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Vintage Fuel Drag Bikes

1M views 3K replies 270 participants last post by  JOHN HANSON 
#1 · (Edited)
This is a new thread I am starting dedicated to Nitro Fuel Drag Bikes. If you were involved with a Top Fuel or Junior Fuel Motorcycle team in the 50s, 60s, 70s and up to 1994 (25 years ago) we invite you to join in and share some of your memories. Or, if you didn't belong to a team but share our passion please join in too. There are other threads here on drag racing so let's keep this about "Nitro". My first fuel bike was an A/F Harley back in 1969. My last was the twin-engine Harley "Freight Train" that I retired in 1985. I will be sharing many fond and a few not so fond memories. This video was filmed in '83 and '84. The opening burnout was me and "The Freight Train" at the 1983 IHRA Spring Nationals in Bristol Tennesee. That was back when Top Fuel Motorcycles were occasionally invited to join in with the cars in a special T/F Motorcycle class. The rest of the video was filmed by my wife and is a little shakey at times but a treasure to me since it is the only film I have of my 21 year motorcycle drag racing career. For some of you it will be the first time you have seen a T/F Motorcycle started on rollers. I hope you enjoy.
 
#382 ·
Frank,
Are you on FaceBook? I think this topic would make a great page over there, and probably find more riders from the days of old. I thought about setting one up, but I think a veteran should instead, I'm just a fan wishing I was there.
 
#383 ·
Justin,

I am not on Facebook so I am not knowledgeable about it other than what I read. It sounds like something that should be done. Maybe Joe Smith can get something going. He is the computer whiz kid geezer. Or if he can't maybe you can.
 
#384 ·
Justin,

I am not on Facebook so I am not knowledgeable about it other than what I read. It sounds like something that should be done. Maybe Joe Smith can get something going. He is the computer whiz kid geezer. Or if he can't maybe you can.
You will notice I don't have anything on Facebook either other than posting a link to my Web Site and Forum at one time...I also posted a link to this site in it's beginning ...I've also at one time posted the link to this Site on a few other good Forums...

I don't have a lot of Faith in Facebook any longer...
 
#387 ·
Must be time for another picture of a twin-engined bike.
This one I photographed back in 1976 at Santa Pod in England.
The guy who raced it, Roger Forsythe, built a neat bike - and it is very much in the Boris Murray tradition.

View attachment 55497

Wow Keith, that is one clean Double...Looks like it's got Head hold down set up...very clean and well put together...
 
#389 · (Edited)
scottto93,
What a great picture from back in the late '50s-early '60s. He's riding it with one hand on the throttle and really tucked in. Thanks for posting.

Danny F

That's a blown Harley I have not seen before.

Keith,

That is also a double I have not seen before.

What a day this has been!
 
#390 ·
Really cool bike and photo. He must have been pretty short, he is tucked up on that bike tight but the bike looks big in comparison to him!
 
#391 · (Edited)
Joe,

What some of our readers do not know is the shimmy problems we had with our early bikes. This bike from the late '60s had very little rake and No steering shock absorbers. It would run in the 150s and wobble a little on the top end. Never bad enough to throw me off but enough to get my attention..
 
#392 ·
Joe,

What some of our readers do not know is the shimmy problems we had with our early bikes. This bike from the late '60s had very little rake and No steering shock absorbers. It would run in the 150s and wobble a little on the top end. Never bad enough to throw me off but enough to get my attention..
You're not kidding Frank, about all the early bikes used stock Rake and Trail and they would sometime go into a lock to lock wobble without warning...

I was just looking at that picture again and that's the old Double Trouble and it did use a Harley Transmission but I don't remember if it was jockey shift or not, jockey shift was used a lot in that period...
 
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#400 ·
This is what Max has on his site about that bike,

http://www.vincentstreamliner.com

The Magnesium Monster had been running so well that for the first time I was able to wander around the pits looking at other stuff. What really interested me was the double A fuel dragsters running the 392 cubic inch Chrysler Hemis. They were reporting horsepower readings of an astonishing 4000! You got it. That was when I began to wonder, "Would it be possible to build a motorcycle drag bike that would produce 1,000 horsepower, by using two of the front cylinders, to make a V twin blown Chrysler Hemi drag bike?" Wow. Talk about the ultimate. What would I call it? I was always a bit envious of others using up all the good names. i.e., Barn Job, Nero, Super Nero, Gunga Din, Mighty Mouse, Super Mouse, Double Trouble, The Brute, Turnip Eater, and others. I thought, "Let's see, I'll be using a quarter of the cylinders of the V8 Hemi, and it's sole purpose will be to reign supreme in the quarter mile......yeah! The "Quarter Hemi" was going to be it's handle. Now that I had the idea and the name, two major things out of the road, all that was left to do was to build it.

I bought a 392 Hemi engine, lobbed off the front portion of the two cylinder heads, (not a problem, my band saw was large enough to do the job). Now came the cylinder block, hmmm...this could present a problem. So checking around town in St. Joseph, Missouri, I stumbled upon a steel fab shop who said they could do the job. They said the only problem was that they were doing work on a sky scraper in Kansas City, and the saw was there. So I took off for Kansas City. I found the man I was supposed to talk to, and after telling him what I wanted, he stared at me a minute, then said, "You have to be nuts". Oh well. I have been called worse..
After conversing with Chet Wilson, an engine builder in Wichita, Kansas, as to what the Big Boys ran in those Chryslers, i.e. pistons, rods, and so on, I captured the following for the project. Arias Pistons with ***** Rings and buttons in the skirt, Mickey Thompson aluminum rods, Donovan 4 bolt main caps, Donovan rocker arms, 2 1/4" titanium intake valves, 2" exhaust valves, a special 990 roller cam ground by Sig Erson. I staggered one set of lobes, allowing the now V twin engine to fire like a motorcycle. Sig Erson push rods and Crower valve springs with aluminum retainers were also used. I modified a 53 ford distributor, also a Volkswagen oil pump, which pretty much finished off the engine package. The cylinders were "O" ringed. A plate was attached to smooth up the sawed off portion of the block. Tuff Block was poured into the water jackets space to keep the cast iron cylinder liners in place. The crank shaft was cut off and reground, (thanks to Chet Wilson) making the second main bearing journal the thrust bearing. The water jackets around the heads were removed. The rocker shafts and the Donavan rocker arms were modified to run in the open, using greased needle bearings.
The project came to a screeching halt as my shore duty assignment in St. Joseph, Missouri was over, and the Navy, in their infinite wisdom, felt that I was needed elsewhere. There was a war going on in Vietnam.
So I went to the Mekong Delta region in Vietnam for a year. This did not--I repeat, this did not do anything whatsoever to increase my go-fast learning curve. (However I did learn how to duck fast)
After Vietnam I was sent to Pearl Harbor for a tour on the U.S.S. Grapple. Luckily, the island had a fine drag strip, and the Quarter Hemi was finally finished, employing an aluminum frame, an eight inch M. and H slick, a 53 series GMC Roots blower, and a modified Harley clutch. It first debuted at the Hawaii International Car Show, where it won the "Best Engineered" trophy.
After the car show, the next weekend the Quarter Hemi was readied and transported to the Hawaii International Raceway Park. I was the rider, and the bike was awesome. It sounded exactly like the double A fuel dragsters, and why not? That's what it was. You couldn't tell when it was running that six of the 392 Chrysler cylinders were missing.
The engine always performed flawlessly, except for one blower manifold explosion during start up. The side of my Oldsmobile took the brunt of the explosion. She looked like Bonny and Clyde's car after their run-in with the law.
The drive line was the Achilles heel of the Quarter Hemi. The clutch and chains were always a problem. The Harley clutch was doubled in the friction plate area. The chains were increased from 50 to 60 chain. Boy. If only the equipment today had been available back then. Slider clutches, two speed Lynco transmissions. What a bike it would have been! The bike was brought back to the mainland after my five year stay in Hawaii. It had to be disassembled for boxing and shipping back. Unfortunately bits were lost in the shipping.
The finality of the Quarter Hemi story is rather strange. As you know, I live in Wichita, Kansas. My daughter Kim said she was talking to a friend one day about the Quarter Hemi her dad had run at the Hawaii Raceway Park. The guy told her he thought he knew where it was. She followed the lead and found the bike at a sports bar in a town called El Dorado, about 50 miles from Wichita, Kansas.
The Quarter Hemi and it's parts have been all over the world. It started in Missouri, made a couple of trips to the Far East with me in my Navy ships, was finished during a tour of duty in Pearl Harbor, was shipped to San Diego, taken to Wichita, then to Grove, Oklahoma, where I made a trade with a guy from Tulsa for a couple of Ducatis and a few bucks. I haven't a clue how it ended up in a sports bar practically in my back yard. Along with the 1970 pictures, I've included the pictures that Kim took of the bike in El Dorado in 2004.
Dave Matson had just gone 225 mph on his Vincent, and by doing so set a record. That gave me an insight which I really never thought of before. All of my racing endeavors had been devoted to drag racing, i.e., sprint racing, for those of you across the pond. Drag racing was a sport where one week you were on top, but the next someone else went faster, and your efforts were quickly forgotten. Records were broken on a weekly basis, and for those of us who did not have financial backing by corporate sponsors, it was becoming impossible to compete in a world class manner. I went back to the drawing board for my next project. The Quarter Hemi had been a real help in my bank of knowledge gathering as to fuel, supercharging, handling, and drive train components. You just had to have been there and done that to fully understand the physics involved. My go-fast learning curve was improving slowly but surely.
 
#401 ·
Joe,

That is one of the best pictures I have seen of you before you became famous.

Justin,

These last two days have been some of the most productive since the beginning of this thread. I have seen pictures that I have not seen in the almost 50 years I have been involved. How about that V-Twin Chrysler Hemi. Can you imagine the machine work it took. And the two Vincents he had before that bike.....and the twin engine streamliner he is racing presently. REALLY GOOD STUFF.

mojomick,

I believe that Triumph drag bike would sell quickly here for the $7000.00 US dollars asking price. If it had pedigree even more.

 
#402 ·
Joe,

That is one of the best pictures I have seen of you before you became famous.

Justin,

These last two days have been some of the most productive since the beginning of this thread. I have seen pictures that I have not seen in the almost 50 years I have been involved. How about that V-Twin Chrysler Hemi. Can you imagine the machine work it took. And the two Vincents he had before that bike.....and the twin engine streamliner he is racing presently. REALLY GOOD STUFF.

mojomick,

I believe that Triumph drag bike would sell quickly here for the $7000.00 US dollars asking price. If it had pedigree even more.
Got to agree with Frank about that picture of Joe. It either proves he had one hell of a strong right arm - or as I said earlier - plain mad.:)
Would like to have taken that picture myself
.

The sawn up V8 is just unreal, and shows what can happen when someone gets an idea in their head. The thought of carting the block across country to find someone with a big enough saw made me chuckle.
I think we in England just sit back in amazement at some of the things you guys got up to in America. It is always on a bigger scale - and don't even get me thinking about EJ Potter!

Mojomick: I now have to find out some more info about that bike for sale. Having just written a book about the first 20 years of the sport in Britain, I do not recognise it as a well known bike.
I used to enjoy the Blackbushe meets - especially as I could walk there at one time! Lousy traction, but good for smokey photos.
 
#403 ·
This is a bike I just bought (don't have it here yet), it was originally from out in my area (I am in Ohio), the bike came out of PA a while back. Story I got was owner died, bike was in pieces, and perhaps a family friend or family member put the bike back together. Anyone recognize it by chance?





Tyler
 
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#410 ·
Joe you just wouldnt believe some of the tracks we used to have in the UK .
NOW I KNOW THIS ISNT A FUEL BIKE BUT WILL SHOW YOU THE SORT OF PLACE WE RACED AT IN THE 60S/70S/80S.....

Oh and thats me riding when i was Younger and fitter...and it was raining...

Oh on a proper track the bike ran a High 10..
 
#413 ·
Careful Phil, you will be joining Joe on my list.
That track is just unreal, and must rank as one of a kind. Then again....:)

I used to think Brighton was a challenge, when the guys raced the kilometre, which is nearly 5/8 mile on a slippery crowned surface, and had to do a bit of a dog leg into the car park at the far end. Very spectacular to watch, but seeing Henk Vink at full chat on the kilo was very special. It probably prompted the organisers to shorten the course to 1/4 mile in light of the speeds he was hitting.
 
#416 ·
Hope I don't get busted for advertising, but I am very pleased to announce that my first book has just been published today. For the first time there is a book showcasing the first 20 years of the drag racing in Britain and Europe.

Drag Bike Racing in Britain - from the mid '60s to the mid '80s by Keith Lee is now available from the publishers Veloce and can be ordered from bookshops.

I have tried to make it an interesting read, with lots of great pictures, and it should also be available in America in the near future.

For more details, visit:
http://www.veloce.co.uk/shop/produc...rs&PHPSESSID=91a49cd4df578cf1757cadc4fe936b40

Glasses Smile Book Vision care Publication
 
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