On October 15, 1997 I went with Vance Breeze of Santa Maria Harley-Davidson and Roger Chatelet of Ram Jett retainer to the famed Bonneville Salt Flats at Wendover, Utah to partake in the world speed finals.  Vance holds records in a few classes for fastest motorcycle, as well as my personal favorite, being the man who has gone the closest to setting a record exceeding 200 MPH without actually exceeding 200 MPH (199.954 MPH).  I had never been to Bonneville and only knew about it what I'd seen on TV, and that there was a Pontiac of the same name.  I had the notion that it was sort of like riding on a very long, straight, flat freeway.  I couldn't have been more wrong.  It's much more like riding at ridiculous speed down a sand wash that has been grooved and torn up by dune buggies.  On two wheels, this is downright frightening.

We were running what is, to my knowledge, the first nitromethane burning electronically fuel injected motorcycle in existence.  This was done by adding two extra injectors to a standard WhiTek Engine Control System, and swapping the fuel pump and pressure regulator for bigger ones with seals made to stand up to nitro and alcohol.  The WhiTek ECS is versatile enough to control the modified system and only two hours were spent on a dyno, tuning.  We'd have spent more time, but this project was done on an extremely short schedule.  We started the engine for the first time and tuned it on Monday night, spent Tuesday enroute to Utah, and raced on Wednesday.

Well, we didn't set a new record.  But we broke the old one.  Vance spent the first run feeling out the track and the bike that he hadn't ridden for a few years.  On the first run, he clocked about one MPH below the existing record.  A new record looked like a piece of cake to me, at that point.  The second run went 3.686 MPH above the existing record.  That's when I learned that one must repeat the run a second time to set a new record.  Breaking it the first time is called "qualifying", as in "you qualify to attempt to set a new record."  The reason we didn't go on to set a new record is that at this point we had no compression in the front cylinder and were missing fourth gear from the transmission.  Vance had ridden 173.454 MPH in third gear.  We don't know how Vance knew not to shift into fourth gear, since he had finished both previous runs in fourth gear.  It is probably some sort of second sight that comes from having crashed at very high speed a few times before.

Having built the engine control system, I naturally think that detonation was the culprit responsible for losing the front cylinder. Having assembled the engine, Roger naturally thinks that it was lost due to over scavenging the crankcase, resulting in inadequate oil to the front cylinder (this is the third time that this engine has lost the front cylinder). Vance has more sense than to speculate. Having not yet torn down the engine and transmission to inspect the damage, we really don't have any idea what caused the failures.

The motorcycle Vance was riding is one that he built from a crashed Sportster.  It runs in the A-PF class, which means it has a custom frame, is not streamlined (or even partially streamlined, which is what the rule book calls a fairing), has a pushrod engine, and burns fuel (fuel being defined in the rule book as anything other than gasoline).  The bike has a custom made rear end that incorporates the rear suspension via a toggle linkage in the center of the lengthened and strengthened swing arm.  The handlebars are narrowed to allow a tucked-in riding position, and there is a dimple in the gas tank for the chin of his helmet to fit into.  The EVO Sportster engine displaces 78 cubic inches, built when the limit for its class was 1300 CCs (the class limit has since been changed to 1350 CCs).  It has extremely high compression and a high lift cam with a relatively short duration.  There is an external electric sump pump to keep the crankcase well scavenged (seen in the photo in front of the shock absorber).  The stock scavenge pump is dedicated to external oil return lines from the top end.  The special 70-weight nitro oil is stored in a custom-made oil tank that sits inside the seat ducktail (or rear fender, same thing).  There is no charging system.  The electronic fuel injection and ignition run off of two small batteries that are located behind the seat, in front of the oil bag, used in a total loss mode.  The engine starts easily using its own stock electric starter motor and an external 24-volt battery.  Thanks to the EFI, it idles smoothly and "carburetes" very well, giving Vance the control he needed to pick his way through the first mile of chewed up salt, before he could really start accelerating.

We took the bike to Kirby's Motorcycles and Machining in Grover Beach, CA for dyno tuning.  We didn't have time to do much tuning, but Vance was happy with 137 horsepower at 66% nitro.  Nitromethane is basically rocket fuel.  It contains its own oxidizer, and so it makes power based on how much nitro you can force into the combustion chamber rather than how much air your engine is capable of pumping.  The only drawback to using more nitro is that your engine will either melt or explode, with the explode event occurring more often than the melt event.  To tone the nitro down, it is mixed with alcohol.  Alcohol has the benefit of having a very high latent heat of vaporization, which means that it cools the engine a bunch.  66% nitro means that one is burning a mixture of 66% nitro and 34% alcohol by volume.

Bonneville is a lot of fun, at least if you enjoy seeing machinery that you would never imagine in a million years.  I saw a streamliner motorcycle with an alcohol burning custom made 3000 cc V-4 engine.  I saw a streamliner car with a turbocharged three-cylinder two-stroke snowmobile engine with an automatic transmission.  I saw a car with four V-8s in a row, and a truck (Semi tractor) with two giant turbocharged V-8 diesels mounted behind the cab.  Bonneville is the home of radical innovation and hi-tech development that is done not by government agencies and giant corporations, but by almost-normal people operating on limited budgets.  We plan on returning next year, both to set a new record and because I have become addicted to the smell of nitromethane.  Hope to see you there.