TT-bike Obree style

[j0m]

A guy in Sweden is currently building a TT bike. I think the project is awesome (although it's not finished yet) and thought that many of you would also like to see it. The builder wasn't, at least for the time being, interested in posting himself but he is aware of this thread.

There's a lot of pictures and text in his build thread, but unfortunately for most of you it's in Swedish. To summarize: since seeing Obree's bike at the age of 14 he has lusted for riding such a bike. Now he has set out to build his own version of Old Faithful in carbon. He hasn't gotten as far as the carbon yet though. Here you can see the official build thread: http://www.fixedgear.se/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6007

a Couple of teasers:

Even I could come up with that

Some sharp edges. :-)

Now it's getting somewhere.

Nice and narrow.

[Fibre-Lyte]

I like the idea, but isn't it a bit 'wrong' to build her in carbon?

[BMANX]

I agree that the only way that this should have been done again is with todays STEEL. Carbon I feel is not in the spirit of the original build. I do love seeing what can be done and it looks like an interesting build.

[Fuchs]

he dos not make an direct copy of the bike! so the carbon will just be fine. and if you could read the text you would love his easy way to build the bike and making every thing by himself.

[BMANX]

I can read the text with Google webpage translater and it is a cool project but I think it would have been better in steel. I still wish I had his skills.

[dunlinii]

Looks cool. Love the wood pattern

[Fibre-Lyte]

he dos not make an direct copy of the bike! so the carbon will just be fine

I disagree. It's not about copying the bike, but the whole point of Obrees bike was that it was a back to basics bike. Carbon is an expensive material and not that easy to work with so there is no way Obree would have hand built a carbon bike. In keeping with the spirit of the original I agree with Bman, it should be steel.

Still like the project though.

[Fuchs]

okej okej, i give up
lets call the guy and tell him that he make some rubbish.

i think if obree would build bike today then he would use the carbon. but back in his days it was not that common like today.

[Ypsylon]

i say obrees bike was about getting the performance he wanted with what was available to him. If this guy has the skill to build the frame out of cf, then why the heck not?

[dalai]

i say obrees bike was about getting the performance he wanted with what was available to him. If this guy has the skill to build the frame out of cf, then why the heck not?

Agreed. Looking forward to further posts on how this is progressing!

[Fibre-Lyte]

Trouble is, that statement covers anything. Could you really compare Obrees bike against Chris Boardmans Lotus? One was built effectively from scrap where as the other was built with a phenomenal development budget. Yet, that statement describes them both. I don't think Obree would have built his bike from carbon if he'd built it today, because it's still a very different technique building carbon bikes and 'metal' bikes. I don't even think that Obree was bothered about building bikes, he just made a jigsaw of a bike to suit what he wanted to do on it.

[pritchet74]

Speaking of Boardman's Lotus, did I ever tell you guys about how when I sold my Lotus (which was actually one of Boardman's Lotus framesets) to Cervelo they attached a P3C downtube to it? It was just out of curiosity since they had a chunk of tunnel time booked anyways. It was more aero than without it! Crazy, eh?

[dunlinii]

Probably split the air cleaner than the 'corner' did. Quite funny though.

[Fibre-Lyte]

It does show how quickly technology moves on. The Lotus was about as good as it could be but that was a lllooonnnggg time ago. I'm fascinated by the idea of aerodynamics on bikes and would love to see cfd pictures of various bikes side by side but I don't see a time when the manufacturers will make that info publicly available

[dalai]

I love the old designs even if they aren't that fast compared to the latest and greatest. Cobb on his blog mentions testing a Zipp 2001 and a Hotta against the P4, but unfortunately kept the values close to his chest...

Although I wouldn't be able to race it due to the UCI rules (though could dust off my runners and enter a few tri's again) I keep my eyes open hoping for the Mike Burrows designed Giant MCR1 to pop up for a good price second hand. Other frames too but I'd expect the Giant to be the most likely to show up one day. I already have my non UCI vision techs aerobars, 8 speed Zipp 950 etc.