Chain guards are still a mystery to me and there are some LSR (Land Speed Record) rules regarding their length and coverage. By the SCTA rules, the guard must be steel, not fiberglass or even carbon fiber. Plus it must extend beyond the rear of the sprocket. So I went to work building a guard from scratch.

I grabbed some lightweight stainless and had grandiose notions of shapes and spacing, until I spoke to Rick Krost from U.S. Choppers, a 5-Ball sponsor, and the man behind TIG welding our oil bag. He looked at my notion and picked up a used H-D chain guard and said, “How about this. Might save some time.”

Of course it would save time. I stole one from his stash of old parts and went to work. I needed to extend it so that I could run Teflon pads, since the Paughco frame was stretched 6 inches in the rear. An old racer cat told me not to run a chain tensioning wheel, “It eats horsepower,” he said.

So I re-shaped some 16-guage sheet metal, made a mounting tab and machined chunks of Teflon for the bottom and top. Recently Rodan, an SCTA official of the highest order, came to the Bikernet shop and inspected our beast. He told me to raise the bottom Teflon guide. “Mount it very close to the chain,” Rodan said. He also instructed me to extend my chain guard forward.

Next, I needed to mount our new 5-pound Nitrous bottle. I wanted to mount it as close to the oil bag as possible, buffeting the air out and around the front of the frame. Again I used 16-guage sheet metal straps, welded a bottom in place and grappled with the position. I wanted it close without banging on the oil bag. It’s always a guessing game.

Note from reader: Since you already spoke with Keith Turk he may have already told you about Guy Caputo. Guy runs a nitrous Busa at Maxton and has set all the fast nitrous records at Maxton, running a best over 228 MPH, so he knows his stuff when it comes to motorcycle nitrous systems. He owns Tiger Racing and can be reached through his web site at www.tigerracingproducts.com. Probably old news since you already talked with Keith Turk but I thought I would pass it along just in case.

--Pablo

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