Open source bike?

[G]

I've had this idea for a long time; it started as thought to make an easily repairable commuter, stunter or tourer bike.
A bike that you don't care about it being the fastest or lightest, but you might want to make use of a wide range of possible parts to repair.

Clicking on the 'Random' button in Wikipedia I happened upon [url= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OScar_(open_source_car)]'OScar'[/url]; it seems someone stole my idea before I had it , though for cars.

That page claims there are such projects for bike, but couldn't find anything; at least not for conventional 'ICE' bikes rather than electric.
Does anybody no of such a project?


Some rambling thoughts of mine on the subject:
My initial idea had been for a effectively a set of specifications that would allow parts to be interchangeable on current sports bikes, say.

However, further thought over the years has settled on the idea of making it around cub engines as they're so readily available (and are featured in the most popular bike in the world).
The idea would be to start with some basic specs for the ways bits interconnect; for instance to ensure all wheels used consistent spacing, ideally similar with swingarms, forks, yokes, etc. That way, when you want to make your sports bike into a trail bike say, you could hopefully do it with a lot less components. More importantly, if you need replacement parts, you should have a much wider range to choose from.

This way, hopefully you can have a good range of components available; from top-spec hand fabricated racing ones to cheap chinese moulded ones, depending on your need.
Obviously upgrading should be much better.

To some degree pit bikes are a bit like this already, but it seems there is quite a range of different systems available still.

[Kickstart]

Hi

Would think with all the monkey bikes around and all the parts swapped between them they are pretty close to this already.

All the best

Keith
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[Feasty]

Have you thought about Lego?

Can be quickly redesigned, more parts added at any stage, light but strong, many different colours available, and in the event of a crash just pick up all the pieces and put it together again!
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[Wafer_Thin_Ham]

Wouldn't Duplo work better for bikes?
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[Im-a-Ridah]

It wouldn't work how open source software does and so wouldn't have the benefits. Open source software is made by developers and made available to everyone to modify for their own purposes. A car or bike is larely already modifiable to suit your own purposes if you have the skills. The designs for the vehicle could be made available, but this isn't of much help as people are unlikely to have the tools to make the parts anyway.

[G]

Open source design - the intention would be to hopefully let companies use the designs to produce appropriate parts/bikes.

My original thoughts for this were that while a bike is modifiable if you have the tools and skills, if you don't, you're quite limited to what is available. The obvious example in cars where it's different is wheels; there's a lot higher number of wheels that are compatible between models, as opposed to bikes where more are.

The sort of similarities seen in monkey bikes is around what I'm thinking, but offer a lot more flexibility as well as a bit more sensible size .

[Charlie]

Would be nice to have a bike made using mostly stainless steel or other non-corrodible parts where ever possible. Also be nice to have a bike which was designed to be dropped and not mean spending hundreds of pounds to getting it back on the road. I can't understand why manufactures don't take this into account I mean it is a bike nature not to be upright all the time.
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[stinkwheel]

Do you remember there was an episode of the Simpsons where Homer designed the car everyone wanted?
https://blogs.smh.com.au/sport/the%20homer.jpg

Ok, how about an XT500 engine that runs on an LPG supply which is built into the frame with a sensible seat, trailie riding position, massive tank range, hub centre steering, universal wheels with interchangeable spare rim and a massive bolt-on luggage module?

Now look at it:
https://www.gizmag.com/meet-the-greenfly-the-worlds-first-lpg-motorcycle/10414/
https://www.thebikergene.com/gallery/cache/Greenfly%20LPG/Greenfly-20.jpg_w500.jpg
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[Zenarchy]

This is really weird. I was standing in the shower a couple of days ago thinking something very similar to this. Completely forgot about it until I noticed this post.

I was thinking it'd be cool if there was a bike that was designed and released in a similar way to how IBM released their standards for the PC allowing all different manufacturers to make the parts and build PCs outside of IBM.

Or the way those old MSX computers were made: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX

I was thinking it'd be good for a touring bike standard (so like the c90s you'd be able to get parts almost anywhere in the world you happened to be and at a cheap price). But now you mention it, a commuter bike like that would make even more sense (or something that could handle both duties and be tough and also cope with rough terrain so it'd be suitable for use anywhere would be good).

It'd mean there's a massive selection of spare used parts, and lots of competition, and manufacturers could more easily set up on large scales producing only single parts without the licensing issues they probably have producing parts to the design of a major manufacturer (not sure how that works with pattern parts at the moment but I'd guess they can't make exact copies without paying licensing fees which will probably end up passed onto the comsumer).

I guess an issue could be that to keep the parts standard over any length of time, it'd mean the rate of progess might be slower (but then compared to the rate of progress with computers improvements in bikes seem a lot slower anyway). Or there'd be a range of differing standards or perhaps versions (though that may still be workable in the way some older PC components will still work OK in newer machines and are backwards compatible).

I was thinking more along the lines of someone like BMW releasing one of their designs in the way IBM did with the PC architecture, but a completely open source model built from the ground up might be even better as that's probably more likely to happen (although IBM did such a lot to get the PC industry started, perhaps they lost out a bit too - not sure).

I think it's a cracking idea! Wasn't even aware of that open source car. Looks interesting.

Like stinkwheel says though, it could end up trying to be all things to all people, and end up being not so great for anyone in the process. I'm not sure how easy it would be to avoid that with design by comittee (as it'd probably turn out to be).

[The Shaggy D.A.]

If you look at the Enfield Bullet, you can already take the standard bike and with little work have a Cafe Racer, Trail or Road Scrambler style, just by switching bars, wheels, sprockets, seat, tank, pegs and exhaust. That's from a 60 year old design. Using a Rotax single a la F650 could bring the performance up to more modern standards without changing too much of the appeal.
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