street Blower VS street Turbo Tales

being an "old guy" and been around all types of racing since I was a teen and having ridden and built/repaired more motorcycles than my noggin can retain . I'm definitely a old turbo guy so clearly I'm biased.


There is nothing else on planet earth like a blower top fuel car or top fuel bike at the drag strip. Love em !

so here's the tale .... believe it or not
Spring of 1977 . I'm still street riding my 836 cc atp turbo kitted honda off and on. h2o injection and street boost in the 25 lb range with premium gas. If I laid any more boost than 26 lb's on it , the honda would rear it's parts breaking head and bend axles and wreak havoc on it's chain adjusters...go figure :whistle:
Any way I have my turbo 76 KZ as backup ,if needed.

a buddy of mine worked at the local Kawasaki dealer and knew well what my old SOHC honda CB750 was capable of.
My buddy phoned me on a Saturday morning and let me know he had a "killer KZ 1000" customer with a Drouin supercharger. the guy wanted to run my "little honda" on the street.
the blower guy said " no problem, piece of cake" no crappy SOHC Honda would out run his King Kong blown Z. Having told me he was running about 12 lb's boost with his drouin blower. I didn't care . the worst thing that would happen is his bike would out run my bike. a nice 3/8 mile clear stretch of low traffic 6 lane highway was our "dragstrip" .
I knew the blower would have more grunt off the line so I knew I had to "wick" my turbo.
First launch his blower bike was half a bike length as I was "mid stroke" on the throttle when he launched . it didn't matter the "little honda" screamed by him by the end of second gear.
We ran like 4 dead stop passes, 2 roll on's in low gear with the same out come every time. after all this we talked, bull crapped a little .
:evil: my honda would get so far out , he's thinking something is wrong with his bike.......... :huh:
after it was all over, I let him know the 25 lb's of boost I had :huh: ,I didn't say anything about the water injection. He didn't believe my boost "story" and told me something was wrong with his blown Z. the moral is: boost is boost. lol
Plain out boosted :evil: :laugh:
ps: old and treacherous usually wins :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

long gone , but not forgotten...


Be safe go to the drag strip/racetrack. I'm NOT promoting street racing.

anyone else have turbo VS blower story the would like to share. win or lose .... post em up

The biggest things Ive always loved about turbos versus a blower on a bike is theyre easily tuned from puttin around town on pump gas mode to full blown psycho killer mode without having to change pulleys ,and theyre just flat out cool looking! :woohoo:

wireman wrote: The biggest things Ive always loved about turbos versus a blower on a bike is theyre easily tuned from puttin around town on pump gas mode to full blown psycho killer mode without having to change pulleys ,and theyre just flat out cool looking! :woohoo:

and they are quiet , quieter when in boost.......the po po :evil: doesn't even give them a second look, most of the time :whistle: I'm too old and my hearing is bad enough from all the years of open exhaust.

Yeah even with a banana pipe theyre quiet compared to an open kerker

wireman wrote: Yeah even with a banana pipe theyre quiet compared to an open kerker

this short pipe I welded up from an old crashed kerker megaphone has no baffle, not loud at all :huh:

The compressor wheel makes a hell of a baffle! :woohoo:

true :lol:

Not A bike or a turbo vs blower story. But many years ago i used to race a fox body car (not a mustang). Built motor trans rear street car 150 hp shot of gogo juice. I thought i was the bomb. Got some race gas mixed in the tank filled the bottles up and went out to our local street races. I decided to run my mouth to an all motor crx rolled up to the starting line purged the system under the firewall. We took off and i killed it. They were a little mad when they discovered the juice. They decided we should triple down and i should race a turbo single cam civic coupe. I left on the nitrous and screamed out 3-4 cars ahead next thing i know shortly after the 1/8 mile mark that little civic came screaming past me and i was out 330 bucks. The moral of this story is never doubt a turbo car or bike.

My team lost to this guy, But what else can I say. :whistle:

Street Fighter LTD wrote:

My team lost to this guy, But what else can I say. :whistle:

I was lucky enough to see Bo O'brachta run a few times , lot of the great's are sadly gone

Not a blower story but around 10 years ago when I first put my stock height and wheelbase 810cc together I decided I wanted to try an electronic boost controller. I found a Blitz DSBC (Dual Solenoid Boost Controller) online in Japan intended for turbo Supra or something like that. It was smaller than a cigarette packet and adjustable via a couple of dials on the front. Just the ticket I thought.

A quick install seemed simple enough even without any instructions, twiddle the dials to 1.0 bar (15psi ish) and time for a quick roadtest before the family BBQ that night. It was still light, a warm summer's evening, so I cruised from my workplace on an industrial estate onto the main single carriageway road. A squirt of throttle in first and up comes the front. And again in second. Ok...slow down for a roundabout then it's onto dual carriageway. Third gear, wind it on and BLAM! Clocks in the face! And again in 4th. This is nuts!! I start giggling inside my helmet. Something is wrong but oh so right... :woohoo:

Another roundabout and I snick up through the gears again into 4th. 100mph. Wind the throttle open and wooo...up she comes and stays there for about 200yds! A 180 round the next roundabout and coming back it's pointing at the sky every gear. I go past a car at around 130-140 in top gear with the front wheel 3 feet in the air. I'm crying with laughter. This is just stupid. I can't open it to the stop in any gear without it trying to flip :silly:

Back to the shop and I figure out the boost controller is plumbed back to front, and the tell-tale says 32psi. On pump gas. Ooops...

A couple of hours later I sneak out of the BBQ to do it again! :whistle: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

I've ridden supercharged Busas and the like but you just can't beat the power delivery of a turbo for giggles and grins

32# on pump gas, dangerous teritory! But I can relate to the grins. :evil:

Les