Posted on 06/18/2003 8:15:48 PM PDT by chance33_98
Motorcycle was clocked at 157mph, court told
By Stewart Payne (Filed: 18/06/2003)
A motorcyclist was recorded travelling at 157mph as he flashed past a police camera, followed by a friend doing 148mph, a court was told yesterday.
It is believed to be the highest speed recorded on a British road and both riders were warned to expect a stiff penalty after pleading guilty to dangerous driving.
Neil Bolger pleads guilty after being caught in a police speed trap in Buckinghamshire doing 148mph
The men, both 29, were said not to be racing each other. Andrew Osborne, from Leamington Spa, Warwicks, who was clocked at 157mph, and Neil Bolger, from Gaydon, Warwicks, must wait until next month to find out their sentence, but were given interim driving disqualifications.
Magistrates in Aylesbury, Bucks, heard that the men were spotted on the A421 near Buckingham speeding through an underpass on a dual carriageway noted as an accident blackspot. The road had a 70mph limit.
Theresa Murphy, prosecuting, said they overtook a lorry on a sweeping bend before being caught by the speed trap.
Darren Rogers, defending Osborne, a master technician, argued that the case should be dealt with by magistrates and not referred to the Crown Court.
Nicholas Devine, defending Bolger, a lorry driver, said that although he was travelling at excessive speed there were no aggravating features. "There is no evidence of alcohol or drugs," he said.
The case was adjourned for four weeks for reports.
In 1972 the 900 Kowie ruled. Honda was cookin' 4 bangers.
And for some strange reason in 2003, 883's are still sellin'!!
Take that!!!!!! :-)
However...IMHO....there will always only be one Kenny Roberts...the night they shoved a TZ750 2 stroker(my all time fav bike) into his flat tracker(they were out of his normal 4 strokes) and he whipped Springsteen on the last lap riding that completly out of control squirrel rocket was unprecedented and they promptly banned those motors from flat tracks. He whipped the Harleys with less power because he was riding the Yamahas...the hogs were far better flat trackkers. He then went on to win every motorcycle road race there is world wide. The first to master the hard braking turn were the rear wheel is airborne to allow faster entry and then goose it maximum out of the apex. Everyone after him is a distant second in my view. I wonder if he ever road the Isle of Mann free for all death race? King Kenny! The hero to all us old cafe street racers in the 70s and early 80s...Hear Hear!
Russ Collins' three-motor monster eventually ran a best of 7.80 sec./179.5 mph but, in the end, proved a death-defying ride. In 1976, it was destroyed in a horrendous crash at Akron, Ohio that nearly killed Russ, put him in the hospital for several weeks and kept him in a wheelchair for several more. You can't keep a wild man down, though. ... .
While recuperating from the accident, Collins designed the "Sorcerer", his final Top Fuel bike creation. Built in early-1977 and later billed as the World's Greatest Drag Bike, Sorcerer was powered by a pair of 1000cc. Honda fours. This bike won a second NHRA Best Engineered Award for RC Engineering. Blown, injected and running on 90% nitro, this two-wheeled, twin-engined rocket set a world motorcycle acceleration record for the quarter- mile of 7.30 sec./199.55 mph. That mark stood for 12 years, a truly astonishing feat in a sport where records are broken monthly. ... .
Russ Collins' ultimate achievement in the motorcycle world came on July 9, 1999 when he was inducted into the American Motorcycle Heritage Foundation's Motorcycle Hall of Fame. Six committees of experts in all areas of motorcycling started with a list of 500 people. Three rounds of balloting reduced that to 72 inductees for 1999 and Collins was one of them. He joins Steve McQueen, J.C. Agajanian, Willie G. Davidson, Evel Knievel, Don Vesco, Malcom Forbes, Bob Hannah, Roger DeCoster and other motorcycling greats as a Motorcycle Hall of Famer. ... .
Today, Russ Collins still consults to automobile manufacturers and race teams, providing expertise in fuel management and data acquisition, however, the primary focus at RC Engineering is on marketing new technology: fuel injection systems, performance upgrades for the racer and street high- performance enthusiast and, of course, supplying the best custom injectors in the world.
And for some strange reason in 2003, 883's are still sellin'!!
Take that!!!!!! :-)
The engine life of the Kow 900 was around 3000 hours. When we bombed Japanese industry to bits in WW2, they had to reengineer and retool completely, and went with aircraft engine engineering rather than follow the safe old ways of motorcycles past; Soichiro Honda was an aircraft engine parts supplier during the war, and wisely directed the research along directions he and they knew best, there being no shortage of unemployed aviation industry engineers in Japan then.
Honda's 750 four was the first motorcycle ever to face a recall; but for some miscommunication between me and a dealer, I'd have had the one that showed up on the cover of Cycle magazine in late '69, which would have been the first Jap bike I'd ever owned. Indeed, the cute little bikini-clad model with the bike looked good too, the daughter of the PR outfit promoting both the dealership and Honda USA at that time, by name of *Mary Collins*...but try though I did, I couldn't quite work out a package deal where I'd get both.
No matter. Though we never hooked up, I picked up a Triumph when the bike was wrecked as a demonstrator. Despite her grief and depression about our not getting together, she did okay, and went into business for herself out there. Eventually married a movie director, I'm told, though now better known by her married.stage name.
I've yet to own a Jap bike, though a couple of tempting possibilities are around. And I don't really regret losing the shot with the teen sweetie, though it's interesting to wonder how that might have possibly turned out. My old XLCH 900 Sportster was probably less tempermental, though....
There's three places I want to get to besides the 10th Anniversary Ace Cafe run if I get back this year. I expect you'd be familiar with all three of them.
As ever was. Then and now.
-archy-/-
Either can bite or scratch you up pretty severly, either can bankrupt you easily enough, and you do need to be cautious about where you put your fingers when around either. But if tamed and fine-tuned either can also be a fine companion for long hours, a source of both pleasure and comfort, and can result in very real pride.
You just need to keep your priorities straight, and not forget there are other good things in life as well. Firearms, aircraft and beer come to mind....
-archy-/-
Archy, YOU ROCK!!!!!!!! An almost Bo of Bo! Awesome story! Thank you! :-)
The japs lost the war because of the fineness of japanese hair.
While building tanks & battleships for their war effort, the jap engineers said "Hey, make that steel plating just a twat hair thicker"!. The Americans said the same thing!
and the rest is history!
<|:-)~~
Indeed. I couldn't guess either ponies or torque, but saw better than 110 by at least 10-15 mph on my old 55-inch K-model flathead Sportster, back around 1964. And that was not *on the clock* numbers, but timed with a stopwatch over a measured 3-mile stretch of then-uncompleted 4-lane interstate. I recall the quarter miles as taking a bit longer, as the bike was really geared for highway work riding double.
-archy-/-
I had the Cycle magazine cover shot of her and the then-new Honda 750 on the inside of my G.I. footlocker until I got out, and kept it in a scrapbook for years, though it was unfortunately lost in a trailer fire a few years back. But every time I'm around a used bookstore with a stack of old copies of Cycle I check for one with that cover in good shape. No luck so far....
Both Bo and I appear to have weathered the years a good deal better than most of those old Honda 45-inchers that are still around. But either of them was easier on the eyes back then.
-archy-/-
"Since 1969, there never have been any Harleys at the top of the performance heap,but that doesn't keep our friends of the Harleyreligion from spending thousands of bucks tomake their twenty grand motorcycles go faster.How do you justify spending twenty large on abike that will get dusted in a straight line bythe average, box-stock Japanese 600, and don'teven think about what happens when the roadturns. It's sort of like the old joke about theBaptists and Heaven: you just pretend there'sno one else out there."
Note though, that there's a very good chance that old Harlety will still be running 5 years down the line, or a decade, or 5 decades or more. It's hardly unusual to see 20 and 30-year old Harleys out, but you don't often see the old Jap bikes with any particular advanced years of the road behind them.
And when that box-stock 600cc Japanese bike gets used for riding double, or for making weekend runs of a thousand miles out on Friday night/Saturday morning and a thousand back home starting Sunday afternoon, once or twice a month, and getting the rider back for work on Monday, the picture looks a little better for those big Harleys...and now, the big Indians again, too.
It's a different way of doing things. But the Japanese have no domestic market for really long distance tourers, and haven't quite got the picture yet. They can copy the features, and come up with retro styling to sell to those without much of a clue, but the best bikes they build are not the Dammfast Sammamabichis....
-archy-/- -archy-/-
I can't believe I missed a motorcycle thread, especially one where dirtbikes (and OPEN CLASS dirt bikes at that) are being mentioned.
I owned both an '83 CR480R and an '85 CR500R, the latter arguably being the most powerful production open-class bike ever produced ... my friends (on YZ490s and XR500s) and I used to ride all over Sumter and Macon counties, often riding in a pack that would wheelie down the highways at 75 mph to go from one riding spot to the other. We never made the papers though.
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