General Part Discussion

[Davidz90]

Apparently the bike has a freewheel mechanism, e.g. one way ratchet inside 24t gear. So many new, useful parts!

[AVCampos]

That part will be lovely for multiplexers, pullback motors that don't use the dedicated part, and large helicopter rotors. As a model, the bike doesn't attract me, but the new elements it brings sure are yummy!

[HydroWorld Outlook]

2 hours ago, Lyichir said:

Brickset's article about the Road Bike reveal has a partly disassembled picture that shows off more of the new parts in isolation, including the gear, wheel segments, and tire: 

Thanks for this picture—it's much easier for us to see the new parts now. LEGO's official website now also displays the 11380 Road Bike set. On the official LEGO site, I found another picture of the new wheel pieces. Unfortunately, I'm having trouble attaching the image to this post so I'll have to describe it instead:

In that photo it is clear that the 12 new macaroni pieces which will form each of the bicycle's two wheels (meaning this new Road Bike set will contain 24 of these in total) will have two axle holes on either side that they use to connect—not just one, along with a pair of narrow grooves along their curved top to accommodate the single rubber tire that slips on around them, which of course are each one piece (and probably will be expensive). The good news is that these macaroni pieces appear almost as if they will make excellent curved exhausts for car or motorcycle engines—or streamlined aircraft intakes—when mounted individually, so that already gives us some hints as to future applications of this part aside from using them as part of a wheel. The bad news is that they also have half-deep pin holes on their inner curves, which limits their potential to be mounted to a central rotating hub outside the context of bicycle wheels, but half-thick liftarm beams can be used instead of the spoke elements, at least, to mitigate this design drawback. Regardless, these parts would still make potentially good shrouds for larger aircraft propellers, somewhat good rim-driven thrusters for larger watercraft models, and certainly excellent flywheels for large pneumatic engines.

That said, I am very curious as to what the actual final diameter of these wheels are, though, since it's very hard to tell or calculate from the pictures alone—they may be slightly smaller or larger than the old rare Hailfire Droid Wheels, but we won't know for sure until someone buys the set and reports their measurements. However, from the looks of it, and assuming the new spoke link elements are 11L each as we suspected (which seems very highly likely), I'm guesstimating that they're probably somewhere roughly between 27L and 29L in diameter, perhaps about 31L with the tires on them. In other words, these finished wheels probably about as wide in diameter as one 99013 helicopter rotor blade piece is long. If I'm correct, then these new wheels are, in fact, larger than the old Hailfire Droid Wheels as was previously speculated, which would be fantastic news.

Furthermore, it appears that the new 64-Tooth Technic Gear will have a whopping 12 pin holes on it along with a central axle hole. Pin holes offer connection possibilities, which is great—I could connect 3x11 or 5x11 panels to these to build fluid mixers, watercraft paddlewheels, or aircraft cyclorotors. However, these are not all that great for offset rotation applications that require us to offset the driveshaft, meaning we'd have to use other connector pieces to accomplish that effect, making the rotating gear slightly heavier. The only reason why I mentioned this is because the 40-tooth spur gear had an advantage by possessing off-center axle holes as well as pin holes, along with the 60-tooth spur gear we would've gotten before it was canceled, so the fact that this 64-tooth gear only has a single axle hole in its center—despite its larger size—is a bit of a letdown and missed opportunity for LEGO. Nonetheless, it's a good piece that I'm looking forward to using.

Edited 15 hours ago by HydroWorld Outlook

[R0Sch]

1 hour ago, Davidz90 said:

Apparently the bike has a freewheel mechanism, e.g. one way ratchet inside 24t gear. So many new, useful parts!

Correct. I see a new dbg 24T gear.

[HydroWorld Outlook]

6 minutes ago, R0Sch said:

Correct. I see a new dbg 24T gear.

All right! I didn't see that coming! Oh yes—this will be such a useful piece! The introduction of this new part would mean the days of building or 3D-modeling huge, custom freewheeling mechanisms are now mostly over—imagine how much more efficient this part will be compared to mechanisms of the past.

Edited 15 hours ago by HydroWorld Outlook

[gyenesvi]

16 minutes ago, R0Sch said:

Correct. I see a new dbg 24T gear.

To me it looks more like 20T.

[Jockos]

Can this new part be used for... pneumatic valves, maybe?

[Auroralampinen]

14 minutes ago, gyenesvi said:

To me it looks more like 20T.

Yeah, i calculated them and i camed to conclusion that its 20Th gear

[R0Sch]

You're right, because it's smaller than the pulley wheel behind it.

[Jundis]

@Divitis and @2GodBDGlory:

This could be a chance to build your CVT ;-)

 

[Ngoc Nguyen]

The ends of the new spoke piece are pin holes, so wouldnt they create slack when they connect the pulley wheels to the rim?

[AVCampos]

You mean, for example, if the rider applies torque to the pedals while the rear wheel is stuck in sand or mud? In a real bike, the tension the spokes are under takes care of that, but in the LEGO version with LEGO tolerances that may be an issue.

[R0Sch]

45 minutes ago, Ngoc Nguyen said:

The ends of the new spoke piece are pin holes, so wouldnt they create slack when they connect the pulley wheels to the rim?

No because they are criss-crossed like real spikes on a bike to the pulley wheels and are under tension.

35 minutes ago, AVCampos said:

You mean, for example, if the rider applies torque to the pedals while the rear wheel is stuck in sand or mud? In a real bike, the tension the spokes are under takes care of that, but in the LEGO version with LEGO tolerances that may be an issue.

The half pins are with friction so the free-play is eliminated and the links are probably thin enough and not made of elastic material to be put under some tension. Nevertheless I think there is a risk that over time the pulley wheel pin holes will crack at the weakest point due to the tension. That's probably why the rear wheel is supported just by the axle to keep the load on the parts to a minimum.

Edited 13 hours ago by R0Sch

[HydroWorld Outlook]

2 hours ago, Auroralampinen said:

Yeah, i calculated them and i camed to conclusion that its 20Th gear

Okay. A 20-tooth freewheel clutch is still solid, though perhaps less useful than I originally envisioned in my previous post.

1 hour ago, R0Sch said:

The half pins are with friction so the free-play is eliminated and the links are probably thin enough and not made of elastic material to be put under some tension. Nevertheless I think there is a risk that over time the pulley wheel pin holes will crack at the weakest point due to the tension. That's probably why the rear wheel is supported just by the axle to keep the load on the parts to a minimum.

Yikes! That wouldn't be good. In that case, I might have to wait for someone else to be the guinea pig and test this theory before I buy these parts. Any volunteers? Maybe the Brick Experiment, Brick Technology, or Dr. Engine channels on YouTube will do it. I'm building a huge model, so I have a lot parts under tension on the high-speed rotating components of it, and I'm not willing to pour more money into an upgraded flywheel only to seriously risk the hub of that wheel failing catastrophically under centrifugal stress. Perhaps I should think twice about these potential consequences before implementing the ideas I proposed in my previous posts then.

2 hours ago, Jockos said:

Can this new part be used for... pneumatic valves, maybe?

What do you mean by this? 

Edited 12 hours ago by HydroWorld Outlook

[N-4K0]

From what I can see on the pics, the axles connecting the pedals to the arms appear to be a LBG recolor of the 4L axle with stop.

It goes through the hole in the black Plate, Modified 2x3 with hole and one of the pics shows the inside, where you can see it has an end stop, and the color of the axle looks like LBG, same as the chain and the new gear the pedal arms are connected to.

EDIT:
Nevermind, I seem to be mistaken.

Edited 7 hours ago by N-4K0

[R0Sch]

49 minutes ago, HydroWorld Outlook said:

Yikes! That wouldn't be good. In that case, I might have to wait for someone else to be the guinea pig and test this theory before I buy these parts. Any volunteers? Maybe the Brick Experiment, Brick Technology, or Dr. Engine channels on YouTube will do it. I'm building a huge model, so I have a lot parts under tension on the high-speed rotating components of it, and I'm not willing to pour more money into an upgraded flywheel only to seriously risk the hub of that wheel failing catastrophically under centrifugal stress. Perhaps I should think twice about these potential consequences before implementing the ideas I proposed in my previous posts then.

As can be seen in this cross section, the weakest, thinnest wall is right at the pin holes, so having a radial load exactly there is not a good idea. The pulley wheel usually brake like I drawn, first radially and then between two neighboring pin holes.
That's why I thought they would put the spikes like on a real bike wheel at a tangent direction. But alas, it's LEGO so of course they did an oversimplified radial lacing like on a trailer wheel.

14 minutes ago, N-4K0 said:

From what I can see on the pics, the axles connecting the pedals to the arms appear to be a LBG recolor of the 4L axle with stop.

It goes through the hole in the black Plate, Modified 2x3 with hole and one of the pics shows the inside, where you can see it has an end stop, and the color of the axle looks like LBG, same as the chain and the new gear the pedal arms are connected to.

Nope. The pedals are dbg and so is the 4L axle with stop. It's just a brightened rendering side-effect. You can see the real color on the lifestyle shots better and compare to the lbg chainring. The chain is flat silver as mentioned in the other post.

Edited 11 hours ago by R0Sch

[HydroWorld Outlook]

19 minutes ago, R0Sch said:

As can be seen in this cross section, the weakest, thinnest wall is right at the pin holes, so having a radial load exactly there is not a good idea. The pulley wheel usually brake like I drawn, first radially and then between two neighboring pin holes.

Got it. Thanks for providing the cutaway view of the wedge belt wheel—that helps a lot. In theory, we could replace or reinforce these with 60208 or 68327 wheel pieces (which are both have 7 pin holes and are much thicker/stronger) to reinforce these connections at the central hub where all the spokes meet, but these pieces are slightly larger than the wedge belt wheels, and thus, take up more space at the center of the wheel. Therefore, extensive modifications may be required in this area to make up the difference.

Edited 11 hours ago by HydroWorld Outlook

[Thirdwigg]

I never thought I would be in a place where bicycle spoke lacing patterns and LEGO part tolerances would be discussed.

The bicycle wheel only works because the spokes are in tension, and LEGO tends to not do tension. I am curious to see if this wheels is ridged or if the tolerance make it feel a little floppy. 

[R0Sch]

6 minutes ago, HydroWorld Outlook said:

Got it. Thanks for providing the cutaway—that helps a lot. In theory, we could replace these with 60208 or 68327 wheel pieces to reinforce these connections, but these pieces take up more space at the center of the wheel and may require modifications to the bicycle wheel to make up the difference.

Those parts would work but only if they had an axle hole in the center. I would just use 2815 rubber tires over the pulley wheels to give some extra support and dampening.

[Jockos]

1 hour ago, HydroWorld Outlook said:

What do you mean by this? 

This new gear might be used for radio controlling pneumatic valves as when the valve reaches its end point there wouldn't be any harm made to the system.

[R0Sch]

9 minutes ago, Thirdwigg said:

I never thought I would be in a place where bicycle spoke lacing patterns and LEGO part tolerances would be discussed.

The bicycle wheel only works because the spokes are in tension, and LEGO tends to not do tension. I am curious to see if this wheels is ridged or if the tolerance make it feel a little floppy. 

Looks like there is one half pin on each wheel that is a frictionless white pin. So there might be some tension on the spokes after all. Unless it's just an orientation color coding. The arch segments have double axle pin connections so they will be fairly rigid by being held together by the rubber tire.

[Auroralampinen]

33 minutes ago, Jockos said:

This new gear might be used for radio controlling pneumatic valves as when the valve reaches its end point there wouldn't be any harm made to the system.

Um, it might be not that usefull. In the real life you cannot pedal backwards and in the lego lifestyle video when he is spinning the pedals backwards the wheel is still like it should be. So if you really want to only make motorized pneumatic switch working one way it will be revolutionary. But you still have to manually switch the switch to lower the cylinder:). 

EDIT. Since i want to be sometimes really technical. Track bikes which rides on oval tracks and penny farthings plus unicycles and some ordinary bikes can have/has only fixie gear without any freehubs. That one you can technically pedal backwards thought its really difficult and the lego road cycle isin't a fixie so it will only work one way as the free wheel/hub should work:). 

Edited 10 hours ago by Auroralampinen

[R0Sch]

4 hours ago, HydroWorld Outlook said:

That said, I am very curious as to what the actual final diameter of these wheels are, though, since it's very hard to tell or calculate from the pictures alone—they may be slightly smaller or larger than the old rare Hailfire Droid Wheels, but we won't know for sure until someone buys the set and reports their measurements. However, from the looks of it, and assuming the new spoke link elements are 11L each as we suspected (which seems very highly likely), I'm guesstimating that they're probably somewhere roughly between 27L and 29L in diameter, perhaps about 31L with the tires on them. In other words, these finished wheels probably about as wide in diameter as one 99013 helicopter rotor blade piece is long. If I'm correct, then these new wheels are, in fact, larger than the old Hailfire Droid Wheels as was previously speculated, which would be fantastic news.

You can easily calculate the exact tire and wheel size from this. Tires are 24.4cm in diameter meaning 30.5L and the full wheels are 22.4cm in diameter meaning 28L. Hailfire was 26.5L.

[HydroWorld Outlook]

39 minutes ago, R0Sch said:

Those parts would work but only if they had an axle hole in the center. I would just use 2815 rubber tires over the pulley wheels to give some extra support and dampening.

The second part I mentioned—41mm wheel (part 68327)—has a central axle hole as well as six pin holes around it, so that piece would fit the criteria, but modifications at the back of the bicycle would be required in order to make space for since it is slightly larger and significantly thicker than the Wedge Belt Wheel elements.

23 minutes ago, Auroralampinen said:

This new gear might be used for radio controlling pneumatic valves as when the valve reaches its end point there wouldn't be any harm made to the system.

Good point.

[SNIPE]

Soo, maybe an icons/creator fishing reel 3 in 1 set using the new 20T sprocket gear, maybe with a 2 speed gear box and adjustable drag but without damaging rubber parts