[Chris Makes Stuff] is an aptly named channel. His recent video shows how he took a kid’s electric motorcycle toy and built a “penny farthing” bicycle. You might not know the bike by that name, but when you see it in the video below, you’ll recognize it. These Victorian-era bikes used a single large wheel before chain drives on a bike became a thing.
Of course, the big part of this — literally and figuratively — is the giant front wheel. There’s a second video showing how it was built in layers using wood.
The donor toy was a Razor MX350 which is a toy dirt bike for young kids. The bike didn’t work at first, so there is another video about that repair and what’s inside of it.
Could you build a copy of this? Maybe, but it looks like a lot of work. In addition, it is a lot of different kinds of work. Electrical repair, woodworking, and bending metal, at least. If you can pull it off, our hat’s off to you.
Not the first hubless bike we’ve seen, though. The last time we saw something that looked like a Penny Farthing, it didn’t look as vintage as this one, nor was it hubless.
My mistake, I started reading this article thinking it was about someone putting a hub motor into a Penny Farthing.
I’m usually pretty meh on the whole helmets vs no helmets debate but for a bike where the failure mode is near instant face plant from 6-8 feet off the ground … I’d probably go for one of those full face dirt bike ones. Haha.
This is why the bike design we use now was first introduced by the name “safety bicycle.” Penny farthing bikes are widowmakers.
There were and are still in manufacture farthingpennies where the small steering wheel is in front, and the large wheel is in the back. They have so many advantages, the main one being a triangulated frame so the bike doesn’t caterpillar, and front brakes that are basically effective rather than being lethal. They’re harder to get on, though.
Ditto. Looks like fun, if I was at least 20 years younger, and definitely wearing a good helmet. Fun should not be deadly.
This needs to be in a circus with performers doing tricks in the wheel while it rides around.
…ideally while it is being ridden by a bear wearing a silly hat.
…and the wheel should be burning
I thought it less about chain drive, (or safety) and more about cobble stone roads where the greater the wheel diameter the better. Like carriage and wagon wheels. The comfort of big wheels and their ability to use poorly made or maintained roads drove the design. Plus I would guess avoiding the weight of better suspensions.
I want to see big hubless unicycle :)
I wonder if you could just mount an EUC on top of a giant hubless wheel and wire the motor backwards.
For some reason I assumed that the hubless wheel would be the driven one. I suppose I was think of this Verge motorcycle. https://www.vergemotorcycles.com/gl_en/