Bike breaks down in land speed record attempt
It took hundreds of people and thousands of hours to build but only a few seconds to break a homemade motorbike chasing a land speed record.
On Friday, 56-year-old British ex-pat Phil Garrett tried to set a New Zealand motorcycle land speed record on a closed road in Pendarves, near Ashburton.
About 50 people attended the event in McCrorys Rd.
The 46-year-old motorbike had been almost entirely rebuilt in Garrett’s Burwood garage by hundreds of people. It got up to 230kmh before it broke down.
The head gasket blew and oil spilled all over the engine, the tyres and Garrett. ‘‘I scared myself stupid but I didn’t fall off and no-one got injured.’’
The breakdown was due to a small miscalculation on the fuel to air ratio, meaning the engine was running lean, Garrett said.
The bike was broken beyond repair and would need to be rebuilt at an estimated cost of up to $5000. Garrett and his team would attempt the record again next year, he said.
‘‘I am very disappointed but I am very grateful that no-one got hurt ... but we are not going to give up. I think Burt Munro was watching me.’’
Anyone who travels over 200mph (321.9kmh) on the Bonneville Salt Flats in the United States, where Munro’s world speed record of 296.26kmh for an under-1000cc bike still stands, is awarded a red hat, a prize coveted by many but achieved by few.
Garrett said he had always wanted one of those red hats.
He initially built a sidecar racer – which took 31⁄2 years, involved 500 people and cost $220,000 – and it broke the world record for fastest 1000cc sidecar at Bonneville in 2005. But it only reached 272kmh, not the magical 320kmh Garrett was after.
A few years later he bought a 1975 Kawasaki Z1000 with a good racing track-record in the US, and went about transforming it. ‘‘Our build team met every Tuesday for two years – probably 6000-7000 hours have gone into this bike.’’