Meth Beth - Earth’s Quickest & Fastest M-8

Story n hoto y: Al n Dockery

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30 years I’ve been writing about Harley drag bikes, I’ve always dug the fact that the strip determines the best machines. The baddest machines in all kinds of racing don’t always come from the biggest shops.

Shoot, I remember when I was a kid and Richard Petty’s shop was behind the house down the road from my Papa. I could ride dirt bikes there and see the race cars we heard on the radio coverage while sitting under a shade tree with the grownups.

Enough nostalgia, this is 2020 and Michael Beland, owner of A1 Cycles near Maiden, NC, is fixing to race the quickest and fastest Harley-Davidson Milwaukee-Eight Bagger Drag Bike on the planet. And he ain’t doing it in any old fashioned ways. The bike he calls “Meth Beth” was on the lift and getting a durability upgrade when I dropped off April issues of The Carolinas’ Full Throttle Magazine. I love drag bikes; the chest-rattling Nitro Fuel Bikes are cool. But I’ve always dug gas bikes, especially with no wheelie bars. The growth of Harley bagger racing has brought more of these type bikes to the strip.

At the All Harley Drag Racing Association events “Meth Beth” will run in the Extreme Bagger Class. A1 Cycles is sponsoring the class in 2020. In the Hogs Gone Wild series Mike will compete in Pro Street. Both of these are the top

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classes and draw the baddest big motor street-type Harley drag bikes to the strip.

“Meth Beth” came into A1 Cycles as a 2017 FLH Street Glide,” Mike said, “We built the M-8 Motor to 150 cubic inches. 4.77 stroke by 4.50 inch bore. Plus 2 mm on intake and exhaust valves. We used a 62 mm HPI intake manifold and throttle body. A TRASK Turbo plenum. Frank Drago custom ground turbo cam, only 520 lift. Hydraulic lifters and adjustable push rods. Some of the same stuff you have in your street bike makes up the motor.”

Oh yeah, not only did Mike build the motor to 150 cubic inches, he boosted Beth with a turbo. That’s a 52 mm Bullseye Turbo unit from Michigan you see on the right side. TRASK Performance Turbos in Arizona, Nick Trask, provided the plenum. The part that supplies the boost to the throttle body. Mike built all the real clean tight piping for the turbo system.

I noticed there ain’t an intercooler on “Meth Beth”. And that folks is where the name comes from. Mike runs a special newto-me VP race gas, C85. It’s similar to the E85 in some gas pumps, 85% Ethanol and 15% Gasoline. “High alcohol fuels run cooler since the stoichiometric ratio is 9.1 to 1 while gasoline is 14.7 to 1,” Mike said. “It requires more fuel to make the same amount of energy. But what is carried with the ethanol is much cooler temperatures. Cooler intake charge so you can run more timing with a turbo at boost. So I can run without an intercooler.”

“The next step for “Meth Beth” will be full methanol fuel. But methanol requires a full system clean out from tank to pump to injectors after a race,” Mike said. It seems that

Mike has built a powerful and reliable motor. He had made 15 passes by that time and only broken the compensating sprocket. Not a race part and designed to break and save other parts. I’ve seen them broken on street bikes

To me, Mike is performing magic here with forced induction and alcohol fuel. I’m an old fashioned guy who understands one carburetor and clean high test gasoline. Mike understands how to use the most modern electronics to dazzle us with his magic.

The magic is in the ECU, electronic control unit. The electronic brain that makes this bike run is a Maxx ECU. This unit allows Mike to manage complete control of the whole motorcycle. The Maxx ECU lets him fine tune everything in the powertrain – fuel, timing, turbo boost and waste gate control, shifting – everything. The Maxx ECU provides data logging on 81 channels for eight hours of data.

Guys like Mike take racing to the next couple levels from what us old guys did. Modern electronics allow Mike to fine tune ”Meth Beth”. Gather data on RPM, gear and rear wheel speed on every pass. Know exactly how much the clutch is slipping and when. I saw the unit and it’s barely the size of two packs of cigarettes. All that power goes through a basically stock Harley transmission after Mike back cut the gears. A1 Cycles has a complete machine shop to do all that race bike work you need. The ECU controls the air shifter as Beth bangs gears down the strip. An M3 Swingarm out of Mad Monkey Motorsports in Winston-Salem plants the rear wheel.

The front end is built from Suzuki GSXR 1000 forks in custom trees with Marchesini magnesium wheel. Mike uses M2 Suspension front and rear. Marcus McBain supplied Mike with the latest stuff to make “Beth” hook up and haul. Not only does she look good, but “Beth” crosses the scales at a trim 570 pounds with fuel and oil.

I started this telling y’all that “Meth Beth” is the quickest and fastest M-8 bagger. To back that up, the best she has run is 9.02 seconds at 157 mph in the quarter mile. On low boost of less than 12 pounds. Mike has run an eighth mile recently at 5.80. That would be way under nine seconds in a quarter mile. Stay tuned to A1Cycles.net for race info and check out the bagger racing pages.

A1 Cycles can boost your Harley, too. Mike can fine tune your machine to simply make it run more efficiently and better. Or he can build your street beast. “We do M-8 Power Packages at the shop. Most stock most bikes come in the shop with about 80 horsepower and 103 foot pounds of torque. Mike said, “Drop off your stock bike and pick it back up with 130 horsepower and 150 foot pounds of torque. Tuned on the dyno and out the door. A1 Cycles has one stop shopping. All the work is done in house.”

Yes, you nitro fuel, eyes tearing and nose running fans know Mike Beland as a Top Fuel Harley racer for several years. I got to know him when he took the American Motorcycle Racing Association’s Top Fuel Championship in 2016. He was riding a Danny Johnson built and maintained bike then. Well, Mike has his own Top Fuel Harley in the shop now.

The A1 Cycles Top Fuel Harley will rip the strip this Summer with some major new parts. At the heart is a 196 cubic inch Hawaya Racing Johnny Vickers Motor. An Owens two speed transmission should make the bike quicker at the start and faster at the top end. This machine will also be the first Top Fuel bike with a Maxx ECU. Gonna run the whole motorcycle with one box.

Before I left the little bike shop in the country I talked to Andy Simon. He is a longtime, winning, highly respected Harley drag racer. Andy is usually building heads when I stop by. He told me very clearly, “The fastest Harleys on the planet are going to come out of A1 Cycles. Period.”