BullDog 2008

Chester Harley-Davidson were very happy to get the chance to race their destroyer at this years bulldog bash, piloted by resident rider Phil wood.The bike has been run at a number of events this year but this time some major changes were made to the setup of the motor and chassis.Shakespeare County Raceway has a reputation as being one of the gripper tracks on the calendar, never having been there before Phil and the crew guessed at some base settings, tyre pressure was dropped to 9psi and the gearing left a 21/57, these settings resulted in a first pass of 10.34 @ 133mph.As the day progressed a few tweaks here and there gave us a final time of 10.01 @131mph

Working deep into Friday night making lots of alterations including changing the gearing to 20 front 57 rear and setting the shift light to 9800rpm, the aim of these changes was to try to sharpen up the launch a little.The air box was also lifted on the adaptor bracket to allow more air into the motor enabling it to breathe a little better.Saturdays race brought our first chance to race against another destroyer, the bike belongs to Chris Van Niemen, a regular competitor in the European series for the destroyer cup, on this occasion his bike was being ridden by another rider, as the lights changed Chris`s rider red lit (breaking the timing light beam to early) giving us an automatic win but he still made a race of it and we ran a 10.3.Things just got better from there; we raced against a German destroyer and won.

The last race of the day pitted us against Chris on his own destroyer, we made some changes to our settings dropping tyre pressures to 7psi and changing the shift point to 10,000 rpm, this race was going to be a real test for us as Chris has bags of experience and also runs a top fuel Harley, Phil had an excellent launch giving us a 9.94 @ 131mph, a fantastic result, our first time in the 9 second bracket and another win for Chester Harley-Davidson’s destroyer.So all in all it was a great weekend, thanks to Pete form Ashfield H.A. for looking after our team while we where down there and thanks to the crew who put all the effort in to improving our times.