Possible to ride bike with steerer welded straight ?

[Banjo]

Clearly you couldn't go round bends but could you ride it in straight lines.

This came up in a not too serious bike discussion .No I am not getting the arc welder out to prove it.

 

[ColinJ]

Riding in straight lines is basically the same thing as riding round bends! (You need to be able to make small corrections to your trajectory to stay upright. Normally we do that without thinking about it, but you would soon discover that you couldn't do it with a welded steerer.)

Having said that, I reckon that a skilled trick cyclist could do it by shifting body weight left and right but I bet you would fall off lots of times while learning how to do it.

 

[Seevio]

Theoretically, yes, but the balancing mechanic would be like tightrope walkers rather than cycling.

 

[Fab Foodie]

No.

 

[Kempstonian]

I don't think you would be able to stop yourself trying to steer the bike, even when you don't really need to. If you do ever try it please do it on a soft surface, as I fear you will be meeting it often!

 

[Oldfentiger]

If you could attain sufficient speed for the wheels gyroscopic effect to take over then it would be possible.

 

[Drago]

What, with the front wheel locked into the forward position? No. Well, not more than a few metres.

 

[Yellow Saddle]

No.

Having said that, I reckon that a skilled trick cyclist could do it by shifting body weight left and right but I bet you would fall off lots of times while learning how to do it.

Shifting body weight when riding no-hands effectively turns the handlebar to steer, albeit in a counter-intuitive way. With a fixed steerer, the steering cannot happen when you move your weight around.

If you could attain sufficient speed for the wheels gyroscopic effect to take over then it would be possible.

No, a gyro doesn't work like that. Take your front wheel off and hold the axle ends in your two hands. Now get someone to spin the wheel. Hold still for a while and then try and tilt the wheel on the vertical axis. You'll see that it tilts horizontally, i.e. 90 degrees out of sync with your attempt. Now visualise that effect at either end of a rigid frame. It won't steer. Hypothetically it will steer a rigid unicycle, but then you'll have to invent one first.

 

[lazybloke]

Hypothetically it will steer a rigid unicycle, but then you'll have to invent one first.

The concept of a rigid unicycle doesn't activate a single neuron inside my cranium. I might try to ponder it again, later in the week, but now I need a lie down.

 

[rogerzilla]

Almost impossible. You don't need to weld the steerer, just get the bike stuck in some tramlines. It will hurt a lot.

A bike stays upright because the front wheel is free to wobble about and counteract the bike toppling over. A bike will actually stay upright without a rider if you give it a good running start downhill, or jump off while it's in motion (I do these things so you don't have to).

 

[winjim]

(I do these things so you don't have to).

Have you done it 800 times?

 

[palinurus]

Tighten the headset up and feel the fear.

 

[rogerzilla]

That diagram is quite pretty but I suspect the speeds involved were quite low. I baled out halfway down a long hill at about 25mph when the bike went into a violent shimmy. The bike instantly stopped shimmying and carried on quite happily to the bottom of the hill, about 200 yards, until it rubbed on the grass verge and stopped upright (that last bit was just a stroke of luck - if the left pedal had been down it would have dug in and flipped).

This was before I rode with clipless pedals. When I was at school, we would practise jumping off bikes at low speeds on grass - it's easier than you might think if you're not attached to the pedals. You can try to land on your feet or go for a parachutist's roll.

 

[Jody]

How good are you at wheelies?

 

[stalagmike]

Have you done it 800 times?

View attachment 444818

This looks like something I pull out of the plug hole after a bath...