What would your ideal race bike be like?

The cost of race bikes is pretty prohibitive to getting people involved in the sport ~£1200+, I'm thinking of having a go at designing a bike to bring the cost down toward the £800 mark comparable with a decent upright.

In essence my idea is a steel copy of an optima low baron using a 700c rear wheel with v brakes at the back, and a 406 front wheel with a 20mm axle downhill hub, disc brakes and a steel monoblade fork at the front. The basic model would use 4130 Chrome-Molybdenum with a lighter version using a T45 Carbon-Mangenese tube set at additional cost. There is also the possibility of making it separate under the seat for travel, again at extra cost and a bit of a weight penalty. The entire bike wouldn't be particularly light, but most BHPC courses are fairly flat anyway. Obviously to make things as cheaply as possible the frame would only be offered in one plain colour of cellulose paint, although I would offer the frame unpainted for those who wanted to paint it themselves. It would also be possible to offer the frame in it's just post brazing state allowing those who wanted to do the laborious hand finishing of the fillet brazing themselves to save even more money.

If one were to allow £350 for the bicycle components you'd have to be making the basic frame and forks for around £250 to turn a reasonable profit. This seems do-able. I already have much of the equipment and experties (15yrs spent making stuff, 2yrs into an engineering degree) although making a tube bender would be a considerable investment of time and money (making the dies being much of the work), as would the bits and bobs to thread BB's, true frames, face headtubes and so on. 4130 is cheap, and I have summer holidays. I'm pretty happy earning £5/hr if it's something I enjoy doing so even if it took me three days to make each frame & forks that's still only ~£135 of labour leaving £115 for welding gas, materials, seat, idlers etc. and £150 profit for recouping investment in equipment.

The question is, what would you add or change about the specification, might you go for a highracer instead? FWD and 406 all round? Mid drive with a 406 RWD? 406 rear and a big chainring? Would you bother with a monoblade fork or get an off the shelf BMX fork and have an extra idler? Has anyone made something like this from scratch before, any hints and tips, anything you don't like about the low baron anyway, should i prioritise making it seperable over weight and cost, and so on...

...and if I really made a batch of these things, would anyone buy them at say £400 for a frameset (F&F,seat, stem, bars and idlers), maybe £300 if you clean up the joints and paint it yourself? This would mean you could probably put together an entire bike for £450 if you were resourceful and scavenged bits off old bikes, or you could have a really nice machine with new bits for £800.


Edited by alexjrice

I think it's OK to say that the design will be based on another manufacturers product, so long as I don't call it an optima baron when (if) I sell it. It won't be an exact copy anyway, not least because I've never seen one in the flesh. The reason i was looking at it was that their general design of rear stays looks easier to fabricate en masse than other designs, although it may end up looking a bit more moulton-esque with a bit more triangulation

The low baron has it's BB quite a bit higher than the standard one which gives a lot more clearance between the cranks and the front wheel, I'm pretty tall but of course I'll bear ikle people in mind as well The solution for really short people might be to go to a 16" front wheel in a 20" fork with a bit of extra 'headtube' to keep everything at the right height but gaining a lot of extra clearance. Indeed, why do lowracers not use 16" front wheels? Any ideas?

I'm set up for making things from metal, rather than carbon fibre which is a whole different kettle of fish and something with which i have almost no experience. I suppose the setup costs are somewhat less but the development cost will be higher because of the dificulty of reworking a mould. If you get it wrong you have to scrap the whole thing rather than whipping out the torch and the hacksaw for a quick bit of 'adjustment'!

In no particular order:-

I'm not convinced by the Baron's handling and Mr Larrington seems to have dropped his too often for me to be sold on it.

The best thing to do is knock something up, to get a geometry that suits you AND like-minded victims/friends. Don't worry about the weight and sexiness , you need to have something that works first, then you make it so it looks the biz.

With a composite bike the frame can be hacked and patched reasonably easily. I would recommend starting with a wrap around a foam core first though to get everything worked out, then making the moulds.

Alan, why not rebuild the wheels for 349 and you can get Stelvios? A no help answer I know but hey I'm that kind of guy...

Looking at the baron in comparison to other bikes (jester, no com) they all seem to have the same head angle, the main differences are that the baron has about a 4" shorter wheelbase and the seat about 3" further back than the jester. This is going to mean that the weight balance will be more to the rear which could possibly result in the front wheel washing out and also with a shorter wheelbase the handling will be slightly quicker.

The baron has the BB about 6" higher than the jester so should be better aerodynamically. In relation to the seat the no-com's BB is similar to the jester.

Seat angle is pretty much the same between all three.

Alan, Marathons come in 305, they're not as fast as stelvios but they're not bad and will take something like 90psi. A good stop-gap measure.

Alex,

    Great idea to lure new riders/racers with a cheaper
bike. However, I wonder if a 'pure race' machine like
the Low Baron is the best design. I'm thinking there is a bigger market for a 'sport' type bike, which is practical for road use as well as racing. £800 is still alot of money for a bike you're only going to ride 12 times a year!

           Best of luck!