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"We thought lighter was better," Zettner said.
In their regular attempts at drag racing, in and around Albuquerque and riding around town, lighter makes sense.
But on the Salt Flats, where the world speed records are set by the fastest motorcycles, cars, trucks and all kinds of ground-based missiles, the light bike simply squirreled all over the place.
"We took Chuck's Dyna (Harley-Davidson) and took a few things off," Rumschlag said. "We asked a whole lot of people a whole lot of questions. We had it all wrong.
"That place is so slick you can't believe it," said Rumschlag, who tried to pilot the racer last year.
They're leaving today to try once again at this week's World Finals race on the Salt Flats. They have a new bike and a new attitude. They have spent the last year figuring and re-figuring their plan to set a land-speed record on their twowheeled custom race bike, built in their garages in Albuquerque.
Chasing the dream
The salt flats may look smooth on TV, but in person the terrain is chunky, broken, cracked and dry. It's easy to lose your footing on the salt, like loose sand.
It doesn't seem like the ideal place to run a vehicle flat out.
But then, where else can you find miles and miles of a mostly uniform surface? The beaches of Daytona, Fla., and southern California, which were used in the first half of the 20th century, are now developed with resorts.
For a while, it seemed as if the dream of setting a land-speed record was dead for Rumschlag and Zettner. It's expensive to try to set a record at Bonneville.
The two try not to think about how much money they've spent getting ready to go, but the bike they built is for sale for $60,000.
The Utah Salt Flats Racing Association has different classes for a variety of machines, from bikes like the one in the movie "The World's Fastest Indian," to regular production cars and purposebuilt speed cars. Folks come every year with sponsors, years of experience and enough money to throw at a project to guarantee it will be fast.
It takes money, it takes passion, and it takes a week to go out and set up and run your machine through the timing traps, which are three miles apart. Just regular guys
Late last year, word of the pair's custom bike-building reached Glen Simpkins, who runs the Southwest Invitational Custom Bike Championship. He invited the pair to build a custom bike for his show this past spring at Expo New Mexico.
The show gave the pair a reason to build a purposebuilt bike to set a record in one of the special classes.
They didn't win the buildoff with their hot rod "The Blue Bike," but the bike has gone on to win several other awards.
Zettner, who's an auto mechanic, and Rumschlag, who own The Color Works body shops in Los Lunas, are regular guys with not much money to spend on a project like this.
The fastest motorcycle in the world -- a missile that went almost 330 miles per hour last year -- was a multimillion-dollar endeavor. Some guys will buy a new $20,000 bike like a Suzuki Hyabusa and add another $30,000 of go-fast equipment and not even get close to setting a record.
But what Zettner and Rumschlag don't have in their bank accounts, they make up in passion.
And it shows on The Blue Bike.
The bike is long, low, lean, and is powered by a turbocharged engine that makes as much power as a new Ford F-150.
"I think we'll approach 200 (mph)," the soft-spoken Zettner said.
It may be street legal, but it barely looks it. You sit -- if that's the right word -- on a simple rubber strip, lie on your belly and hang on.
"Since April of '07, we started putting parts in a common pile," Zettner said. In October 2007, the two set out to build the bike.
At the time, they didn't know what it was going to be.
But they knew it needed to be heavy.
"A lot of the guys at Bonneville, they put sandbags on the back of the bike, or fill the swing arm with lead," Zettner said.
So, the pair built ballasts that will be filled with lead shot for the race, to keep the bike's back end glued to the salt as the rear end scrambles for traction.
One-of-a-kind race
But why Bonneville? There are, after all, hundreds of other bike races.
"I think the whole thing just brings a different breed," Rumschlag said. "It's not like anything else. There are fewer people in the 200 mile-per-hour club out there than ever climbed Mount Everest."
"Anyone can do it. Bonneville and Pikes Peak are the two races where you can just go and do it," Zettner said. "We could build a drag bike and go every weekend and race, but this is only twice a year."
For each of the two race weeks, about 300 racers come from across the globe to run at Bonneville, like the hero Burt Munro from the movie "World's Fastest Indian."
"Maybe we saw 'World's Fastest Indian' too many times," Zettner said.
But of course, the race doesn't come without its perils.
"I try not to think about it," said Pete's wife, Rachel Rumschlag. "It's dangerous, but I just don't think about it."
Rumschlag and Zettner became buddies when Rumschlag hired Zettner as a wrench at the old Easy Riders motorcycle shop on Menaul in Albuquerque. The shop was also where Rumschlag got the bug for building bikes with the store's owner, Cliff Fodge.
The two became quick friends. They realized they were both born in Toledo, Ohio, and ended up in Albuquerque.
"He and I were on the same wavelength when it came to bikes," Rumschlag said.
"We were both dumb and not afraid of anything," Zettner said.
"I'd built cars for bundles of years and I got to talking with Cliff, and he hired me to the dark side. Cliff wanted to be known as a builder," Rumschlag said. "It didn't go according to plan."
The pair did build some bikes but found it tougher than they imagined, and the Easy Riders store eventually vanished.
The Easy Riders company has a long history with land-speed records. In the early 1980s the Easy Riders magazine sponsored Albuquerque drag racer Dave Campos to run a specially built bike at Bonneville. Much like Rumschlag and Zettner, he built his custom bike in his Albuquerque garage, but he set an amazing record of 322 mph that stood for 16 years, until 2007. Campos' bike, though, looked more like a submarine with two wheels.
In a novel idea, Easy Riders magazine -- which was known as the Penthouse of the motorcycle circuit -- asked readers to send in $10 to help sponsor the bike. Each of the several hundred sponsors got their names on the bike.
"I remember I was just old enough to buy those dirty magazines," Zettner said. "I remember I was so amazed and I sent in some money."
Little did he know that he would tackle the Salt Flats himself 20 years later.
To see more of the Albuquerque Journal, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.abqjournal.com. Copyright (c) 2008, Albuquerque Journal, N.M. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
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