I knew a Black Shadow was fast, but i didn't know it was THAT fast!
I was expecting it to have been faster, after all the speedometer went all the way to 150 mph.
T~
122 mph was pretty respectful off the factory floor in 1950. It's what owners did with them when they got them home that made them really fast.
Case in point is legendary Burt Munro who in the 1960's created a land speed record of 178.95 mph on his 1920 Indian Scout (he was 68 years old). For those who haven't seen the movie about him "The World's Fastest Indian" it's one of the best movies you'll ever see, well worth the watch.
Sad to see this bygone era go when an individual could buy a bike, totally disassemble it into each tiny piece and refit it together again like a child's mechno set and race it. Todays super bikes are so sophisticated you'd need
thousands hundereds of thousands of dollars to do this 50, 60 or 70 years after their production date if even possible.
Here's an exploded diag. of a 1975 850 Norton mc motor. You needed deep pockets
or mechanical abilities to keep one of these machines running. With diags. like these you quickly learned to keep the wheels going round.
silodrome.com
conceptbunny.com
