Championship Bike Build-Off

Today, horsepower goes from hot rods to Harley's Mike's building up a late model heritage soft tail with a high performance cam kit free flow exhaust system and air filter while Joe jumps on board the SNS cycle 50 year birthday bash, you'll witness the works of 50 of the world's top builders and discover what it takes to earn a world championship.

We've gone from Hot Rods to Harley's on this week's horsepower.

All right, this late model heritage soft tail is one of the more popular bikes on the roads today. So that's why it's a perfect candidate for the performance upgrades. I'm about to give it

and it's all gonna happen at this bike roads bike shop where three generations have helped maintain the heritage of Harley Davidson's

motorcycles have been in Sam Goodman's family for three generations since 1919.

Now he opened his seg custom cycle shop almost 30 years ago and it's jam packed with fascinating motorcycle history.

There are vintage bikes from 1933 through the Warriors, all kinds of memorabilia and signs that Sam and crew believe in having fun

while keeping their customers bikes running.

Now, it's a place where street bikes get customized where vintage bikes get restored.

If it's got a Harley logo on it, they can fix it,

upgrade it, beautify it or sell you a part for it.

Now, Sam was good enough to let us use his bike shop to make some mods on ours

to get started on our 88 inch heritage. Let's check out some of the parts. Now, this conversion kit from SNS Cycles allows us to get rid of the timing chain and tensions for a more efficient gear driven set up. Now, it comes with upgraded camshafts gears and an upgraded adjustable push rod kit.

The result is smoother performance and about 5 to 8 more horsepower.

All right. Now I got a lot of tear down work to do. And while I do that, let's go check out Joe up in la crosse Wisconsin. Now he's checking out the results of one of the biggest bike build offs in recent history.

That's

easy.

Good eye

say how do you get 30,000 people to show up for your anniversary party?

Many arriving on the backs of their Harlem

Sns cycle's fif th anniversary was a celebration of a lifestyle

and a heritage that began humbly enough back in the fifties.

That's when an innovative drag racer named George Smith Senior began making a few performance parts in his home.

Well, before long, the name S and S was synonymous with high performance racing and world speed

record.

Yeah. Who would have thought when I was a kid growing up in Blue Island, Illinois and my dad was downstairs with a lathe and a drill press making some parts that it would turn into what it has. It's certainly been a ride. George Smith junior led the company through some of the

fastest growing years

today with his son fret in charge S MS builds six different engines including the new X wedge

and it offers customers virtually every engine part imaginable.

Here at this event, visitors saw some awesome ways. Those motors are used to create remarkable rides

and these people, well, they're not in line to get a beer or one of these good Wisconsin Brats. No,

they're here to witness the craft work of 50 of the top bike builders in the world.

There are only a few rules, use an S and S motor,

incorporate the logo in one way or another and make it ridable enough for today's scheduled 100 mile cruise.

I'm impressed, I'm really impressed. There's a lot of great looking bike out here.

A lot of great detail on them.

The craftsmanship is just beautiful man. That's a lot of hard work. Went into these bikes,

Derek Churchill brought a build off entry that's special to us at horsepower TV.

It's the G two motor sports bike built in our shop with help from a team of

Wyotech graduates.

Those guys assembled the 126 cubic inch T

series motor added a clever paint scheme

and put it all together in a cool package hot enough to run 12th quarter miles.

Meanwhile, choosing a bike that represents the best engineering and creativity among these, one of a kind masterpieces is mind

boggling

everything from choppers to this new, old Indian built by California based builder, Mike Thomas. I've always wanted to build this bike. I'm thinking about how to build it for the last several years.

And with this X We

Engine, it's allowed me to uh be real creative and bring out some new designs.

Here's one of the most eye catching paint schemes in the tent

and it's on a bike built right here in Lacrosse.

Well, I paid for the bike and done

built it.

It was great for me. It's exactly the way we did what we were good at. Right.

That's a painter. So the paint in this, in the sun is just incredible. Every fiberglass part he molded by hand, the back end, the fing. Uh

It's perfect.

And who could miss this incredible bike built by Keiji

Kawakita.

The design and craft work, make this sh powered bike a piece of true two wheeled art.

He designed and built it in his Tokyo shop, then shipped everything to Lacrosse for final assembly.

I spoke with KG with his daughter helping as an interpreter,

truck

race

speed the way it is. Huh?

Yeah.

He,

so what does he think about the competition.

It's a lot of rivals

competition.

Well, they canceled the morning cruise because of the rain. They didn't want to get the bike sweat. So,

guess what? The rain came to the bikes.

It's a mess.

I'll tell you what, while we wait out the rain, let's let Mike get back to work on that Harley right after a little swim and a short break.

Hey, we're back and we're ready for the cam swap on this late model heritage. Now, there's quite a bit of tear down involved to make way for it. So take a look at what all I did while you guys were with Joe at the S and S bike build off.

First, I removed the spark plugs,

then the right side bag that's held in place with a couple of bolts

next the front and rear footrest

and finally the complete exhaust system.

Now on this model, you also need to remove the c

next, the air cleaner cover came off,

followed by the air cleaner assembly.

Then after jacking up the rear wheel,

I removed these retaining clips

and turn the wheel to take tension off the push rods.

Now using bolt cutters, cut the push rods and remove it and the tubes

then remove the lifter plate and pull the lifters

and the timing cover.

And with the chain intention is retained,

pull the chain and timing years

next, the camp plate can come off.

And after removing a couple of pins.

I used a press to remove the stock cams

and to install the new cam retainer plate bearings.

Good.

Finally, Sam came to the rescue with a special tool to remove the cam bearings from the motor.

And he showed us how to use the old camshaft to install the new bearings.

All right. Now that we have all our bearings in place, all we need to do is drive the cam shafts in which we'll do with a rubber mallet.

All right. One of the most important things is you wanna make sure your timing marks on the gears line up,

the charges are dead on.

Now with some lock tight on the bolts, I can tighten the retainer

and the cam plate is ready to go in,

then install the new gear set

and use the supplied hardware to torque them down

next before replacing the cover a little test using a piece of model in clay.

All right, we use the clay to check for clearance from the cam gear to this cover and obviously it's a little too tight. So we're gonna use a dye grinder to make a little more room.

Now, the timing cover can go on with plenty of clearance

followed by the lifters

along with the lineup pin.

Now to install the new push rod kit, first lube up the O rings and push them up into place.

Now, we can assemble the new push rod tubes

and slide in the new adjustable push rods and position the assembly into the motor.

Then after slipping in a gasket,

we can tighten down the cover.

Now, we can set the push rod length by going 3.5 turns past zero. Lash

the final step, install these retainers and we're done with this upgrade.

All right, we'll meet back up with Joe at the SNS bike build off and finish the upgrades on this Harley right after the break.

Welcome back to Horsepower and Lacrosse where the rainstorm ended and blue skies covered the SNS cycle celebration.

In addition to the world competition bike build off and we'll see who wins that later.

There was also some cool stuff to see here on the midway grounds

and to see who's uh testing the waters with new prototype bikes like this one,

it belongs to the sun, a famous race car builder Dan Gurney.

So we started with some

classic tube from there. Justin Gurney built a bike that uses a bit of the design technology. His dad's company is famous for,

but he also added some ultra tech tricks you'll never find in a race car.

Well, like the digital multi-purpose gauge with a built in GPS that measures your speed

but wait,

no brake lights.

Sure. It's got brake lights

like any big bike festival. The action was also beyond the festival grounds

at this 50 style drive in called Rudy's, a

club of knucklehead. Devotees staged a contest to benefit the make a Wish foundation.

Ah, a beautiful old. But

now to these guys, the best Harley ever was produced from 1935 to 47. The first with an overhead cam engine design, it's the best engine Harley ever built the

first day.

We have shirts right up. That said the original evolution. It's got a knuckle on it. You get a lot of people, they don't know saying,

why do you call

a knucklehead?

There's a lot of people that get that and they look at us like, you know, three

Stooges or, you know,

just in case you need a knucklehead heads up, they get that name from the look of their valve covers

at this display featured a few unrestored relics from day one that are still on the road.

Of course, there's always got to be some rowdy kid who breaks the rules with a burnout.

Oh, excuse me, sir.

Welcome to tonight's s

cycle 50th anniversary street drag special here at the Lacrosse Fairground speedway

who needs a front tire.

I bet

you don't go through many front tires, do you?

I knew they'd have racing here. Yes. The F and S street drive

drag racing

on a circle track. Here's how it works.

You race on the front straight away.

The first turn begins your shutdown area.

Now, green flag means the left lane one,

red flag means the right lane one

or is it just reverse?

Well, anyway, meanwhile, back at the S and S build off. Tent boating is winding down the

nickel plating

on there. Is this beautiful man?

And soon you'll know who the contestants and B IP S chose as the best overall champion

that is after one more party night in downtown Cross.

Before this gets too wild. We'd better go back to Mike and those Harley

hubs,

man. How do you pick a champion out of all those awesome bikes? Oh, well, while Joe is enjoying the party, I was here at S and G motorcycles, installing SNS cams and push rods on the Soft Dale Heritage. Now, let's take a look at another popular upgrade for late model V Twins.

It's a big shot exhaust system from Van and Heinz. Now it features a power chamber design that uses the volume of both mufflers to enhance horsepower and torque. Now, it comes with weld in 02 bunks and these polished heat shields. Now, it may look really cool, but I'm anxious to hear how it sounds. The first step for us is to install the assembly onto the exhaust porch using the stock clangs and nuts.

Remember to bolt the rear port up first. Now, I pre installed this bracket from the kit and it bolts up to the frame with the supplied hardware.

All right, that was easy enough. Now, just like hot rods. Motorcycles are perfect candidates for air cleaner upgrades also. So we're gonna use this cane in one that's been designed to improve horsepower and make it accelerate better. Now, before we install it, we're gonna show you a little trick. The guys here at S and G used to make it work even better.

Take the stock vacuum plate that holds the filter and drill five half inch holes in the bottom of it.

That'll introduce a little more air to the filter and free up a little more power in the motor.

Then we can install the backing plate,

a new cane and filter

and finish it up with the cover.

Now that we've upgraded this Harley with a trio of components all in the name of more horsepower. We're not finished yet when we come back, I'm gonna show you a way to optimize all this extra horsepower. Oh, and we'll find out who has the baddest bike at the build off. Make sure you stick with us.

Welcome back to horsepower on location at S and G custom cycles. This is where we've enhanced the horsepower of our late model heritage soft tail

first with a cam and lifter upgrade from S and S then better flowing van and Heinz exhaust also a KN air filter upgrade.

All right. Now that we have our bigger cams and pipes on the bike, we need to f

it up some. Now, here's a good way to do it. It's a fuel injection system from Daytona Twin Tech. It has a lot of good features but it takes some time to install and you really should have a shop do it. Now, we don't have time for it. So we're going to use this DFO from Rev Tech. Now it's a digital fuel optimizer that'll give us more horsepower, better throttle response. And it's a lot easier to install

the DFO lives here in front of the battery. Then there are connectors that piggy back onto the stock injector harness plus a ground.

Now set the dials to locations on the chart,

reinstall the seat and we're ready to roll. All right. Now that we've got the DFO set up. It's time to take this thing out and see how it does. Right now. I'm gonna send you back to Joe for the climax of the SNS bike build off. So that means we're taking the ride

for several months. 50 of the foremost builders of motorcycles supplied their engineering and design skills,

harnessing their imagination and creativity with one goal in mind,

craft, the one bike that would be deemed best overall at the anniversary of S and S Cycles,

man. Can you imagine picking a winner out of all of these? Well, the time has come, we're going to find out who comes in first among these 50 top builders in the whole world. Congratulations.

First. There were awards for top builders in each of the six Sns Engine categories.

Trophy.

Thank you.

Congratulations. And a special People's Choice Award that resulted from open online voting by the public

as

a,

that you deserve to be here. And I just, I just want to know that. All right. Thank you, brother.

Last but not

least the best of the world's 50 best builders.

The one judged as greatest by his peers.

It's

possible that this individual

traveled as far away as anyone.

He happens to be a friend of mine

and

it's

Keiji Ka.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I got something.