Power, speed and built for the strip.
Don Newlove's passion for drag racing and motorcycles has taken him across North America and placed him at the top as one of the best in the business today.
“I build them pretty much right from scratch. I build show bikes, custom bikes, straight bikes and race bikes,” said Newlove. “I do everything from restorations on old bikes, antique bikes, to top fuel racing Harley-Davidson, and pretty well everything and anything in between.”
Newlove, 55, is a licensed journeyman motorcycle mechanic and has been working with motorcycles since 1978. He now has a shop west of Bowden, but also owned a business east of Innisfail for more than 20 years and previously worked in Saskatoon and on Vancouver Island.
Today, Newlove is a crew chief for ASB (All Steel Builders) Racing and performs the maintenance, design and work on Harley-Davidson-based motorcycles. He works with fellow crew members David Pelrine, Sue Pelrine and Tylor Bennot.
“I built the first nitro Harley in Canada in 1987. That's a race motorcycle and it runs on nitro methane, just like all the top fuel dragsters,” said Newlove. “It gives you almost two and a half times more power than running on gasoline.”
Race motorcycles, such as those used in NHRA (National Hot Rod Association) drag racing events, are purpose built, noted Newlove, and are created with certain specifications and features for racing, including 14-inch thick back tires, nitro fuel, an automatic two-speed transmission controlled by an air shift and a slipper clutch.
“The front tire doesn't touch the ground until you shut the throttle off,” said Newlove. “This is the same as a top fuel dragster car except all of our (motorcycles) are smaller, lighter and a little bit easier to work with.”
Newlove recently built two nitro racing motorcycles, owned by the Pelrine family, a racing team north of Edmonton. The bikes are driven by Mike and Craig Pelrine. One is known as a blower bike or a supercharger, and the other a normally aspirated nitro bike, similar to many found in the drag racing circuit today.
Nitro racing motorcycles carry close to 1,000 horsepower and are twice as big as a regular Harley-Davidson.
“(The supercharger) would be one of the fastest bikes in the world and our normally aspirated bike is definitely the fastest bike in Canada,” said Newlove. “It's done a 6.25-second (quarter-mile) pass at 236 m.p.h. We did that in Valdosta, Georgia. That is the fastest pass by a Canadian bike ever,” he added.
Racing season begins in February and runs until early November each year, said Newlove, adding that most races are held in the United States. One of the most recent events took place the first weekend of April during the 2016 NHRA (National Hot Rod Association) Mello Yello (drag racing) Nationals in Las Vegas.
“We took both bikes down to Las Vegas, and Mike and Craig Pelrine were riding them,” he said, noting that Mike Pelerine rode his new experimental blower bike. “It was a pretty big show. They had all the big top fuel cars there and they put a class in there for motorcycles.”
The two motorcycles ended up placing first and second in the race.
“We ended up with both of our bikes in the finals and ended up (finishing) number 1 and number 2 at the event,” said Newlove. “Craig ended up winning the ‘Wally' (the most prestigious and sought-after trophy in drag racing today and named for NHRA founder Wally Parks). He won his first Wally at that event and he was pretty ecstatic, and Mike's won a couple of Wallys before on that same bike that Craig won on in the last couple of years.”
For Newlove, drag racing is a sport that keeps his adrenalin pumping.
“I get quite a thrill out of it. I basically hand build each and every piece on the bike and I do the complete tune-up on it,” said Newlove. “I get a real thrill being able to create something like that from material laying on the floor into something that will go down the track in six seconds at over 220 miles per hour,” he added.
“I think this sport is just in its infancy now and I believe it's really going to grow and take off in the next 10 years or so,” Newlove concluded.
