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NEWS
Triumph Salt Racer
A team led by Triumph Australia is planning an assault on the 2015 Dry Lakes Racers Australia speedweek using a Thruxton engine as the donorTriumph Australia’s technical and warranty manager, Cliff Stovall, loves a challenge – especially when it involves absurdly powerful motorcycles. The American expatriate also managed a ‘men’s club’ in Las Vegas a couple of decades ago, which presented another set of challenges…
I digress. Cliff is now sinking his teeth into another project: building a salt racer to compete in the 2015 Dry Lakes Racers Australia speedweek at Lake Gairdner in South Australia from March 23-27. It’s an ambitious project, but one which is really starting to take shape with a heavily modified Thruxton engine about to be shoehorned into a custom-made chassis.
The donor bike is a 2008 model Thruxton, primarily for its 360-degree crank – a better fit for a ‘race’ mill according to acclaimed engine guru Andrew Hallam, who is also helping out on the project.
The standard Thruxton engine develops 69hp (70ps/51kW), but with Andrew and Cliff having been let loose the figure has now been bumped up to 100hp (101ps/74kW) powerhouse – a 45 per cent improvement!
Cliff reckons that figure will skyrocket to 120hp (121ps/89kW) once the high-octane fuel goes in at Lake Gairdner, as well as an exhaust system which has two-inch headers and stubby reverse cone mufflers. It will be loud.
How did the engine make the massive transformation? Here are the highlights:
- Larger inlet and exhaust valves
- Heavily modified head
- Increased bore and stroke resulting in a capacity of almost 1000cc
- High performance pistons and rods
- Enlarged throttle bodies
- Hydraulic clutch conversion
- Power Commander
- Modified stator
From the outside the race engine looks pretty standard, with the oversize throttle bodies the only clue that there is something far from normal lurking underneath.
The engine is currently being run-in, inside a Bonneville chassis. Once 500km has been racked up the engine will be stripped and checked before finding its spiritual home in the salt-spec chassis, which is being fabricated by bike-loving aerospace engineer Ross Osborne.
Once that step is complete, we’ll run another update. And further afield, we’d love to ride it at Lake Gairdner but our spies suggest that Aussie Isle of Man star Cameron Donald is the man being approached to do the job. Bastard…
Dry Lakes Racers Australia is the organisation responsible for racing on Lake Gairdner. It’s the fourth largest Salt Lake in Australia and measures 160km long by 48km wide and is intermittently filled with water. In the summer months the lake dries out and becomes the perfect surface for land speed racing.
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Written byBikesales Staff
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Please see our Editorial Guidelines & Code of Ethics (including for more information about sponsored content and paid events). The information published on this website is of a general nature only and doesn’t consider your particular circumstances or needs.
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