Interesting bike

[simon the viking]

I'm not a scientist, but I do remember my O level chemistry, isn't Magnesium flammable? you would need a no smoking sign on it when you locked it up outside a cafe

 

[dellzeqq]

http://www.kirk-bicycles.co.uk/Kirk.htm

http://cozybeehive.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/8-second-bicycle.html

some of that is tosh. My (uncracked) Precision weighs under 10 kg and the weight difference between my old C40 frame and the Precision frame is paltry. There's no way that TVM would have taken a 14kg bike to the Tour de France. The forks are no more and no less whippy than the forks on 531C bikes of the same period. The biggest problem is the geometry (it's too long) and it tends to dive a bit at speed (but, then again, the difference between an 80s steel bike and a modern carbon straight forked bike is almost as great). The big divide in bike frame performance is not between Kirks on one hand and contemporaneous Reynolds, Columbus and Vitus frames on the other - it's between frames pre C40 and frames post C40. By modern standards all 80s frames are shoot.

The 80s and early 90s was a period of frantic and often pointless experimentation. Kirks failed commercially (with tragic results) because they weren't an advance. Bikes with smaller front wheels and seat posts shaped like wings failed for the same reason. At one point we were all about to abandon the diamond frame for recumbents, and at another the spaceframe was poised to take over. The bike I craved above all others, the Alan Carbonio, is a horror to ride. And, if you think the Kirk is odd, take a look at the Colnago Bititan

All you can say about it is that this restlessness led to genuine advances. Frame tubes changed diameter and shape, and new materials came along. Tubes are being supplanted by monocoques, which, to be fair to Kirk, makes sense of his ambition. Looked at with thirty years of hindsight you can say that he was part of a process, not the one-off folk make him out to be.

 

[TheDoctor]

This has been posted before but must be a similar experience to that I'd suspect

That looks like a wobblebike to me.
They're good fun, and IIRC WobblyJohn has done the Dunwich Dynamo on his.
I've ridden this one, which was one of Hilldoggers fleet.
That's not me in the pic, BTW.

 

[TheDoctor]

I'm not a scientist, but I do remember my O level chemistry, isn't Magnesium flammable? you would need a no smoking sign on it when you locked it up outside a cafe

Magnesium shavings are quite easy to light. Magnesium girders - not so much!!
If the frame I have proves to be unusable, though, I may well grind it up and make thermite

 

[Kestevan]

Magnesium shavings are quite easy to light. Magnesium girders - not so much!!
If the frame I have proves to be unusable, though, I may well grind it up and make thermite

Surely you only need the magnesium as an ignitor for thermite, as that's generally a mixture of iron III oxide and powdered aluminium... or at least that's how I remember making it

 

[TheDoctor]

Yes, you're right, but I bet you could make thermite with powdered magnesium instead of aluminium
Here we go - source is Wikipedia
.Thermites can be a diverse class of compositions. Some fuels that can be used arealuminium, magnesium, titanium, zinc, silicon, boron, and others. One commonly used fuel in thermite mixtures is aluminium, because of its high boiling point. The oxidizers can beboron(III) oxide, silicon(IV) oxide, chromium(III) oxide, manganese(IV) oxide, iron(III) oxide,iron(II,III) oxide, copper(II) oxide, and lead(II,III,IV) oxide, and others.[1]

 

[Hover Fly]

There was a fellwalking gear shop in Broughton that sold cycling gear as a side line, they had a KIrk frame in for years with no takers, it ended up in the early 2000s being used to prop an upstairs window open.

 

[TheDoctor]

I might end up using mine for that...