Zoomie

Zoomie

That Thing Got A Hemi? Yes!

JIM McCRAW

ENOUGH already! Steve Wright has seen the TV commercials, he gets the joke. Yes, most assuredly, his motorcycle has a Hemi.

Wright, 58, has driven and ridden lots of exotic machinery in his time.

He started racing off-road events right out of high school, and built a number of project vehicles up to and including a Top Fuel sand dragster. For years, he operated Wright’s FourWheel-Drive, catering to the dune-buggy, sand-racer and street-truck markets in western Michigan. He built custom driveshafts for all kinds of vehicles, and then got into the military vehicle and equipment business and that morphed into a regular Army-Navy surplus operation. He knows whereof he speaks, having spent six years as a Green Beret.

Wright says after the Harley scene (95th Anniversary Sportster, hopped-up TC88 Dyna Wide Glide) and then a 350 Chevy-powered Kannon, he felt he could build a VEight motorcycle that was both more and better.

The legendary Chrysler 426 Hemi was his engine of choice, because no one to his knowledge had ever built such a motorcycle. He built the standard 426 from a new highnickel iron block and aluminum heads, Ross pistons, forged Eagle crank and rods, with a single Holley 750-cfm doublepumper four-barrel on top, a configuration that Chrysler used on the Hemi for stock-car racing. Although the ignition distributor is period-correct, it doesn’t have dual points-or any points, for that matter-its guts being fully electronic.

Wright worked a year and a half on the bike after the Hemi was built, using Vs-inch-wall chrome-moly tubing for the frame construction, with smaller tubes here and there.

Of course the swingarm has mounting points for a polished nitrous-oxide bottle on each side, for a little more “passing power.” Wright estimates the Hemi puts out 600 horsepower normally aspirated, closer to 800 with the juice turned on.

Body and paint were done by Jim Pacwa of Twisted Twin in South Haven, Michigan, a “Biker Build-Off’ winner who took one look at the frame and the engine on Wright’s shop floor and said, “I want to be part of this.” Another major contributor was Greg Alley of Thunder Alley in Bridgeman, Michigan, who did a major portion of the work on the wiring and electrics. Harry Hauch, sheetmetal man extraordinaire, did the giant fuel tank, and adapted the Hilborn-style fuel-injector air filter between the tank and carburetor. Sanderson Headers built the ceramic-coated zoomie dragster-style header set from a mockup that Wright sent to California, including eight 10-inch Harley drag-pipe baffles, which iork beautifully on the

street to calm the Hemi engine down to acceptable sound levels. There are heat shields for the last pipe on each bank.

“There were two reasons I wanted to use zoomies instead of block-hugger headers,” says Wright. “For safety, if I ever lay this bike down, the headers will go first, protecting my $2000 set of polished-chrome valve covers. Second reason was, Hemis just don’t look right without zoomies.”

The engine maintains its cool thanks to a huge Ron Davis two-row custom-built aluminum radiator, with 1.5-inch tubes and huge fins, a thermostatic electric fan with an override switch, twin 10-gpm electric water pumps and lots of coolant. Seems to work. “It hasn’t been over 170 degrees yet,” says Wright.

The frame’s bottom rails were set in the jig wide enough to accommodate the engine, radiator, fan, filters, lines and pumps, and the engine was tied directly into the frame at five locations. The powertrain includes a Cohen Chryslerto-Chevrolet adapter plate that accepts a GM Powerglide bellhousing and a Vic Richards two-speed automatic transmission with reverse gear and a 90-degree adapter to the front twin-sprocket set. It uses a 2800-rpm-stall, 10-inch race torque converter to spin the sprocket and dual chains. Wright says reverse comes in handy when the 1150-pound Hemi bike gets parked with the nose pointing downhill.

To get that much mass stopped, you want three giant Brembo disc brakes, and that’s what the Hemi bike has. At the ends of the bars are Harley-Davidson grips and controlseverything but a clutch lever-with Performance Machine foot controls for the rear disc brake on the right side and the two-speed automatic transmission on the left.

So, what’s it like to ride a $75,000, 600-horsepower, halfton-and-then-some V-Eight? “If you blip the throttle, the bike does want to rock over,” says Wright, “but once you put it in gear and take off, the torque reaction disappears and it acts like a gyro and goes straight down the road.”

Besides, it’s not all about the ride. “Half the fun of it is watching other people enjoy it, particularly people from the industry who realize how much time was spent, the craftsmanship and the engineering involved,” says Wright.

Just lay off the Hemi jokes...