Pushing the 150cc LSR envelope…

John and Tony with the LSR-engined standard bike...it's shot in silhouette for a reason...lots of cool tricks here, boys and girls, and they're staying secret!

We put the Land Speed Record engine Grant Matsushima built for us in one of our standard bikes, and it’s awesome.  Here’s a rundown on this very special CSC 150 engine:

• We kept the displacement stock at 150cc, because that’s the class we’re running in.   We also have a stroker crank and bigger pistons, but we’re sticking with the stock piston and the stock stroke for this effort.  
• We milled the cylinder to bump the compression (yep, you read that right…we milled the cylinder, not the cylinder head).
• We ported the cylinder head, with lots of extra space leading to and from the valves.  This baby will breathe easy!
• We have a bigger carburetor.  Way bigger, in fact.  The motor’s all about top end.
• 

  Sylvain Binau, the future 150cc LSR record holder

  John Esposito fabricated a reverse megaphone.  It’s trick, it looks cool, and the bike sounds like a Triumph flat tracker.  It absolutely sounds unlike any 150cc bike I ever heard.   Awesome is too mild a word.

• We have a cam with lots more lift.   The way the cam grinder did this is pretty clever.   But that’s a secret I’m not gonna spill.  I’ll just say there was no welding involved.
• Our new CDI doesn’t have a rev limiter.   This little puppy will wind until the cows come home.   I cranked it out until it scared me…but no valve float, and no limits.  And the sound…it was wonderful!
• Grant incorporated lots of friction reduction tricks.  Some of it’s classified, but other stuff is not.  We originally thought we’d be eliminating the electric starter, for example, but it turns out that the kick starter adds a lot more friction than the electric starter, so….   Yep, it’s gone.

There are other things we’re gonna do, but the engine really rocks now.   I took it out on the street after listening to Tony and John riding it around the building (we could hear the bike all the way around the plant), and the power is impressive.   Let’s just say I never expected a 150 to pull like this thing does.

We have a straight stretch of road in front of the plant that is about a half mile long, and when I wound it up, the bike was going faster in 4^th than my stocker goes in 5^th, and I just ran out of room (I was coming up to the end of the street).  When we install this engine in the LSR bike with our rider Sylvain on board, we are expecting great things.   Sylvain weighs exactly half of what I weigh, and the LSR bike is now under 200 pounds (hmmm, come to think of it, our LSR bike weighs less than I do, too).  The LSR bike is in the paint shop, and when we are done with the cosmetics, our Matsushima mill goes into it.

November 21^st folks, at El Mirage dry lake…it’s gonna be a day to remember!