The Motorized Monocycle is a vehicle design that’s been tossed around by nonconformist engineers since its inception in 1869, this is the first time that a company has been founded to produce and sell actual, functioning monocycles. And we love them.
The monocycles are made in the Netherlands, each one is capable of reaching a top speed of 25mph and is powered by a rather humble 31cc, 4-stroke 1 1/2-hp engine. It uses a centrifugal clutch on its inner wheel and has a rubber tire around the outer wheel, steering is accomplished by leaning the wheel left or right and the brake is essentially a clamp on the inner steel wheel.
Ben Branch has had his work featured on CNN, Popular Mechanics, the official Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with millions of readers around the world and hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
This short film shows what went into building a car engine back in the 1930s, including casting, forging, machining, assembly, and testing. It’s a remarkable look back at how it was done before the robots took over, the amount of hand work required is impressive – as is the somewhat casual nature of the safety…
To say that the Greeves Challenger, and all Greeves motorcycles, were ahead of their time is to significantly understate the remarkable foresight of Bert Greeves and his lightweight two-stroke off-road racing motorcycles. Bert developed the first examples of his scrambles and trials machines in 1952, almost 20 years before lightweight two-stroke motorcycles would rise to…
The Harley-Davidson Sportster Street Tracker The Harley-Davidson Sportster Street Tracker is by far the best American motorcycle that isn’t actually in production. Custom motorcycle garages like XTR Pepo make light work of turning a stock Sportster into a handsome, nimble, and fast street tracker – but the Harley-Davidson factory in Milwaukee has been very slow…
James Parker and RADD Inc. Suspension The Yamaha GTS 1000 was released in 1993 with unusual forkless front suspension designed by James Parker, a Stanford University trained Industrial Designer with an innate engineering ability – which he used to develop oftentimes unusual motorcycles. In 1971 when he ran a Hodaka dealership Parker created a 120…
This film is a little different to many that I’ve featured here on Silodrome in the past, there’s no commentary or sound of any kind, just 17 (and a bit) minutes of people sending their motorcycles up a hillside somewhere in the USA in the 1930s. The machines are mostly American V-twins from Harley-Davidson and…
Whenever I see a Maserati motorcycle at a show I have to go over for a closer look and chat to the owner, they’re a rare sight nowadays, and there are many who have no idea that motorcycles were ever built by the Italian company far more famous for their performance cars. Maserati Motorcycles – Fabbrica…
