zero to sixty

Albervin

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The motoring literature of the '60s and '70s were filled with hyperbole and outright lies. What was really annoying though was the magazines in the newsagents never contradicted the factory figures. It was most obvious with cars like the E Type which supposedly had a top speed of 150 MPH but in reality ran out of breath at 120. A friend builds Jaguar engines and when he tells a customer he has a genuine 285 BHP engine now, the customer is often disappointed, until he drives it! 1 (factory)Jaguar horsepower =1 pit pony horsepower :) We are now having to put up with the same bullsh!t when it comes to official fuel consumption on new vehicles. Here in Australia the motoring journalists are finally telling the truth and so far very few have ever achieved the official figures during a road test. Discrepancies of 10-15% are very common. Slater Bros. made similar statements about the Laverda Jota they developed. I think the times and speeds at the Ramsay event in 1999 are what we need to use as benchmarks. Was a Mr D Smith FTD on a standard (?) Vincent?
 

Robert Watson

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Was a Mr D Smith FTD on a standard (?) Vincent?

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm NO

Short rodded
Ported
10:1 squish pistons
Quaife (Mostly) 5 speed
34mm flatslide Mikunis
big pipes and Supertrapp
Very much lightened with alloy/titanium/drillings etc etc

And other things I can't recall
 

Monkeypants

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Same thing with fuel mileage ratings in North America. After the financial collapse and bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler, the big three realized they had to come up with fuel efficient cars like the Japanese had been building. As owner reports of various new fuel efficient models filter in, it appears that Detroit came up with new mileage ratings more than anything else


Back to the 4.9 sec to sixty, Im quite pleased with that. It is a real number, not something fudged by a manufacturer or a magazine hungry for advertising dollars. Standard gearing would likely shave a few tenths off of that, now that is in range of a Ferrari 550 Maranello. No wonder the regular traffic is easy to leave behind.

Glen
 
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Howard

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2.8 seconds to sixty would be roughly the same as the new 200 hp BMW 1000rr. Makesone wonder about the rest of the claims on th ad.

There is a Shadow 70 nearing completion here in Vancouver, stored since the seventies and being assembled by John Mcdougall. The engine is roughly the same tune as my temporary engine but the bike itself will be somewhat heavier.

Glen


I'm fairly sure mine was the last Shadow 70 Slater built, although it's evolved a long way form there, I don't think it ever had the performance quoted, especially 0-60 nearly a second faster than a Fireblade. The performance quoted in v) almost certainly refers to Ray Elgar, and I think rider and bike were a bit special.

H
 

A-BCD

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0-60.jpg
 

timetraveller

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Some readers will have noted the comment by George Spence in the May 2012 MPH about the fastest production Vincent at the Blackpool Sprint having a quarter mile time of 14.36 seconds. That was me, at the time about 150 lbs weight. The bike was a carefully put together Shadow with standard carbs, compression ratio etc. but I think MkII cams. I rode the bike up to my family home in Wakefield from Sussex, where I worked, changed the silencer to a ‘straight through’, i.e. a bit of tube welded into a standard silencer body and then followed my brother in his car over the Pennines to Blackpool. I remember going through some of the towns and villages with the throttle well shut and not causing enough noise to cause people to look round. However, opening the throttle was a different matter!! It was my first ever motorcycle competitive event and I won, much to my surprise. Note that this was a more or less standard road bike, fully equipped with lights, dynamo, battery, front and rear stands etc. It is probably typical of what one could expect from a standard twin at the time. It took about two years for me to get the time down to 13.06 seconds by which time there were no stands, nothing in the battery case or dynamo, the compression was up to 10.5:1 and the ‘carbs’ were inch and three eighths Wal Phillips fuel injectors. The bike was still being ridden to meetings and generally the silencer changed at the meeting. As well as the 13.06 time for the standing start quarter the bike also did 135 mph at the end of a half mile sprint at Long Marston. Regarding the number of gear changes, I tried over revving to 7,000 rpm and making just one change or changing gear twice and revving to a more reasonable 6,300 ish. Times were better with the extra gear change and staying within the power band. Rear sprockets were typically 54 or 56 teeth for quarter miles. I had intended to build another bike with oil in the gearbox, a ‘D’UFM and Bramptons to reduce weight but circumstances decreed that I had to buy a house and as those of you who have gone through this will know one is essentially bankrupted and there was no longer the money to go sprinting. It would not have mattered anyway. For year or two I had had the fastest production bike in the country but the next year, Ray Elgar did something to his bike which transformed its performance. If I recall correctly he got down to about 12.3 seconds and I doubt that I would ever have got there. Even allowing for the lighter weight of a Shadow 70 I doubt that the claimed figures could ever have been achieved.
 

Howard

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Some readers will have noted the comment by George Spence in the May 2012 MPH about the fastest production Vincent at the Blackpool Sprint having a quarter mile time of 14.36 seconds. That was me, at the time about 150 lbs weight. The bike was a carefully put together Shadow with standard carbs, compression ratio etc. but I think MkII cams. I rode the bike up to my family home in Wakefield from Sussex, where I worked, changed the silencer to a ‘straight through’, i.e. a bit of tube welded into a standard silencer body and then followed my brother in his car over the Pennines to Blackpool. I remember going through some of the towns and villages with the throttle well shut and not causing enough noise to cause people to look round. However, opening the throttle was a different matter!! It was my first ever motorcycle competitive event and I won, much to my surprise. Note that this was a more or less standard road bike, fully equipped with lights, dynamo, battery, front and rear stands etc. It is probably typical of what one could expect from a standard twin at the time. It took about two years for me to get the time down to 13.06 seconds by which time there were no stands, nothing in the battery case or dynamo, the compression was up to 10.5:1 and the ‘carbs’ were inch and three eighths Wal Phillips fuel injectors. The bike was still being ridden to meetings and generally the silencer changed at the meeting. As well as the 13.06 time for the standing start quarter the bike also did 135 mph at the end of a half mile sprint at Long Marston. Regarding the number of gear changes, I tried over revving to 7,000 rpm and making just one change or changing gear twice and revving to a more reasonable 6,300 ish. Times were better with the extra gear change and staying within the power band. Rear sprockets were typically 54 or 56 teeth for quarter miles. I had intended to build another bike with oil in the gearbox, a ‘D’UFM and Bramptons to reduce weight but circumstances decreed that I had to buy a house and as those of you who have gone through this will know one is essentially bankrupted and there was no longer the money to go sprinting. It would not have mattered anyway. For year or two I had had the fastest production bike in the country but the next year, Ray Elgar did something to his bike which transformed its performance. If I recall correctly he got down to about 12.3 seconds and I doubt that I would ever have got there. Even allowing for the lighter weight of a Shadow 70 I doubt that the claimed figures could ever have been achieved.

http://www.vmccsprint.co.uk/vintage...ies/2009/10/13_The_Zandvoort_Sprint_1967.html

Is this your era TT?

H
 

timetraveller

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Nice article. That is just a bit too late for me. I have just had to go and look at a few of the trophies to remind me of the dates as it is all so long ago I could not be sure of the dates. The Blackpool Sprint was 1962 and the various trophies go up to 1964 when I ran out of money. However, I was invited to compete at the first Anglo/American drag fest and I think the second, so if you have a record of that you will find my name in there somewhere. Remember, it was always the production class. Professional astronomers are not the highest paid people and there was no way I could have competed with the likes of George Brown or Alf Hagon who had their own professional faclities.
 

Monkeypants

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Interesting post, TT. Your 1/4 mile time of 13.06 seconds with the modified bike correlates closely with Dans 1/8 mile sprint time on his modified machine, according to a couple of online conversion calculators.
One reason that standard Vincent sprint times seem a bit slow in relation to the engine power has to be the sluggish change with the standard gearbox. The changes on mine take about 1/2 seconds, so in the quarter there is a full second with deceleration. The stock AMC gearbox can be shifted almost instantly under full power, although the life span can be short when used this way.I can see why it was popular to utlilize the AMC transmission .

Glen
 
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