Imagine the plums you’d need to pilot an LS-powered bike across the salt at almost three times the legal speed limit? Russell Lowe has done it on this weapon, with a best of 181.5mphģ. “We wanted to a do a mile per hour per cubic inch,” said Greg Telford of his 140mph bellytanker, Olden Grey. His run on Friday yielded 309, so there’s some set-up and development remaining for this first-timer to Aussie saltĢ. “It should run 315mph at 21/4 miles,” Jim said after his Thursday run. Incredibly, the 2000hp car is four-wheel drive, with the Hemi, B&J five-speed and driveline squeezed in a body that’s only around a metre wide. Jim Knapp’s US-built streamliner runs a 520-cube Brad Anderson Fat Head Hemi inhaling boost from two 88mm Garrett turbos. It takes commitment, ingenuity, engineering, determination, respect, obstinance, maybe even a bit of madness – and the only place in Australia to see or participate in it is Lake Gairdner.ġ. Of course, grown-up me knows that land speed racing – aiming for maximum speed across the sun-baked mud, sand or salt of a dry lake – is far more complicated. This article was first published in the May 2019 issue of Street MachineĪnd during Jim’s 291mph practice run on Thursday morning of 2019 Speed Week on the wide, flat and fast salt surface of South Australia’s Lake Gairdner, for a few gleeful seconds I felt like a four-year-old me, babbling excitedly and pointing at the blue-and-white ‘rocket’ car. This car’s stunning profile certainly has the simplicity and purity of a child’s drawing, with its snout beginning just inches from the ground and flowing up over a slit-like windscreen, past two holes for the engine and finishing in the flourish of its high, plane-like tail. IF A little car-freak kid could somehow see his crayon-drawn rocket car magically fall off the kindergarten wall and roar to life, it would probably look like Jim Knapp’s streamliner.
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