Wednesday, September 21, 2016

fellow San Diego cyclist Denise Mueller recently set a new woman's bicycle land speed record of 147 mph at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.




The pace car towed Mueller to about 90 mph, but the acceleration up to 147 mph was all from her legs. The bike's drive train uses two massive 60-tooth chainrings in a double-reduction configuration to provide a massive amount of torque, while keeping the chainrings far enough off the ground for clearance (something that would be difficult with one even larger chain ring).

Mueller rode a highly customized bike built by Chris Garcia of SD Wheel Works with technical support from Da Vinci Designs and KHS Bicycles. The team effort was named Hoehn Adventures Project Speed powered by Cyclance

 The bike includes a long list of technical innovations such as elongated frame, steering stabilizers, a BodyFloat isolation seatpost to dampen vibrations and harmonics, as well as custom-built 17-inch dragster wheels with shaved tires.

A very high gearing on a road bike will have about 125 gear inches. Mueller's custom bike has 488 gear inches

Mueller's coach is John Howard, a U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame and three-time Olympian, 20-time National Champion, and previous men’s bicycle land speed record holder. John set his record with the help of Don and Rick Vesco and the Vesco streamliner


Mueller is planning future attempts to break the current men's land speed record, which was set in 1995 by Fred Rompleberg of the Netherlands and stands at 167 mph. To get those extra 20 mph and become the faster person to ever ride a bicycle, Mueller's team Project Speed suspects they will need a six-mile track, two miles longer than the track they were working with at the salt flats.



Bonneville 2016 with Project Speed from Christopher Garcia on Vimeo.

Here's the cool part, play the next video for sound, and the one after that for video.. it's awesome!



http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a30783/world-speed-record-riding-a-bicycle-147-mph/
http://velonews.competitor.com/2016/09/news/ca-woman-rides-her-bicycle-147-mph-a-new-world-record_420507
https://www.facebook.com/TeamFireCycle/
http://theprojectspeed.com/

Sidenote, I just spent an hour crafting this post, selecting the images, searching for links, getting the info in the right order... etc. Then I see that I've almost exactly duplicated what the Awesomer did on their post about Denise. Hmmm... I think I need to send them a job application (my post is better) 

No comments:

Post a Comment