Unbelievable! We were forced to drive our motor home, loaded with the Assalt Weapan, dirt bikes, electric-powered scooter ice chests, 5-ball racing uniforms, stickers, tools, lifts, and granola bars, to downtown Long Beach to make a sponsor deposit before we could cut a dusty trail. We didn't want to eat casino toothpicks all week long. I need to thank Dave “The Jester” Florence, a Bikernet Reader and platinum sponsor, Bob Parsons of GoDaddy.com, all our Bikernet Reader Sponsors and Custom Chrome for helping us build this bike. We couldn't have accomplished the build or supplied grub on the salt for the hardworking team without that support, but we weren't out of town yet.
We sat in this rental fun mover in downtown Long Beach and counted the minutes. We were burnin' daylight, watching the Friday afternoon workers scramble for a myriad of freeways heading to Vegas on a Labor Day weekend.
We were fucked. Nyla and her daughter, Karley, were inside the bank, built in the late 1800s, negotiating, while Jeremiah and I parked illegally outside the plate glass windows and pulled ski masks over our sweaty faces. Nyla attempted to have funds released into our account, but the bank staff wasn't budging. I tapped the steering wheel and Jeremiah told nervous jokes and whistled. Banks.
We finally cut a dusty trail for the outskirts of LA. I call it no-man's land for Bikers. The city grows on a daily basis and progressively gets tougher to escape. We hit the 710 freeway north to the 105 east, to the 605 north, and then caught the 60 east to the 15.
It was almost 6:00 p.m. and the traffic wasn't awful by Los Angeles standards. The 15 is the notorious bastard that rolls from sprawling town to town heading toward Vegas. We hit Pomona, then San Bernardino, up the hill to Apple Valley, Victorville, Barstow, Baker and then cross the border into Primm Nevada where we were scheduled to stay, about 50 miles from Vegas.
One guy owned Primm, Nevada, who least land to casino brokers in Vegas and recently sold it to the Terrible Herbst family. They bought three casinos, Whiskey Pete's, Primm Valley Resort and Buffalo Bills, plus an outlet mall but not the land. Can you imagine the price tag? The Terrible Herbst oil company is seriously involved in racing, and recently someone fucked with their Nevada racing game, so they bought Primm to control their own race courses, unobstructed.
I've put the word out to a Primm executive. We could use a Bandit's Cantina Casino and a five-mile World Land Speed Record track. Whatta ya tink? Will they go for it? I like Primm. It's real small and easy to reach and escape from.
We snatched a much needed good night's rest and hit the Bonneville road in the morning. Highway I-15 rolls through Vegas to Mesquite Nevada at the border, slices off a corner of Arizona and into Salt Lake City, Utah, but there was a comfortable 100-mile short cut. We figured it's 750 miles from LA to Salt Lake, half-way to Sturgis from LA. From Salt Lake to Bonneville Salt Flats it's another 65 miles.
Our trip from LA to Bonneville, off the 15 and up the 93, taking the 316 direct route around Cathedral Gorge and the Snake Range, into Ely and then catching 93A into Wendover, covered about 650-675 total miles. Great roads, and we rolled into the grimy town of Wendover on the edge of Bonneville, the Great Salt Lake and the home of the Anola Gay airfield in the late afternoon. We arrived Saturday afternoon, to the hoots of the Chop N Grind Racing team from 16 Palms, California. They arrived a day early and set up. By the time we arrived, afternoon winds kicked up and we couldn't risk a trip to the salt.
Sunday morning, we rolled to the salt, checked in, then rumbled for five miles out to the pit area on uncomfortable salty surfaces, including a stretch of nasty potholes the size and depth of sauce pans. Was it a brackish sign?
Berry Wardlaw made a point, on bad Delta flights, to haul back a saline chunk the size of a shoebox. He snatched the salty souvenir in 1989 when he came to watch the Easyriders Team run Bob George's Streamliner for a record. The next year we broke the Motorcycle Streamliner World Land Speed Record. I was on the Easyriders' Team supported by our readers, and Bob George taught me engine building in the early '70s before I worked for Easyriders. Keith Ruxton was the engine builder and the crew chief during '89 and '90 attempts. Our final speed was 321 mph for a world record that endured for 16-years.
Sunday we unloaded the Assalt Weapan from the fun mover, checked her over and rolled her to tech. It was terrific to see other builders, but the controversy began when Jay Allen was asked to cut his Wink Eller fairing to pass tech. There's a set of obscure rules that vary from one sanctioning body to another. Racing rules are governed by three entities, AMA, SCTA and FIM. The Bub's meet recognizes the AMA rules, Speed Week and El Mirage are controlled by the SCTA (Southern California Timing Association) and FIM is the European Sanctioning body.
They're all reasonable groups with rules that don't always fit, so the tech teams got together and decided we had to cut our rear panels some, to adhere. We were scrutinized harder this time and nerves frayed as we wondered what the judges were whispering about.
As we stood around biting our nails Valerie Thompson, our Pilot, and #3 in her division of Destroyer Drag racing arrived and was introduced to the Assalt Weapan for the first time. We built the bike to her specifications, but could never get her to come to LA for a fit, due to her harried schedule. We had the tech guys breathing down our necks and Valerie didn't fit. She couldn't reach the rear pegs comfortably, the grips were too large and the bars out of reach.
Team members yanked on the bars to pull them back to suit Valerie, and we broke off the only hydraulic brake line on the bike from the handlebars to the rear PM caliper. The team, consisting up of Nyla, Jeremiah, Berry Wardlaw, his girlfriend Gypsy (a biker build-off winner), Berry's partner Duffy and his wife Kim, Dr. Hamster – Christian Reichardt, Gene Koch, Hiwayman from Bikernet, and his riding partner Marc, along with yours truly, started clamoring for ideas.
Anxiety was high and we sensed a looming pressure to please Val, the judges and get out and make a pass. I had the bike tech'd twice before completion by a much respected SCTA official, who rode to Wilmington and inspected the Assalt Weapan. Tom Evans felt it met the SCTA rules, because 180 degrees of rear wheel showed. But the name, Tom Evans, didn't mean anything to this tech crew. I shut my mouth and waited.
Hiwayman and Marc rode 540 miles the previous day to arrive on time, and we were going to race, hell or high water. Eric Bennett, from Bennett's performance offered a replacement brake line, but it was too short, by an inch. We scrambled to the timing tower and a call went out. In short order, we had a line and Duffy's tool-carrying motor home packed a brake-bleeding syringe. Dennis Manning, of Bubs, the man who currently owns the Motorcycle World Land speed record, at 342 mph, supplied us with fittings.
“You better walk away,” Berry told me as they hack sawed corners our of our carefully designed rear panels. It was a heart breaker, but we came to run, no matter what. Larry Petrie, from the notorious Chop N Grind crew told me wise words regarding Valerie and the bike. “I haven't ridden my race bike in a year and it feels awkward,” he said. “She needs to get use to it.”
I passed the supportive words onto Valerie, and she kept trying the position. Berry, Jeremiah and Duffy buffeted the stock pegs with padding for a 1.5-inch closer reach. That didn't work. Val would work with what she had. Then the FIM official approached and complained about the peg placement. If I had to hear another word about the pegs, I was going to explode, but I remained calm on the exterior.
He was kind, but went off to confer with other officials and the rulebook. I checked that aspect several times; especially after the Chop N Grind team came to the Bikernet Headquarters and threatened to snitch me off, if I didn't move the pegs. I checked the rulebook once more. For Special Construction bikes the rule calls for pegs to be within 6 inches of the rear axle. I was cool–I thought.
Nick Roberts, of Nick's Performance and Amsoil, a 5-Ball racing sponsor, cut the AW panels with a hacksaw, and sliced peg notions continued to fly around our pit area. I maintained my cool, but after a solid year of building and research, I hurt inside. I pressed for making a pass in her current state.
We readied to make an practice run, the scrutinizing team came into our tent checked the panels, blessed the Assalt Weapan and looked for Val. This year her drag racing boots didn't cut it. She scoured the pits for another set of boots and Laura klock had an extra pair.
We heard Chris Carr, the fastest man on a motorcycle, just won the Illinois Spring Mile and was pumped to break his record on the salt. A buzz of salt fever filled the sun-baked air as we scrambled to disassemble our pit in the early evening wind and ready ourselves for the World's Fastest Wedding on the salt.
The reverend was our own official 5-Ball Racing Photographer, Scooter. Brian and Laura Klock were married on the salt in front of a Hamster gang gathering and Salt racers. The day was complete and we were ready for a pass with a very tentative pilot, but we didn't move the goddamn pegs.
Monday:
Monday morning ushered in a beautiful stellar day on the salt. Bonneville is like traveling to the moon, 65 square miles of flat brine. At dusk you could lose your way and never be found. During the day it's a vast photo studio with a crystalline white base and pure blue skies. In the afternoon threatening clouds approach like tropical thunderstorms over a small Pacific island. They color the sky in the distance and become gray and ominous as they approach, then wind kicks up, until all racing shuts down, tents flap and we clamor into an emergency teardown mode.
This bright blue morning kicked off with the Ack Attack, dual Hyabusa streamliner, making a sunrise run on the 11-mile course, for a 350 mph pass. At the two-mile marker their braking chutes deployed inadvertently and yanked the streamliner off course.
Shortly thereafter a run- whatcha-brung contestant crashed on the short course and an ambulance was called. Reports from the field indicated treachery on the salt, “It's like running on ice,” a racer testified.
We unwrapped the Assalt Weapan at 8:00 a.m. and prepared for a trial run on the run-whatcha-brung 3-mile track. Jeremiah was late again. The crap tables and roulette wheels got the best of him. Rex Harrison, Valerie's boyfriend and professional drag racing crewmember began to calibrate our AIM sports “Spanish Inquisition” system. It was European made and set to run on metric programs. Everything I purchased, I purchased twice. We needed it to read speed, rpms, exhaust temps and oil pressure.
Berry hauled along a barometer and air density meter, plus a calculator that told us the actual altitude based on these factors. He figured the air density equated to 6568 feet when the actual altitude was 4660. Not good for high-speed runs, but he jetted the bike accordingly. According to Rex's GPS we were dancing at 4224 feet and breathing hard.
Duffy brought his motor home containing more tools than I stuffed into a borrowed tool chest, and began checking the pushrods. Berry double-checked the ignition timing. Jeremiah chased an oil supply. We were sponsored by Nick's Performance who supplied us with three cases of Amsoil, which I left in the shop. We were told there was an Amsoil dealer on site, but we never found one. We borrowed one quart from the Chop N Grind maniacs next door.
For the first pass we installed 4164 Autolite plugs, called the 200 mph duct tape crew to order and put them to work. The padded pegs didn't work for Val. The generator exhaust from the motor home was killing crewmembers under the tent and we moved Duffy's motor home to create wind protection. It had its benefits and drawbacks, but at 12:45 we fired the Assalt Weapan to life, switched Big Boar batteries, put the other one on the charger and checked the oil pressure, which started at 24 and dropped to 18 pounds, when the engine warmed. We checked the oil tank cap and it was loose. Jeremiah fixed it.
Berry timed the bike at 35 degrees before TDC at 2000 rpms. Jeremiah found the original timing mark on the belt pulley. Rex set one idiot light on the dash to come on if the oil pressure dropped below 10 pounds and set a shift light to come on at 6,200 rpms, to warn Val to shift. We checked the tire pressure. The Nate shaved tires were full of nitrogen and read 36 in the front and 38 in the rear.
Val straddled the Assalt Weapan for her first run at 1:45. We fixed the uncomfortable throttle angle, but the pegs were still a problem. She wanted a test ride, but at the riders' meetings in the morning, officials warned against riding anywhere except on the tracks. It was as if it snowed the night before and there was 6 inches of soft treacherous salt anywhere off the tracks.
Jeremiah became a master of peg pushing the Assalt Weapan. He peg-pushed Valerie a couple of times in the pits, then up to the run-whatcha-brung staging area for the first trial pass at 2:50 p.m. We noticed an oil leak, but made our pass at 4:15 at 143.5 mph. Val seemed to blend with the bike and begin to understand the design characteristics, but the salt conditions robbed her confidence with the track.
The data acquisition system began to work as Rex pulled much needed info off the dash with a cable lead to Berry's computer. Val never exceeded 5400 rpms. We figured at 4800 rpms she hit her top mark of 143 mph and Berry figured we were at 7275 altitude based on air density. “The best air is at sunrise,” Berry explained. “The air density robs oxygen.”
“It's all 8th grade biology,” said the Whizzer man from the pit crew across from us. “Air is created by greenery and there's nothing green here in this pocket of nothingness.”
Tuesday
The next morning we hit the salt at 8:00 again and the line for the short International Course was long and foreboding, but our crew was anxious to unwrap the Weapan and get in line.
SIDEBAR: BONNEVILLE TEAM MEMBER ESCAPES THE FLATS AFTER MISHAP– We were on the salt and ready to rock. We had lots of new faces, all anxious to help us make the next pass. The bike, positioned on the lowered Kendon Lift, was covered with towels and tarps lashed down with bungie cords, but there were also a couple of straps holding the bike to the lift. A new member snapped a secure strap and over the bike went. It happens to all of us who work on bikes, sooner or later and more than once. Generally, any bike can take it, and so did the Assalt Weapan.
Here's Ian's story:
Well, I'm back home again, as are you by now, I would imagine. I wanted to drop you a line, and tell you, Nyla, how much I appreciated your phone calls to me after I left the flats. They really did help me when I was down. It is hard to describe what happened out there, but suffice to say, I was sick to my stomach when the Assalt weapon hit the ground. I mean, it's not like layin' your buddy's Fat boy down, this was a bike I had watched come together all year on the Internet with great interest, and even sent a few measly bucks in to help out with the project.
I watched eagerly every week waiting to see what Bandit had done since the last report, and was never disappointed. I had planned all year on trying to make it down there, and when it looked as though it was actually going to happen, I was like a kid in a candy store.
I packed up the E glide, and hit the road. Had a few episodes on the 1000-mile trip down there, but had a hoot the whole way, then got to meet a bunch of celebrities that I have seen on the tube many times, and actually going out to dinner with the team was too much. Then I was invited to the pits, and to help out? No way. Too much, so after I was there for about 3 minutes, and proceeded to dump the reason for the whole deal on the deck, whilst hearing the screaming voices of all within earshot, my stomach was inside out. No matter how many times Berry W. told me it was no big deal, it was a big fuckin' deal to me….
I have no idea what the hell was going through my head as I was undoing that tie-down strap, as I have done it a thousand times, but it is done, and that's that.
I went for a walk on the salt, and tried to collect myself, but to no avail. I decided then and there, there was no way I was going to be able to hang out at the 5-Ball pit area and have a good time, so there was no reason for me to hang around at all. I thumbed a ride back to the nugget, from a friend of Chris Carr, Bub's pilot. Good guy.
I packed up my glide, and hit the road. As you know, nothing clears the head like a long ride in no particular direction. A couple of hundred miles later, I checked my messages, and there you were, Nyla, and Hiway, telling me everything was cool and to come back. I called my wife and told her what happened, and she said, “Get your ass back there.” She and you were both right, but by then the weather had really taken a shitty turn, and riding back in to the eye of the storm, to face you guys, just didn't sound appealing.
I do wish I could have worked up the nerve to just come back to say sorry man, but I was long gone, both mentally, and physically. Anyway, I am sorry for any grief over the whole thing.
I hope your trip home went well and congrats on the award at the salt. Hopefully, your friend.
The Assalt Weapan was fine, built to withstand anything we shot at it. We waited for hours to make a pass. Jay Allen, of the Broken Spoke Fame ran 184 mph on his rigid FXR with a Wink Eller Fairing. He was shooting for over 200 mph with his stock 124-inch S&S engine. Laura Klock made her first pass with engine problems unsuccessfully, but her daughter made a Buell pass shooting for 100 mph, and she came close to setting a record.
Roger Goldammer fought EFI problems with tuning and slippery salt. He wasn't pleased. A weather front raced at us, and Dennis Manning broke his streamliner at the second mile marker, while 35 racers waited in line for the short course. He regrouped and headed back to the liner starting gate for another pass, but the inclement weather loomed large.
We finally made our first pass at 1:05 after tightening everything in the morning. Val never kicked that bastard out of 4th gear, but we still ran 152 mph. “I never felt 5th gear,” Val said but she shot a rooster tail of salt throughout the timed mile.
The rear tire was slipping badly, maybe 20 percent.
We were second to the last bike to run. Behind us the stealth silver flathead itched for a chance, but the weather denied it. We dashed back to the impound yard, checked in and had the engine sealed before returning to our pit area. We discovered a possible intake leak, light detonation on the rear plugs and one cracked weld on the chain guard.
Barry discovered a broken plastic feed line to a nitrous connection. These plastic lines are bullshit and we will run more substantial lines in the future. Berry reset the timing and Nyla made us sandwiches, then the rain and wind came. We lowered the pop-up tent and huddled under it. The wind whistled and the rain drove at us, but we kept working under the tent, hoping it would dry up and we could make another pass.
The rain and wind flurries tore the Chop N Grind tents down. We sheltered the Troll family, who rode out to Bonneville to get caught in this goddamn downpour. Teams tore down and escaped, but we stayed on, hoping for a weather break that never came. During a precipitation lull we loaded the Assalt Weapan in the back of the Fun Mover and hid from the driving rain and wind inside, until we could make a dash for the hotel. Another day down and only two remaining.
