...For those that have never been to Wheels Through Time.....you gotta go. You just have to go. I've known Dale for a number of years and I can't say enough about him. Here are a few pictures from there...
Very nice. :thumbsup: Maybe I'll get to go there next year.
I don't think there's any race bike nearly as cool as a Harley-Davidson XR750 flat tracker. They look great, sound wonderful and have a winning history.
The sad part is that the H-D factory flat track race effort is in kind of a shambles these days. They outsourced the whole thing to the Vance & Hines company of drag racing fame. It's a real question on any weekend whether either of the team's bikes will run to the finish.
Two of my friends are the factory racers. Brad Baker, from Washington, is a seasoned pro. He rides an XR750. That engine has been around for decades and has pretty much been developed to its limit. The other team rider, Oregon racer Davis Fisher, is in his rookie year on a GX750-powered machine. They are supposedly developing that water cooled engine from the new Street 750 series to replace the XR750. Problem is, they really haven't done any development and all they've got is an engine that's slow and fragile. It broke again last weekend at the Springfield Mile. The factory XR750 finished in fifth place at Springfield, behind a privateer XR that won the race, and Kawasakis in second, third and fourth places.
The privateer Harley teams are doing better than the factory team, but it's still a very close contest with Kawasaki for the season championship that will go down to the last race in Santa Rosa, Calif., in a couple of weekends. The new Indian racer will debut at that race. Indian/Polaris have been doing lots of development and are expected to be a strong contender in 2017.
The days of the Harley Wrecking Crew are long gone. Whether Harley-Davidson ever regains its place of dominance in the sport remains to be seen.
Here are a couple of shots of Brad Baker (6) and Davis Fisher (67) on the factory team bikes, and another of Kenny Coolbeth's XR750 (2) that won at Springfield last weekend. I just reached into my grab bag for these photos and a couple are from prior seasons. These bikes change very little from year to year.
