Welcome to the first article about Veggie Dave's 'Fatalistic Attitude'; a road legal, 200bhp, nitrous injected, big bored GSX 1216 F drag bike. The reaction I've received from everybody I've described this to has been the same - 'Are you mad?' Okay, so it's hardtailed, has no lights and runs an unbelievably free-flowing - also known as bleeding deafening - Vance & Hines Competition pipe, but surely that's the point isn't it? To be different? Originally, the bike was to be a Yamaha FJ1200 powered chop with all the power enhancement accessories hidden from view, but as time's marched on my original idea has mutated into the insane creation that's about to unfold right before your eyes. All the firms who've had a hand in this bike have been around for quite some time, proving themselves to be the best at what they do along the way, but the one exception to this statement is Steelheart Engineering who are a brand new company based in Kent. When I first saw a picture of a frame Lee Mitchell (the man behind Steelheart) had built for his girlfriend, Jane, I knew there was only one person for the job. When he told me about the frame he'd just built for Ian Shacklady, who races a similar engine to mine in the Straightliners drag racing series, there was nothing for it but to pack my overnight bag and head off down to Kent to check out his latest creation in the flesh. 'This is basically how I see your frame and swingarm, Dave' said Lee, 'D'ya like it?' Like it? LIKE IT? Forget anything you've ever seen before because there's no-one whose work is as precise as Lee's. Every single Tig weld is perfectly rippled, a feat that is achieved because Lee is an international award winning engineer, not because someone has taken an angle grinder to the welds at a later date. Nor is there any reason to mess around with moulding over the joins when it comes to putting the final coating on the frame because it simply doesn't need it. What really impressed me though, was the way the six tubes that met at the headstock spliced through each other, giving the frame a beautiful flowing profile, an operation I should have thought would have been incredibly difficult to actually perform. In fact, there are almost no brackets on the frame at all. Instead, Lee splices threaded tubes into wherever they're needed - a technically impressive solution to the problem of having ugly brackets all over the place. In many ways, both Shacklady's and my frame are very similar. They're both made with 16 gauge, one and a half inch o/d Reynolds 531 tubing with the frame loops and bracing spliced into each other. However, due to my intention for mine to spend as much time on the road as it will do on the track, Lee's had to add extra bracing around the engine - after all, potholes aren't really known to be a problem on your average drag strip, unlike our appalling byways - so a balance between weight and strength is unavoidable, although he's still managed to hang the motor a la Shacklady's, for which I'll be forever grateful. The only other compromise I've had to make due to the bike being road legal has been with the choice of front end. Preferably, the forks and wheel should be as light as possible (basically speaking anyway. The relationship between sprung and un-sprung weight is a huge subject itself which I may cover in another article at a later date), which is why you'll never see a serious drag bike with more than one brake disc on the front and it's also why most drag bikes have spindly little fork stanchions. A couple of pounds lost can be easily converted onto a couple of tenths saved. But who in their right mind would want a road bike with 150bhp at the back wheel (without the nitrous) that's easily capable of 170+mph and anorexic forks when all you've got to retard your forward motion is a brake set-up that would struggle to stop a CG125? No, me neither, which is why I went for a GSX600F front end (held tight by Steelheart yokes), that sports 41mm stanchions, twin fully floating discs that are gripped by four pot calipers and a 17" wheel, which means I'll have a good selection of modern sticky tyres to choose from. At the back of the bike, nestling quietly within the monstrous swingarm, is a ZXR750, 5.5-inch rimmed, 17" wheel and caliper, which again means I can choose from any of the modern sports tyres. Although the standard fitment size for a ZXR is 180/60 x 17, for use on the strip I've got to drop the tyre width to a poxy 160. Why? Because when you're drag racing you want as big a contact patch as possible to prevent excessive wheel spin. So when you fit an undersized tyre, the tyre walls are pulled to the wheel's rim which distorts the tyre's profile so that the smooth radius you'd normally get is replaced with a far flatter profile. Flat profile equals larger contact patch. QED. Except that it doesn't look as impressive as a 180, so I might have to have two different tyres - one for the road (possibly a slightly oversized 190) and a 160 for the track. Now to the really trick bits. Because the bike is being raced, it needs to be as light as possible, but because it's also being used on the road it needs to be able to carry a reasonable amount of petrol, yet a petrol tank is a fairly heavy part of a bike. Solution? Have two tanks. The first is contained within the top tubes of the frame in the same way as a Kosman frame and holds around six pints, while the second tank is part of the bolt-on subframe that will carry an additional two and a half gallons. When racing, the rear tank is simply unbolted thus saving a fair amount of weight. This just leaves the monstrous swingarm, although it's not actually a swingarm as such. There are no bearings, shocks or anything else within the construction, it's basically a ride height adjuster which allows me to vary the centre of gravity and weight distribution between the front and rear of the bike - hell, on this bike even the footrest position is adjustable. Like the frame, the swingarm also has a second purpose - to act as a pressurised container for the gas that the air shifter needs to work. Why have a big, ugly reservoir destroying the beautiful lines of the frame when it can be so expertly hidden? There are no words capable of expressing just how happy I am with Steelheart's work or how incredible I think the frame is - all I can say is, if you want the ultimate frame, from a hardtail to something as complex as mine, made to an incredibly high standard, for a quarter of the price that a firm like Spondon (who are the only bike frame builders in Steelheart's league) would charge, then Lee Mitchell is the man for you. Now that the frame's finished, it's time to sort out the engine. Big bored, nitrous excess next...