Bonneville Salt Flats Museum

Biodiesel Speed Record Set

Several races have been taking place in Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah and last week Hajek Motorsports broke two land-speed records for biodiesel and diesel trucks. The team competed with a Ford F250 Super Duty truck and set the first record on August 16 using biodiesel made from soybeans. The team, owned by Brent Hajek, also broke the diesel speed record and both were achieved using the new 6.7 Power Stroke V8.

Using regular diesel, the team reached the top speed of 171.123 mph and 182 mph on a B20 biodiesel blend. The regular diesel record was achieved on athe first attempt and solidified in the second run. Then the team drained the diesel and switched to biodiesel. The biodiesel land speed record was broken at 130.64 mph.

Hajek is a soybean farmer from Ames, Oklahoma and owns the Hajek Motorsports Museum in Ames where the record-breaking pickup will be on display.

Speed Freaks | Ginger Strand | Orion Magazine

When I left the carriageway and hit hard white Bonneville Salt Flats, I press the pedal to the metal on the Hummer. The speedometer hit 94, but it is nothing to brag to my destination: some trailers scattered five miles past the end of the road. Mike Waters, parked in a lawn chair behind them, would not be impressed.

"What did you drive here?" He asks.

"A Prius," I say (The Hummer is his nickname). Mike growls. He wears sunglasses and a hat Speed ​​Week. Her arms are roped a deep pink purple scar carcinomas excised.He held eight different earthly world speed records during his racing career. The fastest is 257 mph. Now he is an officer of South California Timing Association (SCTA), the host of Speed ​​Week.

"We'll take Don truck," he said. He agreed to give me a tour of the training.

Speed ​​Week, an event calendar in red on every gear, the product every year in August on the Bonneville Salt Flats. Salt, such as nuts racing to call it, is the bed of 30 to 1000 acres of Lake Bonneville salt drive, an ancient inland sea.It is 120 miles west of Salt Lake City and six miles from the border of Nevada. The only town is near Wendover, straddling the state line. Liquor stores, porn, and low-end casinos of Nevada secondary points; Latter-day Saints and a World War II abandoned air base occupying Utah. Bomber crews trained at the base of Wendover during the war. They built a city on the salt flats and dropped bombs on him. The Enola Gay crew secretly trained in Wendover for the first atomic task.

What is the biggest environmental disaster, a bomb or a car?The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed about 110,000 Japanese civilians instantly, and another 250,000 or more over the next five years. Automobile accidents delete 1.2 million per year in the civilian world. Radiological contamination caused by Fat Man and Little Boy turned out to be quite limited. The environmental legacy of the internal combustion engine has been fully assessed, but it seems to be massive. RSS headlines on my phone every day: oil floods in Pakistan, a heat wave in Russia, landslides in China, in the Gulf. Everyone knows the internal combustion to yield to something better. But what?

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Bonneville, The Fastest Place on Earth