About This Series
This article is part of an ongoing monthly series on Dragbike.com featuring select chapters from Elmer Trett and the Gods of Thunder, the 2012 biography by Senior Editor Tom McCarthy. Released throughout 2026 to honor the 30th anniversary of Elmer Trett’s passing, this series chronicles the life, legacy, and impact of one of the most influential figures in motorcycle drag racing history. Each chapter explores Trett’s journey from humble beginnings to global Top Fuel dominance, while also preserving the deeper history of the sport and the pioneers who shaped it. New chapters are published monthly exclusively on Dragbike.com.
Before reading this article, read the previous article posts:
- Series Intro
- Book Intro
- Chapter 1 – Humble Beginnings
- Chapter 2 – The Origins of Mountain Magic
- Chapter 3 – The Teen Years
- Chapter 4 – North to Ohio
- Chapter 5 – Fuelish Intentions
- Chapter 6 – Class Dismissed
- Chapter 7 – Fateful Liasons
- Chapter 8 – A Terminal Lesson
- Chapter 9 – Single Solution
- Chapter 10 – Very Unpopular Decisions
Chapter 11 – It’s Not What You Have in Life that Matters
It’s Not What You Have in Life That Matters;it’s What You Do With it
How Elmer handled his decision to switch from being a brand racer to a professional Top Fuel motorcycle drag racer defined exactly who he was and what he was all about. While Elmer had been a Harley man all his life, the times were changing. He could either change with the times or let life pass him by.
The factory could no longer afford to support Elmer in his racing efforts, and he could no longer afford to invest in an antique design that could not keep up with the times. Elmer was forced to make the most of what he had to work with.
There were many more people’s lives at stake in his decisions than just his own; this is what kept Elmer up at night. He had no way of knowing the ramifications of his decisions, nor how they would reverberate through motorcycle drag racing history for all time.
The Tretts had their work cut out for them with the new Kawasaki Top Fuel bike suddenly taking center stage in their racing operations. Trett’s Speed & Custom was Harley-based in their products, services, and clientele. How they handled the transition from racing Harley-Davidson motorcycles to suddenly racing an inline four-cylinder engine power plant set the stage for the Family Trett.
Elmer’s decision to switch his racing program from a Harley to a Jap bike was unsettling to many, not just his family. Suddenly, adding a Kawasaki to their lineup did not sit well with many people. But other people’s perceptions of him did not concern him too much in the short term. He was out to carve a spot for himself in the history books as the world’s fastest man on two wheels. Once he accomplished this, people would see things his way.
But to do this, Elmer knew he needed a new motor combination that didn’t yet exist.
In 1979, Elmer had developed his Harley-Davidson-based racing program as far as it could go without a radical change to some new motor combination. During his first four years of Top Fuel motorcycle drag racing, from 1976 to 1979, he pushed the Harley V-Twin configuration as far as possible with stock-based engine cases and related factory-designed motor components. Power levels over 300 horsepower were just too much for stock-based Harley components. The sport of motorcycle drag racing was headed way past this point of power production for motorcycle racing engines. Elmer was a visionary who clearly foresaw this development.
This is why, as early as 1978, Elmer was working with Shumaker to create a new motor to go where other racers had not yet even dared to dream. One thing that made Elmer unique among all other Top Fuel bike racers is that his racing program was always in a perpetual state of development. While most racers are out refining an engine-and-chassis combination, he was always designing his next one in his head. Throughout his career, he spent as little time as necessary on his drag bike combination because in his head, he was already designing the next one. Sleep was something that just got in his way.
So, Elmer set out to bring radical change to the Top Fuel motorcycle. He was not remotely interested in doing anything else. Exceptional focus was one of Elmer’s greatest assets.
Prior to the 1981 racing season, in motorcycle drag racing, no one had successfully developed a single engine capable of developing 400 hp that would stay in one piece for more than four passes down the drag strip. The Top Fuel motorcycle engine Elmer knew he needed was not currently available on the open market. More than anything, Elmer knew he needed stronger, more dimensionally stable components. When he called Ken Tipton to facilitate his change to an import motorcycle engine, that’s exactly what he received: a stronger, more reliable engine than the one he was currently racing. From these parts, some even off the Terminal Van Lines bike, Elmer built his first Kawasaki-based Top Fuel bike engine.
As soon as he laid his hands on the engine components, Elmer began analyzing and redesigning them in his head. He knew the effects of power production by nitromethane; he knew what nitro liked and didn’t like, but more importantly, he knew what nitro did to engine components. As he examined his first Kawasaki engine parts, he made mental notes of what he expected to break and what would likely last long enough to deliver the power he needed. Elmer decided, on the spot, that he’d build the first motor the way Ken Tipton and Mike Gray instructed him to, then “Trett Speed and Custom” engine components would soon follow.
The first “Trett”-assembled Kawasaki-engine-based Top Fuel bike was built during a six-month period beginning in April 1981. 23 weeks later, in late September 1981, the Trett Kawasaki fired up for the first time.
During the whirlwind assembly of the Kawasaki Top Fuel bike, Elmer was like a kid in a candy store. There was just so much to explore; smaller, lighter components, four pistons as opposed to two, smaller, lighter valves in the valve train, no push rods to break. This engine was quite exotic, top to bottom, complete with its own one-piece crankshaft. Elmer thought to himself, no more Harley flywheels to fly apart. This motor had promise!
Because every motor has its weak as well as its strong points, Elmer was quick to pick the brain of Mike Gray on this subject. Elmer remembered the two full years of development that Gray and the TVL team put into the Terminal Van Lines bike before they even entered it into the Top Fuel class. Two years later, they were the team to beat. In 1981, Mike Gray was the best mind to meld with on the subject of four-cylinder Top Fuel motorcycle engines. As Elmer and Gray worked together for close to a month in assembling Elmer’s initial engine, it was Gray who unveiled the Achilles heel of the Kawasaki engine to Elmer.
Mike Gray found out, the hard way, that when a stock engine block, supercharged, nitromethane-fed Kawasaki begins to create over 350 horsepower, the greatest threat is to the crankshaft. Not because the cranks were not capable of handling the horsepower, but because the engine cases that held the cranks steady while they churned out the power were insufficient in strength to keep the crankshaft dimensionally stable. Once the motors started to make major horsepower, the engine cases would be pushed out of shape, setting off a chain of events that led to catastrophic part failures throughout the motor. Elmer would soon need stronger engine cases if he were to exceed the Terminal Van Lines bike’s engine performance.
Stock Kawasaki engine cases were just too flimsy to withstand the stresses of producing over 300 hp. Elmer smiled when he heard this because he knew just how to address that problem. Elmer had recently seen a potential solution to the issue sitting on a shelf in his buddy’s shop.
While Elmer’s single-engine, blown, injected, nitro Harley chassis was being built at John Dixon’s shop, Dixon had shown Elmer a new project comprised of new Kawasaki-type engine castings to replace the weak factory engine cases. Dixon knew about the stock engine case-flexing problems that Top Fuel bike teams were encountering. And, as an entrepreneur, he had a batch of engine cases cast from 356 aluminum. These castings were, in essence, much stronger than stock Kawasaki castings and had extra aluminum in certain areas, allowing, depending on how they were machined, various combinations of crankshafts or cylinder blocks to be used during assembly. Dixon had no fully machined running motors at the time, but the basic engine raw casting blocks were ready to be addressed.
As Elmer and Gray moved ahead with Elmer’s first engine assembly, Elmer approached John Dixon about his cast engine block project. There were initially twelve castings created for Dixon’s enterprise, then known as Super Cycle Engineering. The castings were at various stages of machining; some were even raw. Elmer bought everything Dixon had for sale, including the casting mold and the rights to the basic design concept.
Elmer was hungry to take this project to the next level and beyond. He knew just what to do.
All the castings and the molds went to John Shumaker’s shop. Elmer and the master machinist started from the bottom up. They had no Kawasaki blueprints available to them, nor could they acquire a set of machining prints to work with. So, Shumaker took a stock set of Kawasaki engine cases, and, while working with a manual milling machine, Shumaker used his considerable skills to create a set of working blueprints by reading off the dials of his machine found on a stock factory set of Kawasaki engine cases. Then, he called Elmer to his shop.
Elmer looked over the dimensional requirements to accommodate stock factory Kawasaki engine parts, then considered what nitro would do to those parts. Elmer then started asking Shumaker what they could do to retain as much strength as possible during machining to make the new cast engine cases as strong as possible. Elmer and Shumaker entered the early stages of creating the first Trett motor as soon as they began racing four-cylinder in-line engines. Elmer was a man on a mission.
While Shumaker was working on the first Trett four-cylinder engine cases, Elmer began racing the new Kawasaki for the first time.
The team launched the bike into competition on October 10, 1981, at the IDBA World Finals in Gulfport, Mississippi. The bike qualified in fifth place on Saturday of the event and raced two rounds on Sunday. Elmer recorded an 8.24-second elapsed time in round one at 168.85 mph to defeat Dennis Sargent, but lost in the next round to Chris Hand of Alabama. The bike qualified well and progressed to a round win during its very first baptism of fire. 1981 ended with high hopes for the new season ahead.
1982 became the first full season of racing for the Trett Family with an in-line, four-cylinder Top Fuel bike. They put the bike on display at the Cincinnati, Ohio, motorcycle dealers’ exposition for their new sponsor, Karata Enterprises. Karata made belt drive systems for custom motorcycle applications. The owner, Jim Longo, decided it would be a good idea to get on board with Elmer’s racing program. Everyone knew that with Elmer’s knowledge and skills, it wouldn’t be long before he would be a force to be reckoned with. People’s assessments of him were absolutely correct.
Trett’s Speed & Custom entered competition for the ’82 season on April 4 at the IDBA Gulfport, Mississippi, event, where they qualified second, then overcame Chris Hand in round one with an 8.44 elapsed time. Elmer lost at the final round of racing. Nevertheless, it was a great start to the season. Bring a new bike to the track, qualify deep in the field competition, and go all the way to the final round on a first outing.
Jackie still refused to write the “K” word on their entry forms, but she and daughter Gina were starting to warm up to the idea of racing the Kawasaki. The bike was lighter, easier to work on, and required much less attention between rounds of racing. This made life a lot less stressful for them after every pass of the race bike; after all, they were the pit crew.
Just a few weeks later on May 1, the team entered the NMRA race at Gainesville, Florida, and again qualified second with a 7.73 elapsed time at 173.07 mph. It took Elmer from 1976 to 1979 to bring his double-engine Harley well into the seven-second elapsed time zone. The single-engine Kawasaki with the Trett/Gray tune-up was in the sevens in just three races. Gray showed Elmer the way, but Elmer was calling all the shots on the tune-up.
During the entire 1982 season, Trett’s Speed & Custom Racing never entered a race and qualified outside the top ten. While facing factory-sponsored teams like Vance & Hines Racing, who had the power and money of Suzuki behind them, Elmer’s team still managed to give them a run for their money. Even when it was just the two of them racing one-on-one.
At the NMRA Summer Nationals in Connecticut, only two Top Fuel bikes showed up: Vance & Hines Racing and Trett’s Speed & Custom. This was not the intent of the racing sanction; everyone knew there was a race on, but only Elmer was there to do battle with the factory-backed giant.
When they met on the track for their only round of elimination racing, Elmer posted an elapsed time of 7.80 at 178 mph. Terry Vance thundered by Elmer with a monster 199.11 miles per hour blast, coupled with a 7.29 second elapsed time for the win. While VHR parked their bike after their victory, Elmer made sure the crowd got their money’s worth.
Elmer, Jackie and Gina prepped the bike for another run even though they didn’t have to for two reasons: first, there’s no substitute for seat time; the more time they spend on the track, the faster Elmer will learn the new bike. Secondly, Elmer was adamant that fans get their money’s worth when they paid to see a show. Elmer wanted the fans to come back for the next race.
Elmer knew he and his race bikes were a draw for the fans, and the fans paid to see the races. Elmer always worked hard with racing sanction promoters to promote the sport. He was a smart man; he knew without the fans there’d be no racing. He cared deeply about motorcycle drag racing, particularly the Top Fuel class. At the Connecticut race, with only two big bikes entered, Elmer felt he owed the fans.
For his exhibition pass efforts, Elmer laid down a 7.47-second pass, his quickest to date, and the fans gave him a standing ovation as he was towed back to the pits after his run. To Elmer, the fans were almost as important as his race bike.
As Elmer made more power and applied it to the clutch, soon the transmission gave way, and during the summer of their first season, they were plagued by constant transmission problems. It didn’t take long for Elmer to figure out what the problem was, and shortly thereafter, they took their first win.
On August 1, of 1982, the Tretts won their first race with the Kawasaki. At the NMRA Western Nationals at Orange County International Raceway, Elmer qualified second and faced off with Vance once again. Elmer thundered to the win with a 7.43 elapsed time at 190.67 mph after Vance’s bike tossed a blower belt. In six months’ time, Elmer had the Kawasaki dialed in and was slaying opponents almost at will. Without factory backing, the family-based racing team finished second in NMRA championship points to Vance and his Suzuki-backed machine.
By the end of October, the racing season for ’82 was over, but the bigger race was now on and in one season, Elmer was the threat to VHR in a much bigger, more important race than any points race for a championship: the race to be the first Top Fuel motorcycle to break the 200 mph barrier in quarter-mile motorcycle drag racing.
Vance’s 199.11 mph blast at the Connecticut NMRA race showed they had the power to do the deed, but who would run the number in sanctioned competition would be the one to earn history’s honor. It was clear to all that the upcoming season, 1983, would be a historic year for the Top Fuel bike.
Vance had the power and money of Suzuki behind him, with Byron Hines tuning his Top Fuel bike. Elmer had his wife, his daughters, and a small handful of support from various sponsors who donated or discounted parts needed for the drag bike. In 1982, Elmer proved to the world: it’s not what you have; it’s what you do with it. In 1983, he upped the ante.
The Next Installment of Elmer Trett and the Gods of Thunder will be released on July 15, 2026 on Dragbike.com
 | For those interested in owning a printed copy of the original book, please contact Tom McCarthy. Limited copies are available. |
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