Our beloved Yamaha Moto Bike.....Pat #3964765

motobike

View the photos to see how the handlebar mount changed....they were probably still unsure of the final design.

It's an interesting read of their take on the early sport of bicycle motocross....Yamaha states:
"This invention relates to bicycles that are propelled by foot pedals. A sport which has become increasing popular is the racing of bicycles over rough terrain." Improper grammar is a direct Japanese translation


What I dubbed the Yamaha Mono Bike....monoshock which obviously never made it to market........Pat #3982770

monobike

Yamaha touts the fact that the rear suspension pivots in front of the bottom bracket to maintain constant chain tension. This was filed a few months after the moto bike and the drawing shows the double clamp design that was on the production moto bike. Shows a cottered crank which is consistent with the fact that the moto bike didn't have a 1 piece crank yet either.

Here's another Yamaha monoshock design.......a closer design to the Moto Bike.

Yamaha monoshock

What else can we find? I would love to see the Matthews monoshock and Matthews fork patents!

Low and behold, there it is.......invented/submitted by Thomas D. Seifert

LRV/Matthews fork

That 'Monobike' is soooo cool! Brilliant thinking about placing the pivot point in front of the crank hanger. Too bad that one never made it to production.

Great stuff! I can see this patent search idea turning into a lot of threads.

Carry on.

Maybe we can get get Ray Abrams' take on this. According to Bob Freitas (sp?) who worked at Tiger Cycle (and other guys who were around at the time,) A & A had their version out in the warehouse when one of the Yamaha reps happened to be in-town. He took pictures and soon after the Yamaha bike was "born"

My design for automatic shifting CVT hub internals... Shifting based on the difference between input torque and resistance to the ouput torque. NOT wheelspeed - as is the case with other auto-shift systems for bicycles.

Probably not advantageous in racing applications and actually designed for manual wheelchair use... but maybe of interest to some.

Maybe someday it will be considered vintage!

http://www.google.com/patents?id=75yBAAAAE...mission#PPA1,M1

Two of the Yamaha patents are from Cali. They list the names Zenser and Knapp as the inventors but with corporate submissions, the names may not be relevant. The other name is from Japan.

Michael, that is a very cool design you have. I looked at several of the bike transmissions, most of which were torque sensing. I like the ring/pinion one that slid the gear radially to vary the torque.

Some more....

Stroker

Graco?

Definitely Graco... I had one of those bad boys and it was the heaviest bike I've ever owned including my 8" travel downhill bikes... I'll bet even Lund's BI Mono was lighter... everything steel and a 22" front wheel with darn near motorcycle tires on it... they should have patented the "breakaway tanks and fenders" that shattered faster than anything else on the market.

Richard Vogt
bmxmountainbiker

Very cool find. I dig that two US "inventors" were involved. We have a long histroy of inventing, then others taking over production. We need more engineers in this country to invent the next big thing.

Darwin Zenser appears to have passed away http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/SSD...amp;frompage=99. Would have been cool to interview these guys on the early days of the BMX group at Yamaha.

Interesting story, Reilley1.....were you able to dig anything up?

RV....I remember the hard inflexible plastic on the Graco's. I seem to remember they were decent quality but, like you said, heavy as a tank. Anything that resembled a motorcycle that much, with working suspension was super cool BITD.

Here's more.....

Tuf Neck

Addicks Stem

Cook's Fork/Stem

Schwinn Sting

Mitsuboshi Comp 3

DX Cranks

Kool Stop Pads

Preston Petty

Slingshot

Notice how the trade names are nowhere to be seen on the patents.

That Cook Fork/Stem setup is just an amazing bit of innovation that was ahead of its time!

I love this thread. Any BMX related Patent is always interesting... Cool stuff.

'76, I now want to dig into that Webco mag question. I guess I'll be going way back into the Iversons... Wish me luck!

Great dating info in there too.

i.e: Tuf Neck patent applied for Sept 77 - granted Dec 79 - So it was "Patent Pending" all the way up to the end of '79.

DX Cranks - Patent applied for Sept 82...

I agree the Cooks were ahead of their time.....I wonder why more didn't sell. Was it a cost issue?

I tried the Iverson/Barris? angle and got nowhere. I believe the Webcos were made within the 14 year patent life of the original Iverson wheel....if they were patented at all. So, it would seem that Webco would have gone to Iverson....unless that little nut/bolt change was enough to free them legally. I hope you have better succes than I did.

Oh, speaking of Barris, there's some cool Ed Roth and Barris patents in there too.

You never know what patents aren't showing up in this database or what products never even had one. What's more interesting to me is the patents (ideas good and bad) you see but, never made it to market. Inventers with big dreams of a product/idea that went flat for various reasons.

Here's some earlier Shimano adjustable length cranks the DX's possibly grew out of......

Earlier Shimano cranks

Here's the original (?) Skyway Tuff wheel patent & the George Barris connection cited as "prior art"

Skyway 1977



Barris 1969




Direct access to the USPTO for a quick search if you know a patent number or the inventor post 1976.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html

Another patent office seach area if you figure out how to find the "Patent Classification" number.

http://www.uspto.gov/go/classification/

Patent Classification prefix 89 might make for some interesting reading.

You will need the Alternatiff plugin installed to your browser to view the pix , well worth the effort , the USPTO is a goldmine of ideas , inspiration & sheer lunatic inventions.


JB

Good thread, a little off topic but I was breezing through an old mag and found the Odyssey A brake, wonder if FMF's version is a copy