NZ's most successful home made sports car was an air cooled Lycoming aircraft engined special with a home made 3 speed gearbox,engine around 4 litres,max revs around 3900 rpm,built around 1956,max speed about 140 mph ,developed to about 160mph.weight about 700 kg.This car could out accelerate many exotic formula 1 racers of the day and when one hears it racing it sort of just chugs around,the diff ratio was about 2.1 to 1.The point is:there are horses and horses and while the Harleys are cruisers with poor road holding they can accelerate OK.I believe that an 86hp Harley would give a much better spread of power than the 125 hp Toyota I had in my Chevron 7 and coupled with the light weight I believe it would have gone faster.Google ralph watson lycoming for a look at an interesting vehicle and an incredible engineer.David
