Lucky Kaiser built that in Brisbane, initially as a burnout/curiosity machine to raise money for an attempt (using the same engine, but in a streamliner) on the LSR for motorcycles. 5 litre v-twin, made Harleys look and sound a bit limp. A car club associate of mine was to be the rider for the record attempt, but I lost contact - I believe they took it to Lake Gairdner at least once and it made some decent speed but don't know if it ever ran again or what's happened to it since, that was about a decade ago.
That's right . Lucky Kaiser built the engine and fitted it to a streamliner bike to run on the salt at Lake Gairdner which he did for few years . The last time he ran it in that configuration was 1999 . It so happened that I went for a ride in the tow vehicle used to tow start it and watch it disappear off into the distance. Lucky was not so lucky as he could never get the engine to run right as he was experiencing an elusive backfire problem which kept blowing off the intake ducting from the supercharger. In this guise his best speed was 146.962 mph. Lyndon Cooper was the pilot.
The next year with the same bike Lucky had given up on the Merlin V2 and fitted a bog stock 302 Ford Cleveland V8, which Lucky said he acquired for a carton of beer and promptly went 200+mph. He told me at one of the meetings after 1999 , which one I don't specifically recall , that he did eventually find the cause of the back fire. Apparently the valve stem seals were just a bit to big and when the valve was fully open they would get jammed between the valve keeper and the valve guide. This caused some of the seal to get wedged between the guide and the valve causing it to stick and of course the backfire.
Edited by fredeuce, 28 July 2014 - 22:48.