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Hemmings Motor News Blog

Hemmings Motor News has been around since 1954. We're proud of our heritage, but we're also more than the Hemmings full of classifieds that your father subscribed to. Aside from new editorial content every month in Hemmings, we have three monthly magazines: Hemmings Muscle Machines, Hemmings Classic Car and Hemmings Sports and Exotic Car.

While our editors traverse the country to find the best content for those magazines, we find other oddities related to the old-car hobby that we really had no place for - until now. With this blog, we're giving you a behind-the-scenes look at what we see and what we do during the course of putting out some of the finest automotive magazines you'll ever read.

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Reinventing Charles Taylor's One-Wheeled Vehicle

Posted March 10, 2010 12:01 AM by dstrohl

When we last mentioned Charles Taylor's one-wheeled vehicle a while ago, we put out the call for engineers willing to tackle the restoration or re-creation of what he called his "rig." And it appears somebody has answered that call – Sidecar Willy (founder of the American National Unimotorcyclists Society) and John Owens.

We were alerted to a recent video of their construction, from scratch, of a one - wheeled vehicle built using Charles Taylor's ideas, and Sidecar Willy notes that it does run, but only at about 15 MPH. The two are currently working on a body for their rig.

Watch the Video

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Re: Reinventing Charles Taylor's One-Wheeled Vehicle

03/10/2010 4:06 AM

Nothing in this video rotated so much as just one degree, minute, or second of arc, not even the transporting trailers/vehicles. The skid pipes are a good idea, and maybe some bogie casters at the corners would help. Sic Dean Kamen on it, but it will be tricky to control the engine closely enough (time constant is too long.)

Great fantasy, though.

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Re: Reinventing Charles Taylor's One-Wheeled Vehicle

03/11/2010 2:02 AM

See http://www.me.berkeley.edu/one_wheel_vehicle/Movie.htm for a video of Taylor's machine.

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Re: Reinventing Charles Taylor's One-Wheeled Vehicle

03/11/2010 3:15 AM

Your video was definitely better than the other one. It's hard to tell for sure, but it looked as though the frame bottomed out on the road a few times. It was a pretty flat road, though. I don't see this as working where there are rocks, roots, potholes, or quick changes in grade. Despite all that, the idea is indeed intriguing, even though this vehicle is just plain too large for trail navigation. Excellent exercise in feedback control, though.

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Re: Reinventing Charles Taylor's One-Wheeled Vehicle

03/11/2010 4:54 AM

Are these guys serious? look at the acronym for the society's name!

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Re: Reinventing Charles Taylor's One-Wheeled Vehicle

03/11/2010 9:00 AM

the acronym seems fitting because it looks like that's whats going to be dragging on the ground in this thing!

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