Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum

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I'm guessing this datalogger was pretty basic and before computers were small and powerful enough to do what they do today. We are pretty lucky to live in a day and age of affordable dataloggers. I bet this unit cost a fortune back then. Imagine scanning through pages and pages of printouts to find one data point. Now that must have been painful.

miller supercharged engine
The Miller supercharged engine was built from 1926 to 1929 and was 91 c.i or 1.49L. I'm not sure if it's a dual spark plug in inline 4 or a straight 8. That snail looking thing on the front of the engine was a gear driven supercharger. The carburetor directly feeds the blower's inlet. Those groups of horizontal fins that the supercharger's outlet feeds is an intercooler I suspect. I wonder what happened when there was fuel puddling in the intercooler?! A small backfire would have been a pretty bad situation. Its interesting to see how forced induction engines evolved over the years.

motorcycles and IMS museum
There were plenty of motorcycles in the museum's collection also from the late 90's and earlier. Many of the older bikes were Indians and there were plenty of Nortons too. There were also some Honda and Suzuki race bikes too.

indian motorcycle at IMS museum
There were even plenty of pre-war bikes in the collection. Drum brakes and leaf springs on your bikes anybody? Most of the older bikes appeared to be restored to excellent condition so you are able to appreciate them as their designers intended you to. 

lucky strike suzuki
This Suzuki looked pretty cool. It's too bad most countries are banning tobacco sponsors. This actually hurts racing massively. Racing takes a lot of money and tobacco companies make a lot of money so they are a natural pairing. At the end of the day, the tobacco companies stay richer and will still get the kids another way. With less advertising expenses (racing sponsorships), the tobacco companies just end up paying more taxes to the government anyway. Perhaps it's no coincidence that governments are banning tobacco sponsors in sports. 


I think this Ducati might have been released before they figured out what the effect of a high center of gravity does to a bike. This bike might be ultra cool to a Ducati or bike nerd, but I wonder if this is Ducati's equivalent of the 1980 Ferrari 208.

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