Posted 24 March, 2023. It’s a wrap! The end of a successful week.
We made a last run today, hoping to bringing home a 200+ mph slip. However, the salt gremlins had slightly different plans, but it was still a very successful week and another milestone towards our goal of 400 mph.
We had some kind of glitch in the throttle, and we will have to sort that out for next year. The track had improved greatly today, but with error codes blinking in my face and the four throttles for the four motors not cooperating, I ran out of track before I got myself sorted. I exited at 187 mph (301 km/h) at mile 4, with an average of 178.386 mph (287 km/h) over the flying mile. I stopped safely and nothing is broken. The bike was running like a freight train and feels very strong and stable. The custom Öhlins suspension makes it ride like a luxury car. I am confident that it will be a _very_ fast bike in the coming years.
Despite this minor issue, we are very happy with the results. Except for today’s throttle issue, everything has worked perfectly (well, except the weather…). It is unusual for a brand new vehicle to run this good, so we are very pleased. Setting a land speed record is a marathon, not a sprint. Achieving a world record typically takes many years, if not decades of work. We are very happy with the performance of both the bike and the team. We only have a few things to fix for next season. Finding issues on the last day of the event is perfect – far better than finding them on the first day of next year’s event. Now we have plenty of time to fix it.
We also want to take the opportunity to thank all our supporters and sponsors that made this possible, and particularly Cascadia Motion (motor controllers), A123 Systems (batteries), AVID (motors), Arai (helmet), Öhlins Racing – Motorcycle (suspension), Mulcahy (laser cutting), Axis Industrial (fabrication), TOP 1 Synthetic Oil (high efficiency lubricants), CumminsOnan (generator), Vulkoprin (high speed rubber for the KiWheel), V3, Auckland Engineering Supplies, and OZ-DIY, and everybody else that has supported us over the past four years.
Here are a few photos from today. Videos will come later.
On-track photo by instagram.com/phil_radoslovich_sportpics