Let's see YOUR drag bike !

Get a copy of EJ's book and video if you can. He led an interesting life and accomplished a lot of things.
I was fortunate to talk with him a few times, mostly about the bikes and his development of the one of the first motorcycle dynos.

Years ago MTC Engineering sponsored a lot of bike drag racing. My welding/fab shop was 3 buildings down from them. Over the years I did a lot of welding for them, especially Kawasaki cranks. Ken Tipton the owner was quite an interesting innovator and developed a line of hi-performance race bike parts.
This is a photo of an aluminum frame I built for him that had a turbo kz1000 motor in it. As I recall, it weighed 13 pounds.  I don't know what happened with it after they moved to Florida.
 

That MTC aluminum laydown frame is cool, never really heard of anybody using aluminum tubing. I wonder how well that held up?

My buddy had a cro-moly "D&K" frame that looked similar back in the late 1970's (1428cc Alcohol Injected)





Laydown frames lost favor due to all the prostock racing taking place around that time. Situp frames using back half conversions were cheaper and easier to get made.

I have a custom situp style frame that was made around 1990. It has a larger tank tube than is normal because the builder was running alcohol. Its steel but I never did weight it before installing the engine, its suppose to be lightweight as its scratch built and not a converted stock frame.



 

That's a beauty.   I have another aluminum framed bike from the early 70s that was sponsored by MTC and was on the front of one of the catalogs. Muldoon and Tedder built 3 of them and also a twin engine version.  Do you have a copy of John Stein's book: Motorcycle Drag Racing : A History?  200 pages and lots of pics of vintage drag bikes.

I don't have John Stein's book but I do have this one :



I picked it up at a swap meet for $7, it covers up to early pro stock printing date is 1982. It does have some pictures of the early stuff.
 

Here's John Stein's book.  Very well written with a lot of nice color pics.  A great read for anybody who's interested in the sport..

   

And here's yet another dragbike book.  A softcover book, similar to the one posted by Injected; although not nearly as well written.  Some decent pics but very light on content.  More of a curiosity piece..

 

One more from the archives.  It's pretty rare as it's the first (and last!) issue.  Not sure what went wrong here, who knows!?  

On the cover is the Hahn turbo Kaw funnybike.  The inside cover says that it's Neal "Fast" Lane in the saddle, but I say that it's Billy Vose.  Both were hired guns, back in the day, and could ride pretty much anything.

I once witnessed Neal take a wild ride on that bike at Atco.  I was sitting in the shut down area waiting to be picked up so I had a good head on view.  The bike got a bit out of shape at half track, or so.  Neal had to put his foot down to keep the bike upright; but didn't get out of throttle(!).  Back in the pits, it seems like his only concern was the damage to his boot - some kind of alligator skin cowboy boot, as I recall.  He was a man of style!

Very cool, I've gotta get the John Steine book. I have the Mike Nelson one and one other. It's pretty much a bio of Elmer Tretts life and career. A lot of good pics inside. Keep the sport alive while we can....

My favorite from back in the day was Bo O'Bratcha and the Terminal Van Lines Kawi which is in Don Garlits museum. It may have been the first or one of the first blown Kawasakis. Another favorite was the Clem Johnson's Barn Job Vincent. It is in John Stein's collection now.

Great memories

That Terminal Van lines bike is tiny compared to modern TF machines. Its crazy to think that street tire bikes run faster than that ever did.

Found this online : fuelcurve.com/top-fuel-bikes-of-the-1970s/