Alta Motor’s “The Crapshoot” Drag Racer

[Philip]

By Tim Huber - February 23, 2018

Bike of the Week: Alta Motor’s “The Crapshoot” Drag Racer

Alta Motors brings something you might not expect to the 2018 One Moto Show in the form of a custom Redshift-based drag build.

Founded in 2010 as BRD Motorcycles, Alta Motors has quickly earned a solid name and reputation for itself by producing impressive, fully-electric two-wheelers. The company has made a strong effort to have a presence at local motorcycle shows and events to get the word out about its products. Recently the San Francisco-based marque showed off a fascinating, very cool drag racer build at Portland’s The One Moto Show that’s earned the spot of this week’s Bike of the Week.

Alta knew it wanted to bring a custom build based on its Redshift machines, and after bringing a street tracker to Portland last year, Alta designer John McInnis starting toying around with the idea of creating something a little more out there.

“I wanted to do something that a little bit more unique, a little bit more unexpected. Something you wouldn’t see any of our competitors attempting,” McInnis said. “Also I wanted it to show off the modularity of the Redshift platform and how with a few just a few basic hand tools you can pull a Redshift apart and turn it into something completely different.”

John sketched some designs inspired by some of Boris Murray's 1960s and ’70s-era drag racers from when—for a time—Murray held both the National Hotrod Association and American Motorcycle Drag Racing Association records for elapsed time and top-speed, as well as the records in five other leagues. The southern California-based drag racer famously built his own bikes and, created and piloted a 305-pound racer powered by dual, heavily modded Triumph 650 engines that ran on a mixture of 92-percent nitro-methane and eight percent alcohol.

Murray racing half-a-century-ago.

Sadly, Murray passed away in November of 2014 at the ripe age of 78, but prior to doing so had inspired a new generation of racers, and, based on Alta’s build, seemingly continues to have an influence on the motorcycling world. After deciding a design, McInnis showed his renderings to Vinnie Falzon, Alta’s assembly line supervisor. Falzon was immediately on board with the project, so the two got the ball rolling on tearing down the 275 pound Redshift donor and began sourcing parts.

Despite the electric custom being a factory-backed project, Falzon and McInnis had to get pretty resourceful and creative. The front end is off a CB350, and the front wheel and rear brake pedal are off old Sportsters. The chassis had to be hacked up and modified to accept a hardtail rear-end, which was quite a chore. Without the need for a gas-tank, McInnis and Falzon were able to run a single piece aluminum rear-fender, seat/seat-pan combo unit atop the frame. The electric powertrain also allowed for an incredibly tidy build. There is no clutter anywhere and the only thing under the seat is the frame and chain.

In the end, the two opted not to paint or powdercoat the bike so that the minor imperfections that come from hand-done work could still be seen.

“It gives the whole thing some character, it gives it that hand-built feel which is what we were really going for,” said Falzon.

The vintage fairing did receive a gloss blue and silver livery complete with hand-painted white script and gold pin-striping though, and is set off by a diamond-stitched brown leather saddle.

Even though vintage drag racers definitely aren’t what come to mind when you think of Alta Motors, this retro-inspired custom still boasts a lot of Alta-flavor. In addition to the electric power plant—which produces a cool 120 foot-pounds of torque—the build’s hardtail frame still retains much of Alta's easily recognizable design.

“There aren’t too many other electric platforms that a really guy can get a hold of and turn into something cool like this, at least without major modification to the drivetrain,” said McInnis. “The general feel here is that we don’t want to take away your gas bikes, we just want to give people another option.”

Ultimately I was pretty surprised when Alta brought this bike to the table. It’s always cool seeing how passionate people in the industry are, and I can thoroughly appreciate the effort that went into paying homage to those that came before them.
“I definitely want to have a hand in making sure that it respects the past and respects where motorcycles came from, rather than looking like a space ship on two wheels,” said McInnis.

Crapshoot photos courtesy of Alta Motors
Boris Murray photos courtesy of Draglist.com and Steve Reyes

Source: RideApart

 

[Philip]

THE CURRENT: ALTA MOTORS CRAPSHOOT DRAGSTER
MARCH 11, 2018
|IN MOTORCYCLES, THE CURRENT
|BY GARY BOULANGER

John McInnis is a designer working under Alta co-founder Jeff Sand, the Chief Design Officer and original architect of the Alta Redshift motor. McInnis came to Alta from Lightning Motorcycles, where he was responsible for Class A surface modeling on its LS-218 electric superbike that broke records at Bonneville (the ‘218’ was its top speed on the salt) and kicked the ass of every dinosaur-powered factory racer on Pike’s Peak in 2013.

At Alta, McInnis’ role bounces between surface/solid modeling, concept sketching, and a little bit of graphic design. All of which are his favorite aspects of the design process. “I definitely feel fortunate to have found myself here; it’s an absolute dream job,” he told me from his office in Alta’s Brisbane, California headquarters – eight miles south of downtown San Francisco. “Alta is definitely doing some of the raddest things in motorcycling and it’s great being a part of it.”

And it doesn’t get any radder than a silent dragster called the Crapshoot.

Q: John, how and when did the Crapshoot project begin?
We knew we wanted to bring another bike to The One Moto show in Portland, the question was obviously “what?” Jon Bekefy, our marketing director at the time, had challenged me to come up with something unexpected; something you wouldn’t see any other electric OEMs do. We agreed it wasn’t going to be a café or a scrambler, because that felt just a little too obvious. Some other ideas we threw around were an `80s GP-inspired muscle bike or a speedway bike before we landed on one of the most niche segments: vintage drag bike!

After looking through the history books, some of the builds that stood out to me were by Boris Murray with his twin-engine, fully-faired Triumph and Leo Payne, creator of the awesome “Turnip Eater” Ironhead Sportster. These guys built these fantastic machines out of garages in the `60s, and I wanted this build to reflect that “handmade-ness”. My mission was to prove that a regular guy with regular tools and basic fabrication skills can take a Redshift and turn it into something pretty wild, without needing to be an electrical engineer. So in that spirit, all of the electronics and the core of a bone-stock Redshift remained unchanged.

Q: How many different versions were explored before this one was built?
I had only done a handful of pen sketches and one digital sketch before people were pretty excited about it and the rough silhouette was solidified. I had planned on it being a hardtail from the beginning, and getting it as low as possible was a priority. Once I created the hardtail section in CAD, that part stayed the same. The bodywork changed based off of what I could get in the limited time and what would fit best on a 250cc equivalent dirtbike (not much..) but the people at AirTech have quite the selection of fairings, and ended up with their AJSM5 three-piece fairing.

Q: Who laid hands on this project, and what were their contributions?
Once I had a sketch to work from, I took it to our assembly line supervisor, Vinnie Falzon, who’s a proficient welder and fabricator. He was instantly excited to be part of the project and ordered material to build the hardtail that day. We bent the tubing using Jeff Sand’s old Hossfeld that was in a container behind the shop. He’s responsible for all the major fab work on the hardtail section, plus the sleek, hand-formed aluminum seat section that he didn’t even start until about two weeks before the bike was to be displayed in Portland. [And, it should be noted, Sand’s design/fabrication chops are massive; he basically invented the step-in snowboard binding at Switch – ed.]

Once I figured out the mounting brackets and trim lines for the body work, I sent the fairing to Dennis Hodges of DK Design in San Francisco, who didn’t bat an eye when I told him exactly how much metal flake I wanted on this thing. He’s responsible for all the clean up work and paint on the fairing, and converting it to a single piece, eliminating the unsightly part line. His accomplice, Jon Bradford, was able to turn our “crapshoot” logo into a sweet decal for the side of the bike.

The seat was a total custom job by Frances Midori, also from SF, who does a lot of work out of Hodges’ shop. We basically dropped off our seat pan and said “make it look like grandpa’s smoking chair” and she totally nailed it. It was the cherry on top for this little retro futuristic period piece, from the future.

Q: How many hours total were invested?
We started bending the tube for the hardtail around the middle of January, and from then until we were doing final assembly in the van on our way up to Portland was nonstop. Vinnie has 40 hours into the seat section alone and I’m pretty sure Dennis didn’t sleep a few days while doing paint and bodywork. There’s at least 100 total man hours into the build.

Source: The Vintagent

 

[AndyB]

Cool motorcycle.