Honda's downhill racer.You could look at Honda's RN01 mountain bike as a bit of a throwback. After all, the company started off making motorcycles before progressing on to cars, and now it's making experimental aircraft and robots. So a mountain bike seems decidedly low-tech for Honda R & D's technical gurus. But the RN01 is not just any weekend stump jumper. Built specifically for the high-adrenaline sport of downhill (DH to those in the know), mountain bike racing The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) recognised the sport of mountain bike racing relatively late in 1990, when it sanctioned the world championships in Purgatory, Colorado. The first mountain biking world cup series took place in 1991. , in which riders hurtle hur·tle v. hur·tled, hur·tling, hur·tles v.intr. To move with or as if with great speed and a rushing noise: an express train that hurtled past. v.tr. down snowless black diamond-level ski slopes at ridiculous speeds, the bike features an honest-to-goodness transmission in place of the usual gears and derailleur de·rail·leur n. A device for shifting gears on a bicycle by moving the chain between sprocket wheels of different sizes. [French dérailleur, from dérailler, to derail; see setup. The guts of the transmission are a closely held secret. It's conjectured that it could be an extremely lightweight version of a continuously variable transmission The continuously variable transmission (CVT) is a transmission in which the ratio of the rotational speeds of two shafts, as the input shaft and output shaft of a vehicle or other machine, can be varied continuously within a given range, providing an infinite number of (CVT CVT Continuously Variable Transmission (automotive, sport, utility & hybrid vehicles) CVT Center for Victims of Torture CVT Continuing Vocational Training CVT Certified Veterinary Technician CVT Control Value Table ). What is known for sure is that the transmission allows Honda's Team G Cross racers to switch gears in mid-air during jumps without the need to pedal, allowing them to maintain better balance. What Honda really hopes to gain from participating in DH is unclear. Learning about balance and lightweighting at its most basic level could yield some improvements in motorcycle design. Besides, what's Honda got to lose? After all, the total bill for the RN01 effort probably doesn't even approach the annual dry cleaning bill for an F1 driver. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion