From his workshop off of East Sequim Bay Road, craftsman George McMurray specializes in custom car and hot rod parts, repairing panels and a potpourri of other mechanical enterprises for his business, Select Solutions.

But for the past several years, late in the summer, McMurray heads south to break records.

An aerospace engineer for years until he and family moved from the Mojave Desert area in California to Sequim around 2000, McMurray was bitten a few years back by the racing bug. His brother Joe, now deceased, helped spur the family into racing, and George, Joe and another brother Jim formed the Tri-Mac Speedsters, a name George still uses.

On a visit to Bonneville, Utah, in 2008, McMurray looked out across the vast, (54 square miles) salt flats reserved for the top speed racers in the world and something clicked.

This August, McMurray of Sequim and his Tri-Mac Speedsters team set another speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats’ Speed Week 2016, where entrants from all over the world participate in a week-long event attempting to set top speeds in a variety of vehicles such as hot rods, roadsters, motorcycles and more.

McMurray, a veteran of Speed Week events, set his newest record in the APS-BF (special construction partial streamlining/supercharged engine), 125cc classification, averaging 121.935 miles per hour on Aug. 17. He credits his team, support from friends and the community, plus his racing sponsors (P.A. Power Equipment, Maxima Racing Oils, A-1 Auto, In-Graphic Detail, Don Love Trucking, DogHouse Powder Coating and Sailing ‘S’ Orchards.)

“The salt flats were a ‘go’ this year after having a poor, unusable surface (unfit for racing) for the last two years. Our team was very anxious to finally get a chance to test our brand new engine for the 2016 season. The last time we ran on the salt was in August 2013 when we successfully broke two records in the 100cc blown fuel class.

My entry for the 2016 season entailed a one-step up class change from 100cc to 125cc displacement, remaining in the blown fuel category. I used the same chassis as the earlier record-holding motorcycle, so handling remained good and unchanged, except it now had an entirely new engine with a sizable increase in power, and hopefully much FASTER!

This new engine was hand-built in my Sequim shop and is a ‘hybrid’ one-off design composed of lower-half Kawasaki and upper-half Yamaha (say “KawaYami”) with a much higher level of tuning than the previous engine.

We did a few test runs at the Sequim Valley airport, but the limited runway length would not allow me to attain any full-speed runs, I could only utilize five of the six speeds in the transmission. The bike pulled ‘like a freight train’ through those first five gears, so we new we had a good chance at taking the record with it at Bonneville.

At Bonneville Salt Flats, we set up camp on a hillside above the lake bed. We assembled our pit/shelter on the salt, unloaded the bike and proceeded through tech inspection with no discrepancies.

In Phase 1 (a straight run with methanol fuel), we attained a speed of 108.75 mph. The current record was 100.8 mph (set in the 1980s), so this qualified us to do back-up run the following morning.

Early the next morning, while we were staged at starting line warming up the engine, we suffered our first breakdown! Two of the four cylinder-base fasteners had failed, with the bolt heads shearing/popping off at their ends, allowing the cylinder assembly to come loose from the lower engine cases. We retreated to the pits for repair.

The following day, post repairs, we ran again and re-qualified with a 116.75 mph average speed. Again, we lined up and began our backup run. Everything was going well until I reached 80-90 mph when I felt a cool mist hitting my neck beneath my helmet. The first thought that came to mind was that I had a fuel leak, spraying (methanol alcohol). This is when I had thoughts of being a human candle — definitely not good!

After quickly shutting down the engine and coming to a safe stop on the return road, I removed my helmet only to discover the mist was merely water coming from the radiator wash-down just prior to the run. Salt accumulates on the front side of the radiator from the front wheel and we use a small weed sprayer with tap-water to clean and remove salt build-up.

Third qualifying run, we hit 123.32 mph! ‘We must be doing something right,’ we were all thinking. Once again we line up in the morning and give it a try, and this time we succeed in our record backup run with a speed of 120.54 mph.

Next we go to the impound to disassemble the engine and allow inspectors to measure our engine bore and stroke to verify our displacement is correct for our class (no cheating allowed). Upon completion of inspection, we receive our certified new ‘record’ and celebrate accordingly, 121.9 mph!

In Phase 2, we had planned all along that if we could set the record using 100 percent methanol fuel and if the engine was still in good shape, we would attempt “tipping the can.” In racing terms, that means adding a percentage of nitromethane to our methanol fuel. Adding nitro to methanol has quite a positive effect on power output, but it also can cause serious engine damage if you’re not careful.

We test ran it on our portable dyno in the pits and it sounded like a different engine.

We made our first attempt with the nitro mix but the engine, however, was not happy. When loaded in top gear, the engine misfired the entire run. On the second try, we installed a new sparkplug thinking that we may have fouled the old one, same problem — misfire. On the third try, we installed a different size carburetor needle to lean out the fuel mixture. Bingo! The engine ran without any misfire and I made a complete two-mile run.

We lined up once more and while waiting our turn, the wind had picked up, putting all motorcycles on hold. This was day six we had been working/running nonstop. We sat and waited for about one hour for the wind to let up but it didn’t. Tired and hot, we decided to call it quits for this season. We were all very satisfied with a new record.

It wasn’t until we were on the way home to Sequim when I decided to do the math on our last run. I discovered that I had completed the last run in fifth gear, totally missing/forgetting to shift into top (sixth) gear.

Next year, we will return to set the record up a notch or two.”

Everyone has a story and now they have a place to tell it. Verbatim is a first-person column that introduces you to your neighbors as they relate in their own words some of the difficult, humorous, moving or just plain fun moments in their lives. It’s all part of the Gazette’s commitment as your community newspaper. If you have a story for Verbatim, contact editor Michael Dashiell at editor@sequimgazette.com.