RIPPER
SPEED FX TWIN CAM MOTOR, MEET FXR FRAME WORDS: NYC DANNY D PHOTOS: RYAN HANDT
A
lot of paint jobs have been getting out of hand over the past few years. They look like carnival wagons and ’70s drum sets with a bowl of linguine thrown on ’em. Not mine. I’ve owned this bike for close to 20 years now. It ran the 80-inch motor for the first year I owned it, and then I ran a 96-inch S&S Evo mill in it for a while. Over the years, I had a lot of fun breaking everything behind the motor on my bike: two transmissions, three belts, two rear wheels, an inner primary, a torque arm, four rear axles, a swingarm, axle adjusters, and one transmission case. I lost count of the motor mounts I wasted riding the piss out of this thing. After about 15 years of this abuse (it was ridden like a stolen dirt bike), the motor was getting tired. Every seal was leaking. I took the bike off the road. I figured I was going to go over it. It was going to go down to the bare frame and come back from there.
Big-inch Evos and FXRs have a lot of problems. Evo FXR drivelines have a lot of weak links in them. They were great for 35 hp Shovels in 1982 when they came into production, but when you’re making more than 100 ponies, the motor doesn’t want to stay attached to anything. I figured a Twin Cam swap would take care of most of those weak links in the driveline. Once I knew where I was going with this bike, next up was a front motor mount. The front stock one is another weak link. We took a Big Bear Performance front motor mount and added an additional mounting point to it. Next came the swingarm. I had two other aluminum swingarms I was going with until I saw the piece from Mad Jap Performance. It has the best craftsmanship I’ve seen: five-axis CNC machining, solid billet, precision fitment—every aspect of it was perfect for me.
ISSUE 1
2018 / 49
