They are 36 spoke Sims Rims and 36 spoke GLR Sturmy hubs. I used 18 spokes on the inside and 9 on the outside with an extreme dish to get the tires inboard to keep the scrub radius small. This has made a marked improvement in the high speed handling. The inside spokes are an asymmetric one cross to partially compensate for the braking direction only spokes on the outside.
I also laced in my Power Tap hub. I used it to gauge my power and heart rate.
I could have used the Greenspeed GTX hubs which are much narrower however I have stubs to fit the wider hubs and I like hard cornering and the wide hubs take the abuse well.
I installed Scorchers using Stan's NoTube liquid and split 305 inner tubes and Sims rims. I sanded the area next to the vavle stem down a little so that there isn't a bump on the bead at the valve stem. I also found using a little more fluid than recommended makes things go much easier. I also cheated and used an air compressor to inflate and seat the tires. If you are handy you can use an Exacto knife with the blade parallel to the side wall and point against the outer most edge of the rim to get a nearly invisible trim of the inner tube rim strip.
Anyhow the tires were installed just before the Wasco Wild West 75 on Thursday night and Friday morning. I made sure to keep them up to pressure incase of any seepage so I wouldn't have to reseat the tire with a floor pump. I found that they leaked a little initially and now are holding pretty well. Follow Stan's instructions in movies on his website.
The tires were inflated to 70 psi to give a great ride on the chip seal of WWW75 course. In retrospect I don't recall even noticing the road surface feel. Way smoother than my Stelvio's at 120, duh! I run the Stelvio's high for max ground clearance, an issue with the SLR. I didn't scrape any road crown once with the Scorchers! Maybe next year I'll save some weight a loose the steel angle skid. Maybe I could have ran them higher presure and still have had good surface compliance.
I haven't ridden the SLR much since then. I'll try to get some miles in this weekend.
I have to say that on the SLR there is a bit of a shock looking at such wide tires. It seems the antithesis of racing. But I figured that lower rolling resistance and some wheel covers to smooth air flow would be the ticket.
Boxter Body Version 3 with Canopy March 4th, 2005
Here are three shots of the Version 3 Boxter body with the new canopy. The canopy is made from an off spec Windwrap ERX tinted fairing. I cut a V in the back and rivit it together to pull some depth and get a tear drop shape. I was able to blend the canopy in with the body shape more than with the previous canopy.
It was about time to work on version 3 of the Boxter body. This one features an elliptic nose shape rather than the pointier nose on version 2. This was to achieve better handling at high speeds and make for a more compact rig. The nose isn't as long moves the center of pressure rearward. The elliptic nose seems less critical about wind direction also.
Version 3 Feb. 10, 2005
The tail was designed in response to tuft testing on version 2. Yarns shown that airflow angled down quite a bit in the rear. So the tail curves down and ends in a Kamm back to reduce overall length.
As well I reduced the track so that I could decrease the turning circle without widening the body. The track was reduced by heavily dishing the wheels inboard.
Since I bought my SLR with the wider GLR hubs, this looks to have brought the rims into near spec since the SLR was designed to run with ultra narrow drum hubs. The handling has been improved overall. In fact this body is designed to turn right sharper than left in preparation for the Cherry Pie Criterium in Napa CA. You notice some obvious assemetry in the body shape.
Four Boxter Version 2 I wanted to improve aerodynamic performance. I was guessing that the tail was tapered too much. So this one has an 11 degree taper to a point. The pointy section is removable so that the Boxter will fit in an 8 foot trailer.
Boxter Body Version 2, October 2004
The nose was based on an ellipse with a point extended forward. This version was not very stable at high speed especially if the tail point was removed.
doing
a run at Battle Mountain on Hwy 305. Photo by Jeff Wills.
Demonstration runs in the BM HS parking lot. Photo by Jeff Wills.
Photo by Jeff Wills.
This shows how compact the SLR is. Version 3 is ever smaller.
Photos by Jeff Wills
Boxter Version 1, May 2004
Coroplast body work. Very large turning radius. I think I can get around
Portland International Raceway with this.
I am going to make a Coroplast top at first then a combination of Lexan
bubble for the nose and head fairings. Or just Lexan nose.
My Brother Carl Mueller on his GIB trike. GIB stands for Gee It's Big.
The common thing of these two trikes is the wheelbase. Otherwise they
are quite different. Carl is planning on carrying his medium-large dog
in the back. She will be able to look over his shoulder.
That's a 62 tooth ring and a derailleur that was a donor for an extended cage on another project. The derailleur's job is to keep the chain on the single chainwheel.
Racing at Hellyer Park Velodrome in San Jose
Photo by Gabe DeVault
I've decided to call it the the Boxster with body. It handles like a sports car, goes fast, and looks a little boxy.
It was getting really grungy inside the Boxster SLR especially on the 1/2 hour race. The tires were pumping road debris in and churning the dust throughout.
So I added wheel wells to improve the cabin air situation. I'm asthmatic and need to have clean air to function well. All these fixtures tape on so that I can transport disassembled and car top the trike.
1"
angle iron eliminates the pulley cages getting rotated on occasional ground
contact. It eliminates the pulley cages!
As you can see this skid gets some use.
That's a very necessary skid pan to keep the idler cages from rotating backwards as they frequently make contact with the road in my low maintenance neighborhood.
April 2004
It's designed for race track use only. But I've gone ahead and put about 50 road miles on it.
My e-mail address:
markm at humboldt1 daught com
Click on images to view larger
SLR stands for Super Low Racer. The Sims did a great job of making this trike as narrow as I've ever seen while giving it incredible shiny side up capabilities.
Very compact pedal box with 110 cranks. This trike will not accommodate 170 mm cranks since the bottom bracket is so low.
