I had a Peugeot many years ago with a HLE frame – High Level of Elasticity I think it stood for.

What always amazes me about the Beemer bikes is that they are a respecting motorcycle manufacturer as well so you’d think they’d get it a bit more right.

re. the KTM’s – some of the top-end ones are very nice which goes to show a motorbike manufacturer can get it right.

they still make (badge) them

Indeed. My LBS has Peugeot 29ers in stock, all under €800.

Would love one of these!

dispite the myth, they weren’t all crushed. In 2009 there were 3 of them kicking round in whistler. Didn’t see any this year though 🙁

🙂

There was a BMW (the one that looks a bit like a spech enduro) for sale on Gumtree near me once and i suggetsed on here i might buy it just to see what it was like. I got dogs abuse.

Blindmelon- what on earth is that?

Honda DH bike – the pic i posted was supposed to be the inside of the gearbox you can see on it, not sure that was really true though

i think it’s made by honda (for dh).never was sold to public though EDIT beaten to it 😳

Saw the Honda at fort William a few times. The pits were always closed off and shrouded in secrecy. Looked nice tho.

That was the later version of the Honda – the earlier was a very clever CVT design…

Italy 2005 011 by PeterPoddy, on Flickr

😯 OMG 😯 So THAT ^^^^ is what the top secret Honda gearbox looked like inside!!!!!

So hooofin simple Honda!! Bloody genius (as always).

Why don’t all mountain bikes have one of those??

So the Honda gearbox is a chain wheel, derailleur and cassette in a box then?!

A vid appeared ‘revealing’ the gear box just as they were starting to close down the team. My feeling, and I think lots of others too, was that Honda were playing with everyone and they mocked it up to give themselves a laugh. Just IMHO, anyone else remember it at the time?

Apparently so

I’ve just had a browse around and it does seem that the later Honda’s just had a derailleur in a box!

There’s even a video
http://www.pinkbike.com/video/8166/

IIRC Brendan Fairclough got a bollocking for letting people get their mitts on his bike when he rode for Honda……and revealing it was a derailleur in a box.They started out as CVT though.
If you’re wondering why car manufacturer’s cars are so bad….go to a uni and talk to automotive design students 😯 and it’ll be the worst of the bunch who get given the bike projects to keep em away from the cars!!!
Edit…probably.

A vid appeared ‘revealing’ the gear box just as they were starting to close down the team. My feeling, and I think lots of others too, was that Honda were playing with everyone and they mocked it up to give themselves a laugh. Just IMHO, anyone else remember it at the time?

Yup, apparently started as a CVT (but did anyone ever actually see that one?) but CVTs aint allowed by the UCI (gear shifting must be manual iirc). Then shifted to the mech in a box.

Sadly it sounded shit when it came past!

the patents that Honda filed are online somewhere for the CVT transmissions the MK1 frames had, they were too complex/heavy so went with mech-in-a-box for the later ones.

PP, there was a Ducati sponsored laydeez team doing the uk xc circuit season before last. (I work with one of their mums) IIRC the Ducati branded frames were a) excellent, and b) Bianchis in disguise.

I’ve seen the original CVT design – very clever, it used a linkage which changed length to change the effective leverage ratio, the major problem with it was that it required non-circular cogwheels to smooth out the output drive, and they’re an absolute sod to machine.

The later derailleur-in-a-box design was also called, I think, Petespeed – though that might have been a similar design from a different company.

Petespeed

yeah that was from Hayes/Be-One

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/article2245.html

Ah yes, that’s the beast. Suntour had one as well…

Lamborgini made a £140 mtb that tesco sold a few years ago. talk about brand rape.

I give you….

The late 90’s Mercedes

Weren’t these part of the same company before Answer bought out the bike bit?


I may be wrong…

There are quite of lot of KTM bikes sold round these parts (Madrid), seem pretty good vfm.

Do I win something for finding this?

@ Northwind –

that carbon Lotus was my mates bike, where is it now? is it still running? It used to have a disk drive rear wheel- you could hear him coming from miles away!

Just a random pic off the net, here’s the page it’s from:

http://www.singletraction.co.uk/?fn_mode=fullnews&fn_id=105

2 questions:

1) Did Sam do the E2E on the cool Lotus bike?

2) Has anyone worked out how much the carbon fibre Aston Martin Guitar is??

Great thread!! 😀

Not a car manufacturer, but tyres… Bridgestone made the rather tasty, for it’s time mb-0, among other bikes

And going the other way, Cannondale busted the company up big time by going wfo into the motorcycle market..

And Yamaha made this in the 70’s – ahead of it’s time, or what?

Bridgestone make quite a few bikes in Japan – including a lovely Moulton…