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The Kneeslider

Doers Builders and Positive People

NAPA Drag Bike observations

By Paul Crowe

After seeing the two shows devoted to building the NAPA drag bike, I guess they did OK. Unfortunately, they only had about 30 seconds of the entire two shows devoted to starting and running the bike down the strip. It did run the 9.9 and Ricky Gadson said it was running rich and needed a lot of fine tuning so it had the potential to do a lot better. The bike was designed to be a drag bike because of the NAPA theme but it is also primarily a show bike which will be carted around the country so I don’t think anyone can be too hard on them. When show bike builders build a race bike they’re entering a new area with rules they never had to think about before. If they built another bike, the second one would be better. If they devoted time to tuning this one, it would probably run a lot better, I’ve never seen a race bike or car come out of the shop and set records. Interesting segments overall for a show not devoted to racing.

Posted on June 19, 2005 Filed Under: Motorcycle Builders, Motorcycle Racing


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Comments

  1. aaron says

    June 19, 2005 at 1:47 pm

    given that little is done from scratch for this show (ie frames and engines are ordered, suspension comes in a box ready to bolt on. tires, wheels, etc are all ordered from the supplier… i think that ordering a drag frame and race motor, bolting on chrome and pretty paint, and assembling as the manual recommends should yeild a semi decent bike… it doesn’t take a genius to put something on a dyno with exhaust gas analysis and have it tuned…this bike should have done better than a 600 street bike with no hop-ups (gadson pulled high nines for one of the major mags last month)

    i “missed” this episode but it probably went like this…

    dad: “hey jr! i’ve taken a contract to build a bike in 4 days!”

    jr: “are you stupid? you do this every week! ok, order the parts and get them painted”

    …45 min of bitching and family building nonsense…

    jr: “ok, lets bolt these bits together…wow a bike”

    …fade to commercial #413… “and next week on american choppers…”

    the end

  2. Gumby says

    June 23, 2005 at 11:01 pm

    I suffered through the OCC show just to watch our 155 cid
    “street & strip” billet motor run the 1/4.
    The motor, a R&R Cycles 155 made 178 HP on a rear wheel
    chassis dyno only days before it was bolted into that frame.

    They screwed up and used a small exhaust and tall gearing.
    The bike should easily run high 8’s.

    We typicaly run 1.875/2./2.25 stepped pipes on those motors
    and they will produce up to 190hp on pump gas at 5,500 RPM.

    Gumby

  3. kneeslider says

    June 24, 2005 at 7:16 am

    That’s what happens when custom bike builders go racing. All of those things can be corrected in the sorting process, of course some of those things can be avoided in the first place if you listen to the motor builders and other guys who have gone racing before. OCC did bring in one guy during the build who helped them with rules and requirements so they recognized they were out of their element.

    If a race team made those mistakes, you would wonder what they were doing building a race bike. If a custom builder does it, you shake your head and smile.

    It would be nice to see what that bike can really do. Maybe they’ll do another show devoted to making it a real racer.

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