Motor doping thread

[Cloxxki]

I'd be very interested about the system that a pro doesn't know he's using. Surely 100W or even 50W is not attainable then. Only in full-on sprint.
Also, a pro does know his bike is weighed te moment he lays his hands on it. So a team would need to already be using LOTS of lead to weigh the bikes down to meet the 6.8kg threshold.

 

[sniper]

Re:

I'd be very interested about the system that a pro doesn't know he's using. Surely 100W or even 50W is not attainable then. Only in full-on sprint.
Also, a pro does know his bike is weighed te moment he lays his hands on it. So a team would need to already be using LOTS of lead to weigh the bikes down to meet the 6.8kg threshold.

yeah, that suggestion from the gazzetta guy is probably over the top.

as for bike weight: i read somehwere that some bikes are made of such high-end materials that they are below minimum weight and so in fact weight needs to be added for these bikes to be allowed in race. A motor or some magnets could add this weight?

 

[sniper]

Re:

some ok discussion here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Velo/comments/43pdkm/electromagnetic_wheels_are_the_new_frontier_of/
with arguments both ways
(it's also where i got that translated quote from)

 

[Maxiton]

Re:

Still getting caught up on the "how" rather than the "what". Motors are out there and we now have proof they are in use. Be assured that there is the equivalent of a Ferrari that is at the front of the game and is charging large dollars for the latest and best of innovation. We've only give a few "man"-hours in figuring out how to make a hidden motor. Others have given it a decade or more. I have to be honest that the engineering involved isn't that intimidating.

John Swanson

Exactly.

That's certainly a lot roomier! However, I don't think any pro team uses Powertap powermeter hubs.

And all racers want powermeters, but a bike would look very odd with a (fake) hub powermeter and a (real) crank or pedal powermeter. Would attract suspicion, I think.

Oh, I agree. No one today is going to show up with a PowerTap in 2016. I was just pointing out that there is precedence for large diameter rear hubs and it wouldn't be stretch in the never ending gimmick wars for someone to come along with some pseudo-scientific argument that increasing the diameter of the hub body only increases the weight slightly while creating a stiffer wheel.

Using that imaginary scenario, you wouldn't even have to pretend it has any power meter function to begin with, just an ostensibly stiffer wheel. "Hey we made the hub body wider so we could make the flanges lower, thereby reducing flange deflection" or some such rot.

Sounds like a likely scenario.

Still getting caught up on the "how" rather than the "what". Motors are out there and we now have proof they are in use. Be assured that there is the equivalent of a Ferrari that is at the front of the game and is charging large dollars for the latest and best of innovation. We've only give a few "man"-hours in figuring out how to make a hidden motor. Others have given it a decade or more. I have to be honest that the engineering involved isn't that intimidating.

John Swanson

hammer head nail.

from the "guru" quoted in the Gazzetta i found this interesting:

"It’s such a perfect system that I’m sure some riders don’t know they’re using it. They just think they’ve had a great day,” Gazzetta dello Sport’s source claimed. "

Sounds unlikely to our ears, but if the source is credible I think we should take him at his word - until we have reason not to. Otherwise we're just getting caught up in the "how" again.

 

[blackcat]

Re: Re:

I'd be very interested about the system that a pro doesn't know he's using. Surely 100W or even 50W is not attainable then. Only in full-on sprint.
Also, a pro does know his bike is weighed te moment he lays his hands on it. So a team would need to already be using LOTS of lead to weigh the bikes down to meet the 6.8kg threshold.

yeah, that suggestion from the gazzetta guy is probably over the top.

as for bike weight: i read somehwere that some bikes are made of such high-end materials that they are below minimum weight and so in fact weight needs to be added for these bikes to be allowed in race. A motor or some magnets could add this weight?

the frame and geometry needs to be correctly weighted in the right parts, like a surfboard or
F1 car, you just cant add 1kg to any part on the bike geometry with lead tape, and expect the bike handling to be nifty

 

[blackcat]

and like Boardman said, for every kg you need climb you need a minimum(ly) heavy frame to stabilise the bike downhill

it becomes a negative economy when you factor in descending and bike handling

 

[sniper]

cheers, bc, good points.
great avatar.
let's hope Femke and her entourage end up singing like parakeets.

 

[Eyeballs Out]

Re: Re:

I'd be very interested about the system that a pro doesn't know he's using. Surely 100W or even 50W is not attainable then. Only in full-on sprint.
Also, a pro does know his bike is weighed te moment he lays his hands on it. So a team would need to already be using LOTS of lead to weigh the bikes down to meet the 6.8kg threshold.

yeah, that suggestion from the gazzetta guy is probably over the top.

as for bike weight: i read somehwere that some bikes are made of such high-end materials that they are below minimum weight and so in fact weight needs to be added for these bikes to be allowed in race. A motor or some magnets could add this weight?

Who is going to stop you racing your 5 kg bike ?

 

[blackcat]

to run such a sophisticated operation, you just gotta fleece the aviary and smuggle the birds to the orient. this is how sophisticated this enterprise is, and you thought CIA blacktar coming out of burmese golden triangle and vietnam and cambodia and afghanistan were all conspiracy and tinfoil, but folks, $h!t just got real, we are in the midst of an international parakeet smuggling and motor-doping operation. When they speak of the illegal arms trade being inextricably linked to oil, well, parakeets and motor-doping, birds of a feather, stick together
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGVdu2ColMU

 

[Hawkwood]

Re: Re:

Still getting caught up on the "how" rather than the "what". Motors are out there and we now have proof they are in use. Be assured that there is the equivalent of a Ferrari that is at the front of the game and is charging large dollars for the latest and best of innovation. We've only give a few "man"-hours in figuring out how to make a hidden motor. Others have given it a decade or more. I have to be honest that the engineering involved isn't that intimidating.

John Swanson

Exactly.

That's certainly a lot roomier! However, I don't think any pro team uses Powertap powermeter hubs.

And all racers want powermeters, but a bike would look very odd with a (fake) hub powermeter and a (real) crank or pedal powermeter. Would attract suspicion, I think.

Oh, I agree. No one today is going to show up with a PowerTap in 2016. I was just pointing out that there is precedence for large diameter rear hubs and it wouldn't be stretch in the never ending gimmick wars for someone to come along with some pseudo-scientific argument that increasing the diameter of the hub body only increases the weight slightly while creating a stiffer wheel.

Using that imaginary scenario, you wouldn't even have to pretend it has any power meter function to begin with, just an ostensibly stiffer wheel. "Hey we made the hub body wider so we could make the flanges lower, thereby reducing flange deflection" or some such rot.

Sounds like a likely scenario.

Still getting caught up on the "how" rather than the "what". Motors are out there and we now have proof they are in use. Be assured that there is the equivalent of a Ferrari that is at the front of the game and is charging large dollars for the latest and best of innovation. We've only give a few "man"-hours in figuring out how to make a hidden motor. Others have given it a decade or more. I have to be honest that the engineering involved isn't that intimidating.

John Swanson

hammer head nail.

from the "guru" quoted in the Gazzetta i found this interesting:

"It’s such a perfect system that I’m sure some riders don’t know they’re using it. They just think they’ve had a great day,” Gazzetta dello Sport’s source claimed. "

Sounds unlikely to our ears, but if the source is credible I think we should take him at his word - until we have reason not to. Otherwise we're just getting caught up in the "how" again.

The `source' said that he used a tool like a wood chisel to open up carbon frames! And having inserted the motor and made good the frame can still snap! The `source' said he used a similar procedure to open up wheels.

 

[veganrob]

Re: Re:

That's certainly a lot roomier! However, I don't think any pro team uses Powertap powermeter hubs.

And all racers want powermeters, but a bike would look very odd with a (fake) hub powermeter and a (real) crank or pedal powermeter. Would attract suspicion, I think.

Oh, I agree. No one today is going to show up with a PowerTap in 2016. I was just pointing out that there is precedence for large diameter rear hubs and it wouldn't be stretch in the never ending gimmick wars for someone to come along with some pseudo-scientific argument that increasing the diameter of the hub body only increases the weight slightly while creating a stiffer wheel.

Using that imaginary scenario, you wouldn't even have to pretend it has any power meter function to begin with, just an ostensibly stiffer wheel. "Hey we made the hub body wider so we could make the flanges lower, thereby reducing flange deflection" or some such rot.

With the way sponsorship decisions are made I don't know if we would see a PowerTap being used now. But, it was not that long ago that Thor Hushold was using it.

 

[Maxiton]

Re:

and like Boardman said, for every kg you need climb you need a minimum(ly) heavy frame to stabilise the bike downhill

it becomes a negative economy when you factor in descending and bike handling

Maybe so, but I remember seeing articles in 2011 (sorry, don't have a link) that showed the lead weights some teams had added to their frames in order to reach the UCI weight minimum.

Anyway, if a team has sufficient budget and determination to cheat, we have to assume they will be dealing with experts: people who will take into account structural integrity and proper weight distribution. The difference between Femke and her father on the one hand, and cutting-edge tech on the other, is the difference between Pot Belge and Michelle Ferrari.

 

[jens_attacks]

Ok guys the fun is over
Gazzetta source is the same hungarian engineer, varjas
From what i could gather, he likes a lot his name. He cpuld say some truths but a lot more bullshiit.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

...
The `source' said that he used a tool like a wood chisel to open up carbon frames! And having inserted the motor and made good the frame can still snap! The `source' said he used a similar procedure to open up wheels.

lol, but two times no.
1. not a wooden chisel. A chisel (for wood)
2. the source said the wheel, like the frame, is opened up, but doesn't specify with which tools. (could also be chisel though)

 

[Hawkwood]

Re: Re:

...
The `source' said that he used a tool like a wood chisel to open up carbon frames! And having inserted the motor and made good the frame can still snap! The `source' said he used a similar procedure to open up wheels.

lol, but two times no.
1. not a wooden chisel. A chisel (for wood)
2. the source said the wheel, like the frame, is opened up, but doesn't specify with which tools. (could also be chisel though)

I wrote `wood chisel' because it's the correct term in English for a chisel used to shape wood, look it up, the first hit I get on a famous search engine is `wood chisel set'. Anyway using a tool like a wood chisel to open up a carbon frame sounds bonkers, surely you'd use a Dremel or similar? I wonder whether the Gazzetta journalist took the quotes from a language other than Italian ran them through a translation engine and this produced the rather odd `tool for gouging wood' idea?

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

...
The `source' said that he used a tool like a wood chisel to open up carbon frames! And having inserted the motor and made good the frame can still snap! The `source' said he used a similar procedure to open up wheels.

lol, but two times no.
1. not a wooden chisel. A chisel (for wood)
2. the source said the wheel, like the frame, is opened up, but doesn't specify with which tools. (could also be chisel though)

I wrote `wood chisel' because it's the correct term in English for a chisel used to shape wood, look it up, the first hit I get on a famous search engine is `wood chisel set'.

my bad, i stand corrected.

Anyway using a tool like a wood chisel to open up a carbon frame sounds bonkers, surely you'd use a Dremel or similar?

fair point i guess.

I wonder whether the Gazzetta journalist took the quotes from a language other than Italian ran them through a translation engine and this produced the rather odd `tool for gouging wood' idea?

lol, i'd say this is not impossible.
still, however, the story contains details that make it hard to believe the journo made it all up, though that's not impossible either.
maybe the 'source' made stuff up.
maybe nobody made nothing up.
i'm not discarding any of those three options yet.

 

[sniper]

two additional remarks:
- I don't think using a chisel is out of the ordinary, at least at the low-end of the industry.
It would at least be one of the tools used to open up and adjust the frame to put a motor in it (but correct me if i'm wrong on this).
- the 'guru' is not necessarily from italy (although that's likely). If he's anglophone and told the journo about his "wood chisel", that could explain the odd-ish translation.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Re:

cheers, bc, good points.
great avatar.
let's hope Femke and her entourage end up singing like parakeets.

But how much do we honestly think they knew about what others were up to? Even if they do talk, I'm not sure how much ground they could raze. Any big teams or big names involved in that kind of activity would be very foolish indeed to allow that kind of information to get out to the small fry enterprises like the van den Driessche group.

 

[Hawkwood]

Re:

Ok guys the fun is over
Gazzetta source is the same hungarian engineer, varjas
From what i could gather, he likes a lot his name. He cpuld say some truths but a lot more bullshiit.

Thanks for the information. Using it I've found about three different versions of the same article going back a few years. The`facts' are changed, for example in an earlier version the high-end motorised bike costs 20,000 euros, in the recent one it's 200,000.

 

[Tienus]

When Femke was younger she was riding a Bianchi cavaria. It looks exactly the same as bike nr 1 except for the downtube.
http://www.italiaanseracefietsen.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/bcc23.jpg
http://www.tomliberman.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/femke-van-den-dreissche-min.jpg
http://demuur.nu/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/unnamed-7.jpg

 

[Night Rider]

Re: Re:

The MIT motor is what is called a "pancake" motor because it's shaped like a disc. They've been around forever and I'm guessing what the MIT team was doing is finding ways to get sufficient torque out of it. Much, much more likely is that a hub motor is being used. My guess would be potted windings on the axle and the hub shell, run at very high voltage from a battery powered controller tucked into the frame. The only trick would be making sure you get a decent electrical connection from the dropout to the hub. It wouldn't be geared, so the setup would be low speed/high torque rather than something like the Vivax which can run at high rpm. That kind of motor is much easier to make. And I have no clue if you could build this hub motor to actually look like a "normal" hub.

John Swanson

I think the way to approach this would be to embed electrical contacts in each dropout, with the locknuts and axle completing the circuit, put the coil (windings) on the axle, with ferrous inserts or magnets in the hub shell. You'd need to electrically insulate the rest of the drivetrain. Problem is, the hub on a pro road bike is skinny, and the axle has to be hollow and mechanically strong enough for a rider bombing down a mountain at 60 mph. That leaves very little room for a motor to produce enough power to make the whole thing worthwhile. If we start seeing pro bikes with bizarrely large diameter rear hubs, then someone should go put a magnetometer next to the hub shell - or toss a paperclip at it.

Here's a typical pro bike rear hub (a Zipp):

Yep, and while some may say it's getting hung up on the 'how' the fact is you have to fit any motor into the one you posted or the one below which was what Hesjedal was using. I think it's pretty safe to assume that motor technology until now has been based on the seat post motor and drive method rather than rear hubs.

Edit: Here is a cross section of the Zipp hub.

 

[sniper]

yes but as discussed, for hesjedal to have doped wheels, we're not dependent on motors.

 

[Night Rider]

Re:

yes but as discussed, for hesjedal to have doped wheels, we're not dependent on motors.

The magnetic type you mean? In the rim?

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

yes but as discussed, for hesjedal to have doped wheels, we're not dependent on motors.

The magnetic type you mean? In the rim?

that's one theoretical possibility, yes.
according to at least one person close to the peloton, Greg Lemond, it's already been used by pros.

 

[Night Rider]

Re: Re:

yes but as discussed, for hesjedal to have doped wheels, we're not dependent on motors.

The magnetic type you mean? In the rim?

that's one theoretical possibility, yes.
according to at least one person close to the peloton, Greg Lemond, it's already been used by pros.

I call BS on Greg for that one. And if he really believes that then show us a working example. Highly theoretical and highly unlikely.