Hi, and all the best for this just started New Year, I hope it will fulfill all your dreams...
Some of you might remember my previous forrays onto the Bonneville Salt Flats in 2011, 2013 and 2014, on my home made Harley-Davidson 1954 KHK, supercharged on methanol:
http://www.landracing.com/forum/index.php/topic,8744.0.htmlI was toying with updating that bike, but lack of money/sponsors made me think again and change direction. That bike is now retired...
But let's start at the beginning...
In 1976, I was lend a few pre war racing motorcycles photos of the French manufacturer Jonghi. Good occasion at the time to make an indepth article in our Vintage MC Club Magazine. I went to see other friends to collect info and details. At one of them, I saw this fully loaded racing timing chest stamped TT 2:
The TT 2 stamp identified it as the remnants of a rather special bike... In early 1933, the factory owner, an Italian immigrant by the name of Guiseppe Remondini, tried to do a 24 hour World Record with an OHV race bike on the Montlhery Speed Bowl near Paris. They twice failed and he decided to dampen somewhat the engine output by grafting the top end of the sidevalve model on it while discarding the OHV parts.
The little sidevalve bike had a top speed of about 90mph in that guise and at the 3rd attempt, it all came good and the record was theirs at about 72mph over the 24 hours on a cold March day.
In the paddock before the attempt:
During the run, Louis Jeannin in the saddle, their star rider:
Patrick