Fim Synopsis
When Seattle metal artist and home builder David Harto was a little boy, he loved getting rides on his grandpa’s 1953 Cushman Eagle motor scooter. This classic little scooter was no racing bike, with a top speed of 45mph, but it was full of charm and fun. A few years after grandpa passed, David’s dad put the scooter in the back of the garden shed and there it sat for the next several decades. Years later, in 2008, and now a motor sports enthusiast, David takes a road trip to Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats to check out a week-long speed racing event. Land speed records are commonly thought of to be several hundred miles per hour, but walking around the pits at Speedweek, David stumbled on a pair of racers, prepping their motorcycle for a run at a record. The bike was a mostly stock, 50cc Honda minibike, hardly what one thinks of in the realm of land speed records. A brief chat with the racers and the light bulb went off for David. He would use his considerable artistic and metal working skills to transform his grandpa’s scooter into a lean and fast racing machine, and his goal would be to set his own land speed record on the Eagle. It would take him 3 years to prepare the bike for racing, working in his garage in his spare time and rebuilding the bike from the ground up, but in 2011 he made his first trek to Utah with the transformed Eagle in tow.
On this trip David learned that speed racing was not as simple as it seemed. Although he had modified the engine for significant performance gains, the bike’s original transmission, designed for street cruising, kept him from setting a record. The closest he came was 10mph too slow. His bike, however, was the hit of the event. Now a work of art, the Silver Eagle was admired by all for its form and beauty.
In 2016 David made the journey to Utah once again, the bike this time fitted with a newly sourced, 4-speed gearbox. This next time down fared better, and having switched to an open category (one in which no record had yet been claimed), he did accomplish his goal. However, the best speed he could muster was 46mph, only 1 mph faster than the published top speed of the original scooter. This wouldn’t do.
Over the next three years David refined the Eagle even more. With the help of a legendary local race mechanic along with his new best friend and motorcycle buddy he would try again in 2019. Having made significant changes to the motor, including using parts from an old chainsaw, success seemed close at hand. Weeks before the event, however, tragedy struck and his friend passed away unexpectedly. Furthermore, mechanical delays and life at home prevented him from testing the engine before leaving. and after four straight days in the pits at the Bonneville, David finally got the bike running well enough to make a run to break his record, or so he thought. The Salt Flats had another idea. His bike stalled out only a few hundred yards from the start. That would be his only attempt in 2019.
Covid kept the Flats closed in 2020, but the land speed events resumed the next year, and in 2021 David will take the Eagle to the Flats one more time, with even more changes to his engine and fresh motivation to set a new record. Watch and see what happens.
