The World's Fastest Motorcycles?

[PorkPie]

  When Gustav Baumm and NSU tested the flying hammock streamliners they did at Hockenheim and Nurburgring. Vic Willoughby wrote about in his book ?Exotic Motorcycles?. Willoughby said that he was offered a chance to ride the bikes at Bonneville but his magazine editor would not let him. There were also plans to make a road race and street bike version.
  

[/quote]

Just to straighten this out.

No testing at Hockenheim and Nuerburgring.

The Baumm I - the one you could see on the two picture "the First" I add the other day, was tested in the wineyard close to Neckarsulm - the place where NSU bikes was build.

The Hockenheim was a long distance record and also economy record run, driven by H. P. Mueller in the Baumm III, a much shorter version of the highspeed streamliner.

Nuerburgring, Baumm tried to show with his Baumm I, that this streamliner could race on race track - his idea was to let them start in the World Championship. Nuerburgring was may be not the right surface for this and Baumm was killed when the streamliner crashed, unfortunately he hit a tree directly in the center of the streamliner where he was sitting in. The streamliner was rebuild and is now on display where I done a series of picture.

Can you imagine 25 so streamliner running around a race track

Vic Willoughby this was may be a wish of him....but never reality......

[Marcroux]

These are the pictures I have of the circuit bikes. I will write more later.
Marc

[PorkPie]

These are the pictures I have of the circuit bikes. I will write more later.
Marc

The Baumm III is still existing, except the front fork - someone stolen them when the bike was stored for a short time.....no idea what the thief likes to do with this piece.

[Rocky R]

On the subject of steering/countersteering a streamliner, I still remember my first trip to Bonneville riding with Denis Manning. His explanation of how it works still sticks with me to this day. It went something like this: Imagine balancing a broomstick in the palm of your hand. To make the broom move to the left, you have to initially move your hand to the right to initiate the lean angle. You then follow it to maintain control.

On a funnier note, our braking system in Tenacious II wasn't very good, but he also told me "you don't need any brakes in a streamliner...the parachutes do all the work". We had more than our share of parachute failures over the years, mainly with Big Red. However, the first time I hit the chutes in Tenacious II at speed (I think it was around 275 mph) I thought I was going to be launched through the front windshield...I never complained about the brakes again.

Rocky R

[Sumner]

On the subject of steering/countersteering a streamliner, I still remember my first trip to Bonneville riding with Denis Manning. His explanation of how it works still sticks with me to this day. It went something like this: Imagine balancing a broomstick in the palm of your hand. To make the broom move to the left, you have to initially move your hand to the right to initiate the lean angle. You then follow it to maintain control.

On a funnier note, our braking system in Tenacious II wasn't very good, but he also told me "you don't need any brakes in a streamliner...the parachutes do all the work". We had more than our share of parachute failures over the years, mainly with Big Red. However, the first time I hit the chutes in Tenacious II at speed (I think it was around 275 mph) I thought I was going to be launched through the front windshield...I never complained about the brakes again.

Rocky R

Hi Rocky, are you talking about the right then follow to the left to get it up off the side wheels and onto the 2 wheels??  Seems like Eric and John who have the fast 50CC streamliner told me that was what they had to do to get it up on the two wheels.  They ran sidecar for a while with the streamliner as they both worried about getting up on 2 wheels.  Obviously now they are doing just fine .

Once up on two wheels what is the steering like?

Good info about the chute and steering,

Sum

[PorkPie]

On the subject of steering/countersteering a streamliner, I still remember my first trip to Bonneville riding with Denis Manning. His explanation of how it works still sticks with me to this day. It went something like this: Imagine balancing a broomstick in the palm of your hand. To make the broom move to the left, you have to initially move your hand to the right to initiate the lean angle. You then follow it to maintain control.

On a funnier note, our braking system in Tenacious II wasn't very good, but he also told me "you don't need any brakes in a streamliner...the parachutes do all the work". We had more than our share of parachute failures over the years, mainly with Big Red. However, the first time I hit the chutes in Tenacious II at speed (I think it was around 275 mph) I thought I was going to be launched through the front windshield...I never complained about the brakes again.

Rocky R

Rocky, Don Vesco broke once his shoulder when he pulled the chute.......

and by the way, great to have you on the list now, too

[Rocky R]

When I drove Big Red we would tow to start. With the skids down you steered it basically like a car: left to go left, right for right. Even though the skids were down, when you steered left, the bike would go left but it put all the weight on the right skid which was a little unnerving. As soon as the skids went up, totally different. Now, to go left I would steer right first (like the broom handle thing), get the bike to lean left, then follow it up.

Here's a tricky one, though. When you get into a cross wind on a streamliner...say with a wind traveling right to left, the bike would start to track toward the left side of the course. To stay in position you would have to keep feathering into the wind by actually steering left to force the bike to lean more to the right side and force yourself back in. Sometimes the bike would lean farther over than you cared for, and in those instances you didn't dare give up and pull the chute. If you did, the chute would travel to the left and open and yank the rear of the bike in that direction. The end result goes: white blue white blue white blue. I was told all of this (about parachutes in cross winds) before I ever made my first pass and it stuck with me.

On our first pass of our record run I drove the Ack Attack all the way to the end of the course and parked it at the impound pop up. As I slowed I steered right and leaned her left right at impound. As I slowed to around 15-20 mph I dropped the skids and like you mentioned earlier, steered her in just like my rent a car. The folks under the pop up had a concerned look on their faces. Wonder what that was all about  

[JackD]

The impound guys proably never saw a bike liner stop square with a parking space.

[RidgeRunner]

     Facts reported direct from the # 1 source.  Thank you Rocky for takeing the time to share them.  Thank you Jon for provideing the communication connection.

[Marcroux]

First I want to give my thanks to Porkpie and Rocky Robinson for their input to this forum.

  Rocky who better to tell us how to ride a motorcycle streamliner thank you for taking your time to write for us.
 Porkpie, thank you for the pictures and information of the Baumm streamliners, that was the best picture of how the front end works I ever saw.  Anymore pictures or information on the bikes would be greatly appreciated. Could you please tell me where the bikes are now located?   


   I reread my first post on this subject and was surprised to find how poorly I expressed my point on subject. I should wrote that in my opinion a motorcycle streamliner if design properly should behave be like any other motorcycle. I do know many of them did not work or handle well and are difficult to ride but it was my feeling that the people who build those bikes did not know how to design or make motorcycle handle.

  I think the reason for this is that so few have been build and raced. I would be surprised if since 1956 a hundred motorcycle streamliner have been built and raced at Bonneville and by my count the number maybe around sixty.

   I used the NSU Baumm streamliners as an example because people who where involved with the project seem to feel the same way as I do by their actions.

   I wrote ?When Gustav Baumm and NSU tested the flying hammock streamliners they did this at Hockenheim and Nurburgring. Vic Willoughby wrote about in his book ?Exotic Motorcycles?. Willoughby said that he was offered a chance to ride the bikes at Bonneville but his magazine editor would not let him. There were also plans to make a road race and street bike version.?

   Porkpie?s respond was ?Just to straighten this out. No testing at Hockenheim and Nuerburgring.

The Baumm I - the one you could see on the two picture "the First" I add the other day, was tested in the wineyard close to Neckarsulm - the place where NSU bikes was build.

The Hockenheim was a long distance record and also economy record run, driven by H. P. Mueller in the Baumm III, a much shorter version of the high speed streamliner.

Nuerburgring, Baumm tried to show with his Baumm I, that this streamliner could race on racetrack - his idea was to let them start in the World Championship. Nuerburgring was may be not the right surface for this and Baumm was killed when the streamliner crashed, unfortunately he hit a tree directly in the center of the streamliner where he was sitting in. The streamliner was rebuild and is now on display where I done a series of picture.

Can you imagine 25 so streamliner running around a race track

Vic Willoughby this was may be a wish of him...but never reality......?

 What I meant by testing is that they went somewhere with their bikes to ride and learn more about them with the hope of improving them, nothing more.  In Willoughby?s book it does not say what else was going on that day at Hockenheim except he was there to test the bike.  When Baumm was killed riding at the Nurburgring he was testing the bike for a demonstration for a race the following week. My point was to show that they thought of the streamliners as bikes not some kind of freak device.  I always thought that the bikes were designed, build and worked on somewhere around Neckarsulm. (By wineyard do you mean winery or vineyard?)

  When I first read about using them as road racers my first image in my mind was a full grid of them starting a race at Spa streamlining being banging against each other as they lap one of the fastest tracks in Europe. It was a cool picture but there was no way that it could have ever happen. On using them as street bikes the image was the Streetliners Motorcycle Club?s bikes laying on their sides baking like dead fish in the sun after a soccer mom plowed through them on their Sunday morning ride with her suv because she was on her cell phone comes to mind. I reason I wrote about this was that NSU was treating this as serious R and D project that would generate useful bike technology not just some publicity stunt.

  As for Willoughby riding the bikes in record attempts it is not that improbable for the following reasons.
 One, he had race motorcycles and done well. He had won a Gold Star for doing a hundred mph lap on a Velocette around Brooklands raceway in the 1930s.  He raced in Europe after WW2.
 Two, he was a writer for the English magazine ?Motor Cycle Weekly?, later becoming it?s Technical Editor.
 Three, have tested for the magazine the following factory grand prix bikes, the 500 MV four, the 350 DKW three, the 500 Manx Norton, the 125 desmo Ducati, the 500 BMW solo racer and sidecar, the 250 NSU Rennmax, the 250 and 350 Moto Guzzi. Tested the following record breakers, the Drag-Waye dragster, George Brown?s Nero, Burns and Wright?s Vincent as a sidecar. (This bike was the world?s fastest motorcycle before the NSU)
Four, as an independent outsider writing about the record setting from the rider point of view certainly would generated a lot of interest and publicity in NSU?s technology which at the time I believe at the time the world?s largest motorcycle maker.

  I wrote that NSU was thinking of using him simply to show that they believed that any competent rider could ride their streamliners. Willoughby said his managing director of his magazine was against this because he ?took the view that the British industry would be incensed at my contributing to a foreign factory?s prestige?. (The Second World War ended only ten years before)  This was not an unusual feeling at the time as both Geoff Duke and Stirling Moss were criticized in the press in England when they went to race for foreign factory race teams. Would HP Muller been left back in Germany? No, I think not, they would have just taken an extra rider to Bonneville. Since this never happen no one knows how NSU would have organized it.

 I believed it is important to always judge what you read with a critical eye however this seems plausible to me.

 Marc








 

 

 

[PorkPie]

I mean Vineyard - but as a nonsmoker, nonalcoholic and Whiskey drinker - it could be happened that I write it with a "W"

Neckarsulm was the place where NSU bikes and cars was designed and produced, also NSU was the biggest bike producer in the world in the fifties.

I left Neckarsulm when I was ten, but my homeplace was only 300 yards away from the motorcycle museum - it's to today the largest MC museum in the world, unfortunately the show rooms are not big enough to show all the vehicle they got. Could be that I was more in the museum as I was at home - no wonder that I got the speed spirit

Baumm and his family lives only 3 miles away in a small village named Erlenbach - this place is a wine producer village. There in the hills was a lot of small roads, which Baumm used for test drives, at first with a frame (without body skin) and no power unit. There he proved the handling of the idea.

He was a fanatic in his opinion about the system he designed. To ride the bikes was only allowed to NSU company rider.
To Vic Willoughby - there is some rumors that Baumm - to make his idea more popular - offered a ride to Vic - but this was never a official offer from NSU.
After Baumm showed the NSU design bosses his idea of the Baumm flying chair, NSU gave him a contract as freelance styling engineer - reality - he never worked on this job really - most of the time he spent on the record bike - he also set the first records with a 50 cc engine.

Also the opinion about the Baumm was different. H. P. Mueller enjoyed the drive from the beginning - Wilhelm Herz was opposite, he was never happy with this, especially after the Baumm II crashed, caused from cross wind, 1956 at Bonneville. It was a very windy time, Wilhelm Herz runs also the Delphin III,  caused by cross wind, too, into a timetrap. The picture after he set the record of 211 mph, showed a rough repainted frontend of the streamline body.
But he concept of the body was very strong, except some blue dots, Wilhelm Herz was not injured - when he crashed he was by 200+ mph......

[PorkPie]

Marc, to my picture.

I got more than 200 picture of the Baumm, a lot which shows the internal mechanic.

You asked, where they are today.

Delphin I - this streamliner went lost when he was on a show tour in the USA - nobody knows how it happends and where the bike went, to today. Somewhere in states the bike is in a garage and may be the "owner"  knows not what he had.....
A replica of the Delphin I is in the Deutsche Museum (German Museum) in Munich - Heinz Herz is riding this replica from time to time on shows.

Delphin II - the streamliner with the sidecar - went lost with the I.

Delphin III, the first 200 mph bike - the original is in Munich, so as the Delphin I replica - but without the original motor - this motor is by Heinz Herz. But the Delphin III is ready to run, he got a similar motor in.

A replica of the Delphin III was in the Hockenheim Museum, after they went in financial trouble (the have to much too pay to the Formula 1 guru Bernie Eclestone), Heinz moved the bike to Neckarsulm. This replica is not rideable in the moment.

Delphin IV - the yellow 1965 streamliner, with the better aerodynamic bodywork - was also in Hockenheim and is now in Neckarsulm, too.

The NSU record car from 1965 is also moved.

The Baum I, the rebuild version after the Nuerburgring crash, is in the Kleinwagen Museum (Mini Car Museum) in Ettlingen, south east of Stuttgart, together with the Koenig-Fachsenfeld cigar from 1938, which was build by NSU.

Baumm II - sorry, I done a small mistake in the other note, Wilhelm Herz crashed the Baumm IV -
was also in Hockenheim and is now moved to Neckarsulm.

Baumm III - the long distance Hockenheim streamliner - was in Hockenheim - without the stolen front suspension - is also moved to Neckarsulm. For display the streamliner has a camouflage front suspension in.

Baumm IV - the crashed streamliner, was always in Neckarsulm, together with the record Kreidler cigar from 1965. Don't know where the second Kreidler cigar is, in the moment.

Due to the less space in Neckarsulm, nobody knows when the most of the record bikes will be again on display. If I hear something about, I will let you guys know.

The second Delphin III replica which was used from Heinz Herz during the BUB event is on tour in the moment, Heinz has to move him around to the different sponsors.

Also in 2007 we will get the Baumm IV into the windtunnel - Heinz still has the opinion that the Baumm did lift over 200 mph when his father Wilhelm crashed the streamliner. We will see what the tunnel says.

[High Gear]

Rocky,

Welcome to the forum & congratulations for your efforts at the BUB meet.

See you next year,

Gary