Slightly Modified: 1929 Harley-Davidson Board Track Racer
Looking for a practical daily with the look of a classic Harley board track bike? Then steer clear of this pulsejet monster.
Board track racing, where riders piloted brakeless bikes at triple-digit speeds on banked tracks, was insane. By comparison, a modern MotoGP contest sounds about as dangerous as riding a merry-go-round. But if you wanted to make a board track build totally bonkers, adding a pulse-jet engine is a great start. So that’s what Bob Maddox did — and now Mecum Auctions is taking his creation to the block.
Now, this isn’t the first time we’ve covered this wicked machine on HDForums. Back in 2011, I stumbled across the “slightly modified” 1929 Harley when I was scouring eBay, though I didn’t note then if it sold, or for how much. At the time, I also called it a suicide machine, which I stand by. Fortunately, it appears to have survived the last decade unscathed.
For such an interesting machine, there’s precious little info about the construction or ownership history. That said, Maddox is known for his expertise with the pulsejet, and the sound of his creations was even featured in the — criminally underrated — Solo: A Star Wars Story. After a little digging, I also found a video of Maddox testing the board tracker, though it doesn’t provide many hard numbers.
In the clip, Maddox says it took about three months to build, and that the 250 pounds of thrust should translate to “a couple hundred horsepower.” Even for a modern sport bike, that’s a lot of poke, but on something that’s basically a bicycle, and rolling on tires about as wide as pizza cutters, it’s another thing entirely. There’s also the extreme heat and searing noise of the jets to contend with, so riding this baby has to be a trip.
The rest of what we know about the bike comes from the listing. Unlike the classic board track bikes, this one has a large brake rotor at the rear, so it’s arguably safer. It’s also set up to run on regular 87-octance gas, and is said to hit 60 mph in five seconds. Obviously, the market for a machine like this is pretty tiny, and there no estimates on the Mecum Auctions site. So we’ll just have to wait until early January to see how much it goes for. Stay tuned!
Photos: Mecum Auctions
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