LSR

[kevin]

LSR means land speed record.

it's a form of racing in which you take a machine and go as fast as you possibly can, in a straight line, racing against the best time achieved by somebody else on your type of machine. the current land speed record for naked 650 cc pushrod motorcycles is 125 miles per hour, set here in ohio at an old military airport. i'm going to try to go 126, on this:



currently it's missing a few parts, but this was once a 1965 triumph bonneville. i bought it yesterday from a man in hocking county, ohio. hello skunk. and this is all he had left after somebody stole the motor, wheels, seat, tank, and everything else from his garage when he wasn't looking.  so i'm looking for a rebuildable motor right now, and have a few leads. to make the machine go 126 means i have to modify the motor pretty extensively, because they were NOT made to go that fast, and tend to blow up.

stay tuned.

[Teaspoon Shallow]

When things are not engineered wholistically, unpredictable failures can occur.

I love these project but err on the side of caution.....and get a Turbo Hayabusa.  Most insane bike I have riden.   Not good on twisty hill climbs but so stable when hitting 350km/h + (218 miles).

[kevin]

for me, there's satisfaction in doing the engineering myself. hayabusas don't do much for me, as all that's necessary to make them go obscenely fast is to pay for the ride.

but with old machines, you have to do all the work in your head. where can you shave off weight, what camshaft lift will work, what do you gear the motor for, and so on. . .

and 120 is plenty fast for me. the last time i did over 115 on my bike, i did 105 on the seat of my pants. impressive blood loss, like getting bit by my dogs.

[kevin]

got a front wheel on eBay. won't have any front brakes, so i looked for a disc brake wheel so i could just throw the disc away on.



got some front forks, too. these went with the wheel. frame and engine have to come from the same manufacturer. didn't know whether they care about forks, but this will get me by the rules either way.



have a rear wheel coming from a chopper guy in indianapolis this friday. it's the old pre-1966 style. i wanted that one because i can put a smaller rear sprocket on it than i can the later ones. small rear sprocket means i can go faster.

already had a fibrglas seat kicking around. perfect fit:

[kevin]

got a motor.



1970 650 bonneville, two-carburetors. the next-to-last cylinder head before they switched to the short-rod 750 motor. triumph was doing air bench work by this time, and these heads flow well for stock. has a four-speed gear box instead of a five, but i can live with that.

have to do a complete rebuild, but this comes with all the parts already matching, so i don't have to source the correct rocker boxes, pushrod tubes, engine sprocket, shims, thrust washers, and so on

[kevin]

oil tank, kickstart lever, and gaskets for the rocker inspection caps.

plus minimalist motor mounts-- no provisions for footpegs, controls, or anything but the motor:

[Teaspoon Shallow]

Good grief.  Looks like a very fun project.
After replacing the transom on my boat recently I am done with projects, time to enjoy.

Good luck mate.

[kevin]

Man, I grew up near the sea.

There's nothing like that here. I sometimes wonder why I left it.

When its nearby it can dominate your life

[Teaspoon Shallow]

After 2 weeks of itching, I am over glass and polyester.  I love living near the ocean. I often dive twice a week. Something about emerging yourself in the brine that is so refreshing.

Building or rebuilding a toy is awesome as it makes using it so much more rewarding. 

Enjoy your passion. I have broken both hands and an orbital bone playing with bikes, all great fun till you hit the deck hard.  Another mater broke a femur, we saw him one day in hospital. He was due for release the following day.  He had a blood clot in his brain and died that night.  He left behind a wife and twin girls.  Silly accidents that changed a lot of us.

I still love my bikes but will not own another, I'm slowing down and I get the same buzz when we are visited by sharks. It odd but they are not as scary.

[kevin]

still love my bikes but will not own another, I'm slowing down and I get the same buzz when we are visited by sharks. It odd but they are not as scary.

that sounds similar to the what people from oklahoma say when i told them i lived on the san andreas fault: oh i could never live near a place where earthquakes occur, but the prairies with the highest incidence of tornadoes of anywhere in the world are just fine.



tank. modeled by my sarcastic number one daughter

all triumph 650 tanks from 1963 to 1970 interchange, so this came off a TR6 from somewhere in america. larger than the 1972 tank on my street 650, but won't interchange.

[kevin]

[kevin]

got the rear wheel from indianapolis. it had to be an old one, because i'm fitting the old 43-tooth rear sprocket that will let me run up to 128 without blowing up. they quit making these in 1970.



shawna and her daughter are equally sarcastic.

[kevin]

five-speed gearbox, with a skeptical starbuck holding the new main and layshafts



the original 1970 motor has a four-speed transmission. the problem with the four-speed is that if you shift at 7200, the rpms in the next gear drop well below the torque peak of the motor. the shift into third gear at 58 mph actually drops the rpms out of the power band that i'm planning for the machine.

this old five speed transmission came out of a newer motor (forty-five years old rather than fifty) and both reduces the rpm drop during all the shifts, and smooths over the hole that the four-speed has entering third gear. the extra transmission ratio means i can keep the power band narrow, which means i can keep it high, which means i can use longer-duration camshafts and carburetors that would otherwise be too large. the motor will have no power below 4000 rpm, and none to speak of below 5000, but i'm hoping i can spin it to closer to 8000, at which speed it will be a banshee.

this is the older of the five speeds, though, and it has a reputation for blowing apart under stress, which one did in my street bike once. i have some other bits coming from somewhere else that may help avoid a repeat.

changing the transmission from a four to a five speed is mostly just changing all the gears and associated shifting mechanisms. there's some minor machining involved, but nothing sophisticated.

[Kiahanie]

Looks like an engrossing project, Kevin. I like your modelling crew -they look like they're enjoying themselves. Do you have metal-machining tools, or will you outsource the machine work?

[kevin]

yo

where you been?

no, i'll outsource serious machine work at this point. there's a machinist here on the river who's done headwork for me in the past, and the cranjk balancing will be a fellow in colorado.

the gearbox internals can all be done with hand files. what needs to be modified is just the diameters of holes in the castings to let the larger five-speed gears slide back and forth without intereference.

cold here, with social evolution. boomtowns.

[Teaspoon Shallow]

I cannot see the last pic.

I am looking forward to seeing more progression of this project.

[kevin]

at this point i'm just planning the motor program and gathering components.

the current record was achieved with nothing more sophisticated than 10.5 to 1 compression, a mild race cam, 34mm flat slide carbs, 0.06-inch oversize intake valves, and serious attention to intake and exhaust tuning. he also raised the floors of his intake ports with epoxy. but no serious head work. he's also limited by his choice of a modern (1970s) frame and wheels, that restrict his gearing choices. i've specifically chosen an older frame and running gear to be more flexible.

there's power to be gained in this motor with more rpm, but the engines self-destruct in a few hours of running above 7000 rpm or above 65 peak horsepower.

the dilemma is that you can make a winning machine in two ways. first, by spinning it fast, and gearing it short, to use the top end to make more speed. that keeps torque down but the engine speed destroys the valve gear-- it's a pushrod motor designed in 1959, after all.

the second way is to keep the rpms down a bit, make more torque lower down, and then gear it tall to make the same high speed but at a lower rpm, using the increased midrange horsepower. the problem with that is that the old crankshafts blow apart above 65 horsepower or so, and i'd need about 75.

the solutions are expensive--  super-lightweight valves and springs (option1) or a billet crank (option2). headwork would add horsepower to the mix, but would be of limited value until i can specify to the porting service what rpm range i need the horsepower to come in at.



i'm probably going to develop the motor in steps-- cams, carbs, compression, and valves the first season, then a tougher crank and airflow the second season. i imagine i'll spend the first season limited by chassis and style inexperience, so the time and money i might spend on high end and expensive modifications would be better spent on making the old machine stable at 128 mph and figuring out ways to make my body disappear from the wind at that speed.

dunno. but it can be done. this fellow does close to 150 mph on this 60-year-old BSA 500cc single cylinder machine.

[Inertialmass]

Have I mentioned that my Dayton, Ohio brother-in-law is a cynic, a jokester and a transplant surgeon?

Whenever he spots a motorcyclist he points and shouts, "Spare parts!"

[Teaspoon Shallow]

LOL.  I was often called a temporary Aussie.

[none]

.

[kevin]

continuing the project.

the cylinder head has been shipped off to tennessee to be ported by one of the few remaining specialists in the marque. i told him i was looking for 130 mph, and he said he thought he could make the head flow well enough for that.we're looking for 70 horsepower, about a 45 percent increase over stock. he's going to raise the exhaust port floors with welding and then remove metal from the top to straighten it out. the conventional wisdom says otherwise-- raise the intake port floors and leave the exhausts alone. but in the 1970s he drag raced a norton at 146 mph, and i'm going to give him his head in this. he recommends 1 5/8 pipes (large), 36 mm carburetors (quite large), an exhaust length of 33 inches to catch the first sonic wave in the pipes, and an intake of 13.25 to do the same. the pipes are a bit short for the normal approach, but all this will depend on the cams.

camshaft and valves springs coming from california. expensive, because the collars are titanium, but the cam is a new design-- more peak horsepower with less lift and less duration. i don't understand it.

i've put a deposit down on a billet crank from florida. the steel crank, titanium collars, and possibly titanium valves will let the motor spin to 8500 rpm without destroying itself. i have to talk to the porting guy about the valves, because he has his own proven ideas already. 8500 rpm comes close to doubling the bearing loads on the motor, so a rev limiter is essential.

in the meantime, i've been stripping the motor and looking for problems. found some:

the motor suffered a seizure near the end of its life. the left hand cylinder is scored where it melted to the bore. it broke loose, and the owner took it apart but left the piston in place as "good enough." not a good idea.



he also loved silicone seal, and globbed so much on that he filled up the exhaust cam drill way with it and cut the oil flow to the exhaust camshaft in half:



none of this mattered though, because when he went to start it, the oil pump destroyed itself because he'd forgotten to install the little aluminum slider that takes the rotating cam drive and turns it into up and down:



not supposed to look like that:



it must have made an awful noise. at that point he must have given up and set it all aside, because the goop holding the timing cover on was still in place.

some people seriously should leave motor work to other people.

[kevin]

did i mention that he hammered on the timing nose of the crankshaft to split the cases, and then discovered that it wouldn't seal against oil pressure anymore?

he fixed it with a hand file. that by itself condemns the crankshaft, because the oil seal is all that holds oil pressure in against the connecting rod bearings. fixable, but i'm ditching the crank anyway. they're only good for about 60 horsepower, and i need more than that.

here's the state of the art. click on the picture to make it bigger:



one hundred and forty mph, on the salt at bonneville. i don't know quite how old this motor is, as i'm not familiar with the pre-1963 triumphs. the builder uses NOS cranks and (expensive) amal GP carburetors, as well as an unconventional magneto electrical system. he won't talk much about what's inside.

[kevin]

bars and foot controls, from italy





selecting and adjusting these are an important part of an LSR machine. above about 50 mph, most of the horsepower being generated is used to overcome drag. speed increases linearly, but drag increases with the square of the speed, because one's wind-shadow is in two dimensions. anything that you can use to position your body out of the wind will add speed to the machine.

there are classic solutions to overcoming drag in land speed racing:

rollie free at bonneville:



modern imposter:



leslie porterfield:

[kevin]

leslie porterfield, more seriously



sorry about the music

[kevin]

[Dexter]

Kevin's signature

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'WOW-What a Ride!'" ---yellow dog racing

ride hard Kevin

[kevin]

ride hard Kevin

that's what it's all about, dexter.

[kevin]

gotten slowed down by a few snafus.

first, the mid 1970's trident triple tree that i'm using to adapt a mid-1970's tiger disc brake front end to the 1964 bonneville frame was unacountably bent, and the crown nut can't fit into place without bending a very critical component of the steering. a replacement is on the way, but i can't work on the chassis until it gets here. i was planning on completing the chassis while other people had the motor:



next, the man working on my cylinder head is in florida, attending the daytona races for the next week or so.

http://www.daytonainternationalspeedway.com/Tickets-Events/Events/2015/Bike-Week/Bike-Week.aspx

that slows things down some, but one of the things he's doing is talking to people about titanium valves for the motor. he's not partial to them, as he doesn't like the shape of the valve head as much as he does the 6mm reduced-diameter kibblewhite valves:



that's okay by me, as titanium valves cost $150 each, as opposed to a stock triumph valve at about $20. they have longevity issues as well, because the titanium isn't as good a metal for valves as is austenitic steel. kibblewhite is currently state of the art, and the reduced valve stem diameter makes them very light anyway.

the machine shop i need to work with to square up the cylinders and crankcases is pretty busy right now. triumphs have a history of quality control problems in that the crankcase mouth sometimes isn't square with the axis of the crankshaft, leading  to wear on the cylinders and rod bearings. or int he case of a tuned motor, a blow up. i need to have the crankcases checked for flatness, the cylinders checked for parallelness, and then the bores enlarged to the minimum piston size i can run to make them straight. can't buy pistons until i know how big they need to be.



i'm holding off on the five-speed gearbox conversion for this season as it requires case machining and some careful end float modifications of the transmission layshaft which i don't know how to do yet. but i'll be tearing the motor down at the end of the season anyway, so i'll do it then.

have to talk to the owners of bates today about leathers. they take 8 weeks to make them, and that's all the time i have.  they have some innovative designs:

[kevin]

new clutch plates:



new gaskets:



new seals, tab washers, springs, headbolts, studs, washers, bearings, rivets, nuts, senders, grommets, covers, and so on:

[kevin]

ARD magneto





i was originally going to fit an electronic ignition from new zealand running two spark plugs per cylinder, but then i discovered this ARD for sale. these magnetos were popular with flattrack racers in the 1960s and 1970s because you could delete the battery and coils. they reduce the wiring harness to a single wire from the magneto to the kill switch. they run well at high rpm, but have no retard at start or idle, so if you're not careful they can just about break your leg when starting the motor.

they're very rare these days and don't change hands very often. i got lucky.