Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127841
SuIIIance Harley-Davidson By Alan Cathcart Photos by Kolch! Ohtanl t takes a very special person to become a recognized guru for a product from a foreign cul ture, but just as American Dr. John Wittner has become inextricably linked with Moto Guzzi, or Vee Two Australia's Brook Henry with Ducati, so Japan's Takehiko Shibazaki has earned a unique international reputation as a Harley-Davidson tuner, gaining worldwide renown for the £low of exciting products emanating from his Sundance tuning shop in downtown Tokyo. The 38-year-old Shibazaki worked as a race-car mechanic before starting his own Harley-only bike shop back in 1982, long before American Iron became as chic and fashionable as it is today. Back then, in those pre-Evolution days (when H-D stood for Half-Dead and the company teetered on rocky ground, before the p resen t management engineered one of the great turnarolind stories of the modern motorcycle age), you had to be truly dedicated to the American Dream to want to earn your liviilg working on 45-degree pushrod V-twins - especially if you were Japanese and most of your countrymen considered Harleys to be crude conveyances locked in a vintage-era time warp. 'Which, ahem, back then, perhaps they were... But Take-chan's faith in the Harley product was rewarded, as Harley sales took off worldwide, and Japan became one of the American marque's premier export markets. Sundance was in the forefront of the boom that followed, becoming one of the country's leading H-D tuning and customizing boutiques, thanks to a skillful blend of imaginative marketing and good engineering. Shibazaki became the Buell distJ;ibutor for Japan in 1987, one of the brand's first overseas importers - and one of the most successful. Sundance began road racing in 1988 with a sushi version of Gene Church's Buell-framed Lucifer II, and actually scored the Buell marque's firstever race victory, in a BoTT race in Japan. Meanwhile, Shibazaki began developing his own range of Sundance tuning parts and custom accessories, ranging from high-performance engine components - many of them specially made in the United States to Sundance specifications - to retro hybrid-engine kits that combine Pan and Shovel cylinder heads with modern Evolution bottom ends. The Sundance Harley name has achieved worldwide recognition in the past decade, much of it thanks to Takech;m's most ambitious project to date: the fabulous Daytona Weapon BoTT racer. Featuring special Over-alloy spaceframe and Shibazaki's own rakish styling, and combined with'radical engine surgery on what was once a 1200 Sportster motor, the bike has, in the five years since it debuted at Daytona in 1992, thrilled Harley fans in America and Europe with its speed and performance. It's certainly the fastest pushrod Harley road racer in the world today built in Japan! However, Shibazaki is a man who relishes every kind of engineering challenge, and knowing that Sundance chief mechanic Yutaka Teshima - Take-chan's right-hand man on all the 'varied Sundance projects and a key figure in the growth of the business - had long hankered after owning a Harley road bike of his own, but couldn't afford the steep entry fee to the Hog herd, Shibazaki volunteered to build him one. However, this would be a very special kind of power-up porker, to be built using a combination of OEM Harley parts and various bits and pieces left over from the Daytona Weapon racing project. His not exactly a question of the bike being a junker. (even if that's what Take-chan . insists it really is) - it's more a question of putting discarded hardware to good use: a recycled cycle. The idea was to build a half-race, fully street-legal spin-off from the Weapon project. So for the engine Shibazaki started with the same basis, a late-model fiv~ speed 1200 Eva Sportster motor. Retaining the stock crank, he fitted Carrillo rods, Nikasil alloy liners in the stock cylinders, and Sundance-forged 1200 dome pistons delivering 12:1 compression, made in the United States to Shibazaki-san's specs by JE. Andrews carns made exclusively for Japan on the same basis are fitted with roller-end rockers running on needle roller bearings matched to nonadjustable carbon-fiber pushrods, with the crankcase modified to accept an oil-scraper-type flywheel, while the stock Harley five-speed gearbox is retained, but mated to a Bandit five-plate kevLar racing clutch a,nd a British-made Syncroflex 42mm toothedbelt primary drive, with the primary case machined from aluminum billet. However, it's the cylinder heads which have seen the greatest modification and which are mainly responsible