Top Fuel Terror
TOP FUEL TERROR
The bike that almost ate Terry Vance
TERRY VANCE IS GLAD TO BE ALIVE. BECAUSE ONE SUMMER 20 years ago on the first Vance & Hines Top Fuel dragbike, the man wasn’t sure if he was going to make it. The reason was this Suzuki GS1100-based machine, a supercharged, injected, nitromethane-fueled 1325cc missile packing some 800 horsepower and putting it to the ground via a 14-inch-wide car-racing slick. Vance, a veteran of thousands of passes on virtually every kind of dragbike, still speaks with awe about riding the blindingly fast but often unpredictable Top Fueler-and his quest to be the first to break the 200-mph barrier.
“The way that bike accelerated, it’s not comprehensible,” he says today. “It’s trying to run away from you all the time. It’s off the scale. You’ve got to be half-crazy to do it.”
If Vance was only half-crazy, the other demented half was engine-building and tuning legend Byron Hines.
After years of successful racing in the Top Gas and Pro Stock classes, the pair ultimately thought that going to Top Fuel would be the best way to promote their fledgling company, Vance & Hines Racing, formed in 1980. Plus, racing is about speed, and they both were in search of more.
“Byron wanted to build the bike, and it was something I wanted to do,” says Vance. “I mean, when you’re a drag racer you want to go fast. That’s what it’s all about-until you go really fast, and you’re like, ‘Hey, wait a minute, this is too fast!”’
Development had its rough spots. “We ran it for a full season and I couldn’t even get the sumbitch down the track,” Vance remembers. “I felt like a complete idiot.”
Probably a natural feeling for somebody so accustomed to success. But the reason Vance and Hines had so much success was because they were good. Hines naturally found the power they needed, but with it came a new problem.
“We finally figured it out and started hauling ass,” Vance says. “But then we were breaking parts pretty regularly because the bike just couldn’t handle the power. The crank kept coming out of it. And I mean, literally, the whole crank would be on the dragstrip. When you ride over a crankshaft with a 14-inch-wide tire, it’s not a happy thing.”
The fix came from Suzuki Japan in the form of stronger cast-iron crankcases to replace the stock aluminum ones. “Those things were indestructible,” Hines remembers. “You could wad up pistons and break wristpins and it would all stay inside the case.” But the 70-pound cases were 40 pounds heavier and had an unwanted side effect.
“It made the bike handle really weird,” Vance remembers. “It would try to go one way or the other because it was like a dart with the weight in the wrong spot.”
Weight distribution wasn’t the only difficulty. The bike was fitted with full bodywork, and its shape made the bike even more unpredictable at speed.
Despite all this, in August of 1982 at the now-defunct Orange County International Raceway, the duo finally broke the barrier with a 6.98-second run at 203.61 mph at the track’s weekly, non-sanctioned drags.
While they didn’t get past that barrier for the rest of the ’82 season, and did have their share of troubles with the bike, they won the Top Fuel championship.
Vance reflects. “It could have been the end of me. I never, ever, ever went to a race with that bike without thinking about getting hurt. And I didn’t like that. I’d never felt that way on my Pro Stock bike. For me, the good thing was that we went in the 6s, went over 200 and won the championship. Then I said, ‘Byron, I’m done with that thing.’ We sold it and started running Pro Stock again.”
Vance sat quietly for a moment, then said, “Let me put it this way-they’re great memories. And I’m really glad they're memories."
Mark Hoyer
