When humanity developed the motorbike — its biggest achievement up to now — it did so on the again of innovation that got here earlier than. The primary motorbike integrated what we’d already realized from bicycles, which meant we by no means had the chance to make the identical design errors as different two-wheelers. We by no means received a penny farthing motorbike, and that’s a tragedy that YouTube engineer Gregulations got down to treatment.
Greg had a dream that he constructed the world’s quickest penny farthing out of a superbike, and determined to make that dream a actuality via cautious engineering, less-careful error correcting primarily based on errors in that preliminary engineering, and throwing an entire lot of cash at a machine store to construct components that nobody else would ever conceive of. The outcome? A jacked-up R6 on an enormous metal wheel and nearly-as-massive metal swing arm setup, that’s absolute rubbish to journey.
The ensuing SuperFarthing is the product of loads of engineering hackery due to issues that confirmed up after the preliminary run of components was already machined. Items needed to be redesigned or lower away to suit equipment not included within the unique mannequin, little luxuries like “brake calipers,” and the complete rear suspension ended up being scrapped after Greg realized that the rear wheel had sufficient leverage from its newly-heightened swingarm to compress the shock with mere acceleration. It’s uncommon to discover a bike with an excessive amount of anti-squat, however right here’s an ideal instance.
Greg additionally realized {that a} 65-inch metal entrance wheel is all however unattainable to show, main him to equip the SuperFarthing with what could be the first-ever hydraulic energy steering on a motorbike. The hydraulics have been already there to raise the coaching wheels as soon as the rider received going — an concept that instantly proved ill-advised, leaving the pump open to be repurposed.
The SuperFarthing could not likely be a penny farthing by any definition of the phrase — it has 4 wheels and isn’t pedal-powered — nevertheless it’s no much less spectacular a feat of engineering. I could worth my mortal coil a bit an excessive amount of to ever need to journey it, however I’m so glad it exists.
