MANTA RAY

The Manta Ray is a bike I fabricated for one of my college classes, Single Track Vehicle Design. In the class, we learned the control systems and dynamics behind how bicycles work. As a final project in the class, students must fabricate some kind of single track vehicle and prove out their knowledge of modelling and simulation of bicycle dynamics.

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For my project, I decided to create the Manta Ray. I call it the Manta Ray because the bike's dimensions came from a scaled up advertisement for the classic Schwinn Stingray. In other words, I took an advertisement of the Schwinn Stingray (which originally came with 20" wheels) and scaled up the picture of the bike until the 20" wheels matched the size of 29" wheels, then I built it. 

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The primary concept I wanted to test was to see how overall size changes bicycle handling. Running through the vehicle dynamic models for a classic Schwinn Stingray vs the Manta Ray suggested that the longer wheelbase and magnified trail of the Manta Ray would result in a slow to handle bike that was fairly unresponsive to external input.

 

Well, after I made it, I don't think that could have been any more correct. After riding the Manta Ray, one student described their experience as "I felt like I was on a couch with wheels."

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While it won't be winning the Tour de France any time soon, I'm very pleased how this bike/couch turned out.