Martin Pyne's Mini Bike

Fantastic photos and story.

Really glad I clicked on this thread.

Hi, fascinating bike and quality fabrication work on the bars and stem, thanks for sharing as I have never seen anything like this before.

Forgive my ignorance, I am new to this, but what is the thought process behind the design? particularly the smaller front wheel, is it lighter, more aerodynamic, better at cornering or a combination of these.

regards Norm

This is Martin Pyne with the Mk 1 Version of the bike which later he changed to the Shorter frame that I have now.



This was built by Mick Burrows of Lotus bike fame.

When I was going to make the bars I actually rang him up & talked to him on how the bars were made roughly so I has an idea on dimensions & the type of alloy used. A nice gent to deal with & very helpful indeed.

Nice to see the whole story Nob. Didn't Andy Pegg ride this or a similar one at one time?

Old Ned":3i74wkqp said:

Nice to see the whole story Nob. Didn't Andy Pegg ride this or a similar one at one time?

Click to expand...

Yes he did

normski":bhytz8ie said:

Hi, fascinating bike and quality fabrication work on the bars and stem, thanks for sharing as I have never seen anything like this before.

Forgive my ignorance, I am new to this, but what is the thought process behind the design? particularly the smaller front wheel, is it lighter, more aerodynamic, better at cornering or a combination of these.

regards Norm

Click to expand...

Norm, to my mind, the 'Low Profile' low front-end style of bike seemed to come into prominence around the time of the 1982 World Championships in the UK when they were ridden (mainly by Eastern European - German especially) riders on the Leicester track (and team time trial also?). That's when I first saw them anyway. The idea is to reduce the frontal area of the bike and rider (no Tri-Bars in those days) and the concept was quickly taken up by British Time Triallists, ever eager to seek out a new way to cheat Old Father Time without having to train to hard (am I a cynic or what?). Small front wheels were used in both 600 and 650 sizes with a standard 700 rear. The handling however, with the small wheel and very short wheelbases that were popular then, could leave a lot to be desired especially on the more 'technically challenging' courses. Thankfully, in my opinion anyway, the fashion passed and nowadays equal sized wheels are used with Tri-Bars taking over the 'aero' part of the equation. 1980's Time Trial bikes are a fascinating subject that can be discussed at great length and perhaps a thread of photos might be an idea to show you young lads what we old'uns used to thrash up and down dual-carriageways on.

I still have my 1983 E G Bates Low Pro (built by Alan Bates) which I have put back together & this is also a 24" front wheel set up along with PMP cranks, Modolo Kronos Calipers also All my PB's were done on this bike

Fantastic bike and fabulous thread, brings back a lot of great memories seeing that lot. Met Andy on a handful of occasions BITD great guy Even saw him racing the recumberent mentioned in the piece

1 extra pic

A few upgrades since the last post