Warner Goes 311 Mph!
WARNER GOES 311 MPH!
ROUNDUP
WHILE I WAS AT HOME, MAKING A PANCAKE breakfast, Bill Warner was at the former Loring AFB in Maine, riding his homebuilt 1299cc Suzuki Hayabusa 311.945 mph on the Loring Timing Association's 2.5-mile course.
Going this fast is very serious business. When your engine is making around 700 horsepower and you're moving at more than 450 feet per second, the drag force on the fairing is equivalent to 800 pounds. If the front end of the bike lifts, that force will blow you over backward. If you let your tire spin too much (his only spun 6 to 7 percent), the heat can turn it into hot, exploding mush. The true path is narrow.
Warner went 258 mph last year at the Texas Mile using Hayabusa-like streamlining he’d made himself. He wanted to go faster, so employing his self-taught fiberglass skills, he fabricated classic “fish” streamlining and went a lot faster. A test run at former Maxton Air Force Base in North Carolina revealed aerodynamic lift, so, the bike was put into the A2 wind tunnel, also in North Carolina, prior to the Maine event. This led to the addition of a “chin spoiler” that put load back onto the front wheel.
When you make four times the stock bike’s power, you also make potential trouble. To strengthen the crankcase, the team adopted an uncooled billet cylinder with Nikasil bores. Half-inch ARP studs keep the head gasket in place, and the absence of cooling dictated that the engine had to run on alcohol. A Garrett 42X turbo delivers 26 inches of boost through an ice-cooled water-to-air intercooler, and a MoTeC 800 engine controller commands eight 2200cc Injection Dynamics injectors. Combustion forces are transmitted through lowcompression pistons and Crower 4340 rods to a Marine Crankshafts crank. To help the crankcase live, it was align-bored with everything torqued in place.
I love these kinds of success stories because it is determined people, teaching themselves what they need to know, every difficult step of the way—thinking, testing, building and rebuilding.
This was a huge achievement. Congratulations to Warner and his crew. —Kevin Cameron
substantial wealth of projects have been acquired by the company and its principals, Alessandro Capotosti and Ruggiero Massimo Jannuzzelli. According to CW European Editor Bruno de Prato, these two gentlemen are totally unknown to the motorcycle world, both having been formerly involved in banking and financial brokerage activities in Milan, Italy.
At this stage, it is very hard to identify what the new owners will make of Moto Morini. Rumors suggest that they are a front sent forward by another entrepreneur, possibly Paolo Berlusconi (the brother of Italy’s Prime Minister, who attempted to purchase Moto Morini but was rebuffed by the radically communist unions in Bologna) to a rather improbable Claudio Castiglioni.
For now, it is all speculation. Apparently, Capotosti and Jannuzzelli have already contacted former Chief Project Engineer Franco Lambertini to learn if he is interested in a new phase of his long love affair with Moto Morini.
W\ r\I I I M To U.K. insurer Aviva Insurance, for denying coverage to cusUUVV IMtomers who own certain sportbikes or off-road-style motorcycles and say they intend to carry passengers. The company, which insures one out of every seven bikes in the U.K., says the move was prompted by a significant jump in both the number and cost of bodily injury claims to passengers on particular types of bikes. Aviva spokesman Erik Nelson explained that whether or not a motorcycle owner plans to ride with a passenger is just one of many rating factors they take into consideration. “It won’t make a difference for the majority of bikes, but on some models, we may elect to charge a higher premium or decline to cover the bike altogether.”
