Dylan Phillips and the World’s Fastest Wheelbarrow

“Is it like, y'know, riding a bike?”

“Um, it’s more like pushing a wheelbarrow. Except the wheelbarrow is trying to kill you.”

Dylan Phillips is the third land-speed record holder I have been fortunate enough to speak with, following road-car velocity king Andy Wallace and sound-barrier breaker Andy Green. Dylan is different, though: he single-handedly built a certified machine for straight-line speed.

In a workshop hidden away in rural Pembrokeshire, the quietly spoken 38-year-old Welshman attached a 7bhp Honda SJ100 ‘Bali’ scooter engine to an unsuspecting Haemmerlin wheelbarrow. The result was a garden implement able to thunder along the RAF Elvington runway at a certified average of 52.58mph. Please observe a moment of silence for the world’s fastest wheelbarrow.

Photography: Huckleberry Mountain

Dylan Phillips and the world’s fastest wheelbarrow

“I didn’t expect this to blow up like it did,” Dylan admits. “There are so many things going on in the news, you just don’t expect messing about with a wheelbarrow to get any traction.”

What sparked the idea? “I’ve always had an interest in machinery, things that work, but it’s taken a long time to find that little niche,” he shrugs. “To almost feel comfortable enough in being uncool to just do this stuff.” For Top Gear readers, this is about as far from uncool as it gets.

“Like all the best and worst plans, it started in the pub. I had this idea of strapping a scooter engine onto a wheelbarrow and just sort of having a laugh with it. It hadn’t even crossed my mind there were world records for this sort of thing. After I built it, there was another late night pub discussion wondering if there was a Guinness World Record.”

To take part in an officially certified speed trial, the barrow required a rebuild to NORA 92 standards. That meant fitting a kill switch, applying paint marks to the fastenings so any loosening would be visible, and adding a hydraulic damper to the steering bars to prevent a potentially fatal tank-slapper – or perhaps a barrow-basher.

Handling and braking challenges

“It still does get a wobble on,” grimaces Dylan. “If you built a bike with this frame geometry it would be the worst looking bike in the world. You’d have a front wheel two feet out in front of the forks. So yeah, the steering damper helps a bit, but the issue is slowing down.” That is especially problematic because the go-kart wheels on either side of the scratch-built ‘trolley’, in which Dylan kneels, have no brakes. Only the powered front wheel has retained its scooter brake.

Dylan says braking is the principal weakness to solve for MkII. Steering needs work too, although it is nearly impossible because he has to keep his elbows tucked in like a ski jumper. At more than 50mph, the barrow also begins behaving like a wing and attempts to lift off. Weight distribution is another slightly precarious matter: the barrel mounted in the skids is not a fuel tank, but an old fire extinguisher filled with wet sand as stabilising ballast.

The next speed barrow will suspend its engine down there – “mid-engined, y’see” – and use a chain to drive the front wheel, while brakes will be fitted to all three wheels. Dylan is understandably pleased that this is not merely a racer disguised as a wheelbarrow. It is 100 per cent garden centre. “If you pulled the engine off and uncoupled the back you could use it on a building site.”

More home-built machines and a charity cause

His homebrew projects extend well beyond the barrow. Around the workshop sits a Mad Max-style motorcycle powered by the enormous engine from a 1952 cement mixer, another creation assembled using Chinese-bike parts recovered from a riverbed, and ‘Project Dear Oh Deere’ – a ride-on lawnmower combined with the 110bhp V-twin from a Honda Firestorm superbike.

It all serves a worthwhile purpose. Dylan’s monthly workshop open evenings collect funds for the DPJ Foundation, a mental-health charity supporting Wales’s agricultural community. Having funded and proven the concept himself, he now hopes sponsors will back the next build. A new wheelbarrow has already been supplied.

He will need it. Within days of meeting Dylan, news arrived from the United States that the target had moved. Iowan John Loghry reached 55mph in his own homemade motor barrow while collecting money for Vietnam veterans.

The Welsh answer is expected to produce a mighty 28bhp and be geared for more than 70mph. The transatlantic charity speed-barow contest is under way.