bike and cannot be removed—or stolen—when the bike is locked on the street.  The lights are also run on a front hub dynamo so that they don’t require recharging.  In other words, they do not need to be removed and there is no battery to carry around.

We used one of Seven's urban Tiberius Bars as a prototype template for the new Berlin style bar.

It's always fun to weld titanium without the proper fixtures--prototyping means minimal fixturing.  Skill is the surogate for fixturing.

Now the stem is starting to look like something.  The headlight is integrated into a highly stylized custom titanium stem.

The stem comes together well.  It actually works as planned.

Now onto the tail light integration.  We machined this right into the post.

Next up, we finalized the paint scheme and start painting!

 Hoping to post more details this evening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[joe]

That integrated headlight is really cool!

-Joe

[Rob V.]

Joe: Thanks! It took a while to get the light angle, bar height, and overall front end height of the bike figured out; but, we think we've got it!

By the way, your Soulrun gear is great. Matt Roy speaks very highly of it. People should check it out. website: http://www.soulrun.com

We'll post photos of the complete bike soon.

[bryan]

thanks for posting again! these projects are really inspiring. i'd like to see where the seven cycles collaborative project finally wound up too!

[Rob V.]

Bryan: Thanks for reading, and thanks for the feedback. I always have a difficult time deciding to work or write about the work.

For the Collaborative project we've been talking again recently about posting more and showing the results--it ended up not quite as we expected but we learned a lot and we're looking at starting Colab 2.0. Stay tuned!