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Have any of you guys & gals seen "The Worlds Fastest Indian"?
It is a Kiwi movie about Burt Munro & his Indian Special that he took to the Bonnieville Salt Flats in Utah in the 1060's to see how fast she could go.
Not sure if it has made it to the top of the world yet or not. If you get the chance go see it it is fantastic.

here's a link to the website to check it out:

http://www.worldsfastestindian.com/

Yeah, saw it a while back. Good movie. It's already come and gone in the US, in fact the DVD is already available for home viewing, with bonus features. I'm sure I'll end up with a copy eventually!

I was at the salt flats back in about 1967. I was 5 so I don't remember many of the details. Speed week was in progress but the only car I rmember had two aircraft engines in it, and I don't remember seing any bikes. My mom probably hid them from me!

Either Francesco or Nicola, I think, asked in another thread a while ago if I'd seen this movie, and what I thought of it. Well, I finally got to see it last night, and I really enjoyed it.

It was a lot of fun, and very true-to-life, I think, and inspiring. Burt Monroe certainly was a marvelous old man, and Sir Anthony Hopkins was obviously quite in love with his character.

It was incredible how Burt got that old bike, originally with a top speed of around 50 mph, to do 200 mph. I'm wondering what machine they actually used for the Indian when making the movie, and what sort of performance it really had. Does anyone know?

They built a couple replicas. The one used in the shots of it running was apparently powered by a Ducati engine! Not sure on the performance of it though.

Thanks, Craig.

A Ducati motor, eh? Good stuff!

I saw the movie a week ago and really liked it......my wife didn't care much for all the urination (pissing) scenes, as she said it didn't add anything to the movie.

I did find it interesting how you can cast aluminum pistons in a pot on your stove. I guess I need to tell my buddy to get rid of the little blast furnace that he is using and tell him to just grab an old stove (I imagine they were actually using lead in that scene).

There were only a couple of pissing scenes.

Anyway, I reckon if you live in the country side, you're allowed to piss on your own lemon tree in your own backyard.

And on the subject of metalwork, I read that the old blacksmiths believed that the best quenching liquid for tempering steel was the urine of a red-haired boy.

Skins wrote:I read that the old blacksmiths believed that the best quenching liquid for tempering steel was the urine of a red-haired boy.

:laugh: I've never heard that one before.

I do know that you get different levels of hardness depending on if you use water or oil, and it often depends on the type of metal you are using and the temperatures that you are heating treating at, as to which quenching agent you use. I took a class at college, years ago, and we studied the different molecular structures when quenching.....I've forgotten all of it over the years. (I went to school from '87-'91 for Mechanical Engineering....but never got my degree)

I have seen one of the replicas at Big boys Toys last year. They really went all out to make it look as rough as the original probably was. Looking at it, Burt was not to concerned with comfort or his own safety. It was all about speed. I'm sure the engine in that one was an Indian.
As for pissing in the garden. I have lived on farms for most of my life and so far as I have experienced it is common practice here.
I once spent some time with an American woman traveling around the west coast of the south island and until that time in her life she had never squatted. I could not believe it. What could be more natural then taking a leak outside. Desmo- Demon, maybe there are a whole lot of woman in the U.S that need to see more of those scenes as the normality of it seems to have disappeared to the "washroom".

Marinus wrote:Desmo- Demon, maybe there are a whole lot of woman in the U.S that need to see more of those scenes as the normality of it seems to have disappeared to the "washroom".

It's not that it is not inappropriate in the country or not uncommon....and it's not like my wife has never done it .....she just doesn't care to see that kind of thing in the movies.