Land speed racer

Sounds like it is a Star Wars artifact. Lol. Must be a Star Wars convention or something.

 

15 yrs ago I tried to break 300kph on a rented GSX-R1000 on the Autobahn. The speedo got up to 299 the first run and I had to roll off for traffic. Next time, it sat at 299 again but the revs were still climbing. That's when I realized that's where the speedo topped out.

 

Best bet is to use a GPS to track speed as speedos are notorious for being in accurate. BMW's are always "optimistic" and have you going faster than you actually are. Not sure how to do that on a bike though, as I'd imagine it would be dangerous to be watching it instead of the road.

 

With that much air resistance the clutch was slipping and speedo was fine.

 

I'm not much of a bike guy, but wouldn't you know if clutch was slipping? Wouldn't revs jump up and down?

 

Nah, clutch wasn't slipping. Revs continued to climb slowly but gradually. I know it wasn't actually "300 kph". Just wanted to see it on the speedo. This was in the days before GoPros, so I had a PowerShot S50 strapped onto my tank bag to record for posterity, but wasn't quite able to press the shutter button at the right moment.

But here's 263kph on a Gixxer 600 at a track day in Spokane.


Now you know where my username comes from

PS. If you're wondering why the bike in front of me disappears 42 sec in, it wasn't an alien abduction. I edited together clips from a few different laps.

 

Passed by again and I saw Danny Thompson! He doesn't actually live in the neighborhood, but his son does and the base of operations is in SoCal so he was here while working on it. He said that was the last run for the car and it's going into a museum or it's getting sold to some collector. Took time to talk to me while I was walking my son around.

 

Also the X-wing isn't there anymore. But he's building a Tie Fighter now!!!

 

I think I found Danny Thompson's grandson

 

Take one last look if it's still there, he had to sell it to pay bills.

 

Ha! I just got lucky when I saw it parked in front of his house. It was right before they were going to tow it to Bonneville for the record. When I spoke with him I know he mentioned going to Australia for a bit and then going to a museum somewhere. After the record he wasn't going to drive it again and seeing the size, it's a bit of a white elephant.

Wondering which car collector ended up buying it.

 

Just in case anyone is still interested, it sold for $510,000 at the Mecum, Kissimmee Florida, auction.
When it got up to $500,000, the question of whether the trailer was included came up. Danny said, for $510k, you can have the entire "rig", truck, trailer, and car.
There were two bidders going back and forth. An American, and a Canadian, (Dana Mecum was playing up the "keep it in America" theme"). The American won the bid.

 

Sort of related but Jason Camissa has been doing an awesome job with his new channel on YT:



this latest episode is about the in's and out's of the auction world - really interesting!

edit: and derek tam hyphen scott