Sunday 8 October 2017

I Normally Do Not Feature Race Motorbikes,

just the ones that You can ride on the roads,


 but this one by Tyler Malinky of Lowbrow caught My eye, the motorcycle is called Poison Ivy and this is it's history and record breaking run as told by Tyler, 'I had started to mock up this 1955 Triumph T110 as a street bike, a chopper, but then changed direction with the aim to race at the Bonneville Salt Flats at Speed Week in August of 2010. Poison Ivy was entered in the A-VG 750cc class. The A stands for Special Construction, which means a purpose built race bike, not a modified stock bike. The V stands for Vintage, which at Bonneville means 1955 and earlier. The G stands for gas, as I would be running gasoline as opposed to methanol, nitro, or any other fuel. The 750cc was my class displacement due to the fact that I had a bored out 650 c.c. Triumph, just 0.070” over stock bore which pushed me to 681 c.c., a disadvantage in the 750 class,

 Bonneville Speed Week takes place in mid-August and is an SCTA (Southern California Timing Association) event, and 2017 marks the 69th anniversary of the event. Our race crew is made up of friends and family from all over the country, as well as Canada and Australia. Another important part of the Lowbrow Land Speed Racing team are Alp Sungurtekin and Jalika Gaskin of Los Angeles, California. Alp is the builder, tuner and rider of the fastest pushrod 650cc motorcycle of all time, at 175.625mph on nitromethane, with his Crew Chief Jalika assisting his efforts. They made the trip out from LA with the T200 in tow, which is a partially streamlined 1950 Triumph 650cc motorcycle that Alp built in an attempt to exceed 200 mph on a vintage motorcycle, running on nitromethane',

 Tyler and Poison Ivy, 

 and this is it, I revved the bike to the sky and as I watched my small GPS I saw the speeds tick steadily over 120mph, up to 125 and stay there for almost two miles straight. This is where the howling like a wolf and overwhelming happiness come in. The lows that accompany frustration with under-performing machines was instantly replaced with joy and excitement; I had qualified for the record at 124.207mph, I was on my way. Only a slight .673 mph over the existing record! My back up run was almost a duplicate of the first, with an average of 124.980 mph, and a top speed at the 2-1/4 mark of 125.1888. The two way average of 124.593 mph, just a hair over 1 mph faster than the record. a big well done to Tyler for His record and sharing His triumph with us,


 and here are a couple of the 'exotic' bikes, 

You can expect to see at Bonneville salt flats in race week, the pictures were taken by Mikey Revolt,

would I like to go to Bonneville in race week? absolutely!


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