Old Town

Has anyone ever come up with bike frame ridden in the prone position? I only thought of this after watching human powered submarine contestants powering their U-boats laying on their bellys so that they could see forward through clear bubble nose cones.

BlazingPedals

It's been done, but I don't know if it's been done by anyone on this forum.

Philphine

i've kinda considered the position (i'm more a weird bike experimenter than actual recumbent rider). i was thinking if not compleatly prone then with the front sprocket well behind the seating position, kinda like those race motorcycles. almost a gravity bike postion, but with pedals.

truthfully for me, i couldn't see how to sit on it comfortbly. seems like it would be hard on the... uh... family jewels? so you'd need a way to have some of the weight be supported by your chest and/or stomach.

actually the chest support occured to me while i was typing this. i may have to think on it again.

bobbycorno

Seems to me that the chest support would restrict your ability to breathe.

SP
Bend, OR

Engyo

For me, the problems would consist of having to be high enough for knee clearance while pedaling, which puts COG up; and either neck or lower back problems depending on whether the body was completely horizontal or somewhat inclined. Arm position also seems somewhat problematic, depending on the steering geometry.

charly17201

You mean like these?

https://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...a%3DN%26um%3D1

https://bp3.blogger.com/_atq6Cg90KPY/...h/DSCN1419.JPG

JanMM

WalMart will soon be offering one (online only) for $276.

Engyo

All three of them make my neck hurt just looking at the pictures. I don't think the real one would be practical outside the track.

m4ximusprim3

Yeah, human bodies by nature seem like they would be much better off in a recumbent position than a prone one. All of your joints are designed to flex ventrally rather than dorsally.

I'm kinda curious as to whether you could make (even just for fun) a recumbent where the pilot was fully reclined and navigated via some sort of mirror system- it seems like you could get all the aero benefits of a prone system but still be able to breathe while riding and use your neck the next day.

Old Town

Great photo collections. Thanks. I knew someone had to have done it. Seems many.

charly17201

I take no credit for these. I just remembered running across them when I was first researching going bent.

aikigreg

Been done and acknowledged as a vastly inferior platform to bents and df alike.

shoerhino

I recall seeing one on yotube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-akkbNyiXE

Jeff Wills

Read all about 'em:
https://humanpower.ligfiets.net/Human...-v7n2-1988.pdf

purplepeople

Yeah, even more radical than that... the Eivie II. Rider and builder Damjan Zabrovnik has taken it to 120 kph top speed and 87.5 km over one hour. The cranks are beside the rear wheel, the rider almost lays down facing backwards and there is a mirror above him that allows forward vision.

:)ensen.

Jinker

Leading with your head seems like an exceptionally bad idea from a safety standpoint.

Just sayin'.

Jeff Wills

That's why he's encased in carbon fiber. There's some videos of his high-speed crashes at https://www.eivie.com/page/components...se/expose.html . Look for Battle Mountain 2006.

Allen

https://www.bikeforums.net/alt-bike-culture/598487-three-words.html
^^^
From the Alt Bikes forum.

purplepeople

What amazes me the most is that all these skilled bike builders don't do enough Web research to find out exactly what is not worth doing. With the HPV archives on the web, I wouldn't spend time and resources building something that has already been proven to have limitations, in this case, the rider will have compromised aerobic capacity.

This kind of thing makes me wonder if recumbents are considered so "toxic" by other bike builders that they cannot be bothered to learn from the mistakes made long long ago by recumbent pioneers. They're loss, of course, but really it's just seems a waste.

:)ensen.

Old Town

As a former maker of racing kayaks I think I can answer the reason why various people make the same mistakes: We all think we can tweak something old and make it better. Even if someone has failed before at it. I used to make hulls with foils to get the boat out of the water. Been done to death and does not work well under human power. But I had to try it too. It's fun. And you never know, some person just might invent a better mousetrap. I'd never discourage a bad idea. Besides, the guys who do this kind of thing are endlessly interesting to me. They fight the status quo and that is always good.

RobAirborne

I found a webpage that you will probably enjoy. The pic looks like it was long before Al Gore invented the internet.
I also like Jeff Willis' post
https://www.bicycleman.com/history/history.htm

Rob

m4ximusprim3

Well then. I suppose that 1) answers my question and 2) makes me very glad I have never crashed ia giant egg going 70mph surrounded by steel tubing, chains, and splintering carbon fiber.

Jeff Wills

Try 80+:
https://www.ohpv.org/events/albums/bm.../photo_10.html

Typically there's a couple layers of carbon fiber and an inner layer of Kevlar to protect the soft, squishy human from shards of carbon.

("Shards of Carbon"... what a great name for a band!)

purplepeople

Okay... fair enough.

BTW, did you know about the Shutts? They built a number of HP hydrofoils back in the 90's. Very fast. Up on foil at about 10 knots.

:)ensen.

mikewille

That guy in the photos may not care if what he built isn't worth doing from an
efficiency standpoint, maybe it was just fun to do. Like making a tallbike.