my beloved FXR

After 13 years of commuting, riding, partying, breaking, fixing, servicing, speeding and a lot of babying of my '92 FXRS, I had racked up 86,000 miles on it's second speedometer. As you may imagine, my old, tired evo motor was leaking from every crevice. I knew if I had taken the top end off yet once again, I would find something in the lowers that I would not like.







I have had the pleasure of working with S&S Cycle over the last 3 years and I had decided that it was time to buy a little something-something for my own damn self. Luckily my timing was perfect; S&S occasionally has a special program on overstock engines only through their dealers. ChopperDave being an S&S dealer, I purchased a 96" S&S engine through him.







Over at Dave's shop in beautiful Hawaiian Gardens, CA, he happen to have his camera laying around so we shot a few photos while doing the engine swap. Big day for my bike. Never thought I'd be the owner of an S&S engine. I'm stoked as all hell.

Yes, Dave is completely naked except for his shoes and I'm not wearing any pants either. This is how we do engine swaps in Southern CA.
In the above photo, you can see that the old heap had been removed and the new shiny, stroker 96" engine wants to go to its new home.
I saw a good photo opportunity, "carry that motor over here by yourself so I can take a nice photo. And smile, too!"
After a few hours, we had the motor in. Dave's a master of wiring and lucky me, he had the job of wiring the new S&S IST ignition into my stock harness. That was handled like a pro.
After a few very minor glitches during set up, we had the engine running like a fucking champ. It's amazing how much smoother this engine runs, regardless of it's bigger displacement. Torque is night and day. On the freeway, 5th gear is my new passing gear - no need to downshift to "get out of the way" anymore. Roll-on and go.







So I finally got around to posting this little story. I get weirded out when posting photos of myself, but this time I needed to give credit where it was definitely due! Big thanks to the guys at S&S Cycle, Charlie Hadaiya, Opee Olson. Mahaloz to my brother from another mothership: ChopperDave who comes through every time.

S&S Cycle Presents

Submitted by Howard Kelly:




My first book - and possibly one of the coolest coffee table books I have seen — is about to be released through Motorbooks International. It is called S&S Cycle presents Today’s Top Custom Bike Builders and it is based on the S&S 50th. With a forward by Jay Leno, the rest of the book is all my words on the event, the history of S&S and a look at all 50 bikes. When I sat down to write the book I went back to the writing style that served me best, being me.



Back in the Hot Bike/Street Chopper days when I wrote, people used to tell me that when they read the mags, it was like I was sitting there talking with them about a bike as we looked at it together. Same deal. No fancy words, no wild stories about bros in the wind, bars or fantasies about life on the road, just a touch of the builder’s personality and cool stuff about the bikes. I honestly dig the book a lot and get nothing if it sells like hot cakes. I cut the deal to be an all S&S deal since I worked there at the time, but hey, it’s my first book and it came out great.




Both Jeff Wright’s bike and ChopperDave’s bike came out great. The layout on the pages is perfect for chasing down your favorite builders from the 50th and having them sign it.

Ran out of time this morning, didn't get a chance to do a post before I left for work so this'll have to do. We had five S&S KN-Series engines with replica frames to go with them, heading for Tokyo.
Thought it was an appropriate time to give the FXR a day-off and ride the knuck to work for an easy photo. Nothing fancy, just thought I'd capture the moment.







By the way, click on the S&S Cycle label below or just click here for some other interesting S&S Cycle related posts.

NEWS

Viola, Wisconsin. S&S Cycle announces the acquisition of certain assets of Crane Cams Inc. Those assets include the inventory, intellectual property, and trademarks for all Crane automotive and motorcycle electronic products and for Crane motorcycle valve train products. The intellectual property portion includes designs, drawings, and cam profiles. Crane automotive valve train products are not included in this acquisition. Crane Cams was founded in 1953, and like S&S Cycle, founded in 1958, it has become a respected and iconic brand in the high performance industry.













S&S intends to continue to sell Crane products through the same distributors and dealers who have sold them in the past. To that end, they will establish a new facility in Daytona Beach, Florida to manage the business and provide customer service and technical support. This new facility will be staffed by many of the same personnel that Crane customers have worked with in the past, providing as seamless a transition as possible. While there may be some shortages of product in the near future, the Crane/S&S team will be working hard to fill back orders and meet future demand for Crane ignitions and motorcycle valve train components.













Since the acquisition does not include the Crane facility or equipment, manufacturing of valve train products will be moved to the S&S manufacturing facility in Viola, Wisconsin. S&S CEO George Smith comments: “The addition of this product line is a natural fit for our current in-house cam manufacturing capabilities as our equipment and processes are state of the art. We’re also excited that the highly successful Crane motorcycle and automotive electronics line is included with this acquisition. This will further strengthen S&S Cycle in the electronics field by providing additional expertise to improve our product offerings in late model ignitions, among other things."

Submitted by Howard Kelly and S&S Cycle:

Photo of the founder of S&S Cycle, George Smith.

Submitted by Howard Kelly at S&S Cycle:

Submitted by Howard Kelly of S&S Cycle:

Side note: As some of you may know, Howard is leaving the motorcycle industry as his day job but it ain't like he's completely leaving motorcycles all together! As we've seen him before in Hot Bike, he'll be doing wheelies again as soon as riding season comes around in Wisconsin.

This FXR at S&S Cycle has been hammered so many times with various monster motors that the frame is bent. At first I thought that the rear fender was just mounted really crooked. Nope.
Wish I had an FXR with an X-Wedge. These rocker boxes were better looking:
What's going on with these BT flathead cases???
Maybe I wasn't supposed to take a photo of those.

Yeah, I been gone for the last few days. Went back to the cozy town of LaCrosse, WI to take VFI (fuel injection) classes at S&S Cycle. The weather was perfect and I had a grip of drinks at Yesterday's and The Starlight Lounge on Pearl St. again. And again.

I'll have a few things to report later... but let me tell you this for now. Yes, S&S is going to put these dual carb knuckleheads into production. When? How much? What will they fit? Huh? What's the deal?!?
I DON'T KNOW! I DON'T KNOW! I REALLY DON'T KNOW!


At least you got a peek at these prototype heads.

Switzerland

This is Sandra's boyfriend Mac with his VL-Knuckle


This is Sandra

Submitted by Howard Kelly, S&S Cycle:

S&S SUPER CARB ADJUSTMENTS

I wanted to really dial in the S&S Super E on my '76 Shovel. In the past I would just mess with something until I got it to work. Mainly due to the time constraints that a job and family puts on one, more and more I find myself finding info on the topic and going from there.

So I did some looking around and found this tip sheet written by Howard Kelly at S&S. I think useful information should always be shared. So here you go.

Submitted by Howard Kelly at S&S Cycle:



This is Marge Smith's bike. She and George purchased it new in 1966 and put 84" flywheels in it. This is exactly how the bike looks today. It has a rare circuit breaker driven H-D tach on it.



This bike was quite hot; George and Marge used to ride on it and occasionally race unexpected guys riding solo.

Since Scott just posted this S&S ironhead, I'll post this one now instead of tomorrow:






These were submitted by Howard Kelly of S&S Cycle.