Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

<~1: ~~~~.fZ~~ ~ 3" - ~::~~' . "J._:.t~.., ~., ,,~' ..._._ (Oppossite page) Enter Golden Balls: Made in America, built In Japan. The Harley-Davidson 1200 Sportster-based bike is street legal, yet has won races - including Daytona, in the hands'of legend Jay Springsteen. (Right) Alan Cathcart at speed on Golden Balls in Japan. for more than doubling power output to no less than 108 bnp measured at the back wheel, at 7000 rpm. Shibazaki has heavily reworked and gas-flowed the ports, fitting oversize 49mm inlet/41mm Manley valves with Crane springs and a single 41mm FCR Keihin flatslide carb - same as the pair used on the Daytona Weapon. Rather than the laborious task bike of reangling the inlets on the race to 45 degrees downdraft after welding up the heads and recutting the ports, he's opted for a semi-downdraft intake manifold on the road bike, and a tapered squish. Plugs are NGK's short racetype, with a Screamin' Eagl\! CDT and 12v battery, coupled to a pair of Dyna coils operating in dual-fire dead-spark mode - Shibazaki says he doesn't like a singlespark ignition, because of the vibration from the.engine. The exhaust pipe is Sundance's own 2-into-1 system, which AMA Twin Sports Champion Scott Zampach used on his bike in the '95 season, obtaining no less than 4 bhp more on his 883 racer with the Japanese exhaust than the V&H system more commonly used puts out. With the engine completed early in 1994, Tesruma-san slotted it into a modified stock Sportster frame with Sundance double-cradle reinforcement tubes and a fabricated-alloy swingarm built by PVM in Germany to Sundance specs, fitted with twin British-made Quantum variable-rate shocks. Com- bined with a modified rake angle of 24 degrees for the 43mm Showa fully-adjustable upsidedown racing fork, this gives a wheelbase of just 1420mm - short for a stockframed Harley - coupled with 95mm trail. Weight distribution is a handy 52/48-percent front-end bias, with 18inch PVM cast-magnesium wheels fitted with the German company's own 320mm cast-iron discs and four-pot AP calipers up front, and shod with Dunlop treaded tires; rear brake is a 280mm Brembo off a Ducati Pantah, with fourpot Brembo caliper. A U.S.-made MS oil cooler is used, with Sundance's own .78gallon cylindrical oil tank and 2.6-gaUon fuel tank. This compendium of Euro-American hardware built in Japan first took to the streets of Tokyo in mid-'94 - but, almost inevitably, it wasn't long before it wound up on the race track. Don't blame Shibazaki and Teshima, though: It was aU the fault of the organizers of the big Grand Slam four-stroke meeting run annually in November at the tight and twisty Tsukuba race track north of Tokyo, who that year decided to hold Japan's first-ever Harley-only race. Sundance couldn't not be there, so they entered the Daytona Weapon's,usual rider, 125cc GP ace Yoshiyuki Sugai on Golden Balls - the, er, unusual sobriquet the bike had ended up with, after Teshima decided to paint it metaUic gold on completion'. Don't ask: If you don't know why, it'd take too long to explain! Anyway, cruising to unchaUenged victory, Sugai suddenly encountered gear- box trouble midrace, leaving the bike stuck in third gear. No problem: Such is the massive torque (12 kgm at 6100 rpm - some tractor!) and the engine's appetite for revs, he was able to actuaUy increase his lead and come home an easy winner without shifting gears (and there are some quick 883 riders in Japan - fa t enough to earn top-12 places in AMA Nationals at Daytona). Impressive. Having proved a point, Tesruma-san got his road bike back again and enjoyed riding it on the street for a couple of years - until a certain Mr. Jay Springsteen came to Japan on a promotional trip this August, earning Golden Balls a return visit to Tsukuba for God's Disciple to cut some laps aboard it. Twenty laps later, Springer had not only equaled Sugai's best-ever 1:07 lap time when he had a full set of gears, but in the process had become smitten with the J-model Harley. "He told me this was the best Sportster he'd ever ridden, which was a very great honor for us to hear," says Shibazaki, glowing with pride. "Jay-san al 0 said if we ever took the bike to America, he'd like to race it - so maybe one day next year, we will!" And they did. With Springsteen winning'at Daytona of all places. The American racing legend and the Japanese Harley... So, faced with a reference of this magnitude, I had no choice but to take Take-chan up on his offer to return to Tsukuba again, to let me s]jng a leg over Golden BaUs (no obvious jokes, please!), exactly four years to the day after I rode his Daytona Weapon on the same track. That had been a pretty impressive expe- rience: a push rod Harley with the performance of a 600 Supersport and the handling of a Ducati Superbike - well, even better, maybe. But Golden Balls is a different breed of Hog: one that's better mannered, more practical, and almost as potent on a corkscrew circuit like Tsukuba. I managed a 1:05 lap time on the Weapon four years ago, due mainly to the slick tires and better rear suspension putting a similar power output to the ground better out of the tight turns. But the Weapon was a top-end package aimed at excelling on the Daytona bankings; Golden Balls is a streetfighter tailor-made for trouble and looking to get even. It's a Hog with attitude. It also feels incredibly small as well as extremely potent for a Sportster - and having raced Uwe Witt's 883 to a rostrum finish in the German Twin Sports series race held at the Hockenheim World Superbike round this May, I do have a point of reference. The Sundancer holds a line reaUy well like the OEM frame, but it changes direction much better and feels a lot less rangy, with a more rational steering geometry thanks to the less kicked-out front end, and a tight, dose-coupled riding position with steeply dropped clip-ons that says Ducati rather than H-D. Same thing goes for the engine, which incidentally - this being a road bike, after all, complete with headlamp tucked behind the front number plate fires up on the starter button. First thing you notice is how smooth and freerevving the Sundance engine is, even though it's mounted solidly in the frame, without benefit of the rubber mounts used on the Weapon's Over chassis or the Uniplanar system of any Buell. There's considerably less vibration at almost any revs than a stock Sportster has, even wi th more than twice the power on tap - proof that Take-chan's revised balance factor of 53 percent compared to the original H-D engine's 100 percent really pays off. But though there's even more torque' at low rpm than a standard 1200 Evo motor delivers, there isn't a feeling of awesome power at low revs, off the cam: Golden

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