No Nortons at Bonneville

Just a quick report from the BUB Speed Trials at Bonneville this week. I'm here helping a friend run a Guzzi-powered streamliner. The event ends tomorrow, and so far there have been no Nortons entered, but Triumph has a major presence this year. They brought their new streamliner, powered by two Rocket 3 engines. It's a lovely design, but they are still working through teething problems, and haven't got a good run yet. Maybe today. Several Rocket 3 bikes running the course, including one trike. On the old bike front, Tom Mellor managed to set a two way average just over 200 mph with his highly modified 1000 cc Trident in the 1000 cc special construction pushrod gas class. Pretty impressive.

Ken

How fast are those Rocket 3s going?

We did finally have a Norton show up in the "Run whatcha brung" category. For $50 you get one timed run and a timing slip. Still no Nortons in any of the regular classes. The Norton was a chopper style bike, looked like a custom frame with Atlas engine and Commando primary drive and front end. Not real impressive, pretty much a rat bike, but props to the guy for at least being there.

Big storm squall went through yesterday and turned the salt bed into lake Bonneville, so the event is probably over, unless everything dried up enough overnight. We'll be packing up today, and Steve and I will head to the AHRMA races at Miller this weekend.

I have some pictures that I'll post after I get home. Forgot to bring the cord to download them from the phone, and no SD card reader on this notebook.

Dave, the Rocket IIIs I heard times on were in the 120 mph range. There could have been faster ones, but I was pretty focused on our own effort, and didn't catch much of the other action. We spent a lot of the week either flogging in the pits to get the liner through tech, or waiting (for hours sometimes) at the start line for the winds to die down enough for the officials to let liners run. We did manage to come away with two records in the 1000 cc sidecar streamliner pushrod gas and fuel classes, but to be honest, they were pretty slow (131 and 130 mph), but still records because there were no existing records in the class. We did manage to have a great time, though. Bonneville should be on any serious biker's bucket list.

Ken

Congrats, Ken. 2 records at one meet is quite an accomplishment, regardless of the circumstances. I hope they stand for a while, and you better them next time out.

Great time on the salt, Wish I knew you were there.

A Norton still owns the 750 pushrod production class doesn't it? At 126 mph set in 2012 By Randy Johnson

see the bike here (4th photo from top)

http://www.jsmotorsport.com/images.asp

jseng1 said:

A Norton still owns the 750 pushrod production class doesn't it? At 126 mph set in 2012 By Randy Johnson

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Not in the AMA records, which are the ones set at the BUB event. The 750 P-PP record there is still held by a Triumph at 129.649 mph in 2011. The record you are referring to is the SCTA 750 P-PP record, which is still held by Big D Cycles and Randy Johnson. When BUB's Dennis Manning convinced the AMA to get back in the sanctioning business some years for his BUB events at Bonneville, they decided to stay separate from SCTA. Turns out Dennis doesn't get along too well with SCTA.
It gets a bit confusing keeping track of records with two separate sanctioning organizations that run a lot of the same classes in their own Bonneville events.

Ken

Hortons Norton said:

Great time on the salt, Wish I knew you were there.

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Didn't mention it because I wasn't running a Norton. Probably should have anyhow.

How'd you like the storm that moved through Wednesday? We cleaned up and left today. Left a couple of water-soaked carpets in the dumpster on the way out.

Ken

We missed that as we left Wed. morning, But I hear it ended the event. This was our first time back since my brother had his crash and he was not running. It was more of a support thing for some friends than a racing deal for him. But we had a good time and met the guy with the Norton, His name was Morto and was a really nice guy. Did you get to meet the guy named Lucky that went down on the speedway bike?? We had a few beers with him and were very glad he didn't get hurt too bad. He was from down under and had a Jawa speedway bike. he also said he had a streamliner he would bring next year. Also a pic. of Tom with his 200+ mph Triumph Triple, And a pic. of the group we were there with. :wink:

Some more...
http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/bikes/t ... more-46743

I was really looking forward to seeing the Triumph streamliner do well, But it only had 1 run that I remember seeing. Sadly someone said there was a fire onboard and it didn't make much speed. Bonneville is not very kind sometimes.

nice - man i love to hear that triple running in anger - swwwwweeeeettt i bet!

Hortons Norton said:

We missed that as we left Wed. morning, But I hear it ended the event. This was our first time back since my brother had his crash and he was not running. It was more of a support thing for some friends than a racing deal for him. But we had a good time and met the guy with the Norton, His name was Morto and was a really nice guy. Did you get to meet the guy named Lucky that went down on the speedway bike?? We had a few beers with him and were very glad he didn't get hurt too bad. He was from down under and had a Jawa speedway bike. he also said he had a streamliner he would bring next year. Also a pic. of Tom with his 200+ mph Triumph Triple, And a pic. of the group we were there with. :wink:

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The 750 P-PP record there is still held by a Triumph at 129.649 mph in 2011

I believe that is Tom Mellor"s street Trident as well.

pouchy750 said:

The 750 P-PP record there is still held by a Triumph at 129.649 mph in 2011

I believe that is Tom Mellor"s street Trident as well.

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That record is held by B. Duncan. I don't recall seeing the bike, so I don't know if he might have been riding Tom's street bike, of if it was a different Triumph. Tom did have someone else with him riding a stretched and modified Trident 750 this year without streamlining, but I didn't get his name. He had at least a couple runs a bit over 150 mph with it. Don't know what his best was.

Ken