Silvio Metric Century

The blood sugar level plunged after 70 kms, but apart from that a fantastic ride, completing 100 km in under 4 hours.

Its a mild winter's day in Perth with showers passing over. The chosen bike path runs 45 km south of Perth beside the Kwinana Freeway. The last 30 kms out and first 30 kms back are without any traffic hazards at all so must rate as one of the best bike paths for this kind of ride.

With the windwrap fairing on the front the occasional showers presented no problem, just a little sand collecting on the frame, see pictures.

There was barely any wind movement noticeable in the vegetation, but that probably suggests 5 km/h. The ride out was in the mid 30 kph to long sections of 41s and 42s. The ride back found a strong cross wind, plus being tired the last 30 ks, the speed dropped to around the 25 kph mark.

Silvio, a different frame for your road bike

All road bikes have components that follow a very strict formula. There is very little variance between components in terms of their form and function.

The Silvio strategy is to keep ALL the standard road bike components/wheels and merely mount them on a different frame that solves the ergonomic issues. We take this purist approach because we can. No other form of recumbent can achieve this in such a pure sense.

Take the last road bike you saw, there are many hundreds of models that are identical to that in all important respects. There are only two things that can change that would affect the suitability as a parts donor for Silvio.

1) some front dérailleurs clamp around the tube (clamp ons) and some bolt into a brazed on lug (braze-ons). Silvio requires the braze-on.

2) there are two main handlebar clamp widths, 26.0 and 31.8. Silvio needs the 26.0.

For obvious reasons both cannot be accommodated on the bike! Other than that, you can strip ANY modern road bike and build a Silvio from it. You may need a new cable here or there.

Looking under the bell curve of leg lengths, the medium Silvio frame caters to about 3/4 or perhaps more of adult males. We will do a small frame and possibly a large frame over the next year. Once we have feedback on the new frames, we will ramp up production.

Silvio Jigged

The Silvio is in the jig being welded up, all the other parts are ready including the fork, the pictures tell the story.