Bacchetta - An Industry Powerhouse

Bacchetta - An Industry Powerhouse

Bacchetta is the third brand that has been with us since day one. Bacchetta Bikes is made up of a few powerhouses in the recumbent industry. Its leaders, Mark Colliton, Mike Wilkerson, Jermey Massey and Rich Pinto, all have decades of experience building and selling recumbents with such well-known companies as RANS and Barcroft.

 

Bacchetta was out to revolutionize the recumbent industry with sporty, fast designs and unique recumbent parts and accessories. Their own website gives a succinct history of their successes and accomplishments.

 

Their most well-known feature is their teardrop-shaped frame.

 

Using a computer program to do a “section moment of inertia” (SMOI) for custom tube shapes (or more simply stated… the stiffness potential of a tube shape) we calculated our tubing at 2.5” x 2” at .039” thickness, cubed, to be 1.95. (Tubing stiffness varies with the cube of its depth and because our tube is not symmetrical we needed to calculate the SMOI in both directions first.) The SMOI of a 2” round tube at .035” thickness is 1.04.

 

Our tube is about twice as stiff vertically, and also substantially stiffer laterally and in torsion than our competitors 2″ round tubing. But we want to stress the vertical direction here because this is where most of the boom wagging forces would come into play with unsupported boom tube designs. Anyway, this shows that our custom main tube is 2 times more vertically stiff than a 2″ round tube of the same length.

 

What this says in layman’s terms is that you are going to get a compliant, efficient, comfortable ride!

 

Racing

 

Two 4-Person RAAM Teams on Bacchetta

 

In 2012, I raced for a Bacchetta-sponsored Race Across America (RAAM) Team. Training and racing for this kind events puts the bike through grueling tests of durability. Quite frankly, I don’t think there is a better test of a bike than RAAM. Throughout the entire year of training and racing, the Carbon Aero was efficient, quiet, comfortable and fast!

 

Year in and year out, Bacchetta proves itself on the race course. Whether it’s a 24-hour race, a brevet, the 508, or your local century, no other brand has a more successful racing history.

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Leave a comment
* Your email address will not be published