Friday, March 29, 2024

An engineer replaces wheels on a bike with circular saws to ride on frozen lake

Due to subzero temperatures, many lakes around the world freeze over every winter. This icy terrain provides an exciting surface and an opportunity to explore and get dangerously creative.

As far-fetched as it may sound, a product-hacking engineer known as The Q on YouTube has replaced the wheels on a bicycle with circular saw blades so that bikers can easily ride on ice that forms on frozen lakes. He calls his invention an “Icуcycle.”

The Q has shared on YouTube the process of adapting the wheels of a mountain bike. In the video of just over 5 minutes, you can see how the specialist carefully removed the original tires and spokes from his bicycle and replaced them with giant steel discs with sharp blades on the edges, similar to those used in sawmills to cut large pieces of wood.

However, in the first test of the Icycycle on a frozen lake, the sharp blades cut straight through the ice and made it impossible to pedal on the ice surface. As a solution, The Q added a few extra metal parts to each of the blades. Thanks to this modification, the second test was a success, and, as seen in the video, the courageous engineer managed to pedal smoothly over the lake.

This is not the first time when The Q has replaced traditional bicycle wheels. In 2019, the eccentric engineer created a unique Shoe Bicycle, featuring a pair of spinners with multiple running shoes attached to the end of large spokes. At that time, the result was quite a bumpy ride, unlike the new “Icуcycle.”