Turbo Sportster Land Speed Record Clean Sweep
About the bike and I
Hi,
I am just an average guy, a dad, a programmer, and a sportster rider.
I bought a used (abused) Sportster in January of 2011 for very short money. I had never owned or ridden a Harley, I lived in an apartment and had no tools.
The first six months were spent learning enough about the bike to fix all the bad things the previous owner did to it. But nothing very involved because anything I did needed to be done in one session, no place to tear down the bike.
Then I got a loan and bought a garage for the bike. Lucky for me there was a house attached ;-)
I then started doing bad things to it.
I started playing with higher performance engine configurations and installed a used Baker XL6 6 speed transmission I picked up for short money.
I learned how to weld by stretching the swingarm 7" and cutting and stretching the frame 7". That was a 3 month ordeal to get right.
The plans for going turbo started moving at this time.
I found that I was not satisfied with the suspension, brakes and selection of tires available for the stock sporty so and seeing as how I would be needing a LOT more stopping power very soon...
I built another swingarm to accept a GSXR1000 wheel and transplanted the entire front end from a 2003 GSXR 1300 Hayabusa onto the sporty.
This brought a huge improvement in stability and stopping power. I have taken the bike to 160mph on pavement and it tracked like an arrow, not a hint of wobble.
Then my friend Jason Sarrat of Hellcat Customs and I (mostly Jason) sat down in the garage and designed, built and installed a custom one-off turbocharger system.
The cases were then bored out to accept 1350cc cylinders and an 82" race engine was built using race proven handcrafted hand-me-downs from one of the fastest guys on the salt.
I am still in the process of fine tuning but preliminary results showed 140hp @ 5800 rpm. I fully expect to bring that number up to 160hp by the time the bike hits the salt.
Those numbers brought the bike out of the cherry picking pretender class into the bring-it-on contender class.
About the mission
The mission is to capture 8 national land speed records riding the turbo sportster and put one more nail in the coffin of the idea that a sportster is something that you grow out of. ;-)
