MPH verses ET

Speed, ET and why did it happen.

My Double Harley ran a pretty consistent 176 MPH, give or take, at every track I raced on. Those times were with ET’s between 8.12 and 8.40 on any track, night or day.

Talking about unusual Speed’s, I did turn 181, 182 and right at 183 MPH at the Ontario Super Nationals with ET’s between 8.02 and 8.12 and at Indy I had a run of 188 MPH with an ET of 8.77. Ron Fringer ran a 187 MPH on the same bike with Injectors at Orange County Raceway with a mid eight second run.

The thing is those ET’s from the 176 MPH to the 180’s is quite a span. But, I notice on all the faster runs there was something different, it was a feel they had that I tried to duplicate many times but could not seem to do it consistently. The bike seems to have a floating feeling through the traps and was harder to get stopped so I never doubted the MPH plus they were done at an NHRA National Events.

In those days the only instruments we had was the Air Density Gage and I kept a record of all runs that included spark plug range, jetting and nozzle size, rear tire air pressure, shoe size, sh*t everything and on those runs the air density in the record book was right at 104 which was in those days was perfect air.

So, on those runs some place on the track there was a different acceleration rate that I can’t explain, I just knew there was a different feel on that run.

Low Budget

When I fell down in the traps at Irwindale on my Knucklehead, tumbling and finally sliding on my back, my leather jacket rolled up and I ended up with a very big asphalt burn on my back. Shown in this picture how low bucks the Hobby of Drag Racing was in those days. My wife is buckling my jacket to my leather pants so that won’t happen again.
Notice the Air Density gage in rear window of tow car.