MTB Gyro
Mountain bike Slopestyle has been rapidly increasing in popularity for many years. Similarly to freestyle BMX, athletes are judged on their ability to complete the best combination of tricks in a single run.
Tricks often involve spinning the handlebars and this causes the rear brake hose/cable to become tangled around the steerer tube. This problem limits the riders to what tricks they can do before they need to untangle their brake system.
Some solutions do already exist for this problem, some riders choose not to use a rear brake at all, others use BMX style mechanical gyros, and some problematic hydraulic gyros are also available. There are however no problem-free solutions currently on the market.
Gyro design
Tricks like tailwhips and bar spins cause this problem
Calliper design
Over the course of 1 year this project went from a brief to a working prototype. There were several concepts for the gyro's internal mechanism with the final design being granted a patent pending.
The calliper and the lever were both designed around existing internal components allowing me to minimise risk and reduce the number of bespoke parts to just 4 on the lever and 1 on the calliper. FEA was used to finesse and validate the design of the bespoke parts to ensure that they were as robust as possible.
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The function of the gyro is to transfer pressure from the master cylinder side of the system, past the stem, and onto the calliper side. All existing products centre around complex seals that allow fluid to flow uninterrupted all the way through the rotating parts of the system. This leads to friction and unreliable seals. My Gyro works by transferring the hydraulic pressure on one side of the system, through a bearing, and onto the other side of the system.
Gyro - working prototype
Concept validation and refinement
Gyro proyotype testing
Freestyle riding demands a unique combination of features and priority's from the brake. Braking is rarely required during a run and so is only normally used to stop at the end of a run. For this reason a lot of the usual priorty's like heat management, power, feel and bite point adjustment all take a back seat and its durability, ease of maintenance and ergonomic discretion that take priority.
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Due to the mechanics of the gyro, the calliper requires an extra spring behind both pistons, the calliper is otherwise very similar to standard callipers in terms of its layout and profile. Some aesthetic decisions were made to create a simple sleak and durable design profile.
The Lever has also been developed to combine several features and technologies that already existed, into a component that is undoubtedly the best suited to freestyle riding on the market.
