Friday, October 31, 2008

High racer is nearly finished!

The latest Zockra High racer is nearly finished.
A couple of change are still required (front brake modification, cut carbon stem etc..)
Special thanks to DISTRI-CYCLE of Vannes for their help.
Bike is fitted with:
SRAM X0 08 rear derailleur, SRAM X9 twister, Jagwire cables, MAVIC R-sys wheels with carbon hollow spokes, Shimano 105 crank, Shimano Shimano dura ace front derailleur, Shimano Ultegra 6600 brakes, TerraCycle titanium idler, modified Ritchey stem.




Thursday, October 30, 2008

Wind Rider 16 ' à vendre


A vendre: Wind Rider 16'
Prix: 1000 euros
Visible: Vannes (56)
contact: malricleborgne@free.fr
Manque: bome, pédales de palonnier et support dorsal.

Les coques sont en bon état mais les poutres nécessitent une nouvelle peinture. La voile est très correcte et comporte des lattes verticales. Il est preférable d'être deux pour monter le bateau sur la plage.
Supplément de 350 euros pour la remorque.


Thursday, October 23, 2008

Land Yacht

Here is a project that I built with a couple of friends (Stéphane Level, Rémy Héquet, Cyril Lesourd, Olivier Hourquet) while stuying at Southampton Institute in 1993.
The plan was to create a machine that could go on water, land and ice. We built the machine during summer 1996 and we went to Weymouth speed week. (Main sponsor: MER CALME, Seagull landyacht, JPK Composite, FIN'S, High Modulus Europe)
As expected, the machine was finished very late and the real first test were done during the Speed Week. The machine recorded an official 1.9 knots on the wrong tack (Well done guys, all this fart for such a tinny speed!!) but one evening, the machine reached about 22-25knots in choppy water. (That was encouraging)
We found a couple of problems in the steering and plans were made to improove the machine but we never did due to a lack of funding.

Instead, we changed the machine to a land yacht and we reached about 100Km/h on the beach during the second test. That was very scarry for me to watch a friend going that fast with an untested machine.


The soft rig prooved to be very unstable so we decided to build a solid wing but the TEAM members found jobs all arround the planet and the wing was never tested. (sponsors: PRIMAGAZ and SICOMIN)


The machine is stored in a friend's garage in Cherbourg.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Low racer II



After completing the first lowracer (white and REd- I am not talking about wine here!), it was obvious that a few modification were required before going into production.
A second prototype has been built with a slightly different lay-up of carbon fibre. The weight went up by 300g and the bike has a totaly different behaviour on the road.
The second frame has been built with STIFFNESS in mind and I must admit that we did not miss our target but riding confort is reduced.
As our supplier can only supply 451 carbon fork, we redesigned the frame to accomodate a larger wheel. For racing, we still wanted to use a 406 front wheel so we decided to use an adjustable fork angle to find the perfect angle that would suit the two wheel size.
After a couple of test, it appears to be very sensible but a few cables were missing on my handle so I can't make any final conclusion just yet.

I know for sure that the frame is stiff in bending and torsion, light, stable in the curves and the position is somewhere between a Baron and a VK2 when we use the 451 front wheel. It should be closer to the Baron with the 406 front wheel.

Friday, October 17, 2008

New High racer

Here is my new High racer, built for a friend. The frame is entirely built with carbon fibre over a foam core.
I used for the first time intergrated steering bearings and it looks nice.
I will varnish the frame next WE before fitting out the frame.
I have also started a second lowracer with an adjustable fork angle because I was not convinced by the previous angle of 72deg. More pictures later.