Triple engine CB750 drag racer

Posted by rich on Sep 24, 2013; 8:58pm
URL: http://vintage-and-classic-hondas.81.s1.nabble.com/Internet-Oddities-tp3613372p4045947.html

Russ Collins put three engines on to his Honda drag racer in the 1970s. Drag bikes need a huge amount of power for maximum acceleration, and some models are even powered by rocket engines. His three engine bike was named "Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe", a thundering, three-engine, nitromethane-burning, Honda. This frightening machine became the first, seven-second motorcycle in drag racing and the first Top Fuel bike with a Japanese engine to hold a NHRA National Record. The "AT&SF," also, became the first motorcycle to win NHRA's coveted "Best Engineered Car" award at the Springnationals in 1973. Russ Collins' three-motor monster eventually ran a best of 7.80 sec./179.5 mph but, in the end, proved a death-defying ride. In 1976, it was destroyed in a horrendous crash at Akron, Ohio that nearly killed Russ, put him in the hospital for several weeks and kept him in a wheelchair for several more. You can't keep a wild man down, though.



Russ Collins was born in New Jersey in 1939. He was into anything mechanical and his interest in cars lead him to be an accomplished car mechanic and a body man, he later get into trucking business and drove around the country. He fell in love with California and moved there. He became a shop manager and a mechanic in motorcycle dealerships. While there, Honda unveiled the revolutionary CB750 Four and he got one to play with. Collins built a four-into-one exhaust system that a lot of Honda owners wanted, so in 1970 he quit his job at the motorcycle dealership and opened RC Engineering, which later became a leading maker of racing fuel-injection systems for Japanese-made sports cars.

Source: http://briskinfo.com/gk-questions/who-put-three-engines-on-a-motorbike