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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.
 
#29 ·
This was my first dragster. Not much, huh. I was 6'1 and only weighed 150 lbs. It had a Triumph Cub front end with NO front brake. It used an Avon 4" slick. The fuel tank is the bullett looking piece where the headlight should be. It had an 83 inch Sportster engine. It only weighed a little over 200 lbs. This photo was taken by my mom in1968 right after I traded my street Sportster for it. I had no desire to move from street bikes to dragsters but my new friend Danny Johnson insisted on it. I towed it from my home in North Carolina to Capital Raceway in Maryland, Johnson's home track, to make my first runs on it so he could coach me and also peel me off the track if things didn't go right. It was VERY different to lay down on a race bike verses sitting up on it. It was a scary feeling. I don't know If I would have made that first run had it not been for Danny comforting me and assuring me it was no big deal. The fastest I had ever been in the quarter was 114 mph. My very first run on this gas burner was 121. I still have the trophy I won that day.

I raced it the rest of the '68 season on racing gas but was getting ready for the '69 season and switching to NITRO!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

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#294 ·
I'm hoping I don't come out as one of those 'internet tough guys', but I got to call Frank out on this:

This was my first dragster. Not much, huh. I was 6'1 and only weighed 150 lbs. It had a Triumph Cub front end with NO front brake. It used an Avon 4" slick. The fuel tank is the bullett looking piece where the headlight should be. It had an 83 inch Sportster engine. It only weighed a little over 200 lbs. (snip)
Switch to Nitro part two

As stated before about switching to nitro the only change to the motor was the carb. However, I was able to lose a few pounds in the transmission. On gasoline, I started off in second and shifted to third and fourth. Nitro increased the horsepower so much that I was able to take the second and third gears out of the trans and start off in fourth..or direct drive. It was a little tricky getting the slick broke loose. I had to stand on the starting line with hardly no body weight on the bike and rev the engine only slightly. When I got the last yellow (all racers got a full tree back then) I would pop the clutch and sit down at the exact same time. That allowed the slick to break loose and start smoking. That was before slipper clutches. Part three next.
Uh, there's no way you only weighed 150 pounds, unless you had your girlfriend holding up the seventy-five or more pounds of testicles that racing that bike called for!

Only got to page 2, but am going to go thru the rest of the thread; thanks for starting a good one!

-Bill
 
#31 ·
Great thread, I can't wait to see some of the pictures that this will bring out! One of my all time favorites is Pete Hill. You'll be hard pressed to find nicer people. I have some pics of his bike I shot at his annual Christmas party here
http://www.pbase.com/daron_gray/pete_hill_tf
I also uploaded a video of Pete cranking his T/F Knuckle at the party as well. Check it out here
 
#32 ·
scsporty,
Thanks for posting the Pete Hill photos and video. You are right Pete Hill is the nicest motorcycle drag racer I have ever known. I have known him for over 30 years and have never heard a curse word come out of his mouth. I have never heard him say anything bad about anybody. We raced each other in T/F back in the '70s-'80s. His blown Knucklehead was the loudest I raced. The sound on that video cannot capture how olud it really is.

I retired in '85 at age 41. Pete was a good ten years older and did not retire until age 60 or so. He still rides out to Bonneville every year on his Harley....by himself. I asked recently if he went last year. "No" he said. "I rode to California". Pete will be our special guest May 14-15 at the Piedmont Dragway Reunion. Jackie and the blown Knucklehead will be with him. I hope he lets me hear it again. For info www.superstockreunion.com
 
#33 ·
Mr Spittle....thank you sooo much for starting this thread and adding the many cool pictures and memories...I have been a fan of Drag Bikes since I was a kid back in the 60's...I'm also a history buff, so reading or hearing anything about old vintage Drag Bikes tickles me to death!!!

Maybe someday, our paths will cross and I will be lucky enough to meet you. and thank you personally for sharing all this with us here...It made my day finding this thread, and I will be checking it everyday to see what new treasures are posted...

Again...thank you, and please feel free to post as much as you want to!!!

Larry in MD
 
#35 ·
The switch to nitro Part One.

This was the Spring of '69 after converting my Sportster to nitro, once again with the help of Danny. He had just purchased a new S&S nitro carb for his dragster and sold his modified Harley Linkert carb. That was the only change I made to the gas burning engine. Same pistons, cams etc. Those were the good old days. This was not a burnout. It had enough horsepower on 65% nitro to smoke the Avon slick to half track and then haul ass. I will add some more info about this bike later.
 

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#36 ·
I recall running at the crappy little eighth-mile strip in Oxford Maine back in the early nineties where Pete Hill was the star of the show. His slick blacktracked from the starting-line to the finish-line. What I always remember about that knucklehead, besides having its own unique sound, was the huge diameter of the pushrods.
 
#37 · (Edited)
Here's a pretty good link for this kind of stuff, if you don't already know about it. It's on Joe Smith's webpage.

http://www.phpbbplanet.com/granddad...10983f7a17de5aa2e1bbe1&mforum=granddaddyjoesm

And another picture of the renegade bike that showed up for the booked in Harley TF show at a local track.
The history is a little sketchy, but he said he got it from Ike Shelton at Show & Go. I believe Show & Go got it from "Custom Fab & Other Shit" in Denton and they got it from Marion Owens. Not real sure on that though.
BTW the guy is about 6'6" tall so the bike is bigger than it looks.

Don't blame me for the thumb in the picture. I ran into a friend of mine at the drags that day that had his kids (10-14 years old) and a bunch of their buddies with him. I handed out disposable cameras to all of them and told them to take pictures of whatever they liked. I gathered the camera's up later and had the pictures developed (double prints) and gave one set of pictures back to my friend to give to the kids and kept one set for myself. They actually took some pretty good picture.

Larry T

 
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#38 ·
Thanks Larry T for the link to Granddaddy Joe Smith's web site. I have not learned too much about computers and need help doing anything but finding this site. Joe has REALLLLLLY impressed me with how he has took to computers. He will turn 80 this month and is sharp as a tack. He, Boris Murray and Leo Payne were my earliest T/F Motorcycle heros. I hope he joins in here or you can visit his site and read his stories.
 
#39 ·
Switch to Nitro part two

As stated before about switching to nitro the only change to the motor was the carb. However, I was able to lose a few pounds in the transmission. On gasoline, I started off in second and shifted to third and fourth. Nitro increased the horsepower so much that I was able to take the second and third gears out of the trans and start off in fourth..or direct drive. It was a little tricky getting the slick broke loose. I had to stand on the starting line with hardly no body weight on the bike and rev the engine only slightly. When I got the last yellow (all racers got a full tree back then) I would pop the clutch and sit down at the exact same time. That allowed the slick to break loose and start smoking. That was before slipper clutches. Part three next.
 

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#41 ·
Yeah, Mr. Spittle I'm aware of Mr. Prime, but I've never met him. A mechanic I used to work with, who was a little older than me, claimed to have helped him syncronize the two engines on his "double". My late buddy (the mechanic) was a pretty heavy alcoholic by this point, so I didn't put a lot of stock in most things said, although I'm not saying he didn't work on it. Rhode Island is such a small state that it's normal to know just about everyone who has the same interests, it's just that I was a little younger than those guys. This leads me to a question I've been wanting to ask for a while: what was the usual method of indexing the two motors together? They didn't fire simultaneously did they; I always figured they were as evenly spaced as possible. Oh yeah, the Motorcycle Warehouse (Framingham MA.) had a nitro shovel in the eighties and I think Dick Prime may have been the pilot, but I'm not sure. This is a great thread btw.
Jerry
 
#42 ·
This is a fascinating thread.
I dig old drag bikes.....alot!

(this may be a bit too new for this thread)...but I had a friend that was killed drag racing a Nitro Sportster named Bruce Lauer, from FonDuLac, Wi. (early 90's) Bruce owned a couple of grocery stores, and also had a small bike shop he had just started. He also was a long time member of the Masters M/C. He was a super super nice man. He was a goldmine to helping me learn to make my knuckle run better.
Anyone know of him??

Also, I had a friend I met out here, named Stan Deshong.
Stan was originally from Vallejo, Ca. and had been a long time drag & Bonneville racer.
He was a fascinating man, who, sadly has passed this last year.


You can read his story here... http://www.my68flh.com/2010/01/28/iron-man-stan-dishong/
 
#45 · (Edited)
Thank you VERY much for this post. It is not often I get the pleasure of reading about a motorcycle racer I have not read about. I had heard his name before but did not know how enormous an impact he had in the motorcycle community.

I did not know Bruce Lauer and am very sorry to hear about your friend's death.
 
#44 ·
Both of those Dishong drag machines were pretty sweet. How wild is that overhead-cam Pan motor? Does anyone remember the Panhead dragbike that Dick O'brien built; I think it was in an old issue of Hot Bike. The interesting thing about it was that it didn't have an oil-pump mounted on the engine, but instead used the transmission as a pump.
Jerry
 
#46 ·
I Love This Thread, Frank Do You Remember A Good Friend Of Mine , Marlow Billings? He Raced Out Of Detroit Harley Davidson In The Late 60s On Gas Ironheads , Then Nitro, Then Went To Nitro Blown Kaws For A Few Years In The Mid To Late 70s. He Has A Ton Of Pix From The Good Ole Days With A Lot Of The Same People Mentioned Here, Im Gonna See If I Can Figure Out How To Get Some And Scan Em To Help This Thread Go..
 
#50 ·
Frank, great pics & story! I wonder about your 60's dragbike, did it get a yellow pearl paint later on? That nacalle cover looks familiar...

The XLCH looks really nice too! I love the 59-65 CH's, however your old bike is a 60 not a 62. Unless it's a 62 with a 60 tank.
 
#52 ·
This brought back some memories. When I worked at AEE Choppers we sponsored Leo Payne and his Turnip Eater for a year or so. I had the pleasure of seeing him and Mel Disharoon run that thing up and down the street in front of our shop. Even better I got to stand beside that fire breathing nitro burning monster when it was chained down to our dyno running full throttle. Jesus was that hairy! Leo was sitting on it and looked like he was having a lot of fun. I thought it was pretty much a grenade with the pin pulled. Great stuff. Saw his bike a few years ago in the traveling exhibit of the (I think) American Motorcycle Museum. bike looked the same as it was when he was with us except he was missing the AEE Choppers name on the fairing.
 
#54 · (Edited)
twistedtee,
That was a good question about the timing of the two Sportster engines in "The Freight Train". When I bought it from Elmer he included his 10 years experience in racing twin engine Harleys. He had tried everything. He said it ran a little better times if the front engine was timed 2 degree ahead of the rear engine. That's the way I ran it the 2 years I raced it.


choptop37,
I knew of Marlow Billings but did not know him.


epinut,
I do not know what happened to the dragster or the XLCH after selling them but sure wish I did. The XLCH must have had a '60 tank on it because it was titled a '62.


takehikes,
Leo Payne was probably the best early Harley nitro racer. He developed the S&S fuel carb. I have a good story to tell later about the first time I saw him run. It was the first time I had seen a motorcycle on nitro. Mel Disharoon was at the Bowling Green Reunion a few years ago. I will post some info about that reunion later. Many of the names mentioned in this thread were there. Man, I got a lot of stuff to post!
 
#59 ·
twistedtee,

epinut,
I do not know what happened to the dragster or the XLCH after selling them but sure wish I did. The XLCH must have had a '60 tank on it because it was titled a '62.
Here's a pic of the bike that yours made me think of. The CH looks like it had a little mixed parts, 63 & up headlight, 64 & up lower tree cover... Most of these bikes didn't stay unaltered for very long...

 
#55 · (Edited)
The switch to nitro part three.

One thing I have not talked about is how dangerous it was cranking a bike on nitro. You could not crank it with a kick starter of course and remote starters were years away. You had two choices. Pull it down track to crank or use rollers. Rollers were less dangerous. You have seen how it is done with rollers on the video I posted. Danny told me over and over that cranking it was more dangerous, as far as an explosion, than racing it. "The compression chamber MUST be clean of ANY nitro when you let the clutch out to start it or it will blow up". He had learned the hard way and was trying to save me some grief. I took his advise seriously and never had any problems starting. Oh, by the way, have I told I had met this pretty little girl. Before that, all I had been interested in was hot cars and hot bikes. Now there was a girl thrown in the mix! But she loved all the things I loved doing. It wasn't long before I was thinkin' I want to marry her. I am not going to get mushy on you but want to prepare you a change in my life and a temporary change in my Fuel Bike career.
 

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