Petrol head thread!!!

[billy rubin]

i'm paid up for the loring timing association races 1100 miles awy in maine for the beginning of september. if they cancel, i might have time to register for the east coast timing association races in arkansas the first week in october.

that's actually closer, but in the past has been much more crowded.

but dunno. no point in building a racebike unless there's a place to race it.

i also have a roadrace machine to build that will let me do stuff within a hundrd miles. all i have to do is put it together

[Icarus]

Billy, tell me that you are not going to put the engine in that long wheelbase bicycle with the odd ball frame.

[billy rubin]

lol

no thatz an old sturmey archer tandem bicycle i bought for ten shillings when i was about 15 years old.

but it has possibilities

[Icarus]

^ Friggin lunatic kid. His parents ought to beat him................well maybe not because he has involved himself in a creative effort. 

Well alright I was also a lunatic kid.  When I was about 17 I did not run away and join the circus. I did run away and join a carnival outfit that traveled all over the upper mid west.  The name of the outfit was Royal American Shows.  The carnies wintered in Tampa where I lived at the time.  I worked at the corn game.  That was one of the main hustles. It is a Bingo game with a big tent and a lot of glitz. The carnies called the bingo game the corn joint.  That's because the player uses corn kernals to cover the called boxes on his card.   Bingo was illegal in many locations but by calling it corn game they managed to get by with the scam...............

Getting to the point about lunatic kids, it happened as follows.  The outfit had a "motordrome", one of those large wooden cylinders in which crazy people rode motorcycles inside "the wall".  Vertical madness held in place by centrifugal forces.  It came to pass that one of the motor drome riders left the show and they needed another rider.  It was known around the camp that I was an experienced rider even at the age of 17.  Sure enough I was recruited to ride the wall.  Cool ! The pay was better and I thought myself indestructible as 17 year old males often do.  I had no problem with riding the wall, it was actually kinda fun. Not as good a thrill as sex.  I could ride motorcycles and had less skill at seducing young maidens.  Then my parent heard about my foolhardiness and put a stop to my burgeoning career as a daredevil. Back to the corn game I went.

After the season was over I went back to Tampa to finish high school and try to learn more about seduction techniques.  I never did get the hang of that skill.

Before the next year began I was contacted by another carnie outfit who needed a "globe rider".  The globe is a wire cage shaped in a global fashion.  The rider gets into the globe and zooms round and round and does the ultimate stunt by riding up and overhead.  Yep you can do that unless the bike craps out at an inopportune time.  I tried out in the globe and did very well but I decided that riding upside down was dumber than even I could  deal with.  I did not sign up with that carnie outfit because I had partially come to my senses, not entirely but at least enough to pass on the wonderful opportunity of being a super star dumb ass. ...........................

And here I am still able to walk and talk and make up lies.  In the case of the motor drome and the globe tryout, that is the honest truth, not one of my lies.  So when I say that some kid is a dumb ass, it is because I recognize my own history as a youthful dumb ass have some understanding. .

[billy rubin]

you actually rode a wall of death? i have never met anybody who ever did that

what was the machine? even now they all seem to be antiques

[Icarus]

The preferred bike for riding the wall was the ancient Indian scout. It had a leaf spring front suspension. It made a lot of noise and one of the drills for the rider was to temporarily cut the throttle while retarding the spark.  That would make loud exhaust pops which the crowd seemed to think was a failing engine, and more hazardous to the rider.   All of which was pure show biz.

The Globe bike was an ancient ring ding whose maker I do not recall.  Perhaps a CZ, Pugeot or, perish the thought, a Villiers engined machine.  I only rode the globe about two times in a try out session.  Easy enough when you get up to speed at the largest diameters but a bit tricky to get going from a stop at the bottom of the cage.

If you fell off the bike while on the wall you would slide around the wall until your velocity progressivly diminished until you fell to the bottom. In the cage, if you fell off, the wire bars would reduce you to hamburger.  Even as a dumb kid I took that into account and said ; no thanks.

[billy rubin]

ive never seen a wall but there was a one ring circuz that came through once with a cage.

two riders in it at a time.

in my opinion that iz hazardous

wont you tumble if you come off in the wall? i fell down at 115 mph once and i bounced three times

[billy rubin]

well ,the july races were cancelled, but the september event is on in ten days.

took the machine out to the airstrip to break in th erings



its been together since june but nowhere to run it competitively



also took out the daughter's 2007 ninja to re-familiarize the number two girl with the controls





its a quick little OHC 250. the older girl has the one mile record at 103, but i've raised teh gearing to see if we can beat the 107mph at the mile point five. last time they were bouncing off the rev limiter at 103. literally could not go any faster than that.

the man i want to beat ran his 1950 custom triumph to 139 out west. then he abandoned triumphs and now is perfecting this 1948 vincent:



he's got the vincent up to 136 so far but hasn't used 4th gear yet. should be a fast machine when he gets th ebugs worked out.

and my former competition for the fastest triumph 650 has his machine parked. he also built this really nice double that has only been out one time before the rider lost interest. thats a shame, because this could eat the harleys in the 1350 class:



there's a great story behind the double. i spotted it uncompleted on ebay for $700 with nine hours to go and called him up to tell him. he ended up buying it and then completely redoing all the critical engineering. if he'd get his rider in gear, this macghine could run 175-plus.

[Icarus]

Billy I do believe that the Vincents had advanced technology of the day but were over rated.  I routinely smoked a Vincent on a short road course with my AJS 500.  Later My NSU Super Max 250 defeated, more than once, a loud mouthed fat guy on a Black Shadow. My rider at the time was a much better pilot than the dumb ass on the Vincent.  In fact the NSU had much better handling and much better braking power than the Vincent.

As for the double.......Power output is good but aero drag is more influential.  Aero drag is a function of the square of velocity.  For example the square of 130 MPH in feet per second is about 190 feet per second square which is.......36,519..........ft/sec velocity at 175 MPH is 66,200 ...........about 1.8 time v^2 of 130... Can the double achieve that much more out put and will the tires be able to hold well enough to get there?   

Yeah I know that I am a naysayer but consider that I am a curmudgeanly old man.

I will be rooting for you and the daughter even though I think that you are both crazy for doing the LSR stuff. 

What the hell?  I think that Moto Cross is also crazy and even stupid. Boring too.  It is more a test of extreme physical endurance than bike superiority. I do respect the physical ability of the competitors but not their intellectual brilliance.  Trials riding is a whole other ball game.  I urge you to encourage your daughters to try that instead of LSR.  Trials exhibit finely tuned skill and not so much about brassy balls.

I apologize in advance for being such a critical old bastard....................Go for it , both of you. 

[billy rubin]

motocross and soccer are the two most strenuous physical sports that exist. in treadmill tests of motocross riders a number of years ago, the researchers found that riders were routinely exerting themselves well past normal pain thresholds. there's a reason they break down like cowboys at an early age. i'd love to learn trials but if i live long enough i still have hang gliding to  master first. i wanted to pick that up years ago but i don't have enough time left to do it all.

that vincent is a 48 1000cc unit. he started with nothing more than bare cases. obtained a transmission and top end from somewhere else. there's nothing else on the bike that came out of the factory-- it's all handmade in this guy's two-car garage in south california.




hard to tell what it will do. he's running nitromethane, which took his 650 triumph from 139 to 175mph. personally i don't care for super-fuel. it makes you go super fast but i like doing difficult things with limited resources instead.

on the double, the reason the triumph bonneville got that name was because of the 261mph triumph streamliner at the salt flats in the 1950s. with enough aero, a vintage double can do very well. but both he and i are more interested in the naked class, where all you are permitted is a motor and a frame. slower, but harder. i frankly don't know what the double will do. i saw it do 142 mph with no trouble at all the only time it was out, but then it inverted a timing cover seal and lost oil pressure. the mechanic didn't spot the twenty-minute fix and retired the bike from the event. it hasn't been back out. then i beat the 650 record held by his rider and the guy threw in the LSR towel. now the double-- and the 650-- are avante-garde decor in the rider's ride-in bar in new york. may never compete again.

we'll see what we can do. i have my machine lowered until my toes drag the ground changing gear, and the final drive is set up for 135. if it will pull that i'll drop a tooth on the rear sprocket and go for 140. if i do that it will have broken every speed record for every naked 650 british machine anywhere in the world, for the past 70 years, on gasoline, fuel, custom, production, vintage, modified, altered, all of them.

or if i blow it up again i'll be set way back, because i'm out of money now.

[Icarus]

Billy, although I am a bit of a naysayer, I still encourage you to follow your dream. I will be rooting for you when the next LSR event comes around.

Naysayer part:  I am skeptical that the use of nitro would propel a bike from 139 on gas to 175 on nitro.  That is because of the latent heat availability between the two fuels and the very large difference in drag factors due to velocity. 

As for the HRD builder, I salute him for his enthusiasm and obvious ability to build from scratch with ancient parts and his own real ingenuity.  I mean what the hell. There are enthusiasts for all sorts of oddball stuff....I am thinking of the cult that likes the Tribeta car from communist era east Germany.  The 2CV and other such stuff.   I confess that I could become interested in a 1960s era Saab coupe which was a three cylinder two stroker that actually worked quite well.  I had a borrowed one for a couple of weeks way back in the day.  It was a fun little car.

[billy rubin]

lol

id love a 2CV. and a traction avante as well.

and if we re really wishing for weird, i want a 1957 sugga. saw one in sweden many years back and fell in love with them.

the 175 is real, and it was 5he same machine he did 139.226 on with oxygenated fuel. lots of modifications for nitro, of course. he gets it running on methanol and then just opens a valve from the tank. no float in the carb, direct gravity feed to the manifold. scary stuff.

fascinating, really, feeding completely liquid fuel into the cylinderz. ill see if i can upload a video he made. my telephone wont copy the url

here.

[billy rubin]

drove 1089 miles to maine and got the girls racing.

the 19 year old did 103 in pure production 250, and got her name in the record book. the 23 year old runs tomorrow. both of them alternate between riding and doing college clssses online in the truck.

i ran three times. the first was a snoozer at 5500 and 103, then another slow run at 6500 and 113, then opened it up for the first time and clocked 130.

not too fast but it was without tuning and old plugs. tomorrow well see what we can move it up to.

and there were artiodactyls! driving out at sunset my older daughter said look theres a moose. i whipped a u turn and damnwd if there wasnt a big cow right off the side of the road

[billy rubin]

the girls did well









in my humble opinion, correct upbringing of one's children requires that you allow them a means to test themselves without fear of failure. in something like land speed racing, my kids get an opportunity to look for a measure of excellence in which they better themselvves without requiring them to beat someone else.

they're racing against themselves, not other people. sure, there are records to beat, and i personally focus on that. but in th ebig picture, what you're doing is establishing a personal best and then working on your own abilities to attemtpt to exceed it and stretch your envelope.

both my girls now have their names in the record books in different classes on this machine, and no matter what they choose to do in the future, that is an achievment that can't go away.

[Dark Lightning]

That's very cool, billy! I had a friend growing up who had a record for the most hub caps stolen. But a police record is nothing to be proud of.