Old Friend

OK, this is Doug Gall, ran a Top Fuel Harley in the old days. Anybody know if he is still around????

Bikes that won 1971 Indy

Indy 1971, Winner and Runner up, Top Fuel. Both bikes owned by Joe Smith. Joe Smith Winner on King Rat and Jim Cook Runner up on Rat Too.

Putting load on Motor

About loading the engines. I don't think anybody could have loaded the engines much more than I was doing. I learned about loading the motor standing on the starting line when the Top Fuel cars was running. I notice that certain cars, Big Daddy, The Snake, to name a few, when they left the starting line there motors always had a growl to them that other cars didn't have and after watching them for a while I realized that they didn't have the motors as high in RPM as others leaving the starting line. It was kind of a what they use to call a dead stick leave. In other words the clutch was sit up with more weight on launch and was controlled with throttle. I would spend time on the starting line (before they had sliders) and watch the bikes and a rider would get an exceptionally good ET run and come back to the pits all excited, get ready for another run and couldn't do it again. The reason was because he got the clutch out sooner on the good run and not on the second run, he didn't realize the deferents. That was the advantage I learned in the beginning that I used thru out my racing.
I never blew very many bottom ends due to cases, I took off a lot of top ends due to Hydraulicking a piston, bent rod, pulled pin boss, stuck piston once and that took out the cases. I would use my same pistons over and over when doing a top end.
Some more crap out of my mouth,

Maybe 200

KNOWING THE WAY MY DOUBLE WAS RUNNING AND THE THINGS THAT WAS HOLDING IT FROM BETTER TIMES, IF I HAD THE FUEL CONTROL AND CLUTCH, I KNOW I COULD HAVE GONE 200!!!!! THERE WAS ONE SIZE BIGGER TIRE TO GO TO AT THE TIME.

When you making a run

Yes, I remember some of the guys doing that. I was at that track once, for a Truitt and Osborne all bike meet. The track paid me $400.00 to show up, when I got to the track we unloaded every thing, got it all set up in the pits. They had me drive my tow truck down the strip before every thing got started and during that drive my wife and I found the strip was to rough for the clearance on my double for safety. When we got back, I went to the tower and explained the situation. The manager understood and said that’s OK, he gave me the 400 which I tried to return but he wouldn’t take it. We went down to the pits and loaded everything up and were working our way out the pit area. Three guys walked up to the driver side and said, “aren’t you Joe Smith” I said yes and the one guy says “when are you going to make a run, we came all the way from Idaho to see you ”. I looked over at my wife, turned back and said, about 30 minutes. As it turned out I won Top Fuel that day, setting a new track record, broke the front chain guard mount, broke the left fuel tank mount in the back and broke the frame. One run I got into a wobble and almost went down. I was only at that track once, even thought they tried to get me back a couple times more.