In 2011 a self-confessed bike nerd and his vogue mannequin girlfriend took half of their first land velocity trials occasion at Bonneville salt flats. During the years which have since handed, Alp Sungurtekin and Jalika Gaskin have amassed a powerful assortment of 13 land velocity data. Even extra spectacular is that the checklist consists of the report for the quickest 650cc pushrod engine of all time.
This bike is Alp’s newest land velocity racer named the “Killa Bee”. The Triumph engined beast is a ground-up creation, most of which was fabricated from scratch by Alp in his modest workshop. After being blown away by pictures of the Killa Bee I contacted Alp to study extra about this spectacular bike and his aspirations for its future.
Alp skilled as an industrial designer and went on to specialize in transportation design. Today although he designs and builds {custom} bikes and engines full-time as Alp Racing Design. The Alp Racing Design workshop is a transformed 2-car storage situated at his residence in Los Angeles, California. The bulk of his enterprise entails race bikes however his portfolio additionally consists of bikes pieced collectively for personal collectors.
By all accounts, Alp is an extremely modest man. He’s the definition of a quiet achiever however regardless of his humble manner, he caught the eye of the usually rambunctious {custom} bike group. This finally led to him unveiling the Killa Bee on the 2022 Born Free Show the place occasion organisers Mike and Grant awarded him with the distinguished ‘Born Free Founder’s Award’. The principal aim of this mission was by no means to easily look good although. The Killa Bee was constructed to go quick and it has already proved greater than able to reaching that job.
The Killa Bee got here into existence after a shopper commissioned Alp to construct it. The zealous buyer wished a bike able to setting a brand new land velocity report; specifically, the report for the quickest 1000cc pushrod engine. That title is at present held by a Harley Davidson constructed by Yankee Engineuity Express and it set the bar at 166.843mph.
Alp describes his Killa Bee as an experimental design. There was no donor as such for the mission but when it was to be labelled as something it might be a Nineteen Fifties Triumph pre-unit. When designing a bike like this, Alp begins by sketching out an thought on paper. From there he jumps straight into the construct which he describes as a freehand strategy.
“The main idea was to reduce the frontal area and keep the centre of gravity as low as possible,” says Alp. “I’ve done many different types of frames but I wanted to use flat aluminium sheets on this one.”
The results of Alp’s strategy with this bike is a really distinctive chassis design. There’s no tubing like a conventional bike body. Instead, the complete construction is made up of a thick 6061 aluminium sheet. Alp’s strategy to creating the construction can also be relatively sudden. In a world the place CNC machining and laser/water jet cutters would make brief work of this design, Alp opted to do every thing old style. As a consequence, each piece of the Killa Bee’s body was minimize on a band noticed earlier than being painstakingly filed and completed by hand.
“This bike is also all modular. There’s no welding similar to my previous Vincent land speed racer design,” says Alp. “All final proportions are limited to official rules and specs for LSR motorcycle classes in which the bike is intended to race.”
Holding Alp’s modular body collectively are handfuls of beefy bolts. Sandwiched between the higher members of the chassis is a {custom} machined headstock, once more made by Alp, which makes use of the same design to his record-breaking Vincent. Although it definitely appears to be like the half, the chin fairing is the one element of this mission that was constructed for present. Finished in a color scheme matched ‘Signal Yellow’ Nineteen Sixties Porsche color by Alp’s good good friend Bryan Thompson of Thompson Cycles, the chin piece is eliminated previous to racing.
As for the engine, it’s a concoction of Alp’s personal design too. “The engine base is a 1950s pre-unit Triumph and the cases are new,” he says. “They were sand cast and machined to my specs by Thunder Engineering.” There’s additionally a set of rocker packing containers from a Triumph T140 integrated into the engine design which now runs on 95% nitromethane and generates a really spectacular 150hp.
For the ignition system, Alp has opted for a uncommon earth Morris Magneto. The cams have been custom-made to his personal specs by Web Camshafts and the valvetrain is by Kibblewhite Precision Machining. Alp additionally sourced many Triumph spares for the construct from JRC Engineering and utilised components from the Pingel catalogue for the throttle setup, kill switches and significant gasoline valves.
Unsurprisingly, beginning an engine like that is no imply feat. With Jalika’s help, Alp fires the beast into life by squirting methanol instantly into the mouths of the forward-facing carburettors. As you’d count on it makes loads of noise when it does begin, however pleasing the neighbours isn’t one thing that sits excessive on this race workforce’s checklist of priorities.
There’s no scarcity of challenges confronted when constructing a bike to compete in land-speed racing. So out of curiosity, we requested Alp what the largest problem he confronted through the Killa Bee construct was.
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“Just about everything!” he jokes. “Frankly, the actual build is the fun/relaxing part. The real challenge is figuring out all the components necessary to allow the bike to run on Nitromethane. Seeing my design/builds all come together and manage to function in synchronicity, let alone break solid records is what makes it all worthwhile.”
With the Killa Bee accomplished and already sporting a trophy (albeit for wanting good whereas standing nonetheless), it’s time to see simply how briskly this bike can go. “We attended the USFRA test/tune event at Bonneville and the fastest run was 170.749 mph,” Alp says. “This was with 3/4 throttle and it still needs tuning! It will go faster but I do not know how fast.”
The present report within the Killa Bee’s class stands at 166.843 mph so the bike is effectively on its option to breaking that. Unfortunately, the 2022 Bonneville occasions had been cancelled on account of water on the salt. The subsequent land velocity occasion Alp is attending might be at El Mirage the place he has excessive hopes for the Killa Bee.
Alp and Jalika are an influence couple in each sense of the time period and so they now have their sights set on turning into members of the hallowed land velocity racing 200mph membership. Judging by what they’ve achieved thus far we predict that aim is effectively inside their attain.
ALP RACING DESIGN
Studio images by Derek Althen
Source: www.returnofthecaferacers.com