2011 Las vegas to Barstow Vetter Challenge report
 

Alan Smith met at my home in Livermore CA on Thursday morning and we started our ride to the event on our streamliners. We rode down California’s autobahn; US Hwy 5 maintaining 70 to 80 mph speeds. Conditions were good and we made good time to Barstow where we spent the night.

The next morning we left for Las Vegas and encountered strong winds. Alan’s streamlined Ninja 250 with its new Vetter tailsection handled well in the winds with minimal corrections while my Yamaha Vision 550 was forced to slow down and countersteer strongly to stay in my lane during the ride on Hwy 15 to Vegas.
After settling in at our hotel we met Beater911 who was in Las Vegas from WA for some training for his job. We showed him our bikes and discussed our hypermiling efforts.

Beater911 drove us to the Red Rock Casino where the American Motorcycle Association was having a convention and motorcycle concourse. Alan was going to display his streamliner on Saturday with Craig Vetter’s Honda Helix streamliner, Fred Hayes diesel streamliner and diesel Streetfighter. The vintage, racing and specialty motorcycles were awesome. The event staff asked us to move Alan’s bike to the display area before 10 PM rather than early Saturday morning as we had initially planned. We returned to our hotel and returned with Alan riding his bike to the Red Rock loading dock. We then rolled the 10’ long bike into a 9’x 6’ elevator and took it to the convention floor. We rolled it down a long hotel kitchen corridor and the cooks and waiters were intrigued by the streamliner passing through their work area. We placed the bike in its designated spot and then the three of us went out for dinner and a tour of the Fremont Street experience.

Saturday we returned to the motorcycle concourse event, answered questions about streamlining and motorcycle hypermiling, and visited with other motorcycle presenters.
The AMA Hall of Fame inductees then did an autograph signing and we had the privilege of meeting motorcycling legends such as Kenny Roberts, Wayne Rainey, and Bubba Shobert, Bob Hannah, Malcolm Smith, Craig Vetter, Cook Nielsen and too many other legends to list. It was great! The day flew by and we helped Alan get his bike back to our hotel. We then got together with the Vetters, the Hayes and the Chens for dinner, socializing and some discussion about our fuel economy run on Sunday morning.

Sunday morning we topped off our tanks and met at the Red Rock Casino for the start of our fuel economy run to Barstow. The ride was almost all freeway miles under cold and windy conditions. We rode up several 4000’+ passes on the climb up to Barstow. The conditions were the hardest to date of all the Vetter Challenges. We all were able to maintain a 65 mph to 80 mph Pace to Barstow. My bike was the only one to be significantly effected by the strong winds. Beater911 joined us and took photos and video of the ride, and then returned to Vegas for his flight home to WA. He did a great job helping to support our competition and the motorcycle hypermiling cause. Hopefully he will start work soon on streamlining his motorcycles.

We cruised into Barstow and assembled for lunch. After lunch we topped off out tanks and found: 1. Fred Hayes, HDT streamliner , 138.2 mpg, 2. Alan Smith, Kawasaki 250 streamliner , 95.9 mpg, 3. Josh Chen, HDT Streetfighter, 95.3 mpg, 4. Craig Vetter, Honda Helix streamliner, 92.9 mpg , 5. Vic Valdes ( Low&Slow) , Yamaha Vision streamliner, 61.9 mpg

Compared to the 2001 Quail Run, my bike improved from ~56 mpg to 62 mpg on a faster, uphill ride with cold and windy conditions. I’m pleased I was able to significantly improve the efficiency of my bike but the performance gap between me and my friends indicate that my bike is too large, and produces too much power to compete with 250s and the diesel bikes. I need to get a smaller bike and streamline it to start getting competitive. I will probably do a little more work on my Vision to achieve a 70 mpg tank fill but I plan on looking for a new Vetter Challenge bike.

After the event debrief Alan and I started our ride back home. We encountered rain, strong winds and temperatures as low as 37*F. We stopped in Bakersfield and had dinner with Craig. We left on Monday morning for the ride home to the SF Bay Area, encountering lots of fog between Bakersfield and Fresno. Needless to say, it was a great trip with hypermiling, motorcycling and friends.

I hope you all enjoyed this report and that you and your families have a great Thanksgiving holiday.

Low&Slow (Vic)

See if you can find a 1987 Yamaha SRX 250. Sounds like a great ride.

regards
Mech

Mech, Thanks for the suggestion, I'll check one out.

attached are some pix

Thanks for the report L&S. I suspect that any single cyclinder bike under 400cc will get very good result. 250cc does seem to be the favoret of most. I plan t be at Carmel for the vetter challenge in May and then go to Bonneville in September see Bonneville or bust thread.

Old Mechanic your Vulcan 500 looks like it could be very good as a streamlined bike project.

Red Yaris, It will be great to see you in Carmel. I hope to break into the 70 mpg range soon with the Vision but hope to start working on another bike soon. Fred Hayes goes to Bonneville a lot and probably will be there this next year.

Low&Slow I did some number crunching and when I compare the improvement from Carmel Hayes is 4% better, Smith is at 3%, Vetter is at 6%, and you are at just under 13% better. In looking at the pictures of your bike, problems I suspect are the side area beyond the front tire is bigger than it needs to be and the area behind the rear wheel needs to be tapered and the rear wheel should be covered just like the lower rear of the Hayes bodywork. Just my 2 bits. The two trips I have planed for 2012 are Carmel in May and Bonneville in September. I am working on two bikes in the garage and on a Kammback for my Yaris.

If I'm not mistaken the speed limit for the entire route was 70mph, yet sustained speeds of 75 and even 80mph are mentioned. For an earlier run (Ohio?) or in the "rules" it was stated that no driving laws would be broken.

No groceries were carried either?

Me thinks the "rules" have just a liiiiitttle bit too much "flux".

Hi Frank, You are correct about the 70 mph speed limit for the route and that the speed limit was not strictly adhered to. We were far from the fastest traffic on HWY 15 that day. One of Craig's rules is that competitors not get passed by the designated trailing vehicle . Usually in Vetter Challenges, Craig's streamliner fills that role. This time he was the route leader and the trailing vehicle was Craig's SUV driven by his wife. I was probably the only one to go as fast as 80 mph and it was to catch up with the group when I was forced to slow down due to crosswind handling problems with my bike. It wasn't for very long and then the ~70mph pace was resumed.
The 4 grocery bag carrying capability was not enforced for this run as it was marketed as a " fun run" without the strict rules enforcement that is planned for next year's Challenges. Under the future rules the 2 diesel bikes would have had to have carried the 4 bags as they lacked the interior storage capacity of Alan's, Craig's and my bike. Actually Alan and I were carrying all our luggage, tools and raingear during the run.
Craig's goal is to encourage the development of motorcycles that can achieve 100 mpg , that can stay with the flow of traffic , that can carry at least the equivalent of 4 bags of groceries , and can maintain 70 mph into a 30 mph headwind. These are difficult standards to achieve with only Fred Hayes doing it 3 times ( Carmel, Ohio, & LV to Barstow ) , ALan, Craig and Max Perethian breaking through at Ohio this year. Going slower would make it easier but Craig's rules don't allow it.
all the best, L&S

Thanks for expanding on that. Was wondering if someone designed a vehicle to be able to go 70mph into headwinds, then gets to the contest and finds the field going 80mph into headwinds and gets disqualified for a)not keeping up and b)breaking traffic laws- not cool. Maybe I need to put a tail on the VMax and see who can keep up with me at 150mph?

Would Mr. Hayes be of the Hayes Diversified Technology? If so, in your discussions with him, when can we expect his civilian version of diesel bikes to be offered? give me an idea of price and you can count me in ( i got some thanksgiving turkey fry oil waiting, it works in my tractor :) )