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<\/a><\/p>\nThe respected president of the Road Rebels Car Club based out of Los Angeles, the outgoing and amiable Burke joined others of his generation to fight the war, joining the Coast Guard and serving on a PT boat in the South Pacific. While in port in 1943, he spotted a barge carrying a load of auxiliary fuel tanks used on such aircraft as the Lockheed P-38 Lightning and the P-51 Mustang. He leapt aboard and took some measurements, determined that there was enough room to contain a very basic frame and engine, and he decided a belly tank would make \u201ca crazy body for a streamliner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Returning home from the war, the Hot Rod fraternity turned up the wick with sleeker, more powerful Hot Rods capable of ever higher speeds fielded by a generation of young men with an urge to innovate honed into instinct by the demands of conflict. Burke immediately began searching the local military surplus yards around Southern California, soon locating a 165-gallon P-51 tank and creating the first in a series of belly tank streamliners, many of which would set records that held for years. The first tanker used a front-mounted 1934 Ford flathead V-8 set into a modified Model T frame with Bill seated behind it on a bicycle seat welded to the torque tube. While this configuration robbed the car of much of its aerodynamic potential, Burke still ran 137 MPH, coming closer to legendary racer Bob Rufi\u2019s prewar 140 MPH record than anyone had in 10 years.<\/p>\n
After campaigning that first car in 1946, Burke partnered with Wally Parks and future\u00a0\u201cHot Rod\u201d\u00a0technical editor Don Francisco to build his second belly tanker, which became known as \u201cSweet 16.\u201d Based on a larger 300-gallon tank for the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, its layout was the reverse of its predecessor, with the driver placed low in the front and the driveline packaged snugly in the rear, reducing frontal area and penetrating the air much more efficiently. Among the most significant of the many records Burke and Francisco set with the second tanker over the next three years was the 151.085 MPH it ran in July of 1949, famously earning \u201cHot Rod\u201d magazine\u2019s title of \u201cWorld\u2019s Fastest Hot Rod.\u201d It eventually ran a best of 164 MPH.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Burke\u2019s winning ways resulted in a thriving business building and selling increasingly refined belly tankers to fellow racers, eventually producing 13 cars for clients eager to emulate his success. By 1950, Burke had been elected president of the Southern California Timing Association and was appointed the official starter for that year\u2019s Bonneville Speed Trials. He was also building a new chopped Bantam coupe with a long, streamlined nose, which set yet another class record of 141 MPH using flathead V-8 power.<\/p>\n In 1951, Burke again surprised the competition, arriving at the salt with an all-new streamliner sporting a slick aerodynamic body made of fiberglass, one of the first ever made at that early stage in fiberglass development, and a Harley-Davidson V-twin engine that pushed the new car to 136 MPH, a shocking figure that no one expected out of a motorcycle-powered four-wheeler; it was also a new class record that stood for 10 years.<\/p>\n Surprisingly, while Harley-Davidson motorcycles had established the brand as a dominant force in other forms of racing through the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century\u2014board and dirt tracks, speedways, hill climbs, even on the sand at Daytona Beach, where talented Harley-Davidson factory rider Joe Petrali set a new Land Speed Record of 136.183 MPH in 1937\u2014its impact at Bonneville had been minimal; in fact, it was not until 1970 that a Harley-Davidson motorcycle set an official record there.<\/p>\n Burke had formed the 1951 streamliner\u2019s fiberglass body himself using a plaster mold, in the process becoming familiar with this new material\u2019s properties. In 1953, he brashly\u2014and secretly\u2014made a mold from a Cisitalia 202 coupe owned by his boss, \u201cHot Rod\u201d Magazine and Petersen Publishing founder Robert Petersen, while the car was at Barris Customs for repainting prior to Petersen\u2019s November 1952 Motorama show. Burke then partnered with Mickey Thompson and Roy Kinch, an early proponent of the use of fiberglass in automotive and boating applications, to found Allied Fiber-Glass and produce hand-laid fiberglass replica sports car bodies under the Swallow (coupe) and Falcon (roadster) brand names. The proceeds helped to finance Burke\u2019s racing activities, which included setting a new record of 167 MPH for closed sports cars in 1953 at Bonneville driving a car with a modified Swallow coupe body.<\/p>\n Burke sold his holding in Allied in 1955, but he continued innovating, racing and setting records, his exploits supported in part by his full-time work as \u201cHot Rod\u201d magazine\u2019s advertising manager. After a couple of years racing and winning in SCCA and CSCC sports car racing, in 1959, he once again made the covers and feature pages of the Rodding periodicals with the follow-up to his belly tankers, the Super Shaker, a diminutive rocket with fiberglass bodywork cast from a Cooper sports car, the type that were used to capture straight-line speed records. This new creation was built on a simple yet sturdy tube frame and powered by a borrowed Harley-Davidson Knucklehead V-twin engine built by C.B. Clausen, a renowned Harley-Davidson tuner\/racer, founding member of the Boozefighters Motorcycle Club and one of the first ever to run a Harley-Davidson motorcycle at Bonneville.<\/p>\n Front suspension was standard Ford Anglia with split wishbones, a transverse leaf spring and center-link steering; a Harley-Davidson Servicar rear axle assembly with open differential and mechanical brakes was bolted directly to the frame and chain-driven by a stock Harley-Davidson transmission using only second and top gears. Originally displacing 61 CI, the Clausen-built Harley-Davidson Knucklehead V-twin engine was bored and stroked and fitted with a modified cam and heads reworked to maximize flow from two specially tuned Riley racing carburetors. Topping it all off was the car\u2019s distinctive yellow livery featuring Burke\u2019s number 888 and \u201cSuper Shaker\u201d logo.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\r\n <\/div><\/figure><\/a>\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\r\n <\/div><\/figure>\n<\/a>\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\r\n <\/div><\/figure><\/a>\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\r\n <\/div><\/figure><\/a>\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\r\n <\/div><\/figure><\/a>\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\r\n <\/div><\/figure>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>The Super Shaker was typical of Burke\u2019s creations: a lightweight, purpose-built, no-frills appliance designed to accomplish its mission of outright speed with maximum efficiency and a touch of flair. The chassis was a ladder-type design with two main longitudinal hoops of 2-inch tubular steel and 1-inch outrigger braces to mount the body and floor pan and support ancillaries such as oil and fuel tanks and a hand-operated tire pump\u2014like those typically used in Midget racing\u2014that was adapted to maintain fuel pressure.<\/p>\n
