Stay Safe.......Y
Posted on 09/21/2004 9:43:55 AM PDT by Lijahsbubbe
WABASHA (AP) - With a State Patrol airplane overhead, a Stillwater motorcyclist hit the throttle and possibly set the informal record for the fastest speeding ticket in Minnesota history: 205 mph.
On Saturday afternoon, State Patrol pilot Al Loney was flying near Wabasha, in southeastern Minnesota on the Wisconsin border, watching two motorcyclists racing along U.S. Highway 61.
When one of the riders shot forward, Loney was ready with his stopwatch. He clicked it once when the motorcycle reached a white marker on the road and again a quarter-mile later. The watch read 4.39 seconds, which Loney calculated to be 205 mph.
"I was in total disbelief," Loney told the St. Paul Pioneer Press for Tuesday's editions. "I had to double-check my watch because in 27 years I'd never seen anything move that fast."
Several law enforcement sources told the newspaper that, although no official records are kept, it was probably the fastest ticket ever written in the state.
After about three-quarters of a mile, the biker slowed to about 100 mph and let the other cycle catch up. By then Loney had radioed ahead to another state trooper, who pulled the two over soon afterward.
The State Patrol officer arrested the faster rider, 20-year-old Stillwater resident Samuel Armstrong Tilley, for reckless driving, driving without a motorcycle license - and driving 140 miles per hour over the posted speed limit of 65 mph.
A search of speeding tickets written by state troopers, who patrol most of the state's highways, between 1990 and February 2004 shows the next fastest ticket was for 150 mph in 1994 in Lake of the Woods County.
Tilley did not return calls from the newspaper to his home Monday. A working number for him could not immediately be found by The Associated Press on Tuesday.
Only a handful of exotic sports cars can reach 200 mph, but many high-performance motorcycles can top 175 mph. With minor modifications, they can hit 200 mph. Tilley was riding a Honda 1000, Loney said.
Kathy Swanson of the state Office of Traffic Safety said unless Tilley was wearing the kind of protective gear professional motorcycle racers wear, he was courting death at 200 mph.
"I'm not entirely sure what would happen if you crashed at 200 miles per hour," Swanson said. "But it wouldn't be pretty, that's for sure."
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Stay Safe.......Y
My personal best (getting caught) was 152 MPH on Route 22 in New York.
I've topped 167 on my old Fizzer.....
heheheeh
"Youthful exuberance....."
Anything over that is a little too rich for my blood.
Yeah, and some guy got a riding mower up to 60mph at a drag race I saw once.
My little Suzuki Shogun is hiding in shame.
The web site lists a top speed of 200 km/h or about 140MPH
Read later.
Must have been drying his bike off after taking it to the car wash.
You my respect my authoriti!
The guy was riding a street legal bike. Get things back into prospective.
Building something for a single task is not the conversation.
My kid brother builds hotrod Evo's so I think I have an idea of what can be built. What's possible and what's practical isn't what i had in mind with my initial statement.
The metric's have the market on store bought top end speed.
I've witnessed 2 motorcycle accidents this year. In one, the bike was bumped from behind at about 15 MPH. In the other, the bike made angled contact at about 30 MPH. In both cases the rider was catapulted into the air and rolled head over heels like a bowling ball, for 30 and 75 yards respectively. In a third incident, I observed 2 idiots doing wheelies on the Interstate at 80 MPH. Something Darwinian is going to happen to these crotch-rocket enthusiasts.
At last. Someone that understands torque, horsepower, power to wight, acceleration vs top speed, frontal area and aerodynamic drag coefficients.
On the German autobahns when we were there on our last tour, I regularly drove at about 100-110 mph in the "no limit" areas. I thought it was pretty fast, but I was passed as much as I passed.
Some of the Mercedes overtook me like I was standing still. They had to have been clocking 160-175, it seemed to me.
But the motorcycles -- you'd have thought we were at the Bonneville flats.
Here I am going fast and there's nothing in my rearview mirror, so I pull into the passing lane to go around someone. By the time I'm finished, there's a motorcycle breathing down my neck. And I was easily over 100.
Wrecks in Germany generally aren't pretty.
Since Grainger hurtled his Kawasaki through the Elvington timing lights, at least two rocket-powered motorcycles have made attempts on his record. Both have failed. On the short record strips available in Europe, 200 mph plus is no easy matter.
Reaching such speeds requires prodigious horsepower. The 16-valve four-cylinder Kawasaki is overbored to 1108 cc and runs a Garret T25 turbocharger running at 21 psi. A simple but effective fuel injection system replaces the Kawasaki's carburettors. Power output is comfortably in excess of 300 bhp. To help the engine cope with the enormous stresses involved, it uses 116-octane fuel, plus 50:50 water/methanol injection to cool the piston crowns.
Brian Capper painstakingly built the engine, with lots of special metal treatments, special pistons and con-rods and improved oiling. Since 300 horsepower tears the standard Kawasaki transmission to pieces, a special "Orient Express" centrifugal lock-up clutch, like that commonly used on drag bikes, was also preferred. The power this device produces is simply awesome. Crack open the throttle in top gear at 150 mph and despite a lengthened swing-arm, the front wheel paws the air.
A standard ZZ-R1100, capable of over 170 mph, feels utterly flat in comparison. "I still use it on the road," admits Grainger, as though discussing commuting, his soft Devon burr disguising the terminal speed psychosis beneath. "When I need a fix, I take it for a spin." So, a word of advice: if you should see a blue, white and yellow ZZ-R next time you're in Devon, don't be tempted to play. It could well be the British and European speed record-holder
Nitrous and a short engine life expectancy?
To another poster: re wheel wobble - one of my real regrets was to have gotten away from bikes before today's wheels and tires came about. Remembering avons on freeway rain grooves still makes my teeth hurt.
Finally, I was once 'timed' at well over sixty within fifty feet of a complete stop at entrance gate ... seems we had until shortly before been dating the same lady.
Heres another site listing the top speed at 161
http://www.bikez.com/bike/index.php?bike=253
Hard to believe any mod could add 45MPH
And spelling!! :-)
well, I saw a German dude go starfish on the front straight of Daytona at 180....in the early 90's
He got skinned up a bit and sanded through his boot...but walked away.
It is entirely possible to walk away from a 200 mph crash with nothing more than minor abrasions......
remember, when you fall from a motorcycle at 120, 150, 180, 200...you are really only falling at about 6 to 8 miles an hour. Your leathers will smoke like a diesel with a bad injector....but as long as you do not hit an immoveable object while sliding, and you do not tumble too much, you'll walk away. I've walked away from several 145 mph crashes without a bruise.
Yep. That's the same 61 from Dylan's song.
I doubt that the officer was that accurate with the stop watch, and the time entering and completing the 1/4 mile from an airplane at some undetermined altitude at a speed at close to 200 mph.
The officer cites 4.39 seconds, if that changes to 4.99 the bike is around 180 mph.
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