Learn about the Legends of Harley Drag Racing Museum in Raleigh, North Carolina, with highlights by Joe Berk.
The Skinny
- What: Legends of Harley Drag Racing Museum, 1126 South Saunders Street, Raleigh, North Carolina 27603, 919-832-2261. Admission is free. Opens at 9 a.m. Closes at 6 p.m. weekdays, 5 p.m. Saturdays, and Sunday hours are 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. Closed Mondays.
- How To Get There: Take Interstate Highway 40 from either direction, get on U.S. Highway 401 north, and exit right on Saunders Street.
- Best Kept Secret: Ray Price was quite a man and quite a character. He liked eating the Mezcal worm during the inevitable post-race parties (when the bikes were put away and the drinks and stories were flowing).
Legends of Harley Drag Racing Museum
If you ever find yourself in the great town of Raleigh, NC, Tobacco Road Harley-Davidson and its Legends of Harley Drag Racing Museum are “must-see” destinations. Tobacco Road Harley-Davidson is one of the world’s largest Harley dealers, and its founder, the late Ray Price, was a world-renowned Harley drag racer.
I learned a bit about Harley drag bikes during my visit and my conversation with Bruce Downs, the museum’s curator and a 40-year Tobacco Road employee. Top fuel Harley drag bikes are custom made from the ground up. The engines look like Harleys, but they use few Harley parts; the engine and its components are mostly machined from billet aluminum. The engines use solid roller lifters, not hydraulic lifters like a street-going big twin Harley-Davidson. No oil circulates through the heads; the heads and the upper valve train are lubricated with grease only. The engines use a special nitro-absorbing 50W Lucas oil, and the oil is changed after every pass. The strokes range from 5 to 5 3/8 inches, the bikes use two gallons of nitromethane during each run, and the nitro arrives at the injectors via a cam-driven pump. The engines produce around 1500 horsepower. The race team may rebuild an engine after every pass; that decision is based on a post-run compression test. The bikes use an external starter powered by three car batteries.
There is no clutch lever as the left lever is the rear brake; the right is the front brake. Riders launch at 4400rpm and go through the traps at 5300rpm. Drag bikes use custom-built two-speed transmissions and a centrifugal clutch. Shifting is accomplished pneumatically by pressing a button. Ray Price experimented with three-speed transmissions, but decided the two-speed transmission was best. Primary drives are by toothed belt and final drive chains on a top fuel bike are immense. They look like something you might see on earth moving equipment.
Drag bikes’ rear tires are car slicks, not motorcycle-specific tires. Rear tire pressures range from four psi up into the low teens. Based on track conditions and weather, the team adjusts tire pressure to get the desired hookup. The front tires are motorcycle-specific. Ray Price ran with tires made by Goodyear and M&H.
When the drag bikes shown here were racing 20 years ago, motorcycle top fuel quarter-mile times and speeds had already reached the stratosphere. Elapsed times were just over six seconds with trap speeds exceeding 220mph. Today, motorcycle top fuel runs are typically done on a 1000-foot track, as the times and speeds were just getting too wild on the 1320-foot quarter-mile runs. Times for the shorter distance runs are in the low five-second range and speeds are approximately 300mph. The numbers are astounding.
Raleigh, named for Sir Walter Raleigh, is a nice place where I found the people to be very welcoming. The countryside around Raleigh offers great riding. The Atlantic coast and North Carolina’s famed Coastal Highway are just three hours east, and if you are headed west, the Blue Ridge Parkway and its Tail of the Dragon are legendary. If you are looking for a memorable dinner, Raleigh’s The Pit restaurant offers the best barbecue I have ever had. I had the barbecued brisket meatloaf and it was beyond superb, but I hear everything on the menu is great. Trust me on this: It’s a good idea to visit Raleigh to see the Legends of Harley Drag Racing Museum and have dinner at The Pit.
