Bicycle Design [Paperback]

Mike Burrows (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2000

Mike Burrows is a legend, and this is the masterwork from the world's most famous and irreverent bicycle designer and inventor. Bicycle Design is the essential handbook if you want to know how to go faster, if you want the secrets of great bike design, or if you simply love cycle technology.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mike Burrows is an engineer who has designed bicycles for Giant, the world's biggest bicycle manufacturer. He pioneered the carbon fibre monocoque racing bike, as ridden by Chris Boardman to Olympic Gold in 1992, and the compact road bike, used by the ONCE professional cycle racing team. For many years he has also designed, built and raced recumbents. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Alpenbooks (December 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0966979524
• ISBN-13: 978-0966979527
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #535,551 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perspectives of an innovated designer, January 17, 2003

By 

Kevin L. Kirk (Corrales, NM United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bicycle Design (Paperback)

Mike Burrows has been involved in innovative bicycle design for many years. This book reflects his interests in a diversity of human powered land vehicles, including road bikes, mountain bikes, city bikes, recumbents and tricycles.

The book covers some of the major problems of bicycle design, including aerodynamics, rolling resistance, and the strength and stiffness of materials used to make bike frames. The book is not a comprehensive, evenhanded guide to all of the issues involved. Instead, it gives the fresh perspective of an iconoclastic designer.

Burrows likes (for specific uses) disc wheels, monobladed "forks" (like Cannondale's Lefty shock), recumbents, non-standard frame geometry, disc brakes, hub brakes and composite construction. He refers to tires as "annular pneumatic suspension". He dislikes bogus "aerodynamic" frame tubes, bladed carbon wheels, shaft drives, belt drives, and the stifling design rules imposed by international bicycle racing organizations.

The book does not include rigorous mathematical analyses of the engineering problems involved; to get that perspective, see "Bicycling Science" by Whitt and Wilson. Burrows has the perspective of an inventor. The writing has a humorous tone and the diagrams are clear and amusing. I'd recommend the book to anyone who is interested in the technical aspects of human powered vehicles.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Okay but not great, April 10, 2006

By 

Barry Gardner (Wheaton, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bicycle Design (Paperback)

Mike Burrows is or was a designer for the Chinese bike mfr, Giant. He's a Brit and the book is replete with his understated and self-deprecating British humor, which I think some reviewers misunderstood. Other reviewers also seem put off by the lack of quantitative data in the book, in spite of Mike's title as an "engineer." However, the title of "engineer" in Britain has the connotation of a mechanical tinker, not just the math whiz designers that we turn out in the States. Mike Burrows rose to his current position from experience as a mechanical tinker, not through mastering calculus, and there's nothing wrong with that.

I was disappointed with the book, however, because it had the potential to be so much more. Mike obviously knows a lot, gives us his opinions but fails to present the basis for them. It's not terribly helpful, for example, for Mike to show a picture of a bicycle, pronounce it bad, then fail to give his rationale. Perhaps he feels the flaws to be evident from a simple picture but they're not.

It feels more like a coffee-table book than a serious bike book--thick glossy paper stock, sixteen color pages in the middle, etc. Graphically, it's attractive, even if many of the illustrations are cartoonish.

About the only sections where I found new information was when he discussed hub gears and suspensions.

I think it would be fairer if the book were entitled "Mike Burrows' opinions about bike design" than "Bicycle Design." Readers interested in quant stuff should get "Bicycle Science" by Wilson. Readers interested in building their own machine should get "Atomic Zombie's Bicycle Builder's Bonanza" by Graham and McGowan.

I read the book cover to cover in two sittings over three hours. I'll probably donate it to my local library. I would have been pleased to read it there, probably would have been okay with paying about $12.00 for it, but was disappointed that I spent $27.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Valuable Work, June 30, 2004

By 

Leopold Bloom (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bicycle Design (Paperback)

Burrows' statement about his lack of knowledge of algebra is probably tongue-in-cheek. His original occupation was designer of packaging machinery, which I would imagine requires an engineering degree. More importantly, Burrows is an intuitive designer; one need only look at the Windcheetah recumbent tricycle to see a design that was unprecedented at the time, yet both useful and beautiful. Burrows brought radical innovation to the world of racing bicycle design, and is a voice of sanity in the recumbent world, a field with more than its share of crackpots and ignoramuses.

Burrows brings a unique perspective to several areas. Discussing the famous drawing of a bicycle by Da Vinci, he notes that it is not by Da Vinci and does not depict a bicycle, proposing that it is not an elevation view of a bicycle-like structure, but a plan view of something else. Burrows also proposes a different theory for the bicycle's origin. As an engineer, he knows that cutting a four-wheel cart in half to create two two-wheeled conveyances won't work - any engineer would know that the resulting machines would simply fall over. Instead, Burrows theorizes that a second, in-line wheel was added to an ordinary wheelbarrow, allowing a laborer such as a woodcutter to guide it through the narrow paths of a forest while carrying a larger load than an ordinary wheelbarrow is capable of. Burrows provides an example of an old drawing of such a machine. It is insights like these that demonstrate Burrows' ability to reexamine established opinions, and make him so delightful to read.

If you are looking for hard engineering information, consult Whitt and Wilson, or indeed Archibald Sharp, to whom Burrows refers repeatedly. This book is more an overview for the lay reader rather than the professional designer. That being said, Burrows' explanations of why certain ideas won't work is clear and accessible, and wouldn't cause any harm if consulted by engineers long on theory but short on common sense.