Tuesday, December 12, 2023

More Motorcycles

 


That's one fine piece of engineering. After coming across the photo, I did a bit of searching and came across Alp Racing & Design as the builder. Check out their website - amazing work and results.


Twin engine Norton Top Fuel bike. There's been a lot of interesting engineering on race bikes of all kinds over the years. CNC machining combined with traditional fabricating techniques has allowed for some interesting builds - like Bimota has been doing for years.


Probably the most interesting example of a non-traditional build, the Bimota Tesi. I think this was a solution to a problem that didn't really exist - at least to the extent that they went to with the frame and center hub steering.


Here's exhibit A of the simplest type of construction. This is the first motorcycle I built totally from scratch. About as bare bones as you can make one - sort of the Fred Flintstone model. It worked, though. No handling problems. Note the bell bottom pants on my buddy Steve.. If I remember correctly, full leathers were required if you ran a 12 second ET or quicker. I think this one ran 12.30s. When I built the new bike, I was the pilot and I was about 40 pounds lighter than Steve, plus lighter components got the bike down to an ET of 11.70s. Big time fun.

My father-in law passed away on Sunday, so funeral and a couple of doctor appointments for the Missus going to blow a hole in the week. I did get the shop ready for heating and most of the clean-up taken care of. I still have a couple of other things I want to do to improve the work flow through the shop - that's a joke. A time-study man would laugh his ass off watching me fumble around out there. What I need is a shop that's twice as big with about half as much stuff in it. If I was younger, I'd definitely get myself a bigger work area. 

4 comments:

Surly said...

That last sentence is funny. You have three barns. lol

Shop Teacher Bob said...

But none of these are set up for a decent fab shop. Wood frame buildings don't work well with cutting torches and stick welding.

MARSHALL OVERCLOTH said...

I like your drag bike fabrication picture and the rider's bell bottom jeans. that Cyndi Lauper song song is stuck in my had now BUT it's mixed with Redbone singing baby it's cold outside.

girls just wanna have, baby it's cold , just wanna have, it's cold outside, baby it, fah-unnn oohohoh girls just wanna have, baby it's cold outside, I wondr wondr ohoh oh girls jus, baby its, fun..... stuck in my head.

Shop Teacher Bob said...

Marshall: I'm pretty susceptible to earworms, but can't say I've ever had two tunes simultaneously.