Video: One man's passion to build his own bike and go as fast as he possibly could

Experiments in Speed is a short documentary following British bicycle builder Tom Donhou.

He has long been an admirer of the great men of the salt flats in Utah in the US, pushing the boundaries of what speeds are achievable.

The inspiration to build a bike with the basic raw materials and using what was available came directly from what the guys back in the 1960s were doing; with very little funding but the desire to take themselves to the limit.

UK based Spindle Productions started filming with Donhou back in November 2012, documenting the basic assembly of the tubes that would eventually form the speed bike.

Donhou went with Columbus tubing, a steel that he uses to build bikes for his customers. The oversize nature of the tubes would hopefully provide the strength and stability needed for the high speeds the bike would endure.

January saw the team travel down to Royce on the south coast, a British cycle component company steeped in sporting history.

It was on the journey down with Donhou in the car that the team got to know a bit more about him, the story of him cycling across Asia and having a roadside camping epiphany to start his own bicycle business, plus his respect for the Bonneville pioneers.

With Royce on board to provide the 104 tooth chain ring, the project would be fully underway by the time it came to filming the building of the spoiler for the Ford Zephyr that Donhou would be drafting in.

On a cold February morning, the team met in a car park adjacent to the A47, the road that Donhou would make his first shakedown test. The road is an open dual carriageway, so he had to be constantly aware of traffic.

After the initial run the team took the bike to the back roads around Ringland, to test the stability at lower speeds and identify any kinks that would need to be ironed out.

With the kinks ironed out, a sharp paint job and a new set of ENVE carbon rims hand built by August Wheelworks, the bike was ready for its international debut at Bespoked in Bristol.

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With the press picking up the story and photographs of the bike being shared on blogs across the world, the pressure was on.
The team found a gap in the dismal spring weather and set the stage for the speed run at Bruntingthorpe proving ground, an old WWII airstrip. The rest, as they say, is history; 80mph.

Said Donhou: “We were there to go as fast as we could, I felt we’d done that. We were stoked.”

Hat tip for this one to Enda Smyth and Bruce Wardrop.

www.donhoubicycles.com

www.spindleproductions.co.uk