Hi All, I knew the motorcycle fuel economy competition in Ohio would be tough with the gentle hills, lower speeds, calm winds, etc. I did not expect to deal with a rear leaking tire! The rear tire was leaking about 10 PSI every 12-hours. It was too late to have it repaired. I had to run with it and hoped it would hold up. More bad news was announced at the rider’s meeting; due to freeway construction there was to be no freeway sections of the competition. This meant that the smaller less streamlined motorcycles would have a serious chance to beat me. Another wild card in the motorcycle fuel economy competition, an engineer, John Hicky, designs better fuel economy for Ford was competing in this event. His motorcycle was as strange as my streamliner. See photo below. Photo above: Finally a motorcycle as strange as my streamliner. Both are powered by Kawasaki Ninja 250 motors. While in Virginia I found out that non-ethanol blended gasoline (pure gasoline) is still readily available. Actually pure old fashioned gasoline is still available on the east coast. I guess all of our elected leaders around Washington DC don’t like using that blended gas but it is OK for the rest of us to be forced to use it. I tried this pure gasoline to see if I could get better gas mileage but my carburetor jetting is set up for the gas with ethanol in California. I did not see any improvement is my gas mileage on my motorcycle. Photo of some of the motorcycles competing in Ohio. My streamlined motorcycle is at the far end. Some of the motorcycles were stock. The competition course went through the scenic countryside and small country towns. Most speeds were below 55-MPH but we did reach 75-MPH on occasion. One road hazard, we had to pass one of those Amish horse drawn wagons. Some sections of the ruff country roads made my leaking rear tire feel flat. It was not a good feeling not knowing if my tire would hold up in a tight turn. I took a chance and kept going. During the competition we encountered moderate rain for about 5-miles. If it rained any harder we would have stopped for the weather to clear. For motorcyclists riding without a windshield, they got soaked. I stayed dry inside my streamlined motorcycle. On a side note about the local rain storms, in the news on TV an outdoor swim meet had to delayed due to rain. One of the hard things about this type of competitions is that one never knows who is ahead or behind until we top off our gas tanks at the end of the day. We had an hour and a half ride in the morning, a hour and a half lunch, finished with a hour and a half ride back to the start. The official results will be posted in a couple more days but at this time it looks like I got 3rd place overall at 132.5 Miles-Per-Gallon. The Fred Hayes diesel motorcycle got 162.474 and John Hicky’ 3-wheeled motorcycle got 144.455 MPG. Oh I beat 4th place by one-hundredth of a gallon of gas, 0.01 gal. It is interesting that I worked on 4 of the motorcycles that I competed against. The official results should be posted next week on:craigvetter/ My streamlined motorcycle was the only one actually ridden to this event. All the others were trailer queens. Right now I need to get my rear tire fixed. Alan Smith
Posted on: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 04:03:04 +0000
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