The doped bike exists (video of pro version)!

[sniper]

Re: Re:

Here's a selection of reactions to the epic "Ryder Crash - Motor?" thread.
Would be good to hear back from the same posters, also in light of the CIRC report where motorized bikes are mentioned.

It's very simple, really. The "usual handful of people" were totally being "conspiracy theorists". I stand by what I said, as I would even if it was proven that Hesjedal or anyone else used a motor, because what you guys were posting in that thread wasn't motivated by the evidence at all. It wasn't rational. If it turns out Hesjedal was somehow using a motor, then you'd be right, but for all the wrong reasons, so it'd be more of a fluke than a win or a vindication.

i get your point, but i think you were too quick to dismiss it.
The 'handful of people' who thought that footage was suspect included Granville57, Dear Wiggo, Scienceiscool and some others with experience in bicycle technology. Not the ones you'd classify as the 'usual' handful.

 

[ray j willings]

Re:

considering that the following year, Boonen rode away and solo'd from an even greater distance... and 3 Sky riders couldn't gain ground on him... yet no one's saying his bike had a motor.

currently we're at the entire peloton being "never tested positive" for these mystery motors, when you'd think that they'd be much easier to find without the aid of microscopes or lab equipment and medico's...

By then Boonen's bike would have been looked at. Plus Boonen was impressive but he did not ride away from other riders the way Fab did.
The UCI must have suspicions for motors otherwise they would not be looking for them.
The fact we now have electric shifting and buttons all over the bars and wires everywhere and battery packs it would be easier to hide things. It would also be easy for any team to get a Uber light custom frame made so weight would not be so suspicious.

 

[burning]

I think that freewheeling on a climb (poggio or cipressa for this instance) will definitely make you caught pants down as everbody else will immediately know something is wrong.

The most plasuable theory (at least for me) is that they use those stuff before crunch time to conserve energy. ( Remember those excessive silky smooth bike changes from Cancellara and Contador?)

I think Dave's post is excellent for adressing the issues about implementing such a device and I'd like to add my 2c.

First off all, you dont need something like 300W in order to make a huge difference. Saving 30-40 watts during the race could tip the scales heavily and you can use smaller brushless motors ( Cant access daha sheets for a such motor right now, lets say it is 2000ķv) but I think that if you really want to implement such a device, it is doable IMO.

Regarding control software/algorithm , it should be easily doable IMO. This is essentially a single DOF system and I think you can handle it easily even with a basic PID stuff. I dont have excessive info about power storage but using something like phone batteries could to the trick. I think that isolating/blocking buzzing sound could be the biggest issue.

 

[Archibald]

Re: Re:

considering that the following year, Boonen rode away and solo'd from an even greater distance... and 3 Sky riders couldn't gain ground on him... yet no one's saying his bike had a motor.

currently we're at the entire peloton being "never tested positive" for these mystery motors, when you'd think that they'd be much easier to find without the aid of microscopes or lab equipment and medico's...

By then Boonen's bike would have been looked at. Plus Boonen was impressive but he did not ride away from other riders the way Fab did.
The UCI must have suspicions for motors otherwise they would not be looking for them.
The fact we now have electric shifting and buttons all over the bars and wires everywhere and battery packs it would be easier to hide things. It would also be easy for any team to get a Uber light custom frame made so weight would not be so suspicious.

why would Boonen's bike have been looked at?

reckon Boonen's longer distance and growing a gap on a chasing peloton is more sus for the simple reason that he's far less of a time trialler then cancellara. Don't forget there were 3 sky riders in that chase. The chase for cancellara was everyone just looking at Boonen to do it...
was on a Specialized too, no?
as was Cancellara the year before - and one thing you're likely to need would be compliance from your bike sponsor for intergrating the motor/system, no?

anyway, yes, there must be suspicions if they're actually checking, unless it's just a placating rouse...
But it seems as everyone's pointing at Cancellara when there's others that appear to be going under the radar

 

[SpaceRonin]

There is a very easy kill for this one: Put IR cameras on the motards...... see who has glowing tubes or BB. Target and check. End of. In fact I bet you could extract the data from existing TV footage. The CCDs sample into the near IR as well (shoot your old TV remote at a camera and see). You would have to do some tricky signal processing to extract the data and the frequencies will be at variance with the black body radiation levels (not near IR) but WTH it is broad spectrum: There would be some relative data in the tail there and It could be scoped and justified with the appropriate mathematics and without recourse to fuzzy statistical methods associated with blood vector doping. So it would be deterministic.

..........Is that the sound of running lawyers I hear?

 

[hrotha]

Re: Re:

i get your point, but i think you were too quick to dismiss it.
The 'handful of people' who thought that footage was suspect included Granville57, Dear Wiggo, Scienceiscool and some others with experience in bicycle technology. Not the ones you'd classify as the 'usual' handful.

"The usual handful of people" doesn't refer to every forumer who is cynical (that would be 75% of the forum). It refers to the likes of Cycle Chic and you.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

i get your point, but i think you were too quick to dismiss it.
The 'handful of people' who thought that footage was suspect included Granville57, Dear Wiggo, Scienceiscool and some others with experience in bicycle technology. Not the ones you'd classify as the 'usual' handful.

"The usual handful of people" doesn't refer to every forumer who is cynical (that would be 75% of the forum). It refers to the likes of Cycle Chic and you.

i know, and that's why i said:
"The 'handful of people' who thought that footage was suspect included Granville57, Dear Wiggo, Scienceiscool and some others with experience in bicycle technology. Not the ones you'd classify as the 'usual' handful".
but don't worry hrotha, i won't ask you to backtrack anything. it's just funny in hindsight.

 

[ray j willings]

Re: Re:

considering that the following year, Boonen rode away and solo'd from an even greater distance... and 3 Sky riders couldn't gain ground on him... yet no one's saying his bike had a motor.

currently we're at the entire peloton being "never tested positive" for these mystery motors, when you'd think that they'd be much easier to find without the aid of microscopes or lab equipment and medico's...

By then Boonen's bike would have been looked at. Plus Boonen was impressive but he did not ride away from other riders the way Fab did.
The UCI must have suspicions for motors otherwise they would not be looking for them.
The fact we now have electric shifting and buttons all over the bars and wires everywhere and battery packs it would be easier to hide things. It would also be easy for any team to get a Uber light custom frame made so weight would not be so suspicious.

why would Boonen's bike have been looked at?

reckon Boonen's longer distance and growing a gap on a chasing peloton is more sus for the simple reason that he's far less of a time trialler then cancellara. Don't forget there were 3 sky riders in that chase. The chase for cancellara was everyone just looking at Boonen to do it...
was on a Specialized too, no?
as was Cancellara the year before - and one thing you're likely to need would be compliance from your bike sponsor for intergrating the motor/system, no?

anyway, yes, there must be suspicions if they're actually checking, unless it's just a placating rouse...
But it seems as everyone's pointing at Cancellara when there's others that appear to be going under the radar

I agree.
I think Fab's alleged use looks more obvious. Maybe if teams or riders are using motors then they will be more clever in the way they are used.

Fab never looked as good since then.

I was making a presumption that Boonen's Bike was checked. Good point you make there, my mistake "possibly"

 

[hrotha]

Re: Re:

i know, and that's why i said:
"The 'handful of people' who thought that footage was suspect included Granville57, Dear Wiggo, Scienceiscool and some others with experience in bicycle technology. Not the ones you'd classify as the 'usual' handful".
but don't worry hrotha, i won't ask you to backtrack anything. it's just funny in hindsight.

You still don't get it. I didn't take issue with everyone who talked about the possibility of bike motors - in fact, I myself talked about it in that very thread. I just took issue with those who tried to mask their conspiracy theorist tendencies with a very flimsy film of rationality. No backtracking. Where you being rational? Then my comment didn't apply to you. Where you jumping to conclusions just because that's how you always operate? Then I was talking about you. It's very simple, really.

 

[IndianCyclist]

I suspect somebody from the peloton complained about hearing motors otherwise suddenly why would they be doing this and that too for so many teams at once?

 

[blackcat]

the riders accept doping with dope. doping with drugs = allowed.

can you keep a secret in the peloton. in this case, the peloton is its best protection from cheating from mechanical doping. the sociology dynamic of the peloton would not allow it. and yes, this sits side by side with the norms of doping with peds and conspiring to effect and affect results not from the legs, but the palms and benjamin slings

 

[neineinei]

Re:

I suspect somebody from the peloton complained about hearing motors otherwise suddenly why would they be doing this and that too for so many teams at once?

CIRC had "top riders" complaining about motors in bikes, and there are clearly lots of rumours going around.

 

[gobuck]

The electric bike I rode didn't make any noise. If you could make it look inconspicuous, you wouldn't know that it was electric assist without lifting it up.

 

[Benotti69]

New generation just love riding clean with no PEDS but with motors in their frames

 

[sniper]

Re:

There is a very easy kill for this one: Put IR cameras on the motards...... see who has glowing tubes or BB. Target and check. End of. In fact I bet you could extract the data from existing TV footage. The CCDs sample into the near IR as well (shoot your old TV remote at a camera and see). You would have to do some tricky signal processing to extract the data and the frequencies will be at variance with the black body radiation levels (not near IR) but WTH it is broad spectrum: There would be some relative data in the tail there and It could be scoped and justified with the appropriate mathematics and without recourse to fuzzy statistical methods associated with blood vector doping. So it would be deterministic.

..........Is that the sound of running lawyers I hear?

i like this post.

i don't think though that UCI are really interested in actually catching/exposing motorized bikes.
Very bad publicity. Perhaps the increasing rumors compelled them to start checking so as to 'be seen to be doing the right thing'. It will have some deterring effect, no doubt, but as with doping, the cheaters will likely be ahead of the testers.

 

[neineinei]

Pierre Carrey on Twitter:

UCI_cycling Sports Director Philippe Chevallier was dismissed 8 days ago. He worked with strong ethics: sport is always first, not money. https://twitter.com/pierre_carrey/status/580348330930257920

Philippe Chevallier - UCI Sport and technical director dismissed. Has it anything to do with the renewed interest in scanning bikes?

Vaughters and Brunyeel ganging up on Chevallier in 2011 at a bike control. (http://velonews.competitor.com/2011...fer-new-surprise-at-the-uci-bike-check_181449)

 

[DirtyWorks]

Re: Re:

i don't think though that UCI are really interested in actually catching/exposing motorized bikes.
Very bad publicity. Perhaps the increasing rumors compelled them to start checking so as to 'be seen to be doing the right thing'. It will have some deterring effect, no doubt, but as with doping, the cheaters will likely be ahead of the testers.

I agree that the UCI would not say a word. They are managing the image of a sport, not a legitimate sport.

None of you explained how they could possibly store enough energy on a bike to make any of this work. No, not mobile phone batteries. Not even close.
There are two fundamental constraints on the motor schemes.
1. motor deliver sufficient torque in a tiny package to move 50+ Kg.
2. energy storage to move 50+ Kg. And I don't mean that from a dead stop either.

And then there's the manufacturing:
How is Merida/Giant going to lay-up a bike with these fantastical bits that can move 50+ Kg inside the frameset?

Please stop and think about the physical realities/complexities involved before posting more on this topic.

 

[DirtyWorks]

Re:

Pierre Carrey on Twitter:

UCI_cycling Sports Director Philippe Chevallier was dismissed 8 days ago. He worked with strong ethics: sport is always first, not money. https://twitter.com/pierre_carrey/status/580348330930257920

Philippe Chevallier - UCI Sport and technical director dismissed. Has it anything to do with the renewed interest in scanning bikes?

This is actually interesting. He apparently started at the UCI in 2000, previously worked for ASO in Le Tour. Rising to techincal lead by 2010. It's important to note part of his job is finalizing the UCI's road calendar for tiers 1-3. It's not just bike tech.

 

[ScienceIsCool]

Re: Re:

i don't think though that UCI are really interested in actually catching/exposing motorized bikes.
Very bad publicity. Perhaps the increasing rumors compelled them to start checking so as to 'be seen to be doing the right thing'. It will have some deterring effect, no doubt, but as with doping, the cheaters will likely be ahead of the testers.

I agree that the UCI would not say a word. They are managing the image of a sport, not a legitimate sport.

None of you explained how they could possibly store enough energy on a bike to make any of this work. No, not mobile phone batteries. Not even close.
There are two fundamental constraints on the motor schemes.
1. motor deliver sufficient torque in a tiny package to move 50+ Kg.
2. energy storage to move 50+ Kg. And I don't mean that from a dead stop either.

And then there's the manufacturing:
How is Merida/Giant going to lay-up a bike with these fantastical bits that can move 50+ Kg inside the frameset?

Please stop and think about the physical realities/complexities involved before posting more on this topic.

The tech involved here is really not that much different from a cordless electric drill, which is to say, quite accessible and not requiring any fundamentally new developments. First, define the requirements of what you need: Add 50-75 Watts for 15 minutes? That would definitely be enough to help Cancellara ride away from everyone on the cobbles and let someone keep up or ride away on the tricky part of a climb.

That's very modest and only needs a 20 Wh battery. That's 2 x 26650 LiMn02 cells which you could hide *anywhere* in the frame. Disclosure: I started my career at a Li-Ion battery manufacturer (http://www.molicel.com/ca/)

You'd need some electronics to create a motor driver, but that's really nothing too big or difficult. You could even add a small microprocessor and a wireless control system without any hassle.

The motor would have to be custom, but I'm fairly confident that you could easily build a stepper motor with gearing into a bottom bracket. This is actually the part that would require the most engineering, but certainly nothing exotic is required. At a cadence of 90 rpm, even the torque requirements are quite low (10 rad/s and 50 Watts means 5 N.m of torque).

A small team of engineers could have a decent system in less than a year on a *very* modest budget.

John Swanson

 

[King Boonen]

Re: Re:

At a cadence of 90 rpm, even the torque requirements are quite low (10 rad/s and 50 Watts means 5 N.m of torque).

That's calculated for spinning a free wheel though, surely it's going to be massively different to the torque required for a real world bike?

An increase in power would also produce an increase in RPM which I don't think the videos of Cancellara show.

 

[DirtyWorks]

Re: Re:

The motor would have to be custom, but I'm fairly confident that you could easily build a stepper motor with gearing into a bottom bracket. This is actually the part that would require the most engineering, but certainly nothing exotic is required. At a cadence of 90 rpm, even the torque requirements are quite low (10 rad/s and 50 Watts means 5 N.m of torque).

A small team of engineers could have a decent system in less than a year on a *very* modest budget.

John Swanson

Per King Boonen, you need what amounts to a hybrid car's transmission.
How much does a battery powered drill weigh?

You are talking *a small team of engineers* salaries and tooling, a transmission, and electronics, and, and, and, and.... Maybe $5 million USD? I'd give it 3 years to complete. Cycling doesn't have that much money.

Without a doubt John, the theoretical work is done, except for energy storage. Motor tech is there, building transmissions isn't new, a controller is not special. But you have to put it all together and that is really hard even if you have solved the energy storage problem.

 

[ray j willings]

I came across a chap riding an electric bike, He was going up hill and just spinning really easy. I caught him up and had a wee chat with him. The bike was silent. It did not look massively bulky apart from the battery. I don't think it would be to hard to slim down that tech into a racing bike.
A rider like Fab etc would only need a wee bit of extra power to ride away like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6z7uUe0tVA

 

[ScienceIsCool]

Re: Re:

The motor would have to be custom, but I'm fairly confident that you could easily build a stepper motor with gearing into a bottom bracket. This is actually the part that would require the most engineering, but certainly nothing exotic is required. At a cadence of 90 rpm, even the torque requirements are quite low (10 rad/s and 50 Watts means 5 N.m of torque).

A small team of engineers could have a decent system in less than a year on a *very* modest budget.

John Swanson

Per King Boonen, you need what amounts to a hybrid car's transmission.
How much does a battery powered drill weigh?

You are talking *a small team of engineers* salaries and tooling, a transmission, and electronics, and, and, and, and.... Maybe $5 million USD? I'd give it 3 years to complete. Cycling doesn't have that much money.

Without a doubt John, the theoretical work is done, except for energy storage. Motor tech is there, building transmissions isn't new, a controller is not special. But you have to put it all together and that is really hard even if you have solved the energy storage problem.

I disagree. If you design it correctly it might not even need gearing (i.e., transmission). All you're doing is coupling two sources (pedals and motor) in series. Sensors/feedback from the motor detects cadence (i.e., rpm) and simply applies an additional torque of ~5 N.m - and obviously tapers off as you reach 0 rpm so that your bike doesn't spin in circles when you crash. *ahem*

The electronics could be done by one guy as a weekend hobby and would probably come in at ~$20K for a handful of beta units. All the parts involved are cheap, cheap, cheap and reference designs exist for charger, motor driver, etc, etc. Coding of the microprocessor and bench testing the controller would take the most time. There's no way this part takes a year.

The rest needs a mechanical engineer who would need to partner with an existing company. Without diving too deep into details, I'm going to guess that a semi-custom stepper motor would come in at under $100K. I have no idea how long the design process would take, but more than a year?? That just doesn't seem likely.

And yeah, I would expect the whole thing to add a couple of pounds to the bike, but so what? 50 Watts for a kilo of gear is a 50 W/kg add-on. That would change a 70 kg, 6 W/kg rider into a 6.7 W/kg rider. Well worth the upgrade!

 

[Chipist]

I could do the design for control the part myself in an FPGA in days. The electronics is not the difficult part of this.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Re:

I could do the design for control the part myself in an FPGA in days. The electronics is not the difficult part of this.

*jealous* How long did it take to get that level of confidence and which language do you use? I am going down the VHDL path, very slowly.