this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
80 points (95.5% liked)

Motorcycles

406 readers
1 users here now

A place to share all your motorcycle braaaps and adventures!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] officermike@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Page title says it's a drag racer, so I took the liberty of making the following guesses:

  • Engines aren't running long enough to overheat
  • In the Swiss-cheese excavator bucket-looking cover is what I'm guessing is a clutch. It very well may be the case that this gets run wide open throttle and acceleration and speed are modulated with the clutch.

All of this is just guessing. I have no first-hand experience with drag racing drivetrains, motorcycle or otherwise. I do seem to recall learning that there are automotive drag racing transmissions in which the clutches weld themselves closed during the race and need to be rebuilt between runs.

[โ€“] fartographer@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Ew! Your speculations sound based on reason and research! I, on the other hand, was relying on pure stupidity.

Personal anecdote about welding clutches: turns out it's really easy to do! The clutch pedal fork in my '95 4Runner broke, so I ended up getting my entire clutch system replaced/rebuilt. As part of the rebuild, my mechanic's parts supplier offered a deep discount on a racing clutch they recently started manufacturing. Somehow, this clutch sat incorrectly in the housing and presented a partial gap of a few micrometers, which the supplier assured us would be negligible within a few days. A couple of weeks later, I was running errands all day and suddenly smelled and heard something awful and couldn't depress my clutch pedal, even when trying to stand on it. That was a fun day of abusing my clutch start override every time I stopped and wasn't on a decline or had to change between forward and reverse!