The steering has been converted from tank levers to a T-bar in this photo.
Here are some photos and articles on the Raincloud. I commuted
to work on this bike for 6 months of a Seattle winter. During that
time it evolved quite a bit and then finally broke. It suffered from
a weld failure at the rear suspension pivot due to uneven cooling of the
weld. The welder fixed it better than new but I was still reluctant
to use it after this incident as my commuting route includes steep downhills
where I routinely exceed 45-50 mph. I've begun a new design that
uses a stronger and stiffer composite frame construction. I have
more detailed pictures here.
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This was the Raincloud in its final form. In May 2001 I gave the bike to Rod Miner of Lightfoot Cycles in Darby Montana. He currently builds unfaired utility HPVs and is considering building something like this on a production basis. His website is: www.lightfootcycles.com. |
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This photo was taken on June 21 1998 as I'm about to leave on the 1998
Seattle to Portland one-day ride of 200 miles. The picture
was taken at sunrise, about 5:00 AM. I rolled into Portland at 9:00
PM that night. It was within a month of my 40th birthday and it had
been a lifelong goal of mine to ride a 200 mile day. It was particularly
satisfying to do it on a bike of my own design.
The steering has been converted from tank levers to a T-bar in this photo. |
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This is what it looked like on its maiden voyage, in early January 1998. You can see the tank-lever steering. This was later changed to a more conventional and manageable T-handle steering. |
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I took it to our framebuilding workshop at Jerry Onufer's in January 1998 to show off. Total weight was 60 lbs. |
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More pictures taken on the road in front of Jerry's house. You can see in this photo that the roof was too low for me to wear a helmet. This was fixed before I started commuting on it. |
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The front hood had a storage compartment at the time. The hatch was not well-fitted yet. The plastic sheet on the front is for the headlight to shine through. Eventually I did away with the front storage hatch, although my next bike will have it. It was extremely useful. In addition to the headlight, I stored my tools and spares in it. |
Written Descriptions and Experiences
Article 1 - General
Description and Development
Article 2 - Maiden Voyage
Article 3 - A Fantastic Commute
The Raincloud General Description and Development
Summary
The Raincloud is an enclosed streamlined bicycle with rear suspension
designed for year-round commuting in the Seattle climate on a 25 mi. round-trip
route. The chassis is a long-wheelbase recumbent with T-bar/tie-rod
steering controls. Fairing mounting brackets are welded on the head
and seat tube to provide mounting points. Bulkheads attached to these points
support the fairing frame and skin that surround the rider compartment,
keeping all dirt and water off the rider. Nose and tail section subframes
mount to the ends of the cab frame to fair the wheels and provide front
and rear storage areas that are also weather proof. This means that
when I leave for work I just throw my backpack into the storage area and
go. No zipping, tying or other fiddling around. Although the
sides are wide open, rain stays out of the cab area when I'm moving
so I can ride without raingear in most weather.
Specifications
Height: 48" Weight: 60 lb
Length: 96" Speeds: 12
Max. Width: 19" Gear Range:
30-75 gi
Turning radius: 15 ft
Features
Low seat height (permits hand stops - don't have to unclip at stops)
Full fairing/Weather enclosure
Rear suspension
clean/dry rider compartment
dry storage areas in nose, tail and under seat
headlight and taillight
Turn signals
Development
Ever since I read about the first IHPSC in Scientific American when
I was in high school, I had longed for a human powered vehicle that would
serve as my car for all practical purposes. I had been riding bikes
for as long as I can remember, and developed an aversion to gas-engined
cars at an earlier-than-usual age. I sketched and daydreamed about
the type of vehicle I would want. In the intervening years I rode
several streamliners belonging to other people and made note of their good
and bad points. The design goals that I developed were:
1. Low overall height
2. Complete weather protection for the rider
3. Dry storage areas for cargo
4. Simplicity and reliability
5. Low cost of construction and maintenance
6. Rapid and rugged construction
7. Easy entry/exit for the rider
8. Cruising speed 20-25 mph
The desires for low height and complete weather protection (1 & 2) drove the decision to use a LWB design. I had determined from experience that crosswinds affect a bike’s handling severely if any side area sticks above 36” from the ground. The LWB arrangement permitted the lowest crosswind profile and placed the wheels outside the rider compartment where bulkheads could be place to keep all road dirt and water from being thrown in. Another benefit of the long and low design is that the rider’s hand can reach the ground and support the bike at a stop so removing toe clips from the pedals is unnecessary.
Storage areas were planned in the front and rear above the wheels (3). They would be kept dry by the shelf, bulkhead and fairing skin surrounding them on all sides. Over the years I’ve filled many pages with sketches and dreams of complicated things like linear drives and monocoque chassis. In the end I decided that it was important to have this bike on the road as soon as possible and so I would stick with off-the-shelf (or out-of-the-junkyard) sources for all moving parts (4, 5 &6).
Since the bike would be in constant use for commuting I would need to be able to start and stop it without assistance (7). I had ridden several streamliners that required no assistance to start/stop yet required some miserable acrobatics to get in and out of. Recent designs have come out with remarkably good and simple methods for access. In particular, the Aerolope is an SWB with large openings in the sides that the rider climbs in and out through. If necessary they can be closed easily with panels that resemble car doors. I decided to use the Aerolope method because it was simpler and quicker.
My formal education is in aerodynamics so I know the importance of streamlining to achieving good speeds with only human power, yet I didn’t have the means to make a smooth molded fairing. I also put higher priority on the other practical features of the fairing, which I wanted to be able to change quickly and inexpensively. Past experience had taught me that my trip average speeds would be around 20 mph no matter how light and streamlined the vehicle because of the many stops on my route. For these reasons I chose to use a tube-frame and flat-wrapped skin method of construction for the fairing until all of the practical details of the shape are finalized. The tubes mount to bulkheads in the front and rear of the rider compartment which also serve to keep dirt and water from being thrown in by the wheels. At some future time when I’ve settled on the final shape of the body I expect to have a fiberglass body made, or at least a nosecone.
Construction
A few months ago a local inventor/builder who had built bikes previously
announced that he was getting back into it and agreed to look at my design.
We spent an hour reviewing a sketch I made and then collected parts to
begin construction. The next day I came back for a test-fit on the
frame and a few days after that the bike was road-ready (minus fairing).
To keep costs down parts were mostly scrounged and salvaged from donor bikes. We started with a main tube that was laying around from a previous project (1.5 x .060 mild steel) that had a 90 deg. bend in it and was approximately the right length. A head tube (cut from a diamond-frame) was laid in at the front 90 deg. to the main tube. After carefully estimating the distance required from the seatback to the pedals a bottom bracket was welded on, with a connecting tube to the head tube to relieve bending moments on the head tube. In the back a cross-tube was mounted for the suspension swingarm and a gusset plate at the location of the rubber suspension block to carry the loads through to the main tube. The swingarm itself was made from the rear triangle of the aforementioned diamond-frame. The seat base is a flat board mounted to the frame tube at the base and the back (aluminum tube with webbing stretched around it) mounts to the main tube with saddles and hose clamps.
A guide pulley directs the chain under the seat to the rear wheel. Front and rear wheels are 406x36’s that were laying around from another project. The builder wanted to try dual center-stick steering levers. For the price I was willing to let him try anything he wanted. These are very simple in construction and are connected by levers to a bellcrank on the headset stem. Rubber bushings damp vibration in the pivot connections. (The steering levers have since been replaced by a more conventional ASS T-bar with connecting rod going to the steer tube.) A workable rear brake was made by brazing extensions to a conventional side-pull brake. The extensions caused the lever to work much better with this brake. In the interest of time and poverty no front brake was mounted at the time. Bar-end shifters and a front derailleur (steel) were installed and the bike was ready to be tested. Aside from a flat tire on the first ride all went well. The steering was wobbly but I was able to get used to it right away. My expenses at this point were $300.
I had originally intended to take the bike home and put the fairing on myself, but after a few days of non-stop interruptions I decided to take it back to the builder. He had supplies on hand to finish it for another $100 using aluminum tubing, zip ties and coroplast. He put bulkheads at the front and rear of the rider compartment, I had him leave the nose and tail fairings for me to finish as I had just happened to stumble across the supplies I would need to do this at the Boeing Surplus store.
When I got home I took down some thinwall aluminum tube I had from a
previous trip to Boeing Surplus. It happened to fit snuggly inside
the aluminum tubes that formed the frame of the cab fairing so I bent frames
using my conduit bender, then pop-riveted the tubing together to form a
rigid frame. This is skinned with the red 4 mm coroplast and the
white 10mm coroplast forms the base of the storage area in each section.
Sheet metal screws secure the nose and tailcone assembly to the rest of
the fairing frame. The front storage area has a hinged door that
fastens down (for now) with a rubber strap. The rear area (Big enough
for a tent and sleeping bag) is closed in completely outside, but accessible
through an opening behind the seat. I mounted a standard flashing
taillight on the rear. The headlight is a 6-volt camping lantern
strapped to the floor of the front luggage bay. It uses a lead-acid
lantern battery which I found at an electronics store. It shines
out through a piece of clear plastic taped over a hole in the cover door.
The bike was ready last Friday (with the cab faired but without the
nose and tail sections faired) so I brought it in to work (by car) for
a test ride at lunchtime.
I was also scouting out a new section of bike trail which had been
completed since my last commute trip in. Saturday morning I went out with
my son to scout
the hardware, plastics and surplus stores to finish the fairing. By
some miracle Boeing Surplus had full sheets of coroplast, one of which
was the color I
needed. I bought all 4 sheets of bright colors (orange, red and yellow
in 4 mm and white in 10 mm) at $1 per pound, $20 in all. Unfortunately
I had just come
from the plastics place where I paid $20 for one sheet. I was unable
to find re-usable panel fasteners I was looking for so I had to do without
those.
Sunday morning I was putting the last skin on the tailcone as I got
ready for a 1 PM "Low Down and Laid Back" ride around the south end of
Lake
Washington with Bob Bryant and the rest of the locals. I finally got
it buttoned up and took off on the 6 mi ride to the rendevouz point at
12:30. Operationally
the bike was still a few parts short. I had only a rear brake and derailleur.
The front brake is still on order and I didn't have time for the front
derailleur. On the
downhill stretch into Renton I realized why 2 brakes are a good idea
as I thought of what might happen if the only brake failed. It held though
and I got to the
start in time.
There were about six people (Steve Nash, Tony Licuanan, Bob, Terry,
Kent Peterson and one I don't know). I received a warm reception and everyone
looked the bike over thoroughly. As we started off on the ride and
it started to rain I was really glad I had the full fairing. The only water
coming inside was
dripping off the edges of the windshield (design change there). I stayed
warm and dry inside. Since I didn't need a raincoat I wore breathable clothes
and
didn't get soaked with sweat. I got the wettest when we stopped at
Tully's Coffee on Mercer Island because we were standing around looking
at each other's
bikes and trading testrides. We discussed the bike and a lot of other
things over coffee and refreshments. The return trip was uneventful with
the same steady
rain. It stopped once we got back to the parking lot so I let everyone
sit on the bike. Kent Peterson tried to ride it but couldn't get used to
the center-stick
steering right away. To my surprise nobody was interested in having
a bike like mine. They thought it was too heavy, bulky or hard to get in
and out of but
most most gave encouraging remarks about one feature or another.
I left feeling a little confused. I had wanted something like this since
I read about the first IHPSC in Scientific American when I was in high
school. I had
longed for a human powered vehicle that would serve as my car for all
practical purposes and I knew most of the others in the group shared that
interest.
Why don't they jump at this bike then? Oh well, I only built it for
me anyway. I left late with darkness falling and no headlight but managed
to make it home
safely. The only mishap was a low-speed fall when the chain went off
into the spokes during a shift (hadn't had time to adjust the stops yet).
Overall the bike performed great for a maiden voyage. It was great sitting
back and enjoying the view in the rain, instead of hunkering down cold
and wet.
Everything held together and I was able to keep up with everyone else,
although I want to make it faster because I was wiped out by the time I
got home. I
plan a few modifications soon including headlights, turn signals and
side mirrors (Kent showed me a great trick for making the turn signals
blink). The front
luggage area needs to be sealed because the front wheel is throwing
dirt and water in. I'll seal the roof and add drip edges so I stay completely
dry while
riding. I've ordered Arai drum brakes for the front and rear that will
need to be put on, and I still have to hook up the front derailleur. Otherwise
it's been a
great bike and an exciting experience to finally be riding something
of my own design. I don't know when I'll be able to take it apart and paint
it (it's only
primed now) because I intend to ride it everywhere all the time.
I've been asked by David G. Wilson to write something up about the bike
for the Velomobile conference in Germany. Now that I've ridden the bike
a little
I've started working on a paper.
May your mileage always vary upward. Nick Hein
I had such a great commute in this morning I just had to tell someone
about it. I clocked one of my fastest times ever in spite of having a 75
in. top gear,
darkness and pouring rain in city traffic. Total time was about 45
min. for a 12 mile ride (I'd guess about 18 mph avg, but I don't have a
speedometer on yet).
There's a net descent of 400 ft and 150 of climbing on the route. At
the end of the ride the only places I was wet were my fingers (from putting
my hand down
at stops) and the top of my head (There's a leak in the roof and every
time I stopped the water ran forward and dripped onto my head). Once I
fix the roof
leak and get better gloves that'll be taken care of. Cargo all stayed
dry, Arai drums worked fantastically. It feels great to have a bike I can
use like a car!
Last night I had my fastest ride home ever, in ideal conditions of good
weather and daylight. I think part of it is due to the Boe-Lube I put on
the chain at
lunchtime. I had been using White Lightning before and that just didn't
seem to hold up more than 60 miles and made alot of noise.
Other improvements remaining on my to-do list are rear-view mirrors,
and a drivetrain rebuild. Yesterday I ordered a Suntour XC crank with a
63-tooth big
ring. When I get that I'll also put on a new chain, front der. and
wide-range freewheel. Then I'll find out what it can really do.
Feel free to forward this to anyone you think might be interested.
Keep 'em rolling.
Nick