Raptobike Pr0n

The Raptobike build is coming along. I heard from Arnold at Raptobike and the carbon seat is almost ready and then it will ship this week if all goes well. I am going to get a Ventisit seat pad for the Raptobike, I found a good source here and am working on this now.

I am very excited about the progress. I am planning on picking up some coroplast to make wheel covers and a tailbox in the meantime. I am still on the fence on the color of coroplast to use. At this point I am leaning toward black, so as to make my color scheme black and white. I can use 3M reflective tape to make it reflect silver at night. But black will be hot in the summer and my water will get warm faster. White also fits the color scheme but it will get dirty faster. Barney Harle made a nice white tailbox for his Raptobike here:

I like his total weight of 1.1kg and the shape is pretty nice as well. Adding a white wheel cover for the rear wheel wouldn't add much weight and it would still look pretty good. Maybe I will go with white. The dirt and grime should be easy enough to clean off if I am good about doing it. I would really like to have my tailbox made by the OHPV Human Powered Challenge in Portland, OR. That would put me in the super-stock category.

I think I could still use the black reflective tape to put nice designs on the tailbox, which would reflect nicely as well. I am still on the fence, but I think white with a black design on the tail-fairing will be nicely artistic and show up well.