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
• Chapter 12 – Historical Developments
• Chapter 15 – The Big One that Got Away

Chapter 16 – Side Projects: The Beast from the East

Elmer’s skills as a tune-up artist in Top Fuel bikes were exceptional. Because he grew up with all things mechanical around him, his intimate relationship and his understanding of the very nature of how things work together, or not as the case may be, gave Elmer an edge few could rival. Elmer understood how and why things mechanical did or did not interact.

Because of this, his phone would ring almost daily from racers who needed his sage advice. By the time Elmer cornered his first Top Fuel championship in 1979, he already had legendary status in the Harley-Davidson community as he rose to his first world championship in just four years.

That Elmer came to prominence as a Harley-Davidson racer was never lost on the motorcycle drag racing community. So, when some racers needed input on their Harley-Davidson fuel bikes, it was not uncommon for them to seek out the old sage. Such a scenario brought Elmer to a great moment in the history of Top Fuel motorcycle drag racing.

In the early nineteen nineties, a Pro Comp racing team, composed primarily of Andy Gotsis, Steve Rominski, and George Smith, Jr., of S&S Cycles, had reached its peak in both performance and fun factor. Both Gotsis and Smith were ready for a bigger and better challenge in motorcycle drag racing, and they set their sights on Top Fuel.

As the pilot of a Pro Comp bike, Gotsis had already pushed the 190 mph mark and was comfortable with a high horsepower drag bike. Smith was a seasoned racer himself; his entire life revolved around racing. Harley-Davidson flat track racing, Road Racing, drag racing- Smith had done it all. So the duo decided to step up to a Top Fuel bike.

The Pro Comp (P/C) bike they had been racing at the time was a turbocharged inline-four-cylinder machine. They were familiar with how to produce power with a turbocharger, so initially they decided to make their next project a Top Fuel Harley to be outfitted with one.

Because the team was about to enter the Top Fuel class, they decided it would be a good idea to ask the king of the class a few questions: get his thoughts on their combination and the direction of the team. After all, no one in the class had more knowledge or experience than Elmer.

During one of the early calls to Elmer, Gotsis asked, “We’re building a motorcycle that my team and I want to move up to Top Fuel with. We’re thinking of putting a turbocharger on it, what do you think of that?”

Elmer responded with, “Why would you wanna jerk off before you take off?”

Elmer was referring to a well-known trait of turbochargers called “turbo lag.” Turbochargers need to build pressure before they can produce boost to force-feed the engine to produce enormous horsepower. Depending on how they are set up, there is a momentary lag while turbochargers come up to speed.

This lag is not present with belt-driven superchargers, which are used on all true Top Fuel cars and all current world-record-holding Top Fuel motorcycles. It simply made no sense to Elmer to wait for a turbo to come up to speed while facing real supercharged bikes. Elmer’s way of thinking was, face him and his advanced supercharger technology, or you could buy one from him, and he’d help you set it up and get it running right. Even if you didn’t buy from Trett’s Speed & Custom, if you race in Top Fuel motorcycle, sooner or later, you’ll have to face Elmer.

Gotsis briefly considered Elmer’s comment and began asking questions. “Elmer, you’ve been beat’n by turbo bikes before. Why don’t you think they can work in this combination, with a Harley?” Gotsis was skeptical. He had been racing turbocharged Kawasaki bikes for the last few years and had gone close to 190 mph on one, so why not on a Harley?

Elmer replied, “The fact that you are out to do this on a V-Twin makes two things come to mind right away that tell me a turbo is a bad idea. 1) As you know, Harley-Davidson motors fire 45 degrees apart; that creates its own set of problems for turbochargers; they flat don’t like it. 2) A belt-driven supercharger, as I use, is instantaneous in its power production. The race is over in about six seconds; you don’t have time to wait for a turbocharger to wake up and do its job. If you want to race in Top Fuel, use what the Top Fuel racers are using, or you will get beat by one.”

Smith had initiated talks with Elmer long before the team officially started building their T/F bike in 1993. Smith, like dozens of racers worldwide, was always ready to pick Elmer’s brain for clues at every chance. Before their actual move to Top Fuel, Elmer already knew they were coming, given the questions Smith was asking in the months leading up to the launch of their Top Fuel Team. So when they asked him for help and advice on the new bike project, Elmer was prepared.

Elmer was not opposed to helping Gotsis or Smith. He knew exactly who was going fast at the races and who was not, and Gotsis was a serious Pro Comp racer. If Elmer could bring them to the dark side and increase the Top Fuel bike ranks by one more team, that was fine by him. There was always room for another T/F bike.

While the new team did have their eye on building a bike capable of competing in Elmer’s class, they had their eyes on bigger fish in a historical sense: at the time they were about to build their first Top Fuel motorcycle, no Harley-Davidson type V-Twin bike had ever crested 200 mph in the quarter mile. They had their eyes on the prize, and they were enlisting all the help they could muster to reach that historic mark first.

When the bike was initially being built, it was a team effort that came together at S&S Cycles in Viola, Wisconsin. Kosman Specialties made the chassis; Jim Fox of Advanced Racing Technologies was hired to provide the clutch and blower drive systems; the motor components were initially provided by S&S Cycles.

Kosman Specialties was building the chassis in San Francisco. Jim Fox at A.R.T., located in Virginia, was busy making the motorcycle’s critical clutch components and supercharger-supporting hardware. Many Harley-Davidson drag bikes since the nineteen seventies have used superchargers to increase power, with some degree of success. But there was far more failure than success in their efforts. V-Twin ignition timing and the resultant power pulses tend to hammer superchargers and turbochargers into piles of scrap metal. Fox had his work cut out for him with a new drive system in mind, and he had to machine everything out from scratch with no drawings to go by, so he created them as he went along. This took A.R.T. close to six months to complete.

When all the components were ready, they came together at S&S Cycles, where Gotsis, with help from machinist Steve Rominski and S&S support staff, began assembling the bike. It was a ponderous machine with a 98-inch wheelbase and a 114-cubic-inch motor.

The bike was created, as the team intended, with a turbocharger providing power-boosting enhancements. But as Elmer predicted, the torque spikes from the power pulses hammered not only the turbochargers but also the motor’s lower-end components into scrap metal. The team quickly converted to a belt-driven supercharger and also changed the lower end of the motor to a Jim McClure “Overkill” short block. In fact, the team took delivery of McClure’s own personal prototype engine, the very first one.

This fuel-injected, supercharged, single-engine Top Fuel bike was a far cry from the one Elmer and Shumaker built in 1980/81. When fully assembled, this monster was close to 12 feet long with the wheelie bars and weighed in at a whopping 870 pounds. For a single-engine bike, it weighed the same as some of the double-engine Harleys weighed during the nineteen seventies. As the bike came together, Elmer’s phone began to ring.

From time to time during the construction phase, Gotsis would call Elmer for advice. On a Top Fuel motorcycle, everything affects everything else, so there are specific locations where items needed to be. Never having built a Top Fuel Harley before, there was no shortage of questions for Elmer. No matter how busy he was at Trett’s Speed & Custom, Elmer found time to talk to Gotsis or Smith whenever they called.

The calls became so frequent that whenever Gotsis was on the phone with Elmer, Gina could tell because Elmer would answer the phone with a very paternal “yes, my son” to open the conversation. Along with his nitro knowledge and advice, there was a lot of laughter when Elmer was on board for a project.

Finally, the bike was fully assembled. The first start-up was done at S&S Cycles. The turbocharger phase of the bike was short-lived, and once the bike was assembled with the new supercharger, it was brought to Elmer’s shop in Georgia for its first fire-up with the belt-driven supercharger.

Once they unloaded the bike for Elmer, he wanted to hear it to assess the current state of the tune-up. But first, he informed the team that they had to go to nitro school to learn how to mix nitromethane properly. Gina taught the class, which lasted an hour.

With the nitromethane properly mixed in the fuel tank, they were ready to fire up. Before they spun the motor over, Elmer gave real shrewd advice to everyone. “If you don’t need to be here, or are not on the team, please step outside.” He was not kidding. “If you are not driving this bike or working on it, please step outside.”

In 1978, at a race in Atco, NJ, Elmer was working as a pit crew member helping out his buddy, Marion Owens, with his double-engine Top Fuel Harley. When they spun the motors (2x) over in their pit area for a warm-up, both engines exploded at the flick of the magneto button. The front and the rear motors blew the heads clean off the motorcycle, sending engine components across an area the size of a baseball field. They literally had engine parts raining from the sky. From this moment on, Elmer knew to give nitro the respect it deserved, and safety always came first.

Elmer was serious. Especially when it came to teaching people how to use nitro in his shop, he didn’t want any holes in his roof or his family members! “Now look,” he announced, “when we get this thing going, I’ll tell you when it’s ready. And when I do, this is not some gas bike or turbo-alcohol bike; this is a Top Fuel motorcycle. You treat it with respect, or it will hurt you BAD!” Gotsis thought Elmer was about to pull one of his famous pranks again.

When the bike came to life, Elmer brought it to idle and began tweaking the injector hat just as Joe Thronson had done for him back in 1976. As the bike calmed down, it settled into a brisk but deafening idle. Elmer gave the throttle a gentle tweak, and the bike barked like a fuel car. It was both frightening and satisfying.

Then Elmer gave Gotsis the nod to lay his hands on the throttle for the first time and take over the controls; after all, it was his bike to pilot. Just from the way Gotsis grabbed the machine, Elmer predicted trouble. He was ready for what happened next.

Gotsis, having never experienced a Top Fuel Harley in this state of tune-up before, was unprepared for how quickly the bike could build engine RPM’s.

This bike could, and would, go from idle to over 9,000 revolutions per minute in less than a second, scattering engine parts all over the garage. In less time than it takes to say “Oh Shit,” this Top Fuel bike could, and would, erupt into a fireball if the motor were not treated correctly: so Elmer had his hands close to Gotsis’ when he took over.

The moment Gotsis began to get aggressive with the throttle, Elmer slapped his hand away and shouted over the roar of the thundering bike. “WHAT DID I JUST TELL YOU?”

At first, Gotsis thought Elmer was joking. Then he noticed all the big red veins popping out on Elmer’s neck and forehead. Elmer shouted again as he shut down the bike, “What did I tell you? Didn’t I tell you to be gentle! Step outside, please.”

Gotsis was quite offended at first, but then it hit home. “He was trying to save me and my crew from getting hurt. He was right.”

Elmer laid it out for Gotsis. “Look, that bike in there is a bomb! It can hurt you and your teammates faster than you can react. You have to be ready for things to go wrong before they go wrong, or people will get hurt. Now you respect that machine and be ready for it. It’s your bike, you’re the pilot.” And with that, they returned into the garage as Elmer continued to examine everything on the bike before pronouncing it ready for shake-down runs. But there was one more thing he needed to do to the motorcycle.

Before the bike left the shop, Elmer dove into the engine and had Gina remove the barrel valve from the fuel injection system. He took the item to his wet flow bench in the back room and made a few adjustments where prying eyes could not see. After he tweaked the system components, the next time Beast spoke, it did so in a manner that it came smoothly up to idle and stayed there at a brisk lope. Whatever Elmer did to the barrel valve, the engine liked it.

In the spring of 1994, the team hit the track for real with a Trett starting tune-up in the motor for the first time. The nitro was mixed properly, and the bike was sounding like no other. Whenever the bike was warmed up in the pits, it always attracted a large crowd.

Throughout the ’94 season, the team engaged in a lot of private track, closed test sessions with the bike. Oftentimes, Elmer and Gina were present to assist the team. They entered one AMA/PROSTAR event during that year, and found the bike was not quite ready for competition. So they returned to private-session testing until the start of the ’95 season.

At the 1995 AMA/PROSTAR Sunshine Nationals, at Gainesville, Florida, the bike earned its nickname “The Beast From The East” when it launched in the right lane and broke its drive chain just after half track. Despite having no power to the rear wheel, the bike still ran a 7.013 elapsed time, at a thundering 194.76 mph, much to the amazement of everyone present. A trackside reporter on the sidelines quipped, “That’s the loudest motorcycle I’ve ever heard in 15 years of covering motorcycle drag racing. If it’s that powerful, broke a 630 T/F chain at half track and that beast still pounded out 194 mph, that bike is going places no motorcycle has ever gone before.” The race reporter was right; two months later that motorcycle made history.

On May 6, 1995, during the AMA/PROSTAR Dixie Nationals held in Dinwiddie, Virginia, Gotsis piloted his S&S Cycle-sponsored race bike to a thundering 200.01 mph pass during qualifying on Saturday to officially break the 200 mph barrier for Top Fuel Harley.

The tune-up that fateful day was called for by Smith, who called for a mixture of 94% nitromethane, buffered with 6% methanol to tame it. The blower was set to produce 30 pounds of boost pressure, and the ignition timing was set to 45 degrees.

For this 870-pound motorcycle to cover 1320’ of racetrack with a terminal speed of 200 mph, the figures indicate the bike was producing close to 800 horsepower, or if you prefer, the motor was making approximately 400 horsepower for each of the two cylinders of the S&S V-Twin power plant.

Elmer played a vital role in the tune-up of the Beast From the East. When the team first contacted him, it was Elmer who talked them into changing their minds about running a turbocharger and switching to a conventional belt-driven supercharger. It was also Elmer who took the time to teach the team how to find out what the motor liked and didn’t like regarding timing and fuel pressure when dealing with a belt-driven supercharger. Elmer unlocked the motor’s secret key so the team could begin fine-tuning the combination.

What impressed Gotsis most was when Elmer started working on the bike, he looked at Gotsis one day and said, “You know, when you get this all sorted out, my guess is your final tune-up will probably be this …… combination.” Elmer was mighty close.

The S&S Cycle team did the deed they set out for. They did all the hard work, spent close to half a million dollars of their money, and achieved a lofty goal in less than three years. Some racers give it all they have for decades, spend many times that amount, and never achieve such greatness. Yet, for the S&S Cycle team, they prevailed with much thanks to a man who taught them the most valuable lesson a racer can learn about racing: It’s not what you have; it’s what you do with it that determines your results.

To quote George Smith Jr., “We could not have done what we did without Elmer Trett. He’s forgotten more about nitro Harley racing than most racers will ever acquire for knowledge in a lifetime. Elmer was the best there ever was.”

The Next Installment of Elmer Trett and the Gods of Thunder will be released on September 1, 2026 on Dragbike.com

For those interested in owning a printed copy of the original book, please contact Tom McCarthy. Limited copies are available. E-mail Tom on Facebook

Copyright & Republishing Notice
Republishing of this content, in whole or in part, requires prior written authorization from Dragbike.com or Tom McCarthy, confirmed through a valid news service or via email with Dragbike.com copied on the correspondence. Unauthorized reproduction, redistribution, or use of this material will be considered infringement and may be pursued to the fullest extent permitted by law.