Episode Transcript

Today we ride with motorcycling. Crazy guys, Daredevil Harley jumper, Bubba Blackwell, British stunt champion Craig Jones and a bunch of other two wheeled wild men.

Even Tommy G gets extreme with our project of the week.

Hey guys, welcome to T DC and a really wild show. I'm Alan neighbors. And today we have a special guest in the show.

Check out what this guy can do.

Hey guys meet Bubba Blackwell, the American Daredevil. How's it going, Bubba? Good, Alan. Nice to be here. Good, good. All right. First of all, I wanna know and I'm sure everybody else wants to know.

How does a guy from a small town in Alabama start jumping tractor trailers for a living? Total fear. Fear everybody. You don't wanna have a real job for a living, get you a Harley. You can jump stuff. But, uh, no, actually for me, it was a lifelong dream to make a living riding a motorcycle. Thought I was gonna be racing. Had some good success racing.

But I thought that, uh, you know, since the Harley had gotten so popular,

why not jump one?

Whenever I first started jumping a motorcycle, I started thinking everybody was jumping on dirt bikes. You know, it's like

nobody was any different

at the time. I wasn't really doing that big a jump.

And I thought, well, heck, if this is all I've got to do to get paid, I'll get me a Harley and, you know, kind of be the,

the guy jumping on a Harley that all the fans could dig because it's about drawing a crowd. It's not necessarily the stunt

and draw a crowd. He does putting on shows from coast to coast bubba racks up frequent flyer miles on his Harley Xr 750.

Today, he stands unchallenged having bettered every record of another legend,

Evel

Knievel.

The records that I hold jumping to Harley Davidson is I've jumped 20 cars,

14 semi trucks and then 15 tour buses.

Uh Those are all records that were preceded by Evel Knievel. You know, he did one less of that.

Now,

I don't use a 1970 model jump bike to, to go out there and do my thing.

Uh But the jump bike I use now is still a really heavy,

real

powerful,

big piece of steel. Harley Davidson xr 750.

No.

And his biggest jump ever,

14 tractor trailers in his hometown of Foley, Alabama.

I don't care if you're going 200 miles an hour for a split second.

You feel like you ain't gonna make it.

And it's kind of like, oh my gosh.

But if that was a high point in his career. It was soon followed by a devastating low, a 22 car record attempt at Del Mar California July 4th 2001. And I remember going towards the ramp that night and I was thinking

so, like I was going fast enough, you know, the bike was really revving at the time. I did not use the speed armor,

but I was in top gear wide open and going to the ramp bikes really making a lot of noise. You know, the motor is really working good.

What I didn't realize was even though I was going really fast forward, the tire was spinning,

it was spinning just enough to keep me

from, uh, clearing the gap

and

took a little helicopter ride to the hospital and stayed in there for a month.

Well, what I had done was I held up my end of the bargain of being a motorcycle stunt rider, daredevil.

You know, you don't go into this line of work thinking, hey, I'll never get hurt. I'm the greatest, you know.

Well, you have to have that positive mental attitude, but you also have to be real.

If you're not pushing the limits, you're really not that great of a stunt rider.

But just two months later, Bubba was back ripping it up, putting on stunt shows for Buell and Harley. First of all,

they are absolute performance motorcycles,

but perhaps the most important

is they're fun machines, you know, they're fun motorcycles. And

if you come to a Bubba black

gun show, you're gonna see somebody out there. That's just, heck, I got to be ashamed of myself sometimes. How much fun I'm having.

No Bubba,

you've earned it

coming up. The British sensation. Craig Jones.

Oh, my God.

Oh, no.

That dude's out of his mind.

No. Really? You crazy. I, I swear you're crazy.

We're outside of the shop with some above his bikes.

Well, you kinda dig that. Do you to?

It's

nuts. Crazy. That's cool bike. You know.

Well, actually this is uh a Harley Davidson xr 750 flat track race motorcycle.

And it's just like you see it on the racetrack except for we put

foot pegs straight across the bottom. How many of these made each year? Do you have any idea? You know, I think Harley Davidson still produces 30 engines a year for racing purposes only. But that's just the engine. What about these pipes? He's a nice trick pipe. Yeah, this is a super trap exhaust system, you know, really creates a lot of low end power. That's the way this motorcycle was built.

It's all AC and J frame, which is the current

hot rod set up for the racing.

But white power went in and made me this trick front end. That's gonna give me a little extra suspension so that now

I can take the records possibly just a little bit farther. But you know what? The coolest part about this whole motorcycle is. What's that?

I finally wised up after 42 broken bones and put a speed on the

roller.

Well, this guy's love for American bikes doesn't stop here. That's right now. Bubba may be America's top daredevil, but the Brits have one too

and they both ride duels.

England's wild man. Craig Jones has been wowing extreme fans for years.

Go for broke style, earned him to crown at the European stunt championships. Beating all comers with wild stunts like his signature stop

long

in 99. He set the world record nosy at 323 ft

in 2002 riding a stock Buell

XB nine.

He rode out an amazing 740 footer at the Buell

test track in Florida. Now he's back with a new bike. Determined to go even farther.

This time. We've got a new bike. It's the BUE

XB 12 R. This is the 2004 model and it's been especially prepared for me.

One of the BUE factory engineers, Chris Keane, he

came with a great idea. He's actually created a pan of lead here. It's actually bolted underneath the clocks. He's weighed that in just over 60 pounds.

So we don't need any rear brake. We don't need any passenger pegs. Everything that's from here backwards can be lightened.

His team uses a pedometer to measure the distance of each run and a radar gun to dial in Craig's approach speed.

129

you heard. Right. It takes almost 100 and 30 miles an hour to carry these distances.

An observer makes sure the rear wheel is up before the start line

take

off.

Beautiful.

So,

and that amazing ride on the front wheel measures an unbelievable 873 ft. That's right. 873 ft.

So, it's a new world record. Yes, I came here to beat myself and that's exactly what I've done.

All we can say is way to go. Mr Jones

up next on T DC. More testosterone.

Very nice. Now, extreme stunts may put a smile on your face or turn your new bike into a pile of spare parts.

Today, there's a whole new slew of extreme riding teams like Las vegas' 702 boys and Florida's own triple extreme,

but it was all started by a bunch of rogue riders who call themselves the Star Boys, their deal selling videos of their mostly illegal starts.

Today. The Star boys take a more legit approach to their brand of extreme riding at

stunt fest across the country. They showcase the talented and not so talented amateur riders. They inspire

the contested six events. Fastest wheelie, slowest wheelie wheelie for style, longest

sty stompy for style and a two minute freestyle burnout.

The fastest wheelie contest requires the rider to have the front wheel up before crossing the starting line and post the fastest time through the quarter mile top riders in this event post speeds in excess of 100 and 20

MPH.

The rules are the same for the slowest wheelie taking more than 30 seconds to cover the strip without falling over.

There are lots of variations on wheelie's for style but adding a passenger ups. The

ante two riders upset more

feed off. The pegs will work and feed on the seat looks flashy but no feet in one hand. Well, that's almost impossible.

Almost. This one with a gear change takes the hands down wind.

The longest stoppi contest is measured from a marker where your rear tire must be up.

These guys are certainly no Craig Jones. But things get interesting when 100 and 20 footer is chalked up

when riders start pushing the limits. You can guess what happened.

So

well, they were still scared of the competition. They tried taking us out by running us over tonight.

Oh,

no, no, no.

I, I was doing whatever I had to do

was that struggle and I was trying

that and a

little too much

stopping for style are more difficult. There's no marks for distance, just creativity and you can really impress when you add a passenger

hardest on the machines. The burnout contest, each rider has just two minutes to burn their tire off and a little style never hurts

two people can do the same trick

but

they're different, you know, what I mean, in their own little way, you see, you know, two people on the track

and one can be looking totally out of control. And another one looks as smooth as, you know, a bird flying through the air. So

the style definitely is, is, is key.

Yeah, and evidently shows a good mechanic and body shop. But I guess what extreme riders are really after is the roar of the crap.

Yeah,

after the break, Tommy G and our project of the week

we're back on T DC. I'm Tommy G.

You know what the big trend in Daytona was this year for sport bikes,

huge rear tires and super stretched swing arms. Well, today we've got some really fat planned for this ninja,

but check it out. It's already sporting some serious mods.

The first thing you notice under the aftermarket air filter is a killer custom turbo kit from horsepower unlimited.

It nearly doubled the stock horsepower. Now, 300 to the rear tire on pump, gas

graded lines connect to a remote oil filter which had to be moved. So the turbo would fit inside the ferring

on the other side, a waist gate controls, boost level and the exhaust is a quiet one piece job since the owner wanted a bike that's a sleeper

up top the trick gauges with custom mounts. Round out the package.

Today, we're gonna upgrade the chassis to make it launch hard and give it that pro stalker look.

Yeah.

First let's get the rear wheel off.

I bet you guys are wondering how are we gonna hook up all that horsepower?

Well, check this out.

The owner wanted some fat skin on the back. That's why we went with this Metzler 240.

It's made of a super sticky compound with a flatter tread profile providing a thicker contact patch for better traction and increased mileage

for the wheels. We went with the 18 inch drag wheel from RC components.

It's one piece forged aluminum made for the street or strip.

The question is

how are we gonna get this thick rubber in such a tiny space?

Here's the answer. This is track dynamics. 250 tire conversion kit,

it comes with a tire wheel offset, front and rear sprockets, swing arm and all the hardware.

But first, we gotta get the old one off

kill.

Our new swing arm is wide enough to accept a 250 millimeter tire.

And compared to stock, it's adjustable from 4 to 6 inches longer for more stability.

First slide the new swing arm up in place with the provided spacers

then slide the pivot bolt through the frame and tighten it down,

make sure it pivots freely,

then reinstall the shock.

They don't come with the kit,

but we're putting on a set of dog bones that'll let us adjust the ride height of the bike independent of the suspension.

With our longer wheelbase. We'll need a longer chain here's a tip. Don't just add more links to your old one. It'll just weaken it.

Spend the extra bucks buy a new chain

from a 200

to a 250. Sweet

with a new front tire and rim.

What do you think?

$2900 ain't cheap for a swing arm conversion like this one.

But for a bike cranking out over 300 horsepower, it's well worth keeping that power on the pavement.

It's time for some new products. Now, if you're serious about off road, you're gonna need a good pair of boots. This is the new talent series MX boot from fly racing. It has heavy molded side panels, thick shin protectors and a four buckle system.

They also have removable leather booties with a gel pad, ankle protector for support and comfort.

All right. Now, the best part, they're affordable. Fly Talents retail for 259 a pair.

Now, if you ever crash your dirt bike,

here's another good deal. These replacement UFO radiator shrouds are more rugged than stock and they're a lot cheaper.

This one for AC R 250 F has pressure sensitive race team. Graphics, motorsports.com

Shroud, starting at $25 each

and complete graphic kits at $39. Now, here's another off road product that caught our eye. The shark fin is a high strength aluminum disk brake garden. It's open design helps cooling and prevents mud packing. Now, it's a great idea for under 80 bucks from Promotor

billet.com.

Well, guys, that's about all the time we have for this week, but join us next week

when we'll go behind the scenes at Daytona Bike Week with a few 100,000 of our closest biker friends.

Well, guys, thanks for watching Ride Safe. We'll see you then.
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