Windcheetah
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Windcheetah or Speedy is a recumbent tricycle designed by Mike Burrows in 1981 and now manufactured by Bob Dixon's Advanced Vehicle Design (AVD Windcheetah Ltd).
It is a tadpole design (two wheels at the front, one at the rear) with a cruciform frame of aluminium tubes with cast bosses for mounting of wheels etc. The bike is assembled using glue rather than welding. It is steered by an unusual yoke arrangement, mounted on a Hooke's joint to allow the rider to maintain control while leaning into corners. Typically for a Burrows bike, all three wheels are cantilever suspended. The rear wheel is ETRTO 559 (26" nominal), the front are now ETRTO 406 (20" nominal). The very first models used ETRTO 451 front and ETRTO 630 rear wheels; subsequently changing to ETRTO 369 17" Moulton rims for the front and 541 (24" nominal) for the rear. Some one-off racing variants (and kit-built machines) reverted to the 451 size of front wheel in combination with a 622 (aka 700C) rear.
The Windcheetah has achieved near-legendary status as the spiritual genesis of the modern recumbent tricycle movement now embodied by companies such as Inspired Cycle Engineering and Greenspeed. It has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum, and examples exist in other museums of technology.
The Windcheetah's influence stems from its success in competition, particularly endurance events. Burrows won the European HPV Championship twice on his own (modified) Speedy, and the bike has set at least six endurance records, including the record for Land's End to John O'Groats set in 1997 on a fully faired Windcheetah specifically designed & constructed for the attempt. Andy Wikinson completed the 1386 km (861 mile) route in 41 hours 4 min 22 sec, an average speed of 33.7 km/h (21mph), nearly four hours inside the previous record despite the loss of an hour to failure of one of the special titanium axles. Peak speeds of well over 110 km/h (70mph) were achieved on some descents.
