Years ago on a weekend of the most obscenely dangerous activities I ever saw, I went to Beech Bend park in KY for the motorcycle drag racing championships, the camping area was turned over to the mostly outlaw bikers. All the drag racing I saw was in the camping area, on a golf cart track, with the meanest street bikes you ever saw, wheelie bars and all.
The hot bikes of the day were 900 Kawasaki's and 1100 Suzuki's and all the Harley's were getting whipped REAL bad. Some dude comes dragging in a Harley 350 Sprint, which was an Italian Aeromecci (sp?) It was dressed in Harley Orange and black racing colors, and had an aluminum disc laced into the front spokes to break the timing light, so it looked like a toy drag bike. Here's a picture of one.
The guy with the little Harley got laughed at, till he pulled a roll of money out of his pocket, then all the fast Jap bikes were more interested. He dragged the little bike up to the starting line, he hadn't started it yet, waited until the other bike was staged, all the mouthin' off was done, started if up and KICKED ASS!
Everybody got real quiet, watching this guy, who had immediately killed the motor at the other end of the race, he calmly dragged the little bike back to the starting line to see who was next. The Jap bike people couldn't believe it, so he got about 3 or 4 more takers, promptly kicked all of their asses too, each time starting the bike after the other guy had warmed his tire and shot off his mouth, and each time killing the engine quickly at the finish line. People still couldn't believe it. By about the 4th or 5 time he repeated this stunt, everybody crowded in close at the starting line was coughing and rubbing their eyes, something was burning them. The guy kind of faded away with his Little Harley racer by the time somebody said
"Nitro!"
Just for the conversation, a piece of more or less useless trivia for this thread, on making race fuel.
Everybody has heard of methanol, that's wood alcohol.
Then there is nitromethane. It's a cousin of nitroglycerin.
Nitromethane is soluble in methanol and makes a superfuel that helps make nitro fuel dragsters make 800 hp per cylinder. Neither nitromethane or nitromethanol are soluble in gasoline.
IF YOU WERE CRAZY ENOUGH TO WANT TO DO SO, and/or had a special purpose bike you could tune for kicking ass only, you might make use of another interesting cousin of nitromethane, and his name is nitropropane.
Nitropropane IS soluble in gasoline, and has been used at concentrations as high as 20% for race fuel. Where I first read about this stuff was in go-kart racing, people were sure the whipping they were taking was because of cheating on the fuel, but they didn't know a way to test for it at the track.
One of the HotRod magazines tested it one time, built a strong motor, tested it for a baseline, spiked the fuel with nitropropane, richened up the mixture like they'd been told, fired it up and BOOM, split their cast iron block several pieces and broke a forged crank. They started over, built a new motor, etc, etc, and went up 9 sizes in jets, so ran it WAY rich, and got it to run safely, and said they finally made about 20% more power than gasoline on the same engine.
Because a V-Rod has a plastic fuel tank, and maybe being water cooled might make it a bit more tolerable of higher heat, a feller inclined to race for money and cheat, and to tune carefully for this stuff, and research what fuel system components might be affected, might find nitropropane useful.