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8 comments
Just found this article that goes into some detail about using hydrogen/helium in your tyres:
http://www.cyclist.co.uk/in-depth/791/why-don-t-we-fill-bike-tyres-with-helium
Hydrogen seems to be the better choice - half the weight of helium.
Lol. Get best bang for your Buck.
I'm stoked. Just started riding full time again. Car use Sunday ( totally opposite to old day churchies ). Mate coming out of rehab this week. Had no short term memory like the movie '51 first dates. ' Therefore car just a water bike transport unit; kayak.
Anyway vacuum reads like a great idea, might suck me in unlike space which is sucking the planet off.
I love cleaning up, on the bike I score tools and lead from the gutters. Fortnight count; 1 large bit of lead, 1 hammer and a Sidcrome 14 mm combination spanner.
Nitrogen might be useful, wouldn't rust inside out ensuring a quality ride.
LSD occurs when my chain isn't lubed. I call that limited slip reaction technique practice.
You wouldn't be able to keep enough hydrogen/helium on a bike to make any difference.
Also, if you put it in the tyres (which is the only air-tight compartment available on a bike) it would leak out relatively quickly as the molecules are smaller than air/nitrogen. This also happens with CO2 although I'd imagine that helium would escape a lot quicker.
You could try to fill a huge balloon with helium which could reduce your weight (though it would increase you mass) but the increased aerodynamic drag would make you far worse off.
Actually the amount of helium / hydrogen you contain within the bike is almost irrelevant. Better to vacuum the tubes (may be possible but would significantly increase chance of tube collapse in an accident. )
So, all things being equal, helium at normal atmospheric pressure has a density roughly 1/8th of air. A rough guestimation gives a total air volume in a frame of about 15 litres, so the mass of air in a frame is (at STP) 19gm. so the mass of helium would be roughly 2.5 gm, saving about 17 gm. However, frames are not hermetically sealed, so the extra materials to achieve this, and to provide the opportunity for replenishing the gas would almost certainly weigh more than 17 gm.
Too much acid ?
Or not enough. Definitely not quite the right amount of LSD, though.
I dig man.
Do you dig it?!?
...what?