Nimbus 36" frame weight

Unicycles and Equipment
14

Before you ask, yes, I have a stick up my butt.

Why is everyone throwing the word “alloy” around like it means something? Look in a dictionary and find this: it means “a mixture of two or more metals”.

It seems UDC has started this horrendous trend of calling everything “alloy” without mentioning the actual contents of said alloy. Whether it’s steel, aluminum, titanium… it makes a huge difference!

SHAME ON YOU UDC!

When possible, please clearly state if you’re referring to the steel frame or aluminum frame. My head is going to explode if I’m confused any further.

15

Couldn’t the same question now be asked about the Nimbus 36"? What is the advantage, now, of the Nimbus 36" over the Coker Big One, which weighs 480 grams less?

16

I think it’s stiffer, and also lockable.

17

Agreed. I see “alloy” cranks on UDC and think: What type of alloy?!

18

it’s stiffer, it has a narrower profile, it has brake mounts, if fits good quality seatposts (like thompson), it can take an older style schlumpf hub, it’s blue.

19

Where do you people come up with this garbage. You can order the new Big One with brakes/mounts (HELLO). I just measured (with calipers) the seat post of my coker to be 25.4mm, Surprise a size that you can buy a Thompson seat-post for and coincidently the same size as the nimbus frame (wrong again). How do you know it’s stiffer did you actually test them or have you seen actual test results? UDC claims it to be stiffer but I haven’t seen anything that backs up their claim with empirical evidence. Not to mention I was rather amused when Terry(Muni Addict, I have also seen others also post the same) couldn’t feel an appreciable difference between the Radial frame and the Nimbus frame. And what’s the reason why the schlumph hub won’t fit? Bearing size, Bearing spacing, Bearing holder lip interference, or the fact you would have to drill and tap a hole for the torque arm yourself?

Am I completely off my rocker or what?

20

I think the nimbus frame is actually more flexy side to side but you don’t notice that at all when you are riding. What you can notice is that it is much more resistant to twisting which seems to translate into better feedback and control with a handle.

If you look at the frame designs this makes perfect sense (at least it does to me)

This is my observations but it is far from scientific. The Coker had a steel rim and my Nimbus has an airfoil so that could have made more of a difference than the frame design.

21

Well said, I couldn’t have said it better myself. I just don’t understand why people in this forum seem to speak as if they have owned and tested each and every unicycle frame. I think if you have evidence of such a claim, then that’s fine. Otherwise, you sound like the New York Times. :smiley:

Shannon

22

i think there’s some confusion over which coker frame people are referring to. the original steel coker frame fit a 22.2mm post and had no brake mounts. it was light, but the quality was low.

23

“Why the V2 frame? My guess is that it’s all about the look.”

I was shopping for unicycles back before Christmas, and Target had a 20" unicycle on their website with the 4-post design. Hard to imagine that it was just coincidence. I don’t see it there now, though.

24

Because no one has ridden both frames yet as far as I know, no one knows the answer to this. No one knows if it’s stiffer (although personally I’ve never had any hassles with stiffness on my old stock coker frame). The only known advantage is that the coker is way lighter.

The other known advantage of the nimbus at the moment is that you can buy the frame alone, whereas the coker frames aren’t available separately, so you don’t have a choice to use the new nightrider rim / tyre / hubs without first buying the coker wheel. The coker does look like a pretty good bargain though, and the difference in price is a fair bit.

Joe

25

Correction. Though the interface at the wheel is basically the same for all 36" frames (in terms of stiffness), there’s still a lot of flex that can happen in a frame. I should have remembered this lesson from my old carbon MUni frame. That’s too long and unrelated to repeat here, but suffice it to say we put tremendous twisting forces into unicycle frames as we pedal, especially uphill. Way more than you might imagine. Add a long handle to the front of your seat or frame, and you increase the torque that can be applied in this twisting.

Therefore, stiffness may be much more a factor than I tossed off the other day, though I’ve yet to do much serious comparing. I have mostly only ridden my own Coker (1st-generation, deluxe) a lot, and other peoples’ 36ers very little.

Based on what I’ve seen and can extrapolate, the V2 frame should be the stiffest by far. This means there should be less flex between the front of your seat or handle and the bearings. This is side-to-side flex we’re talking about. The next-stiffest frame should be the Nimbus (or Hunters), which also have more structure to brace against flexing. After that there are the various steel frames that have been made, which are probably fairly similar and finally the new “alloy” frame on the Big One, which is still an unknown. Surely it is less stiff than the V2 and other multi-leg designs, but beyond that we’ll have to get it out in the field and see for ourselves. It all depends on how beefy the tubing is.

Coker also claims that their new unicycles are quite a bit lighter than the originals. Definitely the new rim will have a lot to do with this, plus general lightness in most of the other parts, I guess. For the moment, I think the tires are the same, but they are developing new ones.

My guess is that the Nimbus frame must be stiffer, but nobody knows this yet. How do you know about the narrower profile? How much narrower? They both look fairly narrow. And both are available with brake mounts.

OUCH! Consider yourself burned. :smiley:

Interesting. Did it look like the same exact frame? Apparently Coker is making the V2 frames in-house (in Tennessee), so I’m sure that one was unrelated. It’s possible they “scouted” the job of fabricating the frames in Asia first, which put the idea out there for some high-volume, low-price company to make some knock-offs.

I hope to get my hands on a new Coker soon, and will offer what feedback I can…

26

I assume he was talking about the Mongoose Squid

It looks ideal if you think that most trials unis are too light and if you prefer your knees with that battered and bleeding look :smiley:

STM

27

Thanks for clearing that up, johnfoss. After reading your previous post, I was starting to wonder if the frame design was important at all. Your clarification makes it a little easier to ask the question I was getting at earlier, which is basically this…

If the Nimbus frame provides enough extra stability or stiffness over the aluminum Big One frame to be worth the extra 480 grams of weight, then is it possible that the Coker V2 also provides enough more stiffness over the Nimbus to be worth the additional 600 grams of weight? And at what point does the “balance” between frame weight and frame stiffness shift in favor of one over the other? Is it determined entirely by the type of riding being done?

In other words, at what point do you conclude that the extra stability is not worth the extra weight, or that the “light-weight” frame has sacrificed too much in structure to warrant the weight savings?

28

Whoa! Cool, man. If only they made it in 36"!!!

Comes with a 3" tire and from a Google search, looks like it can be had for $75 and free s/h…

29

The titan is the same as the old 25.4mm coker frame, therefore I’m going to make an educated guess and say that Ken’s rounded weight is infact the same as the Titan.

making the new list.

Alloy Coker: 799 grams
Schlumph v1: 850 grams
Coker 22.2: 864 grams
Titan: 1157 grams
Nimbus: 1279 grams
V2: 1872 grams

In terms of production frames, the alloy coker frame is the lightest, followed by the Titan, Nimbus, and V2.

30

Anyone know what the Qu-Ax 36er frame weight is? the total weight is 8.2kg.

31

Define “worth.” :slight_smile:

In other words, the answer to that question is going to be very subjective. Some people like stiffness, some people may like flexiness, and even more people probably can’t be bothered to notice the difference. For myself, I don’t have an answer because I have to ride more different unicycles and see what I like. I’ve ridden one of the new Nimbuses with the T7 and all the extras, and I thought it was awesome. But I don’t have enough riding on any of them to have an opinion on stiffness.

You may have found a link to a site that still has those things, but according to the Amazon link it is not in stock and may never be available again. That’s a unicycle I would hang on the wall, or otherwise look at, but I don’t think I’d want to subject my knees to those pointy corners, no matter what my leg length!

32

unijuul had an interesting comment here related to the weight of a unicycle. Seems like he is saying more or less that he thinks the most important parts of the uni, in terms of weight, are the moving parts…and more specifically, the moving parts that are farthest from the hub are going to make the most difference with less significance as you move toward the hub (tire, then the tube, followed by the rim and then the spokes least of all). This makes a lot of sense to me in relation to the limited amount I understand about the laws of physics.

Any opposing opinions on that?

Somebody who is better with physics than myself…would the weight of the frame itself, not being a moving part, make any more difference than the weight of the rider? For example, would there be any significant difference between a 178 lb. rider on a Coker Big One and a 175 lb. rider on a V2, assuming the standard wheel/tire setup? Total weight for both rider and uni would be 194 for both. Obviously if the rider is doing “unigeezer” style jumps and drops, weight makes a difference…but I’m talking about general street riding where the wheel doesn’t leave the ground.

33

I’ve been pondering the question about which frame is “the best” as far as stiffness, and weight and where it begins to make a difference which of those you want to compromise, but I’ve yet to find the answer. I’ve only ever ridden the nimbus frame so I can’t really have an opinion, but I think it would be interesting to figure out what type of program bike builders use to test bike frames before they even leave the drawing board. If we could input the dimensions, tubing diameter and thickness, and the materials used to make a frame into a program and run it through a virtual stress test to really see what would happen if an extremely aggressive rider rode each frame for a long time. Then we could have tangible evidence to use when recommending frames to people.

It’s just a thought and not seeming to be a very plausible way of figuring it all out for me at the moment but I figured why not just get high tech and go all the way instead of going off what the manufacturer says. If anyone has the ability to do the tests I would be interested in seeing some actual results instead of just opinion based recommendations all over the place.