Ever Dream To Change Your Harley In A Racer?

I know a few custom builders who are taking this direction. They take a big American V-Twin and stuff it into a sport bike chassis that they hand fabricate. But it’s always for a one-off project. As the opposite, the idea of Curt Winter, owner and designer of Big Twin Racer, is to offer a ready to assemble aggressive riding style sport bike chassis accepting most of your Big Twin components. So he designed a rubber mounted frame with increased longitudinal ridgitity by the use of a unique perimeter style double backbone. Rear suspension is single shock. Critical components such as oil tank and gas tank are rubber mounted so that over time vibration won’t be a problem. The gas tank is also is shaped to fit between the twin backbone and give free movement to the rider. Oil is carried in an aluminum oil tank, mounted low and in front .to lower central mass weight and increase oil cooling by grabbing fresh air from the front. You can buy the kit or ask Curt to assemble your components. To see how it would look, go to War Horse Big Twin..

7 Responses to “Ever Dream To Change Your Harley In A Racer?”


  1. 1 Nicker Jul 6th, 2007 at 9:39 pm

    RE:
    “…a few custom builders… taking this direction…”
    “…single shock…”
    “…sport bike chassis…”

    A new direction?
    Sounds Cool!

    But, “…Oil is carried in front…[of the engine]…”.

    That looks like an air dam to me……????

    What about over heating????

  2. 2 hoyt Jul 7th, 2007 at 3:16 am

    Nicker – I had the same question for my friend Curt at the time that bike was being built. On the Evo setup, the oil bag is out front grabbing cool air (I believe air-cooled bikes get up to 60% of the cooling by oil, so keep the oil cool is the logic)

    On the twin cam bike (see Curt’s in-progress build on his site), the oil is underneath the trans. as you may already know.

    Curt will also build complete bikes in addition to the frame kits or rollers.

  3. 3 Nicker Jul 7th, 2007 at 5:07 am

    some years ago i made the mistake of strapping a rolled up camping mattress on top of the Beemer’s front fender. This put it above the radiator, so i figured it’d be OK for a hard run up the coast.

    Coming into the first fuel stop i could smell the engine heat and the fan went on the moment we got off the freeway.

  4. 4 goldiron Jul 7th, 2007 at 1:28 pm

    The frame is nice. The swing arm is heavy. The gas tank may give you an open pelvis fracture if you launch over the bars. That being said, the geometry of the overall design is nice. I would like to see the results of testing for torsional twisting on the frame swingarm joint and surrounding area deflection.
    I believe that these v-twins are closer to 90% oil cooled. That being the case, a 50 %larger oil capacity would be nice.

  5. 5 hoyt Jul 8th, 2007 at 3:00 pm

    The twin cam bike has an aluminum swingarm that Curt built. See the photos on his site.

    The petro tank is the same general shape and position of any sportbike.

  6. 6 JD Jul 31st, 2007 at 7:39 am

    WHY, you can buy a really nice sport bike for half the price.

  7. 7 Sid Aug 21st, 2007 at 2:30 am

    you can buy really nice cruisers for a fraction of the price of some customs too.

Comments are currently closed.
Cyril Huze