Land speed huh. Have nephew that missed out on Lake Gairdner this year because of rain.
36 Hudson Terraplane dynoed at 1100 hp.
Him and 2 others own/drive it.
Mine came with the canopy.
i know exactly what that terraplane looks like. beautiful automobiles. i used to have a 1950 hudson stepdown with a V8. all the horsepower of a smallblock chevy and all the brakes of four ten inch drums.
lake gairdner is famous among LSR people. you can get 9 miles there. i race on B52 runways. cant hold it open very long.
Gus says its very frustrating. Even with the Previous engine he was never able to run it flat out. Not enough traction for 1000 plus hp. A Hudson Terraplane. It on Facebook some place.
wheelspin is a serious issue on the salt. i run on asphalt, and dont have enough horsepower to spin the wheel anyway.
in america the salt at bonneville is going away. extraction has reduced its thickness from about 5 feet in the 1940s to only 8 or 10 inches now. so even a moderate rain will flood the surface.
theyre all still in denial about it but runway events are the future.
is there such a thing in oz? wheelspin is controllable on asphalt but the runs are shorter.
The Bonneville Salt Flats are SO yesterday, as in last Century.
The more modern location for running high speed is the Black Rock Desert, outside Gerlach, Nevada.
The only issue there is desert floor dust, so multiple air filters are needed to keep the dust out of the engines, and need to be cleaned every time after each run.
Two Million Mile Rider
Exploring the World in Comfort
The thing with salt flats is just that.
Flat.
How can you run flat out if it's not flat?
Pye won't do it.
So I'm sticking with the flat earth society.
Are you saying the salt has been mined?
Or is being lost some other way?
its being extracted by flooding and then evaporating the brine in artificial basins. i used to drive a semi and went there several times for salt loads. each load is 47,000 pounds of bagged salt destined for snow removal and water softeners. the soft gypsum layer under the salt is often exposed now in spots and at best isnt very far down anywhere.
because the surface is iffy its not as goid for motorcycles as it once was. i know a guy who broje his arm falling off a 1950s triumph at 123mph because the cars had chewed up the track. theyre having trouble finding enough good salt surface every year now to lay out a course.
well, here's the tug. a triumph, in the end.
this is a 1966 TR6 front frame, with a 1965? rear frame, and 1969 front forks with the improved TLS front brake. other parts are sourced from whoever knows. i have a 1967-1970 motor and bonneville cylinder head, with most of the other parts available right here:
not so insurmountable a problem as it might appear. all i need to have for a street-legal motorcycle is a headlamp, front fender, a seat, and various small bits. the motor can be assembled from a whole bunch of boxes from various places, which is no big deal for an old fart. just seals, lockwashers, and gaskets. plus a 0.060 rebore and some pistons from somewhere. lapping the valves, thats all.
well, also a legal title. thats next.
then we're in business!
well, the forum software locked me out for a while. hard to send "jeff" an email to open up my account when i have to log in to find out what his email is . . .
lol
anyway, this watsonian project cant proceed far until i put the triumph motorcycle together to pull it. so today i bought a set of 1970 TR6 trophy cases on ebay for a really good price.
i already have a set of 1966 T120R bonneville cases i was going to use, but the british motorcycle industry made a major shift in threaded fastener standards starting in 1969, and completed in 1970. my 1966 cases are very nice, but every threaded hole in them uses threads cut to obsolete standards: cycle engineering, british association, british standard fine, and whitworth. sometimes a single stud will conform to one standard on one end for screwing into aluminum, and to a different one on the other end to accept a steel nut. so every nut, bolt, screw, and stud has to be matched to these obsolete standards. all of it is available, but the cost adds up, and if something vibrates loose, you cant get a replacement from the hardware store.
by 1970 the Great Thread Shift was complete, and almost all the parts on the triumphs were SAE-- UNC and UNF, except the weird little BA/BSF screws in the carbs, drain plugs, rocker adjusters and so on, which never changed. and the head bolts. so i try to use 1970 motors for whatever i do. 1971-on was yet another sea change in triumph motorcycles, with major frame modifications. but i stay away from those to keep my life simpler. the sidecar itself will use the old standards, as its a 1968.
i guess this means sooner or later ill have to build a 1966 motorcycle after all and use the 1966 cases there. or pass them to my kids, along with a whole bunch of boxes of odds and ends.
so the project moves on. later today ill go see about getting the roller ready to hook up to the chair to see what th emounts look like. im really not impressed with the watsonian solution to the lower frontmount, where an eye nut is just screwed onto the end of a 7/16-inch motor mount bolt. if i run an H-shaped subframe under the machine i might even be able to improve the lower rear mount at the other end. ill be looking for advice there, as ill be out of my comfort zone.
you know, i use this place to research obsoltete things, so here's my contribution on how watsonian mounted their sidecars to a 1969 triumph 650, back in 1969. maybe someobody father down the road will find the history useful, and i am absolutely open to suggestions on improving what i have to work with here. this is a 1969 trophy, a left-side exhaust 650 similar to what this sidecar was hooked to fromwhen it was new:
upper front mount:
lower front mount:
upper rear:
lower rear:
the upper front mount is a conventional clamp on the single bike downtube, with a stud bolted into a clamp on the swan neck of the sidecar.
the lower front mount is an eyenut screwed onto the lower engine mounting through-bolt, then to a strut on the sidecar frame.
the upper rear mount is also conventional, with a strut bolted to the sidecar attaching to a clamp on the bike frame member up near the shock mount.
the lower rear mount is complicated. it was designed to be far enough back to clear the kickstart, and high enough to clear a silencer. the solution was a multi-piece bracket bolted to a tube on the sidecar frame that adjusts for height and angle and ends in a fork bolt. on the motorcycle, theres a boomerang-shaped plate that originates at a motor mount bolt, clamps to a bracket on the frame, then terminates in an eyebolt. even with a shorter kickstart lever the seller told me that your heel can catch the brackets.
that lower front mount has worked for some 55 years on a triumph trophy, but does not look very strong. i may cobble up a subframe to try to spread those forces.
Kevin, without going through every post here in this thread, have you even mentioned WHERE you live ?
I ask, because we have a guy in our sidecar community that can build things like subframes, mounts, etc.....but he lives in Eugene, Oregon.
If you are anywhere close, he might be your source for custom made steel items.
Two Million Mile Rider
Exploring the World in Comfort
no, im on the other side of north america, in appalchia. eastern ohio. way out in coal country.
thought about living in oregon once, but life directed me in the other direction. was living in california, and it was getting too expensive to stay.
but a subframe wouldnt be hard to fabricate, i can hang a piece of 1.5-inch square tubing from the front motor mount through-bolt, the centre stand mounts, and then to a longer bolt where the rear frame section bolts on. then do a similar piece on the other side and weld cross pieces to spread the forces to both sides.
just finding time is always my issue. its a resource i dont have much extra of. too much going on:
well, im not pulling the watsonian anywhere yet, but i might as well put up a progress report on the tug. its a 1960s bitsa for sure. a 1966 triumph TR6 front frame, a 1965 rear frame, 1969-70 forks, mudguards and a seat from somewhere between 1963 and 1970, a 1960s ARD racing magneto, some old 32mm mikuni carbs i had in a box, an early 1970s tank from a three cylinder trident, and so on. i had intended to use up some miscellaneous aftermarket parts id accumulated in order to save money, but as things went on i ended up assembling a more or less frankenstein out of old orginal parts.
heres where we started at the middle of winter
[img] [/img]
i began by sourcing parts from anywhere i could scrounge them
front fender and stays from an american import 650, 1966 or so. it was second try-- the first was for an 18-inch wheel, and the fender didnt fit the 19 that i had. different models of triumph used 18 or 19 depending on where they were sold.
[img] 
[/img]
rear fender and tailight assembly. from a 1969, i think
[img] 
[/img]
the tailight parts are almost as expensive as the fenders, but i got a package deal on the two together.
then a 1964-1966 seat, with the old J-hook hinges. these are hard to find, and some people want three or four hundred bucks for em. this one was in california for a $100, and its a NOS aftermarket unit of unknown age. fits perfectly.
[img] 
[/img]
[img] 
[/img]
and then theres the little junk.headlamp ears from an unknown british machine that look like they fit, a pre-1965 headlamp bucket with the vestigial ammeter, electrical switches for lights and brake bulbs, the cursed rubber mounted P-clamps to hold the handlebars, and a complete steering damper assembly. the steering damper was a lucky find, as almost all the parts were there, which is generally unheard of.
[img] 
[/img]
little bits like ^^^these are often the hard ones to find. that steering damper, for instance, doesnt work unless you also have this little half-inch grub screw that locks the mechanism into the bottom triple tree. they usually stay with the triple tree, but whoever disassembled the donor machine knew his stuff and included it with the rest of the parts:
[img] 
[/img]
threaded things can be problematic, because the older components have whitworth, cycle, british standard, and british association threads, and sourcing those parts can be an issue. no SAE until 1969 or 1970, and no metric until the 1980s, i think. even then some parts stayed cycle and briitsh association threads until the company died.
and last but not least, once all that is put together, i still have to do the motor:
[img] 
[/img]
but i have most all the pieces for that.
in the meantime, the monaco just sits there waiting for me to get my act together and hook it up. if i had bought that 1963 bonneville that came up at an estate sale a few years ago for stupid little money id have the chair out on the road right now, but i had an unfortunate attack of common sense and let it go.
[img] 
[/img]
i could still figure out a way to put the thing on a BSA, but i have a complete set of 1960s triumph mounts already
[img] 
[/img]
cheers!
