Video History: All Harley Racing Video Library by Johnny “Red” Rhea
Video History: All Harley Racing Video Library by Johnny “Red” Rhea
John “Red” Rhea, of Nashville, TN, has been a member of the motorcycle drag racing community since the 1970’s, as a builder, racer and team owner. John has raced both gas bikes and nitro Harleys nearly as far back as he can remember. Now in 2025, John has taken the time and considerable financial investment, in helping to preserve a segment of Nitro Harley drag racing history.
John has established a YouTube channel located at www.youtube.com/@NitroHarley1951, where he is now building a video library of considerable volume, it will include hundreds of hours of Nitro Harley motorcycle drag racing from the 1980’ up to the year 2000. Once John has all his uploads in place, anyone interested in viewing the important growth of Harley Davidson, nitro Harley drag racing will be able to view these 8mm, converted films into the digital format for hours of reminiscing about the good old days of Nitro Harley drag racing.
Here is sampling of videos John is uploading, this one is two hours of footage from Sturgis Dragway from 1996.
John began drag racing his beloved Harleys in the mid to late 1970’s, before the “All Harley” drag racing sanctions were formed. So when the HDRA and AHDRA and AMRA were formed, John and all his fellow Harley racers were there, when the gates were opened. Places like Clarksville, TN, Lassiter Mountain Dragway and even Beech Bend – yes, Johnny “red” Rhea was there. So were other Harley racers like Ray Price, Jim McClure, Buford Edwards, Bonnie Truett, Marion Owens, Pete Hill, Elmer Trett, Steve Stordeur, Johnny Vickers, Bill Furr, Mike & Jack Romine, Bob Totty: Red’s contemporaries reads like a “Who’s-who” of nitro Harley drag racing history.
Red began his love of motorcycle drag racing on his 1974 FXE Super Glide in 1976. He raced gas as a sportsman and bracket racer in the late 70’s with the IDBA and lots of local action at Clarksville and Bowling Green, which have always been home tracks to Red, who lives in Nashville – born & raised there.
In 1979 John bought a lay-down chassis from Bonnie Truett and converted his gas motor to nitro in 1981 and began learning the ways of nitromethane racing with a B/F lay-down drag bike. While Red loved drag racing his own bikes, over the years, he found it more satisfying building the bikes and tuning them, as opposed to being the guy piloting them. As Red recalls, “I never liked riding them as much as building em and figuring out what worked, what didn’t and why. I just found that more satisfying than ride’n em. So to enhance performance, for me, it was better to hire a rider than try to do it all myself.”
Red’s rider list, on his Nitro Harley builds, of people he’s helped get rolling in Nitro Harley is not too shabby: Richard Vandergriff, Johnny Haywood, Doc Savage, Brian Jernigan, Bob Totty, Lin Neil, Joe Carlisle, Chris Smith, Mitch Brown, Mark Conner and Michael Balch. In fact, Red’s tune up and Mitch Brown’s driving won the Truett & Osborne drags in 2022. And Red’s mentorship of Michael Balch has already landed Mike more than one #1 plate in Nitro Funny Bike, with a bike Johnny Red Rhea built, which Michael now owns and pilots, very competitively.
During Red’s racing years, which continue to this day, a faithful supporter and integral member of his nitro teams was a fellow racer known as “Bubba Crunk.” Bubba began racing Harleys back when Red first started in the 70’s. They were great friends and team mates for decades. During the early 1980’s Bubba began filming the Harley drags with a home movie camera. As the years rolled on, red came to terms with Bubba and held on to the old films. Sadly, Bubba passed away in 2024, and Red let Bubba know, he’d get the home movies converted to digital and help preserve their racing adventures.
Now Johnny has invested quite a bit of money and time in getting hundreds of these old home movies converted into digital format and preserved on SSD external drives. As of January, 2025, John has begun uploading hundreds of hours of content, to both help preserve Harley Davidson drag racing history and give back to the racing community he so dearly loves.
John mentioned in a recent interview, “In getting all the many boxes of home movies digitally converted, I not only wanted to preserve what Bubba created, but at the same time, share it with the motorcycle drag racing community at large, to help preserve our racing history, and at the same time, provide people with hours of enjoyable viewing.”
John’s YouTube channel can be found at:
https://www.youtube.com/@NitroHarley195
While only a small portion of John’s “All Harley Racing” video library is up as of January, 2025, rest assured by the end of this year, the full catalogue of John’s videos will be available to the world at large. Please Subscribe to the channel and share it and help it grow so that it can gain a following in YouTube’s algorithm.
| Until Next time…
– Tom McCarthy |
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