• officermikeEnglish
    6·
    8 months ago

    Page title says it’s a drag racer, so I took the liberty of making the following guesses:

    • Engines aren’t running long enough to overheat
    • In the Swiss-cheese excavator bucket-looking cover is what I’m guessing is a clutch. It very well may be the case that this gets run wide open throttle and acceleration and speed are modulated with the clutch.

    All of this is just guessing. I have no first-hand experience with drag racing drivetrains, motorcycle or otherwise. I do seem to recall learning that there are automotive drag racing transmissions in which the clutches weld themselves closed during the race and need to be rebuilt between runs.

    • fartographerEnglish
      3·
      8 months ago

      Ew! Your speculations sound based on reason and research! I, on the other hand, was relying on pure stupidity.

      Personal anecdote about welding clutches: turns out it’s really easy to do! The clutch pedal fork in my '95 4Runner broke, so I ended up getting my entire clutch system replaced/rebuilt. As part of the rebuild, my mechanic’s parts supplier offered a deep discount on a racing clutch they recently started manufacturing. Somehow, this clutch sat incorrectly in the housing and presented a partial gap of a few micrometers, which the supplier assured us would be negligible within a few days. A couple of weeks later, I was running errands all day and suddenly smelled and heard something awful and couldn’t depress my clutch pedal, even when trying to stand on it. That was a fun day of abusing my clutch start override every time I stopped and wasn’t on a decline or had to change between forward and reverse!