Bonneville 2006

I am back home from the salt flats and want to give a bit of information on what happened. Max has done a gigantic job - he built a completely new streamliner. "Black Lightning" got black paint and lost very much weight in the procedure, the steering system was rebuilt and a rear swingarm incorporated. On my first run I had to abort the ride as I had no free play for the helmet inside the canopy and the vibes from the engines were all directly transmitted into my brains - after two miles I had enough - I couldn´t see where I am going and my brainpain almost killed me. Don and me had problems with visibility so a bit of the cushion around the helmet was cut out to make it possible to clear the helmet inside the canopy. We couldn ´t get the engines to rev properly - thatswhy I only managed 188 mph as I idled through the traps in highgear. Max wanted to advance the ignition much further - when we did it I misunderstood him and advanced only a little bit. The engine still was not on full song so we lost time playing around with the jets. The engines were running too lean now as I had to find out when they started tightening up on one run and I just switched it off before more damage was done. All these vibes that were absent last year did much damage to the geartrain inside the primary - shaking it lose and breaking screws so much time was lost repairing this. The screen on canopy was giving viewing distortion so we left it out for the next runs, replaced it later with another and finally cut out a window for better view. Finally I talked to Max about the ignition setting and understood that I did it wrong so we gave it another try - this time I did not care for timing marks and advanced the thing much more than before - the engines now revving easily bejond the point of destruction - if allowed. Full power and no vibes anymore! As we thought we got it all together now we ran into gearbox problems - Don came back from a run and couldn´t change into high and had a serious misfire. We found the cause for the misfire - a broken coil was shortening out. Lenny had a go on the gearchange system which has worked faultlessly before and found a solenoid not working each and every time. As we had no sparepart here we had to make a decision:

as the bike leaves the line in low gear so effortless and fast (Rocky Robertson - the driver of Ack Attacks liner said he never saw a streamliner leaving the line so fast.......) we thought it might be possible to start in high gear. The gearbox was locked in high and Max advised me to "nail it" on my run.
I was never so ready to go real fast than on Thursday morning - this bike has more torque than will ever be needed, the handling is perfect now - this should be my run and give a good result but it was not to be.

I left the line in highgear as effortlessly as on my previous runs in low and thought they haven´t locked it in high gear. This thing is a giant monster tractor - it will pull 400 mph easily. I had it up to 3000 rpm within a mile, the clutch already almost completely locked up as it lost steam and the revs went up without more speed. I backed out, got back in only to find it revs up to 7500 without getting me faster so I aborted the run. When getting out of the liner I could smell the fried clutch and saw what caused it - one parashute was shot out - as my speed got higher it tried to slow me down and thus killed the clutch. As the new shute system worked flawlessly the whole week I have no idea what made it go off this time. (I was later told it went off the moment I accelerated from the starting line)
As we had no spare clutchplates we could not repair the bike for another run.

This week on the salt has not given the desired results but I got a very important view of Max´s bike: to me there is no question anymore about the Vincent liner - its got the handling and the power to break the existing record. If the gearbox selector gets sorted and the shute systems stay shut until needed this thing will do 350 ++++ mph - no question!!!!

We have several advantages on other liners:

Sam Wheeler runs out of steam above 360 with his tiny motor and can´t get proper tires anymore Ack Attack tried several times to better Dennis Mannings record - without success - their bike is too big. Although they have 900 hp and a 6 speed tranny they need to pushstart the thing - obviously not much torque so a very long track is needed.
Dennis liner is definitely the only one that could go faster than 360....

I think Max bike will be faster as we can get up to speed much quicker. The acceleration of the Lamby liner has to be seen to be believed. So if we top the actual record on a shorter track I doubt that there is another liner except Dennis´ who can counteract.
And still Max bike has the advantage of being the lowest and slimest liner out there with the least air resistance.

the more confident than ever Hartmut # V2 785

PS: Dennis Manning visited Max a few weeks before the BUB meet and saw under what circumstances he builds the liner - I am sure that this was key to Max and Patti winning the prize for " Most dedicated effort"
Now give us a bit support and we will show some good numbers next year - I promise....