Mike Burrows video

I have mentioned Mike Burrows on the blog a few times before; I even mentioned him in one of my very first posts. He has designed many great recumbent bikes and trikes throughout his career, but I most admire the work he did on uprights like the Lotus bike for Chris Boardman and the first compact frame Giants in the 90s. I haven’t heard much about him lately, but I just saw a link on VeloVision to a video of Mr. Burrows showing off his bikes. Also, bottlemasher has some great photos of the Ratracer V.L.R., one of Burrows latest creations. The photostream is worth checking out. In particular I like the photos, like this one, which show Mr. Burrows piloting the Ratracer.

I would recommend Mike Burrow’s book “Bicycle Design”, published around 2000,to anyone interested in his designs. The book is pretty basic and it is definitely biased toward the author’s strong opinions about bike design, but I still think it is a pretty entertaining read. As a definitive book on the subject of bicycle design, it is definitely NOT a substitute for Whit and Wilson’s “Bicycling Science” or for Archibald Sharp’s classic book, but Mr. Burrow’s book is fun to look through if you are interested in his perspective. I believe his book is out of print at this point, but you can check your local library for a copy if you want to see fun illustrations, furry helmets, nicely shaped carbon frames, and plenty of monoblade forks.

Photo credit: bottlemasher on Flickr


Posted

in

by

Comments

8 responses to “Mike Burrows video”

  1. A F Avatar
    A F

    Does anybody know about this site ( http://www.earthlab.com ) ? I have seen other environmental sites with carbon calculators like yahoo and tree huggers, but I am wondering what the deal with earthlab.com is, is it credible? I saw they also published a list last month of the top ten greenest cities ( http://www.efficientenergy.org/Top-Ten-Green-Cities-in-the-United-States ). Does anyone know if this site is better than say WWF site? Fill me in

    I took their carbon foot print test and it was pretty interesting, but they said that I put out 4.5 tons of carbon while another test gave me like 15 tons? I think I trust earthlab.com’s test a little more (because my score is lower). Does anyone know about any other tests?

  2. 54 Avatar
    54

    Cool, Burrows’ work had always been nothing short of fantastic….

    Wonder what he is up to now? He designed a bike for Giant once, before the UCI ruling, didn’t he?

  3. Id Avatar
    Id

    Mike Burrows es Dios!

  4. James Avatar
    James

    54, I agree, Burrows work has always been fantastic. He designed several bikes for Giant, but the one you are probably thinking of is the mid nineties composite monocoque MCR. That was a beautiful frame, but the UCI didn’t go for it. At least the UCI did decide to allow compact road frames based on the diamond frame. The compact road bikes that are all over the market today can be traced back to Burrows time at Giant not all that long ago.

  5. Ron Avatar
    Ron

    Nice.. now we have a face for the enigmatic character of Burrows.

  6. bikesgonewild Avatar
    bikesgonewild

    …burrows ratracer ‘vlr’ is a great looking, well engineered ‘bent…if you look at all the various bikes on bottlemasher’s site, the ratracer looks to have the lowest center of gravity…

    …love to ride one some day…

  7. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    i have both books, mike’s and bike science, and i really like mikes better. mike’s book made me think and BS just made me wonder what the testing would show on new components.

    but that’s just me and it’s great that both books are out there for us.

    -mike-

  8. […] posted about Mike Burrows’ Ratracer VLR recumbent early last year. I’ve mentioned him on the blog a few times and have great respect for his work, […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *