Way back in the 1960's, Alf was a terror. He ran the quarter mile in 9.5 seconds and went through the traps at over 150MPH. In 1968 he was the first Brit to cover the flying mile at 200MPH.
George is from the same era and has a number of records to his name. Both of these guys were pioneers in motorcycle racing. I would love to have one of these bikes.
You go Rollie! Funny how all the English speeds are given in Imperial units and the American one is given in metric. In case you are curious 249.1 KPH is equivalent to 154.8 MPH.
Thailand's Insane Motorbike Races - 9 Second 1/4 Mile with 150cc CB Media
This popped up on YouTube. It's great. A little too much narration, but it's still pretty cool. I remember when I was a kid 50 years ago top-fuel dragsters were making 7 second quarter miles, and that was with big monster machines. A 1969 Camaros and Mustangs with the big engines were making 13 second quarter miles and 100 MPH. 9 seconds is hauling *ss.
MURDER NOVA Throwsdown in TULSA - Clocks On! - 2020 Midwest Pro Mod Series Season Opener
When I was a kid I was pretty much car crazy but somewhere along the way my world view expanded and cars became just tools for going places. However, my inner child won't die and cars still occupy a sizable portion of my brain.
Drag Racing is kind of nuts. I remember that 50 years ago the holy grail was running the quarter mile in seven seconds and clocking 200 MPH. Sometime between now and then, they reduced the strip length to one-eighth of a mile. Now they reach the same top speed of 200 MPH, but it only takes them 4 seconds.
Drag Racing is a spectacle. I suspect one of the big attractions is the visceral sound effects. Not just what you hear, but the impact on your body. It's kind of like shooting guns that way.
When I was in high school, the Mustang something-er-other and the Camaro Z-28 were the kings of street drag racing, reaching 100 MPH in a quarter mile and doing it in 13 seconds. The Ford pickup truck in the video has had some work done to it, but not much. The four-wheel drive apparently lets it get off the line quicker than the rear-wheel drive cars, and drivers of some of those other cars may have been asleep at the wheel, but still. It's a flipping pickup truck, not a race car.
And the engine is like something out of Star Wars, or maybe Italy. All good pickup trucks, like mine, use large displacement, cast iron V8 engines. This Ford engine is tiny, aluminum, and turbocharged, and it doesn't have just one turbocharger, it has two! Ten years ago this was something wanna-be racers dreamed about, now it's the stock engine in a work-a-day pickup truck. The world is changing, and it's changing faster.
Having ten different gear ratios in a transmission sounds excessive to me, but I suppose there's a good reason for it. Maybe the gear guys are feeling pressure from the electric motor folks.
The current truck with the new, smaller engine and the aluminum body weighs 600 pounds less than the old iron monsters they were building just a couple years ago. (4,051 pounds vs. 4,685).
Stu got me started when he mentioned that Ms. Thompson had set a new land speed record on a BMW S1000RR at the Bonneville Salt Flats. This video is from The Texas Mile (Warning: Sound Track starts automatically), not Bonneville, but she breaks 200 MPH here as well. It doesn't look like much, it certainly doesn't look like 200 MPH, but then it's a little hard to judge since there isn't much in the way of background. But watch the tach: 14,000 RPM. Can that be right? Last time I looked production motorcycle engines were turning 6 or maybe 7 thousand RPM. 14,000 RPM is way out there. The Japanese used to build racing engines that turned that fast, but I have never heard of a production engine doing it.They cost around $15,000.
Notice the Buick powered dragster with the enormous straight 8 engine. I was only 12 when this film was made, and it was bicycles, not cars that I was using to get around. There was a time when drag racing was critically important to me. I remember having a spirited debate in high school about which car was better: the Mustang Mach 1 or the Camaro Z-28. They were both posting times of 13 seconds and a speed of 100 MPH in the quarter mile. I still like the sound of screaming engines. The internet is a strange and wonderful place.
