Thanks TJ. 🙂

PP – I know, I know, Some people just have NO colour sense whatsoever, do they. Mind you, I DO like the little red cuff on it. I was hoping for a bit of carbon fibre at least. 😉

Will post action shots and possibly video later (but if I can't post pictures I don't really stand a chance, do I? In my defence, I just 'upgraded' to IE8 and I think that's the problem.)

A chap here at work once rode with a bloke with no hands. He had a ball-joint arrangement where the balls were on the end of his arms and slotted into the bars. Not sure how he worked the brakes.

We went for a ride yesterday with the new arm. We rode a local route so he could compare how it felt without and with the arm. The weather was grim though – we ended up with head winds up all the climbs, but the terrain was fairly challenging with lots of slidy and gloopy mud/cow or horse poo, unavoidable puddles and wet rocks.
We have a list of things that could be improved but on the whole it went quite well.
Photos to follow – having some trouble uploading them.

I ended up having to cut an inner tube up and lash the 'hand' bit to the bars because every time he leant back it popped out. That helped quite a lot.
And the shoulder joint lock is too easily caught so he ended up with his arm dangling from the handlebar at one point, which was a bit frustrating…
Also the fixing point at the shoulder it too low (which I thought initially but until you test it you can't say for sure, can you?)
The locking elbow is a drag because every time he gets to the top or bottom of a hill he has to stop and reposition it and relock it.

BUT, he said it definitely gave him some extra confidence and stability. He rode one of our usual downhill bits MUCH quicker than I have ever seen him ride it and with no dabs. 🙂 (He said that was partly arm and partly after we rode Rushup Edge – he said that's boosted his confidence a lot which is cool. 🙂 )
It looks like a damper/shock of some sort is going to be necessary because the multi-position lock out at the moment isn't working well. The prosthetists are well out of their comfort zone though so I think this may end up being a home project.

Will post photos soon.

Still can get pics to post 🙁
Click here

Pictures 🙂 Go on to all sizes, right click / properties / location and paste into box that appears when you click img in the reply box

Thanks again TJ.
I wasn't doing the 'all sizes' bit – I was just clicking on the 'thumbnail' to open the pic and then taking the location properties from the larger version that opened. 🙁 I will try again in a bit.
I also have video to post, but I can't even get that to upload to flickr yet so I don't fancy my chances much… 😉
(Is this where I admit I am supposedly a techie?)

Hi TN
Thank you for this great story. I remember talking to a chap earlier this year at a XC race about his Yeti ASR. This dude was racing on the day and he also had a missing arm. He had a curved pincer type prosthetic fore-arm. I never asked him about how he managed , just talked bikes. 🙂
Well done to your mate and as someone said at the beginning of this thread, 'Who needs an arm if you have Balls…'
I am sure that a better solution will be found with a bit more Research and Development.
Best of luck.

Was at Delamere yesterday and there was a chap there with one arm (still had the other arm but obviously did nothing). Looks like he had an adapted road bike – hugely impressive, I have enough problem with two arms 😳

I was thinking about something wouldn't it be worth getting a gravity dropper?
It will indeed help in the down, plus he could hole the saddle between his tights to help directing the bike.

Plus I concur with peter 😉 it has to be black anodizing 😉

I ended up having to cut an inner tube up and lash the 'hand' bit to the bars because every time he leant back it popped out. That helped quite a lot.

Sorry TN – i'm not sure what movement J can impart on the riding arm but – having read the above I was wondering if there is anyway the arm and bar mount bracket can be adapted to take some sort of SPD clip in type system – compact enough and hopefully enough to hold in place when needed – and also release when needed!

Just a thought

Chris

Heard about this bloke last week – amazing riding shots. Going to point a few of the well it has to be improved because its increasing access for all people in the direction of these pics.

Chris, I am not sure (certainly with the current version of the arm) whether he'd be able to produce the motion required to clip out of an SPD-type arrangement, but it is certainly worth keeping in mind.

I think now he's tried this version we can look at ways to improve it – it's good to have a starting point.
To that end, he's currently watching various air shocks on 'that auction site' with a view to trying one of those instead of the current elbow arrangement. We figure if he can provide the part and some drawings, the prosthetics guys should be able to put it together. And if not, we know a fair few mad inventor types…

One interesting side effect was that after he had been riding 'with 2 hands' his phantom limb felt different – less cramped up and uncomfortable. I have heard people report that using a prosthetic can improve phantom limb pain but it was cool to see it in action. It didn't last long but he said it made a nice change. 🙂

I read about this therapy for phantom limb pain where they sat people next to a mirror so they could see their real limb reflected where their missing one would be. Their brain then sees two limbs and sorts itself out. One guy had been 20 years feeling that a missing hand was clenched painfully tightly, then he used this mirror, unclenched his real hand and that was it – pain gone.

Molgrips – mirror box therapy is pretty amazing, isn't it? It's kind of tricky for J because the 'standard' set up is to put the residual and/or phantom limb inside the box on one side and the remaining limb in the other side. Unfortunately J has no residual limb and he can't move his phantom to place it as though it were in the box, so it doesn't work for him at the mo. Maybe if the phantom moves in the future though…
It's a pity because it sounds like it does great things for those who can use it. Weird how the brain works though, isn't it?

The riding arm is progressing though now – 18bikes are looking into couplings to allow him to fit an air shock to the limb he's got so that he has a dynamic 'elbow' rather than one he has to lock in position. If that works it should improve things even further. Watch this space…

And here's another pic, just because…

Still looks like there's very little weight on the new arm tho..

But still – brave riding on the snow and ice like that 🙂