In the early 1980s I went back to school and got myself a degree in software development. This and my moving into a new career distracted me to some extent from motorcycling. However during that time I did get a Yamaha RD-350, which I ported and took to a 370, a Kawasaki Ninja 900 which I built to a 970, and even a Honda 50 to get me to school, which I installed a hotrod 70cc motor into.

At some point I decided that I had been working hard and that I deserved a new toy. At that point for the most part I had not been paying much attention to what the motorcycle manufactures were producing. I had noticed that there were some big twins running in the tens which seemed really quick to a guy who got excited to see a four cylinder make it into the elevens. One day I decided to look at motorcycles on the web and one of the first bikes I saw was a red Hayabusa. The Hayabusa was a nine second fuel injected monster and looked every bit the part. You have to understand that one of these things is as fast or faster than a full on Pro-Stocker was in the early days of that class. Of course I had to get a Haybusa, and a red one at that.

It wasn’t that long before I took the bike to the track, just to see what it would do. My first time down the track I went a 10.20. Janet was there with a camcorder and shot some video. You can see them at http://homepage.mac.com/emarsh/iMovieTheater7.html. Of course I had to have my bike running in the nines. I lowered it, put a PC2 and a pipe on the bike and before long I was running 9.80s. But the drag racing bug had bit me again and I couldn’t leave well enough alone. Next I put a dry shot nitrous system on the bike. This made it tricky to ride, with big wheelies when the nitrous came on but put me in the mid nines at over 150 mph. That’s as fast (but not as quick) as my old Pro-Stock bike and this is on a mildly modified street bike that I regularly rode to work. I was getting this level of performance on a tight budget and most of the parts on the bike were used. Here’s a video of me running a 9.53 with only a 20hp shot: http://homepage.mac.com/emarsh/iMovieTheater10.html.

Speaking of used parts, eventually I found a second hand street turbo system for $2500. I’d been reading about turbo Hayabusas for a while and what I read was astonishing. There were street driven turbos producing 450 horsepower and even more. I bought the turbo and while I had the cylinders off to put a cylinder spacer in to lower the compression, I put a used set of 1397cc pistons in it. We put the bike on a dyno and saw 300 horsepower. When I went to the track, my first run with the turbo was on a worn out old junk tire. It spun the tire to about half track and then hooked up at over 100 mph and started to pull like a locomotive. I only went a 9.70 but that was at 158 miles an hour.

I started to work with the turbo but it threw a lot of new challenges at me. First of all, it had a severe overboost problem. I sent the turbo to Stedman Racing to have a wastegate installed but they botched the job twice and had me waiting for my parts for many months. Finally I bought a TIG welder and did the job myself. Once I had the wastegate working I added a computerized boost control system and then finally a data acquisition system.

The data acquisition system is a very powerful tool. Until I installed it I didn’t realize that the turbo was actually shutting down at about 9500 rpm and would not maintain a properly boost profile. About the time that I had that realization I was running 9.30s and the bike started to jump out of gear. I had to pull the motor out and apart. From there, the story of my Hayabusa can be found at my Dragbike Site.

I found that a turbo on the street is a bit of overkill at anything that resembles legal speeds. When the turbo starts to make power it will break the tire loose and spin it at eighty or even a hundred miles an hour.  Consequently I decided to put the Hayabusa on the track where I could really use that power and bought myself a Kawasaki ZX-14. Currently this is the most powerful production bike you can buy, or very close to it.

It’s been an interesting ride over the last 35 years and I wonder where it will take me in the years to come.