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Posts Tagged “

salt flats

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movies

JT Nesbitt, Designer Of The Confederate Wraith, Readying Land Speed-Record Attempt Documentary

I first met JT Nesbitt in August 2005, when he was the most famous motorcycle designer in the world. I was in New Orleans to profile him, which I did in an article titled "Mafia, Guns, Sex Toys and Hurricanes." It's that hurricane that changed things. A few months later I finally got JT on the phone. He was at work, at his new job in a gay bar, cleaning used condoms out of the toilet with his bare hands. But even Katrina couldn't keep JT down for long. Last September he headed to the Bonneville salt flats to attempt to set a speed record in a Lincoln Mark VIII he salvaged from New Orleans' flood waters. The documentary Salt Dreams tells that story.

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4:45 PM on Sat Feb 23 2008
By Wes Siler
1,885 views, 15 comments

Latest by cq: @econobiker: oh god, the refrigerators. I was trying to block those memories out. What were they using for the cars? I'll have to admit I only saw where they stored them. more »

land speed record

Super Salty: 123 MPH Subaru Justy

Can your penalty box go 123.224 mph with a destroked one-liter engine? Didn't think so. Back in the late 1980s, a wonderful gang of engineers began tweaking a less-than-2000-lbs. Subaru Justy to set the Class I Production World Speed Record. The first problem they ran into was that the rules stipulated a maximum engine size of 1000 cc. The stock, US-spec Justy sported a (relatively) massive 1.2-liter three-cylinder mill. So they replaced the crankshaft and rods with the 1.0-liter parts from Japan. Butting right up against both the letter and spirit of the rules, Roger Banowetz and his team managed to squeeze 99 hp from the puny engine. A few more engine tweaks plus the removal of rearviews/windshield wipers and the addition of aluminum moon disks allowed the über-Justy to set a two-way record that stood for 18 years. Sadly, to save weight, they went with the FWD variant instead of the true econo-hero AWD model. Still, we love the #440 Justy. We simply love it. (Thanks to Ric Hawthorne and Roger Banowetz for the images.) – Jonny Lieberman More »

12:00 PM on Thu May 10 2007
By Jonny Lieberman
2,065 views, 6 comments

Latest by n/a: I saw a white Subaru Justy in West Virginia a couple months ago, while I was down visiting my mom. A little rusty, but I'd never seen one before that. more »

news

A Salty Salute: Bumbeck at Bonneville Speed Week 2006

Here's why we like Bumbeck, whom only one of us has actually met:
Dearest Dorks,
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