This seems like a complete joke. I don’t think it would work at all, there have already been threads about the potential dangers of clipless petals.
Quote:
“The Unipsycho bike was built in 1993. It’s designed to be the ultimate unicycle. Its design features a disc brake, carbon fiber construction and the patented steer with your rear technology.”
The picture, for one, doesn’t feature a disc brake at all. And the throwaway joke “steer with your rear” is an obvious jab a unicyclists. I don’t think you could even ride such a thing.
Yeah, I also noticed the disc break thing. I think they could have tried harder to convince people that it isn’t a joke. I think Specialized could actually make a very cool unicycle if they wanted, that would kick ass…er…bum.
I’m pinging this thread because I’m wondering if anyone has a photo of this unicycle around still?
I know what it looks like, and I’ve been meaning to contact Specialized for it for a quite a long time. Just didn’t get around to it.
It would make a really good time-trial Uni with a few modifications. Basically, I think road unicycles need to be set up more like bikes (ie lower spread out positions with handlebars). From memory the design was years ahead of it’s time…we’re heading that way now with longer handles and lower positions.
Too bad he has to stick his hips so far back relative to the axel. I think the biggest problem is that the more the rider bends over, the further the cranks are from being under their hips and which impedes the diaphragm. Looks pretty close to that old photoshopped pic though.
I’m definitely in the “we should be more like bikes” category, for road riding and races. Wow, writing it out like that doesn’t sound good. But I think there’s lots to learn from them.
I’m actually surprised and excited by what looks like a shallow frame angle, compared to how unicyclists normally ride. I don’t know if he was slowing down, leaning left/right, uphill/downhill, and the photo isn’t a straight-on profile, so I can’t measure the angle from the picture (not to mention potential issues like rolling-shutter distortion from the camera). BUT it at least looks like something close to the 72 degrees standard for road bikes. So maybe a bicycle seat could be comfortable in that setup?
We need V-frames! I want to build (or want someone to build) an add-on v-frame: weld it to the lower bearing clamps, and bolt the top tube back onto the frame. Set up handlebars and go!
I’m going to use bike-inspired terms.
Top-tube = horizontal tube that connects the seat forks to the down-forks. (uni v-frames tend to double-purpose the down-tube as the head-tube).
Down-forks = connect the handle-bar end of the top-tube to the hub and seat-forks.
Seat-forks = vertical-ish (about 72 degrees on most bikes) rear forks connecting the seat-post and top-tube to the hub and down-forks.
I want to end up with a V-frame most similar to Turtle’s or kind of like naturequack’s. The rear portion of the V would be your standard unicycle frame, so the add-on is the top-tube and down-forks.
Top-tube bolts to the seat-post-tube of your regular uni frame, via a clamp around the frame. The down-forks bolt to the bottom of the seat-forks by replacing the lower-half of the frame’s bearing clamps. So it’s sort of like a regular frame, but with the half-circles that go on the bearings turned almost upside-down, to go around the bottom half of the bearings.
… a diagram probably could explain this much better, but hopefully this makes sense. Building this is pretty close to my #1 priority for… when I have time…
