An engineer turned an old motorcycle into the fastest penny-farthing in the world (5 photos)

An English engineer spent almost 750 hours turning an old Yamaha R6 motorcycle and a few hundred yards of spare steel into the world's fastest penny-farthing.





Popular in the 1870s and 1880s, the penny-farthing is considered a symbol of the late Victorian era and the ancestor of the modern bicycle. Its odd name was inspired by the difference in size between the front and rear wheels, as the British penny coin was significantly larger than a farthing.

The iconic bike was only in fashion for about a decade before the modern bike was invented and proved much safer, more comfortable and easier to ride, but there's something about the penny-farthing's amazing look that still fascinates people. Take this young engineer from Swindon, who spent hundreds of hours turning a 20-year-old bike into the world's fastest penny-farthing.



"The idea came to me in a dream," Greg recalled. "I fell asleep watching YouTube videos and dreamed I was building this bike. I woke up and immediately recorded it. I can't draw, so I asked the AI ​​to draw it and that's when I knew I had to make it."





Mitchell initially planned to build his SuperFarthing out of aluminum, but then realized the raw materials alone would cost him around £4,000 ($5,000), so he decided to use steel he had buried in his backyard. He then set to work on the massive 165kg front wheel, made from 420 individually machined parts, as well as the massive vertical swingarm.

The English engineer found a 20-year-old Yamaha R6 that was the perfect fit for his crazy build, and spent dozens of hours swapping out the exhaust and radiator, drilling 890 individual holes, and dreaming up ways to turn the bike into the world's fastest penny-farthing. Somehow he succeeded, but when it came time to finally take it out for a test drive, it became obvious that the bizarre design was downright dangerous to ride.

To keep the SuperFarthing upright, Mitchell had to fit a pair of side stabilizer wheels, which he initially envisioned as hydraulically extendable. However, he soon realized that trying to maneuver his creation without them was suicide with extra steps, so he ditched the ability to raise the stabilizers altogether. But that was just one of many problems he had to solve. Even with the steering locked out, the bike only rode straight thanks to the huge deflection in the forks, and despite the rider’s best efforts, the bike followed even the slightest curves in the road.



Mitchell knew he had to go back to the drawing board to make the SuperFarthing rideable, and that’s what he did. He fitted rigid forks, beefed up the frame of his unique bike and, to give it a modicum of control, fitted hydraulic power steering, using buttons on the handlebars to keep the penny farthing off the potholes in the road.

"At first I thought I'd ride it once and never again, but it's actually not as bad as you'd think. With the sway bars off, it's like riding a really tall quad bike," says Greg. "I've only managed 50mph so far, but that was on a short stretch of road. It can definitely do more. I'll need to find a bigger place to practice because it's not like riding anything else."



The world's fastest penny-farthing isn't legal in England due to its non-pneumatic front wheel, so it won't be able to be tested on the open road, but Mitchell would love to take it on a perfectly smooth track to work around the hydraulic power steering, as "trying to steer it with power is not the best option, as you can imagine, especially at speed."

While the SuperFarthing is still far from being the safest or most comfortable motorcycle in the world, it's still stunning both visually and mechanically. And Greg Mitchell genuinely believes it can reach speeds of around 140mph in the right conditions.