200 MPH INDIAN PING!................
I did 35 on a bicycle once.
Impressive indeed
I’m not going to be challenging that record.
There’s a term for people who ride motorcycles at close to 200 mph... “organ donors.”
I guess “Just because” is the answer to Why would anyone want to go that fast on a touring bike? But the Kawasaki ZX-11 Turbo was doing well above 200 mph back in the mid 1990’s.
130 MPH once...once!
110 mph on ‘69 CB750,,,,
Yuppers,,,, it’s A Ride!
I guess if you are not on a highway full of vehicles, but alone on the salt flats, you may not feel as scary as doing 90mph in traffic on a freeway - which I have seen some idiot motorcyclists do.
I used to have two motorcycles. One nice easy street Honda, of only 450cc, and which I never took on any Freeway. And one 350cc Hodaka “dirt” bike that I used with an Enduro racing club in the pine barrens of southern New Jersey. I could get up to 60-80mph in brief spots along a flagged enduro trail, but the terrain changed fast enough that you were always changing speed, never “flat out” for long, with too many trees, deep sand, gravel, mud pits, whoops, logs, ect to contend with.
What got me out of that era was the spectators. To see the racers spectators had to go find some place along the flagged trail that had been laid out. Sometimes it was no more than a small open dry flatish spec of land to one side or another of the race trail and room at that one spot for only small group of people. These spots would pop out every now and then along the race route. But too often the spectators were partial obstacles by how they limited the ability of the riders to navigate the natural obstacles or bad patches and avoid the spectators too. I witnessed too many races with some major spectator injury or a bike and rider wrapped around a tree as a result of avoiding some spectators. Enduro races in the pine barrens of south Jersey were not very regulated in the 1970s. I don’t know how well they are structured today. Maybe they are more tame today.
100+ in a school zone on the back of John Ulrich’s Honda 450 in 1973. John was trying to catch my brother who was on his Kawasaki 350.
My brother rode a lot of motorcycles.
Not me. I didn’t trust them.
I rode horses.
They scared him.
Fastest I ever went was 135MPH on a 1983 Honda V45 Interceptor. Back in 1984.
Loved the Fastest Indian movie.
Kawasaki once made a 2000cc cruiser named “Kawasaki Vulcan 2000”. It was the largest displacement production motorcycle for its time. A problem some owners complained about was the high torque damaging the rear sprocket.
140+
Autobahn.
76 Gold Wing with Windjammer fairing.
Guy in the Turbo Carrera nodded, waved, and left.
I reached 147 on a 2002 GL1800A Honda Goldwing once upon a time, long ago... It had more to give, but I felt the need to see both sides of the road, not just the dotted line in the middle.
Burt Munro no longer has the World’s Fastest Indian.
It’s all relative. I’ve been 150 mph+ down an airport runway more times than I can count. A few times I’ve been faster than that on the Autobahn. In time you get used to it.
And 196 might seem fast for a bagger, but don’t forget that it was “race-prepared.” There are four or five L-4 crotch rockets that will best 200 mph with nothing but aftermarket intake and exhaust, and maybe a change of front sprocket.
I ride Ducatis and an Indian. No interest in riding an Indian at 200mph. Not much use or interest even for riding the Ducks above the ton anymore either. The Bimmer can do 100 all day long in comfort, but that’s more for riding out West on the other side of the Mississippi.