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/128148
Feuling W3 By ALAN CATHCART PHOTOS By RICH COX/SLID'E'1'-. TION n ike the slogan on the back of Jim LSFeuling's T-shirt says, "Size DOES Matter" - or as the man himself likes to state, "There's no replacement for displacement!" Gas up the throttle of the 2500cc Feuling W3 at a traffic light, or roll it on in top gear, cruising a freeway leading away from the Feuling Motor Company's Ventura, California, base just an hour north of Los Angeles and be prepared to become a believer, as your arms are yanked in their sockets with the force of a hurricane windblast, while you cling frantically to the handlebars and suddenly realize why this lean but muscular-looking motorcycle has such a stretchedout riding position. It's because 2500cc and 210 ft/lbs. of torque, coupled with 150-plus horsepower at the back wheel and a unique threecylinder Harley-and-a-half exhaust beat, mean the Feuling W3 leaves everything else on two or four wheels eating its dust, while you fight the forces of physics and try to stay along for the ride. The W3 is a motorcycle "that delivers: a two-wheeled funny-car street 42 APRIL 3, 2002' c: U c: I e dragster barely sanitized for the highway, which sets new acceleration standards in commerciaUy available powerbiking. California is crammed with can-do customizers, aU competing to create the ultimate ultrabike or the absolute auto, each the product of a mind which asks 'why not?' - rather than 'why?' It's no coincidence that so many major manufacturers of both two- and four-wheeled customer products maintain SoCal design studios and engineering shops - because out west is where unorthodoxy reigns, where the improbable achieves reality, and where today's alternative becomes tomorrow's convention. I couldn't really imagine the Feuling W3 being built anywhere else, could you? It's not exactly true to say that nobody ever produced a radial threecylinder bike engine before - Moto Guzzi built just such a prototype 15 years ago, and there were a handful of such specials derived from radial aircraft engines back in the vintage era - but you couldn't ever buy a motorcycle powered by such an unconventional engine package. Until now. For it wasn't until Southern Californian engineer Jim Feuling decided to put intb metal a what-if idea he'd n e _ s had while working with Harley-Davidson on R&D of their current Twin Cam 88 motor, that such an engine took shape. Two years down the road, the Feuling W3 has now reached the marketplace, with 'DaUas' TV soap star Larry Hagman one of the first customers for one of the Feuling Motor Company's improbable but innovative three-cylinder pushrod aircooled roadsters. Very unconventional, very cool - but very California. Feuling's spacious 28,000-squarefoot so-called 'Skunk Works' Ventura base boasts an array of dyno rooms and flow benches, each crammed with experimental engine designs, making it a dream destination for any gearheaded pilgrim. In one section, surrounded by tricked-out V-eight car engines, some V-twins fitted with Feuling's aftermarket four-valve cylinder-head conversion for Big Twin Harleys, a lineup of hot-rodded musclecars with Feuling-modified engines, an arcane selection of vintage bikes, and a display of cylinder heads with exotic-looking porting and extreme-lift camshafts, sits the threewheeled Salt Flats streamliner which Feuling himself 'drove' (rode?) to a speed of 332.103 mph at Bonneville in November of 1997, making it the world's fastest motorcycle under AMA rules. And up on a shelf in his office, between all the dyno charts and patent certificates, sits the aerodynarnicaUyshaped, ultra-lightweight Bell helmet designed by Feuling and worn by Fl World Champion Michael Schumacher. This is a man with an enquiring mind, and the ability to translate his 'what-if' ideas into reality - then to make them work. A true inventor. Feuling's career to date is littered with names like Ford, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz - and Harley- , Davidson, with whom, during the course of a 20-year collaboration as a consultant engineering troubleshooter, he earned a proven track record as Harley's R&D Mr. Fixit. It was while working with H-D engineers on the prototype Twin Cam 88 motor that he had the idea to create a new family of three-cylinder Harley products with an extra 50 percent displacement by the simple expedient of adding an extra cylinder to the Twin Cam motor - an idea effectively rejected by Motor Company management, presumably on the basis of the Not Made Here syndrome. Okay, said .. Jim - I'll do it myself. So he did.