Kolb Machine / Land Speed Racing: 2016

Its been way too long since I last posted and it comes down too making stuff for the bike or writing about the bike. Over the last year its been all about making stuff for the bike, going to Bonneville, running my business so now that i have a false sense of security what better time to write about whats been happening. Two years of tough weather at the salt flats have lead to no records in the books for the newest version of bodywork and chassis. We were at the salt in 2014 battling overheating only to get rained out and arrived at the salt in 2015 only to have it piss rain the night we arrived flooding the salt and cancelling the event. That 1" deep lake behind us is supposed to be dry salt.

A second visit to the wind tunnel in 2014 showed the latest version of chassis and bodywork has yielded a drag coefficient of .235. That's really low for a motorcycle that is not fully streamlined and we have yet to fully exploit all of the hard work that landed us this extraordinary figure. As far as chassis updates go lets start with a video overview of the latest chassis;

You can see things are looking tidy. The new aluminum front wheel did not get a chance to run on the salt due to the rain so we gave it a go on the asphalt right there in Utah. No problems other than the asphalt is a lot harder than the salt surface the wheel was designed for, so the bike hopped around a bit at 80mph and the wheel received a good hammering from the unforgiving surface. The old adage 'tires are half your suspension' rang true. That test run proved the geometry a success! I confidently move forward with this front end transferring over to our carbon monocoque streamliner.
Also lots of heat reflective material used throughout the engine area. Tough lessons in 2014 with overheating/heat removal lead us to go overboard to make sure all components in the engine bay would absorb as little heat as possible and that ventilation would extract heat from the bay out the rear of the bike.

While the rain at Bonneville was a drag we made the most of it. Since we had all flown out out or drove out and had a couple days to kill before heading home we hit the desert for some dirt-bike riding on the three bikes we brought along. Oh yeah, we brought the grill with us too for some good eats.

I thought i should mention we are entered in a competition put on by Champion Auto Parts. If you have a moment take a look at our video entry and if you can stand it please vote for us!

There are approximately 100 entries in our ‘Advanced’ category. Fifteen of those will be awarded 5K. Those 15 will go into a final for the grand champion who will be awarded 50K. 33% of the judging is online voting which is open now and will continue for the next 30 days. Champion will judge the other 65%. The ‘Final round’ will be judged the same way over a 30 day period in February so if we make it that far we will be voting again.

Voting will require registering on the champion site, which is a pain in the ass I know, but it would be much appreciated. You can vote once a day so if you can stand it… please vote every day. If you know of anyone who you think would be willing to vote please forward the link.

Direct link to the voting; http://sfac.championautoparts.com/search-for-a-champion#.Vo00_1IhHBY

Direct link to our entry which is currently on page 5 of the ‘Advanced category’ http://sfac.championautoparts.com/search-for-a-champion/view/3413/#.VoqPM1IhHBY

Thank you for your time! This will go a long way in helping our goal of 200mph.