Bonneville

I was hanging out in some pub with a line of motorcycles parked outside drinking suds and telling lies. (That is, "we" were drinking suds and telling lies, not the line of motorcycles!) As often occurs on such occasions, the topic of conversation turned to the fastest one had ever ridden a bike. Plenty had done the ton (100 mph or more accurately 100 kmph) and numbers such as 120, 140, and even a 150 or 160 were being thrown out by the slightly inebriated crowd.

When it became my turn I said “226.395 mph.” The conversation stopped. Maybe it was the three decimal places. Maybe it was just that everyone was preparing to shout “bull shit!” But I stood my ground. “Hey,” I stated, “I’ve got the slip from the ‘Southern California Timing Association’ to prove it.” You see, they are the official timers at the Bonneville Salt Flats. Well, you didn’t think I went that fast on some two-lane highway, did you?

Soon the soddened crowd was coaxing the story out of me and buying me more beer to loosen my tongue. Now this may just be “bull shit” or the musings of a fevered mind who had a little too much “you know what” back in the sixties, but I swear this is exactly how it happened. Let me provide a little background to my personal tale and describe those early seventies adventure when I was too young to know any better and ready for any adventure, no matter how fast it meant I had to travel.

The Bonneville Salt Flats, the dry lake bed to end all dry lake beds, is a flat (very, very flat) hard surface that mother nature seems to have prepared just for us speed demons to practice our craft. Ever since 1955 when Jahn Allen rode his 650cc Triumph to 192 mph at Bonnie, beating the record set earlier that year by Russell Wright riding a Vincent-HRD 184 mph (or some speed in kilometers per hour) at Christchurch, New Zealand, the flats near the Nevada border and close to Wendover, Utah have been synonymous with land speed records. In fact, you can go back to 1914 when Teddy Tezlaff hit 141 mph in his Blitzen Benz for a four-wheel record, the flats have been the place.

A lot of earlier motorcycle speed records were made on beaches such as those in Florida or somewhere in England or Europe, but as speeds approached 200 mph, the stretch of scenery in western Utah became a beacon for those, mostly southern Californians, seeking to ever increase their speed in pursuit of the numerical goal of a land speed record.

Roland "Rollie" Free was famous for breaking the motorcycle land speed record there in 1948. He was on an open bike and became convinced the wind resistance of his clothing was preventing him getting the final few mph to break the record. So he stripped down to a pair of Speedos and laid prone on his Vincent to accomplish the feat. The picture of Free, prone and wearing a bathing suit, has been described as the most famous picture in motorcycling.

But it was in my time that the Salt Flats became the one and only place to be if you were interested in top speed. In 1966 Robert Leppan pushed his 1298cc Triumph powered bike to 245 mph. It was the age of the streamliners, motorcycles built within rocket shaped bodies. Leppan’s bike consisted of two 650cc Triumph twins taken off the popular TR-6 Tiger (similar to one of my favorite bikes I owned around this time).

He was a Detroit Triumph dealer and he was back at the flats in ’70 pushing the record, but crashed at 280 mph.

After Leppan's successful run, the land speed record, much like many traditional motorcycle competitions, moved aggressively to Japanese produced engines. In 1970 Don Vesco drove his Yamaha “Big Red” streamliner made out of an old airplane fuel drop tank to beat the 250 mark with a two-direction run of 251 mph power by twin 350cc two-stroke Yamaha engines. (In fact, I also owned a Yamaha RD-350 at that time which was the basis of his 700cc combination.)

Like many land speed record pilots, Don was a successful racer and had won the AMA Grand Prix 500cc class in 1963. The Vesco family is pretty much synonymous with land speed records. Father John Vesco ran hotrods on the various California dry riverbeds, and sons Don and Rick raced and set a number of important records.

To allow for tail winds and other situations, to obtain a record, you had to race two directions within a time limit. The average of Don’s run in ’70 was 251.924. However, just a month later at the Flats another racer, Cal Rayburn, riding a single engine Harley-Davidson 1480cc machine powered by a Sportster engine on nitro moved the record up to 275 mph.

In 1975 Don Vesco was back with the "Silver Bird" powered by two, four-cylinder engines based on the Yamaha TZ750, another two-stroke racing engine, and he was back again in 1978 with "Lightning Bolt," a 318 mph record maker based on twin turbo charged Kawasaki engines from the KZ-1000: king of the hill at that time. (I own a Z-1, 900cc Kawasaki four, the predecessor of the KZ-1000. Do you sense a pattern here?)

(Harley did recover the record with a 3,000 cc twin HD engine run by Dave Campos who went 322 mph in 1990.)

But this story is centered between the 1970 record and the 1975 record. Those five years saw many attempts including brother Rick Vesco driving a machine with dual Yamaha four-strokes based on the new at that time 650cc DOHC design which the Vescos added turbo-charging. (I also own a Yamaha XS-650 from which that engine came … I seem attracted to those fast designs.) That attempt was unsuccessful due to stability issues. It was while the Vescos were working their magic that I showed up on the scene.

Following years saw the top motorcycle speed pushed to 376 mph by 2010 and the last few records were mostly on bikes with Suzuki engines. (The current record holder roars on the strength of twin Suzuki Hayabusa in-line four-cylinder engines, with a 30 psi turbocharger boost. The maximum engine speed tops out at 12,000 rpm with an incredible net horsepower of between 700-900. This "Ack Attack" monster turned 394 mph in one run, so can 400 mph on a bike, albeit a streamlined, carbon-fiber paneled body with chrome-moly tubing bullet/rocket of a bike, be far away?)

These days the news often comes from down under as dry lake beds in Australia have seen some attempts of late and a push toward higher numbers, but currently the 376 mph holds. 2016 saw a serious attempt at Bonneville by a Triumph powered team, but their luck and the weather didn’t hold.

But getting back to my personal story in 1973 … oh wait, I think we’re running out of time. I’ll have to continue this tale in part two. That’s all for now, folks.