It has been a long week. John and I designed and built the streamliner as a team; so we decided to perform the driving duties as a team. To maintain approximately equal seat time in the streamliner; after every other run at El Mirage we swap drivers, and every other trip to Bonneville we swap who gets to run the fuel class. It was my turn to run the gas class. The new landing gear works great so we were entered as a motorcycle streamliner.
Friday (9/1/06) drove to Elko, realized we didn?t have any richer jets for the gasoline setup with us, the motorcycle dealer was closed until Tuesday so we enlarged one of our smaller main jets to slightly larger than our biggest main jet.
Saturday (9/2/06) drove to the lakebed and set up our pits.
Sunday (9/3/06) the vehicle and our driving suits were officially scrutinized, waited for the winds to calm down and our turn to come up. I ran the short course (two mile run up to the measured mile). After about 6:30 pm we were given the choice to run once today with no possibility of a record and be at the head of the line tomorrow, or just run tomorrow. It was the beginning of the week we had lots of extra engine parts and enthusiasm so we ran. 119.011 mph. A little rich; we didn?t need the drilled out jet after all.
Monday (9/4/06) went one tooth smaller on the rear sprocket, I (Eric) ran the short course again at 123.276 and 119.602 for a two way average of 121.439 mph (AMA S-AG). Slower than the NSU blown fuel record by about a quarter mile per hour. We had hoped to increase this later in the week, but it was time to start working on our fuel set up.
Tuesday (9/5/06) John?s turn to drive (fuel), we ran the long course (five mile run up to the measured mile). Our data recorder showed 119 mph at about 2.5 miles then it started to slow we broke a ring, this is the first time we?ve ruined a piston mechanically usually we just melt them. John?s time through the measured mile was 103.610.
Wednesday (9/6/06) we put on the highest gears we had, then sat at mile zero all day, too much wind for a safe run.
Thursday (9/7/06) the event closed at noon so this was our only shot at exceeding the NSU record, John ran a 133.045 mph down run and a 134.745 mph back up run for a two way record of 133.895 mph (AMA S-AF) we ran out of gearing and rpm, so turning on the nitrous wouldn?t improve our top speed and we didn?t have time to reinstall the gasoline setup.
At impound the piston looked perfect after both the gas and fuel record runs; we now have base line setups and full nitrous bottles. For the World Finals we?ll put another tooth or two on the front and go for even bigger numbers.
At the awards banquet on Thursday night everyone was very enthusiastic and complimentary of our efforts. We received the Top Time Mile Per Hour to CC Ratio prize money of $2,500.
Friday (9/8/06) we drove through Los Vegas to Barstow. On the way we stopped at a carwash and got rid of most of the salt that was stuck to our stuff.
Saturday (9/9/06) changed gearing and repacked the parachute in the hotel parking lot. Drove to El Mirage for tech inspection and had them measure and seal the engine.
Sunday (9/10/06) about fifth off the line, John drove it to a new El Mirage record of 102.767 mph (S-G) for 50cc streamlined gas motorcycle. We were awarded high points for the meet; unfortunately they couldn?t be combined with our sidecar 2006 season points because without the sidecar the streamliner is considered to have a new chassis.
By 9:45 we were loaded up and started driving toward Northern California. After a two thousand mile round trip in ten days, we returned with three records, sometimes this feels like an endurance sport.
My work and domestic duties have been stacking up while I was gone, I?ll try to update the Buddfab web site with a longer description in a few days.
http://www.geocities.com/buddfab/buddfab3
