Roland Sands Attempts to Break 200 on Victory

“A personal goal of mine has been to go 200 mph.” So says custom bike builder and former AMA champion Roland Sands. And while breaking the 200 mph barrier on a motorcycle is itself a lofty accomplishment, simply breaking that barrier wouldn’t be enough for a man like Sands. To make it even more challenging, Roland set out to achieve his personal goal on an air cooled V-Twin Victory Motorcycle. 

The two have been working together on a little project called “The Road to 200" where they're creating a land-speed racer using a Victory as a base motorcycle to compete for a LSR in the Modified Partial Streamliner class. We saw the bike at the 2011 Victory Motorcycles press launch in its early stages. Roland had switched the bike’s standard controls for billet rearsets, threw on an Ohlins steering damper, some ultra-light prototype wheels, dropped the seat height, made an aerodynamic rear hump to match the arc of the rider’s back and converted the final drive to a chain. He dugout the top of the tank so he could tuck his chin in behind the rounded front fairing. Not soon after they did some preliminary test runs and reached a max speed of 151 mph. 

Since then, the engine has received a major makeover from the team at Lloyd’z Motor Workx, including the addition of a turbo charger. With the new engine work, Roland Sands and his team headed out with Victory to “The Monster Mile” at Maxton to see if they could break the 200 mph barrier. For the Maxton Mile, riders begin at a standing start over a road surface that has been deteriorating over the years.

Posted in: Motorcycles