Rail Bike Conversion Is A Success, And A Failure

May 1, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 40 Comments

There is a long tradition of hacking transportation to work on the rails. People have done it to all kinds of things for many reasons. Some are for rail maintenance, others are simply to enjoy the tracks. With as much unused railways as we have, it seems a shame to waste them. This hack turns a bicycle into into a rail bike with the use of some conduit, a cut up razor scooter, and a fork from another bike. After some tinkering with spacing to make the whole thing a little smoother on the rails, the whole thing seemed like a success. That is, until the front rail guide caught a railway tie and the rider was tossed. Not only that, the impact destroyed his bike frame.

So, does this wreck mark this as a failure? Or is this simply another step in the iterative process we all tend to use. The only difference is if he carries on to build another.

Home Brew Motorized Bicycle Is A Super Grocery Getter

April 28, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 14 Comments

[Thor] sent in an awesome motorized bike build he found coming from the fruitful workshop of [Jim Gallant]. It’s an incredible piece of work built nearly entirely from scratch.

[Jim] welded the frame together on a home-built jig that keeps all the chrome-moly tubes in alignment before they’re pieced together. With the jig, the frame was kept extremely straight making a bike that turns very well and can be ridden no-handed.

All of [Jim]’s previous motorized bikes used small Honda engines, but after hearing Robin Subaru engines are more reliable he decided to give one a go. The motor is attached to the derailleur gears with a continuously variable transmission usually found in scooters. [Jim]’s earlier motorized bikes didn’t have indexed shifting and disc brakes like modern motorized bikes, but he decided to throw them in anyway. Everyone who rides his new super grocery getter comments on how smooth the ride is with these additions.

While [Jim] doesn’t have an official speed or MPG rating, he’s guessing this bike can carry three bags of groceries at 30 mph at 170 miles per gallon. A very efficient mode of transportation that is much safer than the other motorized bikes we’ve seen before.

Pedal Powered Hydrofoil Looks Like A Lot Of Fun

April 27, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 19 Comments

After reading a bicycle-powered hydrofoil build we posted a few days ago, [James] sent in the project that earned him an iron ring from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada. It’s a pedal-powered hydrofoil made of carbon fiber and a Titanium drive shaft [James] and five other students in a mech eng senior design class built in 2005.

The Halifoil, as the team called it, is based on a recumbent design and uses twin carbon fiber hulls to keep the rider out of the water when not pedaling. The use of carbon fiber foils and Titanium drive shaft keep the weight down so the rider can easily accelerate to a speed where the hulls come out of the water.

Compared to the last hydrofoil we posted, [James]’ build is much heavier, but one is much better suited to sitting in the middle of a lake, then pedaling to the shore while flying above the water.

Even though the project is several years old, it’s still a very cool build. [James] was kind enough to post the videos of his build residing on the Dalhousie servers on YouTube; you can check those out after the break.

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Hacking The Trampofoil To Be Pedal Powered

April 25, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 31 Comments

We’ve seen a few different versions of the “trampofoil” before. That’s the contraption that utilizes a hydrofoil and human power to scoot you across the water above the surface. It is somewhat difficult to explain, so just check out the first video after the break to see how the original works.

Today, we stumbled upon a cool video where someone is attempting to make a pedal powered one instead. Their first prototype, shown above is literally just a trampofoil with an added seat and pedal powered prop. They did manage to take it a step further though and came up with a second prototype that has a better designed hydrofoil as well as using a bike frame for the main structure. This looks really fun as you can see in the second video below.

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OBD-II TrckrX: Data Logging In A BMW E36 M3

April 25, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 14 Comments

[Bruce Land] sent in this cool final project for ECE 4760 at Cornell University. Dubbed TrckrX, it is an OBD-II tracking and data logging system built into a BMW E36 M3. The car in question is being used in some auotocross competitions. The driver wanted instant access to some data as well as a log of everything for later analysis. The unit gives a real time display of vehicle speed, coolant temp, and RPM. G-force and timestamps are stored on the SD card.

We think this is a very cool idea, and could be quite useful in some instances. The real time display of speed and RPM seem a bit peculiar as the car’s speedometer and tachometer are more appropriately placed for real time information. However, we completely understand that this was a class project and this person may not have wanted to replace their dash cluster with a new readout.

Real BMW Dash Cluster For Your Racing Games

April 20, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 10 Comments

Here’s a cool add on that could making racing games just a little more engaging. How about a real instrument cluster? [Herctrap] has written up the schematics and shared the code to get a real car’s instrument cluster to be driven from x-sim. It is a slightly different approach than we’ve seen before, but really not too complicated.While this is still just another accessory sitting on his desk, it really seems to add a considerable amount of feedback to the game. Next he needs to build a motion rig for his seat!

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2 Horse Power 3 Wheeled Beast

April 19, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 5 Comments

This beast above is the result of what is probably the coolest class project ever. The instructors[Michael Ham] and [Kenny Ham] gave their students a pile of junk and said “build something”. The goal was a “vehicle that could recharge itself”. In the pile were motorcycle tires, an old classroom seat, the front suspension from a VW bug, some old power drills, a solar panel, and a battery, amongst other bits and pieces. What you see above was the result. While it may not win any drag races any time soon, it was a fantastic class project that had the students thinking their way around many problems.

The videos on the project page show that this thing isn’t quite as sluggish as we would have expected for its size.

[via Make]