The last thing I did was to lean the idle and mid-range fuel curve, as this portion of the fuel curve was way too rich. The barrel valve ramp was closed to approximately 7 pounds leak down. Previously it was at around 14 pounds. The relation to this setting and the butterfly in the hat was changed by 3 flats on the linkage between the butterfly pivot arm and the barrel valve pivot arm, thereby leaning the idle to midrange mixture.

I gathered up the same crew to again set the ignition timing, Don at the tachometer, Hartmut at the distributor, and myself on the throttle. I told Hartmut, "Advance the distributor, keep an eye on me, and when I give the nod, lock it in place."

Ray Haskin plugged in the starter; the engines were fired; and in less than 30 seconds I gave the nod to Hartmut. The engines were running smoother than they ever had before; they were consuming more fuel than they ever had before; and they were running with more advance than they ever had before--around 60 degrees. With all of these known facts the engines without a doubt were producing more horsepower than ever. Some might call it "Luck" but I prefer the term "educated guess".

The engines were now tuned to a state capable of making record setting runs.

The next three runs, as it turned out, were the last three runs. I'll have to tell you my adrenaline was in high gear, and even though it was next to the last day, I still felt Black Lightning could pull it off. The first of the three runs proved to be exhilarating for Hartmut, expensive to the project, a jaw dropper to the competition, and stupefying to me.

I had tuned the engines, and finally they were making lots of horsepower. The crew had made ready the liner under my supervision. All checks were made except one. No one had thought to check the fuel level.

The liner was taken to the line, put in low gear, and Hartmut strapped in.

The Top 1 machine was waiting for the wind to die down. Ack won't let the liner make a run with wind gusts above 5 mph due to it's large sail area, which is about 1/3 greater than that of the Vincent streamliner. We were ready to go; the sequence of runs had been cleared with the starting official. He soon notified me that the track was mine. The liner was fired, and Hartmut was on his way.

Wow. That puppy did accelerate.

Steve and I jumped in the truck to follow the liner down. We soon gained sight at about the 1 1/2 mile mark. There was a 9 inch wide, straight black line on the salt, about a hundred yards in length--then there were a few black marks, broken and not so straight. When we got there the liner was pointing back toward the starting line, and Hartmut was getting out of the cockpit. The parachute rollover switch had activated during it's pirouette down the salt on it's skids, and the chutes did their job of stopping the liner at about 150 mph. Hartmut appeared to be just fine.

At about the 1 1/2 mile mark, during hard acceleration, the liner ran out of fuel and the engines abruptly stopped, locking up the rear tire. The Vincent streamliner maintained stability until the six ply's of the Mickey Thompson 400 mph tire had been worn through, causing the tire to deflate. Black Lightning became her own boss at this point, as Hartmut had no control.

As it turned out, a professional photographer, Buck Lovell, (bike posters) just happened to be standing at the right place at the right time, and captured that moment for posterity. This shot will certainly go down in history much like the Rollie Free bathing suit picture.

The picture shows the Vincent streamliner going backwards at 150 mph with plumes of salt, rooster-tailing upward and towards the front of the liner. The parachute billows in the wind behind the front of the liner instead of the back, as is customary. :o)

So this is what happened in a few seconds of the black filly's young life. Black Lightning had lost a shoe, her trainer had forgotten to give her her oats, her jockey had given her her head, and for the first time she was able to show what she could do.

The Vincent streamliner proved at that time that it had more torque than any of it's competitors, as it pulled a 300+mph gear, and after the first 200 or so feet, accelerated (according to Hartmut) more like a drag bike than a tall, tall geared streamliner.

The liner was soon back in the pits. There had been no apparent damage (other than the $1,000.00 tire) that I could see.

Now to the task of trouble-shooting to find out why the engines had locked up. Hartmut said that he thought the engines had seized. Four plugs were pulled. One from each cylinder. The starter was plugged in and the engines spun. The old rag and the finger in the plug hole trick was used. Well, she spun free and had lots of compression. Next the transmission was checked. Nothing wrong there. Going by what Hartmut told me, and knowing that the gear train between the motors had been a constant problem, I assumed that something had come loose and had gotten between the gears. The primary cover had to come off to check this possibility out. No sooner did we have the cover off (and by the way all of the bolts were intact and tight) than Don brought it to my attention that there was no fuel in the fuel tank!

I was flabbergasted.

How could I have forgotten something so elementary? Dumb, dumb, dumb.

The idler gears and primary were all put back together, as the problem had been located--me. :o(

Lenny, with a couple of other helpers, I think Don and Hartmut, removed the rear wheel. It was checked for damage. Still bright and shiny with no dings. The spare M/T tire was mounted, and Lenny had it all back together in a couple of hours.

As I knew the liner was making a ton of horsepower, I was ready to hang a 360 mph gear on it. My bravado was again being shattered, as after looking for my gearing for about an hour, I came to the unbelievable conclusion that I had left them back in Wichita on the work bench! In this case it wasn't dumb,dumb,dumb--it was tired,tired,tired.

Chris Kleps, a staunch supporter, with a never-give-up attitude, suggested that I try to get someone in Wichita to Air Express the gearing to Salt Lake City overnight. Knowing the liner would pull far more gear than the 300+mph gear that was available, I asked Chris to drive Patti back to our digs at the Nugget, where she tried to phone family members, all to no avail. The idea was dropped.

This gearing thing wasn't as bad as it seemed. I felt that the 300+mph gear at 6500 rpm could be increased by spinning the engines to 7500 rpm red line. This would nudge the speeds being turned by the big boys.

So the last day of the meet was upon us. Denis Manning, now the FIM record holder at 350+mph, wanted to give the Ack Attack every opportunity to challenge his new record, so he extended the cut-off time of the meet, which was noon, to 3:00 in the afternoon. Talk about sportsmanship! A truly generous gesture, but not uncommon among those who believe "the best man" really should win.

I felt that we had a good chance of going really fast and surely would come home with an AMA record well in excess of 300 mph. With the additional three hours to play with, it was possible to get in three runs on the last day.

Don was scheduled for the next run. A couple of problems that had ensued during the week had been corrected. Two of the coils had broken their brackets from the frame during the time the two engines were having their boxing match. Hartmut stated after his last run, that the engines were running smoothly with no vibration.

One other problem that we were having was an intermittent electrical problem of the air shifter solenoids to the transmission. We were able to shift the gears several times in the pits with no malfunction, then all of the sudden we would get no electrical circuit whatsoever. All the switches and wiring were checked, several times by Lenny McKnight. It was found that the problem lay in the solenoids themselves. With no spares we could only hope for the best.

We took the liner to the line, as I said before, Don was scheduled to be the next pilot. He was strapped in and I gave him the following instructions: "Take it up to 6500 rpm in low gear. Make your shift. If it jumps out of gear or doesn't make the shift, hold the momentary switch in the on position." The starter official gave me the course. The starter was plugged in. The engines were spun. Caraway flipped the "on" switch, and the pandemonium of the Vincent power plant turned many heads of the competition. Damn--she sounded sweet.

Don accelerated down the course. Steve and I began the chase, which by the way is a futile one, because the Ford pick-up, even when floor-boarded, can't even come close to staying with the Vincent streamliner, which was quickly becoming nothing more than a black dot in the distance.

Again, at about the 1 1/2 mile mark, we saw that Black Lightning had turned off to the left of the course. 'Now what?', I thought. On our approach nothing seemed to be wrong with the liner. The tires were up, and there was no oil running out of it.

I asked Don what happened. He said, "It was running real good, no vibration. When I made my shift the momentary toggle switch lever broke off. I tried to move the little nubbin that was left, but to no avail. So I aborted the run."

Well, nothing to do but take it back to the pits. Boy. I was beginning to wonder if this salt racing thing was all that it's cracked up to be.

Back in the pits we replaced the toggle switch; made a few shifts in the pit, finding that on a couple of occasions that intermittent current problem appeared. It seemed to be becoming more punctual. As the liner had pulled away effortlessly in low gear, I made the decision to lock the transmission in high gear, reverting back to my old drag bike days where it was commonplace to pull a 3.0 gear on my one gear only, magnesium framed, 93 cubic inch, fuel burning Vincent.

Hartmut had the next ride, which turned out to be the last ride of the meet for the Vincent streamliner.

Without going through the usual orchestration, the liner had no problem whatsoever pulling the 1.6 one-gear-only gear. While leaving the line, the high speed parachute deployed. All I could say was, "Shit. Oh shit." It was kind of like when a disaster takes place, and your whole life flashes by you in a split second. I thought to myself, "What does this mean, and what's going to happen?"

First. The liner had more grunt than it has ever had, and I knew Hartmut wouldn't detect the trailing parachute under acceleration. The next thing that flashed into my mind, was that earlier in the week, when the engines were running sour, I had ordered the removal of approximately 1/3 of the finger weight that engages the slider clutch, and backed off two turns on the springs, both reducing the pressure on the plates at any given rpm. What I knew was going to take place when the liner reached a mean speed to where the drag of the machine, and the parachute overcame the friction coefficient of the clutch, was that all of this was surely going to cause the clutch to be fried. I was right. It was.