West Yorkshire pair build world’s fastest toilet
A motorised toilet built in West Yorkshire has flushed past competition landing a new land speed record.
The lavatory – which even has the ability to flush – was ridden on 18 May by Shaun Walker from Leeds, reaching 70.9mph (114 km/h) at Elvington Airfield near York.
The vehicle was designed and built by 69-year-old Trevor Duckworth from Brighouse, who has been building machines from his garden shed for over 50 years.
It was built over the winter period, in which a real toilet was put on top of a go-kart. Parts were also tweaked to make the vehicle fast enough to break the record.
Mr Duckworth told the Yorkshire Standard: “It feels fantastic to have done this. We built this with the express intention of beating the record and we went and did a little bit of testing a week before the event.
“In preparation we did quite a lot of building, tinkering, and playing with the engine to get a lot of power out of it. We knew we could do it and we even went quicker than we actually thought we would.”
Guinness World Records had the current record as 42.25mph (68 km/h) set in Italy in 2011.
In 2012, a stuntwoman from Canada named Jolene Van Vugt recorded a speed of 46mph (75km/h), although this appears not to have been verified.
Mr Duckworth has high hopes for his next ambition this coming August.
He said: “The next step is to radically tune the engines so we can go for a 100mph toilet.”
