Of all the totally insane motorsports that use nitromethane the most often forgotten among the mainstream is hill climb bikes. These things need all the horsepower they can muster to propel themselves up near vertical courses all the while being jumped and bounced like a supercross machine. Take this video for example. You are going to watch and actually ride on a nitromethane fueled, totally evil GSX-R600 at a hill climb in North Dakota. From the second they fire this bike up, you know it means business.
The engine has a wildly nasty idle and that idle turns to a hellacious scream as soon as the throttle is cracked. If the sound doesn’t tell you enough about the stiffness of the nitromethane percentage in this engine, the pre-run routine will. There’s a guy who has the job of aiming the little leaf blower jobbie at the rider’s face to keep them from being overcome with the fumes. Unfortunately for the crew guy, he did not get that service and he gets the worst of it.
This is a truly awesome ride on a truly awesome machine. We watched it a couple of times to concentrate on each individual vantage point that the footage gives us. Talk about differing perspectives. Off the bike it looks ragged-edge, riding for survival, holy wow scary. On the bike? On the bike it looks smooth and graceful!
