land speed productions - fuel for thought...land speed record of 409.3 mph. it took five more years...

Were cosmic forces at work whenthe steroidally-buff orange beast fromMontana first took shape in the mindof Tom Burkland back in December of1985? On assignment at Kadena AFBon Okinawa, Japan, engineer Burklandmailed his mom and dad design draw-ings for a streamliner that couldchallenge Bob & Bill Summers’ worldland speed record of 409.3 mph.

It took five more years to collect apile of parts. This, like most landspeed racing dreams, is a self-spon-sored operation and a pair ofaluminum Donovan engines don’tcome cheap. Construction beganwhen Tom, an aerospace engineertook an unpaid leave of absence fromhis job in January of 1990.

Working in mom and dad’sgarage in Great Falls, Montana; hewent back to work when the stream-liner was completed - October 1991!Contrary to some reports, “411” wasnever a speed target number. The fam-ily’s first car, a Studebaker, built in ‘71used the numerals because, accordingto Tom “It was all straight lines and itwas easy to spray paint.”

The faster you want to go in landspeed racing is akin to an invertedpyramid when talking about wheelsand tires because options are few tonone. The 411 streamliner was origi-nally designed to roll on F16 fighterjet tires, but the tires exploded toooften and too soon on the Burkland’spurpose-built spin-testing machine.

“Dad is the core of all this,”revealed mom Betty, “He’s the welder

and fabricator.” I was working full-time, keeping the family fed as a legalsecretary.” Understand that this is alady who would rather buy race partsthan new furniture and can easilydrive in excess of 250MPH.

At the ’92 SEMA Show, Tom, Bet-ty and Gene approached every tiremanufacturer for help. They carriedwith them an exploded F16 tire askingto speak with each company’s engi-neer to discover why the tire failed aswell as find a supplier of high-speedtires. “When we told them the tiresneed to be good at 400mph,” recalledBetty, “Every one turned us down.Mickey Thompson Tire Co. was ourlast stop and hope.” That visit turnedinto an R&D joint venture with theBurkland’s performing a variety ofspin tests over the next couple ofyears. Patience is a virtue in this sportand by May of ’95 they had 12 high-speed tires, each 4-ply with 2-plysidewalls that weighed 14 poundsapiece. “My advice is to find the tirefirst and then build the car,” said TomBurkland, “it’s a lot easier that way.The tire fiasco put us about five yearsbehind schedule.”

The first of many shakedown runsoccurred in August of 1996. The carmade a good showing for itself, butthe next four years were spent sortingout development challenges and wait-ing out poor weather conditions.“People need to realize that withoutthe help of many of our family mem-bers and friends serving as crew wewouldn’t be able to run this car,”

pointed out mom Burkland. Thatcrew, who have varied duties depend-ing on what’s going on with the car,include: Cookie the Chihuahua, Herband Nicky Ferguson, Keith, Bill andSteve Hunter, Al Maynard, Gary andLeah Stauffer, Mel Sudweeks, Rex Svo-boda and Bill York.

“My biggest job driving the car ismanaging the amount of power to getoptimum acceleration,” observedTom, “It only required 52% throttle togo 438MPH, but I was still spinningthe tires. It’s like trying to climb anice-covered hill while shifting fourtimes and matching things up eachtime. I’m getting pretty good at it, ofthe 12 shifts last October, ten weregood, but two were pretty grim.”

Sensitive to crosswinds underpower, Burkland has to be careful,especially around the 4 mile markwhere the surrounding salt flatsmountains dip down to nothing; he’sgotten into the habit of deliberatelymoving to the far left of the trackknowing that the wind out of thatmountain pass will push him to theright.

“The biggest challenge of this pro-ject is to get stopped,” Tom stated,“The most critical performance pieceof the car is the parachute system.With the speeds that we run, and therelatively short stopping distance, weneed two parachutes to get stoppedsafely, one will not do it.”

An elusive “full-pass” milestonecame at Speedweek 2000 when the caraccelerated through all five miles andTom used all five gears to scamperpast the last timing light at 360MPH.Elation continued the followingmonth when the car squeaked past400MPH in the fourth mile, tacked on38MPH in the fifth mile and chargedout the back door ticking off 450 MPHearning the 411 team the USFRA’sWorld of Speed “Top Speed Of TheMeet.”

“I’ve driven a good handful ofpretty fast single engine cars,”remarked Tom, “I am pretty relaxeddriving down the salt. However, evenafter 16 runs in 411, there is no relax-ing. The cockpit workload is verybusy, 12 instruments along with 15switches and control slide handles allhave to be actuated on a run. I’malways counting down a checklist.From letting the clutch out to pullaway from the push truck to stoppingeight miles away only takes 90 sec-onds.”

Betty and Gene were just about ashappy as they could get about the fullpass run until both risers on the high-speed parachutes broke and thelow-speed parachute failed. The carstopped nearly three miles past theend of the racecourse entrenched inmud so deep that the rear fenders

were damagedending racing forthe season.

The familypaid extra atten-tion to stoppingover the winter.The 2001 seasonstarted with aparachute test runbefore rolling past400MPH to againpick up the

USFRA’s World of Speed Top Speed ofthe Meet in September clocking421MPH.

The speedy success soured againtoo soon when 411’s right tail airbrake clipped the top rim of a mostly-submerged 55-gallon drum just pastthe seven-mile marker as Tom wasturning off the course. Slowed downto 135MPH and vectored towards theleft side of floating mountain, theimpact launched the car up into theair and kicked the rear end sidewaysto the left forcing the car into a non-recoverable skid. The 24-foot long,5,000 pound streamliner completed12 barrel rolls whacking the groundonly five times over a distance of 790feet coming to rest with the nose fac-ing back towards the starting line. Theorange twister performed this eye-widening, seat-puckering performancein a mere 3 seconds.

For those who have not had thepleasure of chatting up Tom Burkland,let me clue you into a bit of his psy-che - this guy is a perpetualcalculating analyzer and dissectingdervish of the first order, a.k.a. anengineer who determined that as hewas spinning in space a dozen times itwas only at a gentle 166 revolutionsper minute. Biological analyzing com-ponent Burkland broke both bones inhis right arm precisely at where thearm restraints were sewn into his fire-suit, and bursting so many bloodvessels in his eyes that daughter Carly,7 at the time, wanted him to stay thatway until Halloween so he couldanswer the door and scare everyonewho came for a treat. Interestingly,Tom suffered no bruising at his safetybelt points confirming his theory thatbeing strapped in extra tight is a saferway to drive fast.

“His analytical brain blows mymind,” chuckled mom who is also alifetime 200mph Club member, “Thatcar is his second skin. On one run,when something had broke, Tom hadpresence of mind to shut down theengines but continue to roll throughthe lights in order to generate non-powered time slips to double checkhis coefficient of drag figures. Whothinks of things like that strappedinto a racecar? I don’t.”

Crashing is one of those tests younever want to do, but they can berather informative. That pesky barrelwas a blessing in the terms of theenhanced product it caused to bebuilt. The Burklands made lots ofchanges that would never have beendone had they not been subjected tothat little incident.

“Structurally, the car camethrough the accident with flying col-ors,” explained Gene Burkland thathad the crash been the car’s fault theywould never have rebuilt the stream-

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Fuel For Thoughtwith “Landspeed Louise” Ann Noeth

Figure on Four

June 200514

Gene, Betty, Tom

Goodguys Goodtimes Gazette 15

liner, “There was no evidence of struc-tural failure. The body was nearlycompletely trashed and we found frac-tures in four of the six tubular framerails, breaking just as they had beendesigned to do. The rebuilt car isstronger and the air brake can nowpeel off 150mph of speed regardless ofwhen it is deployed.”

At the crash site, where manyfolks would shift into emotional over-drive, Tom was also ahead of the

curve and wiped out anguish before ithad a chance to grip hearts too strong.The moment the rescue folks arrivedhe asked them to radio his motherand report that he was “OK.” “WhenI arrived Tom gave me instructions,”marveled Betty at her son’s insight,“‘I’m in good hands, but here is whatyou need to do now. Take a real goodlook at everything, find out why thecar did what it did, something was

wrong because the car wouldn’t dowhat it did by itself.’ He gave Genethe same mission so we would havesomething to do and not have time toworry.”

The rebuild ate up two moreyears, but it was so very worth thewait. On October 16, 2004, Burklandlaid down a pair of runs that earnednot only SCTA/BNI World Finals TopSpeed of the Meet, but bumped up theAA class record in blown fuel stream-liner to 417.020 miles per hour.

Tom now slips on plastic, “Won-der Woman” cuffs to distribute thestress loads on his arms around thearm restraints. Furthermore, theparachute knowledge gained wasinvaluable and they are willing toshare all their experience and datawith anyone who asks. That’s the“espirts de corps” that makes thissport so fabulous.

Racing has been known to pullfamilies apart, but in this case it hasbonded them closer together. TheBurklands began land speed racingwhen Tom was 11 and his youngerbrother Bill was only seven. TodayBill, a former Peace Corps worker, isalso an engineer, but prefers bicycles.“We have one son who wants to go500MPH and one son who wants toget 100 miles per gallon, mused Bettythe mom, “Because of the car we seemore of Tom. When we sat down withthose drawings, we knew thatbetween the three of us we had all theskills to pull it off.”

In 1978, Gene drove the familyStudebaker to a 255MPH record inB/CC (blown competition coupe)class. Next came the B210 Datsun

competition coupe, a college engi-neering project for Tom; he set a classrecord of 294mph in B/BFCC (blownfuel competition coupe). During the’86 - ’88 seasons, Betty drove most ofthe time as they performed enginedevelopment for the streamliner usingthe Donovan engines perfecting thedry sump oil systems, cooling jacketsand fuel curves in their rolling dynolab.

“Dad and I were talking on theway home from the salt in ‘85,”recalled Tom, “I mentioned that I’dlike to build a streamliner and withoutmuch more thought, dad agreed, but Idon’t think he really understood justhow deep we would eventually getinto this streamliner program.”

What I believe is the mostbrilliant modification – one thatEVERY streamliner and lakester oughtto adopt in some form, is the helmetrestraint system, a bumper that holdsthe head in place. Forget the HANSdevice, it’s unusable, even dangerousin a LSR tight cockpit, but Burklands“head bumper” spreads across thefront of the rollcage and is part of thecanopy release that will swing out ofthe way allowing the driver an easyexit.

This season we may see AlTeague’s long-held 409MPH recordmove a line down in the record books.Gene made it clear about what the“Dreamsicle” orange 411 streamlinerrepresents, “This is Tom’s dream, it’shis kite and we are just strings tied tothe tail, along for the ride.”

Louise

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Take a good look, it’s the only one of itskind out on the salt. Designed, built anddeployed each run by Tom Burkland; hecan activate the special braking systemat any speed to peel off 135MPH beforeeither of the parachutes open.

Tom Burkland’s “desert” office at Bon-neville. There are 12 instruments, 15switches and control slide handles tomake systems work. Because every onehas to be actuated on every run downthe racecourse Tom has no time to sight-see while driving.