| Alan Ariail's Quest for Speed | |
| Alan has been hard at work refining and focusing his recumbent scope to allow him to go as fast as possible safely, on the street. He has tried everything from a Wishbone to the Lightning R-84 in an attempt to find a vehicle that is safe, fast and reliable for riding on the street. |  |
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Alan has made his Challenge Jester low racer with Optima tail box about as fast as it can possibly be, by sealing off the bottom of the fairing and sealing the spaces between his body and the fairing. With this configuration, he was able to complete a 4.5 hour century ride in the summer of 2000, at an average speed of about 22MPH. |
| Alan has now come to the conclusion that there are not any vehicles currently manufactured which meet his criteria, so like many of us, he has decided to design and build something himself. Initially he considered using a front fairing, and created this rendering: |  |
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Here's a design study of Alan's Jester with a Euro style wrap around rear fairing. This would be a big improvement of his relatively small Optima tail box. |
| Because of the problem of being able to see over your feet that low racers with very high bottom brackets such as the Jester have when enclosed in a fairing, Alan has considered using the Ross Festina low racer as a platform for his fast street fairing. Pictured to the right is an early rendering of a fairing for the Festina. |  |
| 11/01/02 Over the past year Alan has continued to refine the Jester with Optima tailbox, and to train hard. This fall he entered in the UMCA 6 hr. TT in Eldrige, Iowa, and set a course record with 133 miles in 5:44:16. That's a 23.3 MPH average an a hilly 19 mile loop course. Alan says: |
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With the help of Sean Costin I managed to take ownership of the bike that Denis Ahrens raced at Brantford, Ontario. Sean was a great help as he transported the bike from the 2002 World Championships and made it possible or me to take the next step towards my personal speed quest. |
| When I got the bike I noticed
that the handlebars were a problem for me as I could not get my legs to
clear them during the pedal stroke. The boom had no derailleur post which
would limit my ability to use the gear range I was accustomed to on the
Jester. I also noticed the the rear wheel was not tracking parallel to the
front.
It was now time to learn how to work with carbon so I could alter the bike for a personal fit and to correct the tracking. After a week or so I had enough preliminary trial and error work acquire the carbon skills needed to: Build new handlebars, extend the stem, make a chain catch under the idler, re-drill and fill a rear drop out and add a front derailleur post. |
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| This is a preliminary stage of
the handlebars and what the end result looks like. A carbon shell was made
from wrapping the aluminum tubing which was bent to match my leg
width. Before the tape cured a slit was cut into it so the aluminum could
be removed. The slit was then epoxied and after the piece cured it was
wrapped a number of times with carbon tape.
After the stem was lengthened by a similar process the end was cut with a tubing cutter for accuracy. The bars were then epoxied in place and additional carbon tape layers were added to strengthen the join. Then the process of sanding and caliper measuring were done to create a clean finished appearance. The new handlebars are about 2" narrower than the original bars. Though my hands are right next to my legs I have no problem with steering control. My goals were to get my hands as close to my body as possible for aero efficiency and allow my legs to clear the bars during the pedal stroke. The internal shifter cable routing is an added benefit. |
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The custom handle bars weigh a bit more than the original bars. I wanted less vertical flex so naturally I added some weight to the bars with a thicker carbon diameter. The bars are hollow and this allows me to route the shifter cables internally instead of taping them to the surface. |
| For the derailleur post I used a
small diameter aluminum tube, drilled a bunch of holes in it and then
wrapped layers of carbon tape around it. After it cured, I stuck the tube in a hand drill which was clamped to a table and then I used a rough metal file to reduce the diameter similar to a mini lathe. I then had to clamp the boom to an adjustable bench top drill press so I could accurately drill a hole at 40º. After the hole was drilled, the boom tube was epoxied in place and additional small layers of carbon were added to the base of the tube. Everything had to eventually get sanded down for a nice finish. |
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To allow for use of a triple chainring crank with a 108 mm BB I had to make and adjustable derailleur clamp. I used a piece of 1.125" aluminum tube, drilled some holes in it and filled it with layers of compressed carbon fabric. When cured, I drilled the derailleur post hole off center and added 3 set screws to keep the derailleur clamp from moving. Finally a shifter cable was epoxied next to the derailleur post. This allows for the shifter cable to route inside of the boom. |
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Here's the storage area in the
seat. A small hole that has enough space to carry 2 tubes, a mini pump,
patch kit with chain links, chain tool, some allen wrenches and a couple of tire levers.
The rear dropout shown here is the one I
adjusted. It's basically a thick piece of solid carbon layers with a hole
drilled to accept the rear axle. I made the hole slightly larger, clamped
a metal straight edge to both wheel and filled the gap with carbon and
epoxy. I also added some additional layers of carbon to the interior of
the dropout for added |
| Here's the aero front fork. No
chain line management problems with this design!
This is the narrowest wheel I have ever seen. Pretty amazing!
Below is another view of the entire bike.
In addition to learning how use carbon for modification I've also learned
to sew. I bought a cheap $20 sewing The disc cover is a piece of cloth with a sleeve sewn on the outer edge. The sleeve has a string in it and the cloth wraps around a fiberglass rod and the string is tied tight like a sail. The rod is cut to the same diameter as the inside of the rim. The ends of the rod are held together by a small metal sleeve. Small cable clips attached to the spokes are used to hold the fiberglass rod in place on the wheel. These discs are cheap to make and very effective. |
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The RazzFazz2 was probably around 16.5-17 lb. when I got it. Currently, the entire bike with tools weighs slightly under 20 lb. With the modifications and the addition of a triple chainring I've added weight. I also had a stronger rear wheel built for durability on some of the rough roads in my area. All that stuff adds up but it is still a light bike compared to the Jester. The next project will be making carbon mounting brackets for the large Kevlar RF tail fairing I plan to use next season. |
| 1/17/03 Here's the the new stem. The fork tube of the RF is an odd OD. There are no tubing sizes similar. In order to make the section of the stem that will clamp onto the fork tube I had to use a roll of paper the same OD as the fork tube as a starting point to wrap carbon around. I figure that if I used a roll of fax paper I could just take enough paper off of the roll to match the OD of the fork tube After I had my carbon clamp tube I then carved foam for the rest of the stem, inserted the foam into the tube clamp and wrapped it with a thin layer of carbon. I just sanded it down and now I have a skeleton shape that I will wrap with several layers of carbon tape and eventually smooth sand it. The new stem will have a very narrow taper to it. I really like working with carbon as I can create any shape I desire. When the weather gets warm I will learn how to vacuum bag. Then I can make some nice splitter plates. |
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| 2/13/03 I swapped out and modified a pair of Motolite brakes to use on the RazzFazz. Previously the only size wheel I could use in the rear fork was a 559. Now that I have a wide range of adjustment with the brake pads, I was able to switch the rear wheel with a 650c wheel with a 145 psi Stelvio. Over the past several weeks I had many e-mail discussions with Thomas Schott about what I thought was an alignment issue. |
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It turns out that the rear
wheel has to be dished quite a bit to the left for precise wheel
tracking. I originally used a standard dish 559 wheel and changed the
left drop out to alter the tracking as I thought that would make the
wheels track in a straight line. That was big a mistake. So I filled
the dropout hole with carbon fiber and drilled it to the original position. Then I
put the new properly dished rear wheel in the rear fork and it now
tracks perfectly. The brakes are now evenly spaced and no more loud
squeal when I apply the brakes.
Little by little I'm getting the bike ready.
Next will be mounting the huge Schott tail fairing. |
| 2/24/03 The carbon fiber chain line fairing I'm making is going to seal off the bottom of the tail fairing a bit more than the way Thomas used it. Its that "need for speed thing" and tweaking the tail fairing for less bottom air intake. Similar to the fairing add-on that Warren made for the Cuda a while back. Minimal sanding will be required. I used soft cell foam to compress the carbon over a piece of solid pink foam that was shaped and glued to a piece of Coroplast to retain the curves of the tail fairing. The chain line fairing will fasten to the interior and be removable with plastic wing nuts. In this picture you can see the chain line fairing under construction, attached to the bottom of the Schott RazzFazz tail fairing. |
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3/13/03 I made carbon fiber clips to hold the fabric wheel disks as close to rim as possible, and to properly align it with the edge of the wheel for maximum aero efficiency. Alan
explains how to build these cool wheel disks and clips. |
| Here, I vacuum bag the new chainline fairing. The first one
I made did not work properly (rubbed on the derailleur), so I built a new
mold out of foam and ABS plastic and then used a vacuum bag to create a stronger
and lighter carbon kevlar piece. |
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The end result of the chainline
fairing construction.
This fairing allows the bottom of the TF to be sealed off with a just cutout hole for the rear wheel. The chainline fairing connects to the bottom inside of the TF with 5 nylon bolts. |
| To create a form fitting TF I epoxied RD45 foam to the inside edge of
the TF. After the epoxy cured I sat on the bike and traced an edge around
my torso onto the foam. Then I cut the edge of the foam to match the line and tapered the edge to a thin thickness and smoothed the
surface of the foam with a vibrating palm sander. Mys body now sinks into the foam and will prevent air from entering the TF. |
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It took me about a month of work to get the
TF configured properly for my size. The builder of the TF, Thomas Schott
was much bigger and a lot of work was needed to fill in the gaps. The first few rides were trial and error rides to feel where air was coming in and to check for horizontal alignment and shoulder placement for efficient air flow. |
| This was an interesting project as it allowed me to improve my carbon
skills by making carbon mounting brackets and a chainline fairing plate. I used a vacuum bag press for the first time. The TF'd RazzFazz is now ready for the season. Just in time for warm weather. |
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3/23/03 Warren says: Here's Alan on his Razz Fazz just before yesterday's Barrington Hills ride. This combination of bike and rider continually amazes me. We can be tooling along at 23 MPH, and start to sprint, and from there Alan can ratchet his speed quickly up to 32MPH and hold it. I'm sprinting my butt off and he just pulls away like he's got a motor. It wouldn't be so bad that he's going that fast if I could draft him, but he's got the thing so well optimized that I can't feel any draft at all! |
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Alan has an evil sense of humor.
3/2/07 |
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11/28/07 A carbon fiber lowracer bursts into flames after a collision during a race on a hot day. |
| New for the US market - The HighCom high-racer with splitter plate. |
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9/5/2008 This is Alan's 2nd NoCom. The first he sold to Sean Costin. Alan has made many tweaks to this NoCom. |
| He added remote steering to improve the handling, stiffened the frame, added a rear fender, and added a bunch of aero modifications. |
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