No Limits, Nobarriers
NO LIMITS, NOBARRIERS
LET'S TALK ABOUT FAST—CRAZY fast, faster than you can go
anywhere but inside a metal cigar at Bonneville. Let's talk about going 254 mph on a naked Suzuki Hayabusa.
A man named Bill Warner achieved this in April at the Texas Mile. He needed not only massive power to overcome aero drag and rolling friction at that high speed, but on such a course he needed extra power to accelerate to those speeds in so short a distance. When you run at Bonneville, it's 7 miles to the moun tains. One mile comes quickly.
How much power? We have fig ures for an unstreamlined Hayabusa from Driveability Test Facility Wind Tunnel #8 in Allen Park, Michigan. Everything that follows is estimated, of course, but lowering the rider 6
inches from the docu mented wind-tunnel shape leaves us with just under 7 square feet of frontal area and a drag coefficient of a little more than 0.6. Drag coefficient compares the test shape with the drag of a flat plate of equal frontal area. In this case, the shape of motorcycle and rider reduces their drag to only 60 percent of the flat-plate drag. For 250 mph, that gives an aero horsepower requirement of 437. Adding another chunk for rolling friction takes us easily over 500 hp, and we need even more for quick acceleration.
Now get this: A human in free fall accelerates to about 125 mph, at which point the unlucky individual's drag equals his weight. That's terminal velocity, and they say it's like riding on air. Drag increases as the square of speed, so at twice this speed-250 mph-the drag force on the rider could be as much as four times his weight. Hold on tight, and hope the seatback and handlebars are strong enough. That's why everyone is so impressed with this record.
Warner's bike is based on the RCC Ultra turbo kit, which is a piece of engineering that includes not only the turbo and plumbing but also an integrated airboxlintercooler, water pump, intercooler radiator, secondary fuel injectors and fuel controller. You didn't have a better use in mind for $1 1K, did you? I thought not. That,
with lowered compression iand thicker-crowned turbo ipistons from JE (thicker crowns aren't just stronger they also carry the heat to the cylinder walls), gets you to what the turbo Hayabusa people nonchalantly call "your standard 550 hp" on I race gas. But bear in mind I that the Garrett GT35R turbocharger has a 640-hp I "capacity"-room for a little I something extra.
It is my hope that this new breed of record-seek ers will work as hard to stay safe as they do to go faster. -Kevin Cameron
