Lightning Bolt (motorcycle)

Lightning Bolt
Manufacturer Don Vesco
Predecessor "Silver Bird" streamliner
Class Streamliner
Engine 2×Inline-4, twin turbo, 2,032 cc total displacement
Top speed c. 333 miles per hour (536 km/h)[1]

Lightning Bolt is an American-built streamliner motorcycle that held the motorcycle land-speed record from 1978, when Don Vesco rode it to 318.598 miles per hour (512.734 km/h),[2][3] until 1990.[4][5] It was also the fastest vehicle participating in the 1978 Bonneville Speed Week with a one-way 333.117-mile-per-hour (536.100 km/h) run.[6] It was powered by twin turbocharged inline-4 engines sourced from a Kawasaki Kz1000,[1] with a combined displacement of 2,032 cc.[7] The near-stock engines were linked at both ends of their cranks by two Gilmer belts and utilized the rear engine's gearbox.[8]

Lightning Bolt was apparently succeeded by another streamliner based on two turbocharged six-cylinder Kawasaki motors (probably from the early-1980s Kawasaki Z1300) that did not set records.[9] Vesco turned his attention to automobile land speed racing in the 1990s with a six-wheel car called "Skytracker" that Vesco described as a "cross between a car and a motorcycle",[10] then his final vehicle, the land speed record-setting #111 Turbinator.

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Robinson 2007.
  2. ↑ American Motorcyclist Association 1999.
  3. ↑ American Motorcyclist Association 1978, p. 38.
  4. ↑ FIM 2014.
  5. ↑ Morris 2005, p. 45.
  6. ↑ Noeth 2005, p. 1.
  7. ↑ Gunston, Taylor & Ewart 1984, p. 92.
  8. ↑ Burns 1993, p. 42.
  9. ↑ American Motorcyclist 1982.
  10. ↑ Noeth 2005, p. 3.

References

External links