147mph.

Crikey.

Sauce.

I often wonder at the decision for guy martin using a truck as a tow…

What has been seen cannot be unseen. I don’t care what records you’ve set on it that’s no looker! Although in fairness that’s a stonking record.

What’s with all the suspension? Looks pretty flat.

Love the brakes.
🙂

I believe the surface is pretty rough.

17ers for 2017 then?

At 147mph the first divot would send you sky ward with no suspension.

At 100mph plus I don’t imagine pretty flat is actually all that flat.

Wins Strava.

Because at 147mph I’d some small bump are going to seam pretty big

Never seen a brake on a chainring before. I guess it’s ‘fixed’ and pretty tricky to slow down.

What’s with all the suspension? Looks pretty flat

I guess at 147mph even undulations become big impacts, same way a road bike manages without any suspension at <30mph (or <70 in the alps), but motorbikes need it at 70-200mph.

[edit, beaten too that point]

Would that disk brake be more or less powerful, I can’t figure it out, chainring spins slower which implies less energy?

RST and KHS its 1996 all over again.

I didn’t know range rovers could go that fast.

I didn’t know range rovers could go that fast.

Assuming it’s the blown 5 litre V8 petrol SVR RR Sport, it’s good for 160+ on a road. What it can do on a salt flat is another question.

cyclistm – Member
Never seen a brake on a chainring before. I guess it’s ‘fixed’ and pretty tricky to slow down

I wonder if that chain ring is bloody heavy to act in part as a fly wheel?

UCI officials would give a time penalty for drafting a team car

Towed up to 90mph!

What is most impresses me about this is that it is done on a relatively bumpy salt flat. Surely even higher speeds would be possible on a smooth runway, could run lower rolling resistance tyres etc.

They’d need to use something pretty long. They used 4 miles for this record and for comparison, Heathrow is around 2.5 miles

Personally I think it’s cheating unless pedalled from a standing start. None of this getting towed to a certain speed.
Regardless of what the actual rules are.

Tom KP

I agree castest speed on a bike yes

Fastest cyclist… no

They’d need to use something pretty long. They used 4 miles for this record and for comparison, Heathrow is around 2.5 miles

Yeah the Kennedy space centre runway and VW’s Ehra-Lessien track are both over 4 miles long but would most likely be prohibitively expensive to hire for a day.

Would it even be possible to start from a standstill with that truly massive gear? Two 60T chainrings and what looks like two teeny (10T?) sprockets?

To much cheating going on there for me. Getting a tow, drafting etc…

from wikipedia;

Bruce Bursford 1996
334.6 km/h (207.9 mph)

Pedaling on a bicycle treadmill (rollers) after being “towed” to 100 mph, on a custom made £1,000,000 bicycle

207mph on rollers? Did he take off?

for those worried that a tow is cheating all the categories are covered here although most of the non-assist ones use faired recumbents;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_records

Bursford’s bike:

Re Bursford’s bike pic above why does it need to be so ‘aero’ when he’s on rollers and not moving through the air?

Have I missed something, or was the bike originally made for a different purpose?

What’s the fastest speed cycling “properly”, I wonder?
I.e. from a standing start, nothing to block the air, all self-propelled, on flat (not downhill).
I think that would be a proper achievement if you were to set a new WR there.

Not on a recumbent bike either.

A million quids!? Fool.

More details/photos here.

Are there any technical regulations for the pacing vehicle? One could design a complex fairing that created tailwind around the bike, such that the vehicle towed the bike along. In which case, the record would be mainly about vehicle design. I imagine a rule along the lines of “daylight between the rear of the vehicle and the front of the bike” might well exist. But careful aerodynamic design might still result in a useful forward flow around the bike.