You silly buggers

Today is a good day to die.

A longer and larger version of the film:

from He did 242km/h. 150mph.

Try watching the timing gate shots near the end without saying 'JFC!' out loud.

Aaaagh. Key-frames, people! It's a wobbly, funny coloured mush with the occasional funny coloured blob whizzing across it, and all to save a couple of kB on the final file size... Gah, frustrating. But, yeah, impressive. 52mph on my racer scared the crap out of me..

Strange, looked fine to me even though the ebay version was mush.

Thought it was pretty funny that as he pushed himself to the start the brakes were sqeaking - not sure I'd fancy a slightly binding block at 150 :-)

Any day is a good time to die but if so not on a jet powered bike.

The movie reminds me of our early exploits: we made grasscarts, a spaceframe with independant suspension, motors for Citroen 2cv to the

600cc Honda CBR.

Rear wheels came from trikes (quads didn't exist yett), the fronts from a garden tractor. The fronts were Bridgestone, a pair per race was used. We bought them in quantity (with a major price reduction) at Bridgestone.

They taught we made garden tractors... just till the point were I bougth another 50 tires and they asked me. They asked, I told. "what speed we did" Well, with the CBR600-engine about 180 kph.

They went white and refused to sell anymore. Inspection of the tire revealed "VNE = 16 MPH" (VNE = Speed Never Exceed).No wonder we had massive vibration above 100 kph.

I would be very surprised if the tires on the jetpowered bike were designed -let alone tested- at speed above 100 kph.

The Hamster showed what happens if a tire explodes at those speeds (considering the diameter, the tire on the bike is subjected to similar centrifugal forces as were the tires on the rocketcar)

Tom De Moor

Quality bike tyres should definitely be good for 100kph (60mph). That's fast alpine descent territory. I've never had a problem with slicks at 50mph+ (hit 60 twice in the UK and we're not strong riders), and I think we've had knobblies up to that sort of speed too with the only problem being the stupid amount of road noise.

I'd expect a bike tyre to be better balanced, since they're dainty thin things anyway - unlike a garden tractor tyre, or even a car tyre, if there's extra lumps of rubber on it, you'll notice straight away since there's so little there to start with.

And remember the world record for human powered 200m is > 80mph now. (takes a 5 mile run up though :-) )

cheers, clive

pfft. When I go, I'm going to do it doing something really really stupid. That qualifies :-)

Hehe. Excellent.

Um. Centrifugal 'force' goes as v^2/r. r is larger and v rather smaller than for the rocket car, so the forces will be much smaller. Still, I totally agree, most cycle tyres probably aren't designed for

250kph.. :-)

20" wheels, so r will be about the same. v = half, quarter, so velocity contribution is .25-0.1 that of the car. And the tyres weigh a small fraction of what those on the car will be, so the force will be even tinier - maybe 1% when you add it all up?

(what pressure would one run in rocket car tyres?)

cheers, clive

Do you think he gets a hot bum?

David