Tom Rose's FXR

What can I say about Tom Rose, and brother Joel's FXRs?

To start with we are dealing with a very unique situation... the two bikes you see here were both purchased by Tom and Joel on the same day, came from the same crate and were absolutely identical in every way when they were bought.
They are even consecutive serial numbered bikes.

Tom says:
"Bob Chip at C&c cycle in Chariton Iowa quoted me a price that may have been below his cost on the bikes, then he held the price. Joel and I paid $7300 apiece. Retail that year was like $8600. I think the margin was about $1000. "Chippy" is an honest man. I made payments for 3 years."
I find it very fascinating to see how different both the bikes turned out to be.

It's been a 23 years give or take, and both bikes are still being ridden and used today by their only owners... and both are still just as amazing and incredibly capable as they were back when the articles were written.
Both were (and still are) way ahead of their time. Built by brilliant, forward thinking men during a era when it wasn't cool to own FXR's (lets face it... it was totally repulsive to own them) and only a few people knew how well they worked.
Tom's FXR (Kiback) has 235,000 miles on it now, and has been refined since the original article, but most of those refinements have been minor. The original motor was pulled out somewhere around 180,000 miles and replaced with a 100" Revtech motor in an attempt to get it on the road quickly. He still plans on rebuilding the stock 80" motor and running that again someday as well as a dual carb setup with a true dual track manifold.
He is currently building a new tranny with the Rev-Tech one piece main shaft kicker and Rev-Tech gears.
Tom lives in a mountainous area and so Kiback has to function as a all terrain adventure motorcycle. Basically, you are looking at a very, very large dirt bike.
Kiback gets Tom around on dirt, snow, ice, mud, gravel and pavement on a very, VERY regular basis and he has done all that with street tires...but he will be running enduro/dual sport tires by Spring.
Tom still hates battery's, electric starters and starter buttons with a hatred that burns hotter than a ten thousand suns, and happily kicks his magneto powered monster to life every time. He has told me on several occasions that he has never once regretted converting to kick only and magneto in all these years.
Tom continues to R&D his black wolf on a regular basis, most recently he switched to some Biltwell tracker bars because he had managed to bend his ultralight bars while trying not to crash in some nasty mud. He reported that not only are the Biltwell bars incredibly strong, and amazingly well built, but they are as light as his previous bars... so you know he is thrilled about that. He has also managed to shave a few pounds off here and there and is still always looking for more weight to jettison. He is now starting to resort to titanium to net as much weight loss as possible.


Tom still owns just Kiback. He has no other motorcycle for any use, and still wouldn't trade Kiback for anything else out there today.

Here are some more shots that Tom has sent me of him adventuring on his big black wolf bike.

Brother Joel has recently redesigned his intakes, and is now trying a set of hard bags to see if he likes them. He is also experimenting with hydroforming some exhaust components for it. It still runs very...very...hard.
It should be pointed out that as fast as it was when the article was written... it still needed to be dialed in a bit and it is now much faster than it was at the time.

A very special thank you goes out to Sal from Hard Life bikes for hooking me up with the magazines... I haven't been able to find my old copies for years... you rule dude.

A few words about Biltwell products...

... Tom Rose has been using and abusing Biltwell parts for some time now and he really thought I should explain the huge Biltwell logo at the top of the Blog... but I thought that he would be able to do a better job, so he wrote this up for me.
So here's what he had to say:

"A couple of years ago I ordered a very interesting “exhaust builders’ kit” from CCI. The kit arrived and I was very impressed with its versatility , innovative components and packaging.

It had a really cool logo on it which I was unfamiliar with because I live under a rock. The logo, of course, said “Biltwell”. I have Internet under my rock so I used the Google button and discovered Biltwell had a Website with an array of more interesting products.

The most exciting item on the Website, which I can’t seem to find on the current one, was their Manifesto. The Manifesto spoke of being offended at some motorcycle show in a place I’d never heard of where motorcycles had been accessorized with spider webs, dangly floppy things and 3-speed-with-reverse-triple-chromed dildos. I strongly identified with this sentiment because I’ve never seen a need for any of that stuff on bikes especially, reverse.

The manifesto also spoke of selling a simple quality product for a reasonable profit. I was, of course, suspicious of this but have found it to certainly be the case. At this point I discovered that a man I had been communicating with intermittently on the Nazi journal seemed to have some sort of position with Biltwell, ostensibly testing handlebars on his FXR. I asked him if he could sell me a helmet because I had noticed that they had one in my color, flat black. I still have the helmet and I have ridden at least 10,000 miles with it and have been very pleased with its performance in all weather conditions.


Photo of Tom by Jerry Hannely

After my experience with the helmet I was feeling pretty good about this company. This sentiment was increased when I attended a Run at a campground in Temecula. Biltwell footed the bill at the campground as well as buying beer and food. It’s been an awful lot of years since I can remember companies doing this in the motorcycle culture.

I went by the Biltwell base where my friend, Jarhead Rob and I were welcomed and allowed to work on Rob’s bike in the cool of the warehouse. We were given access to the nuts and bolts bins, any tools or machinery that we might have needed and boxes were opened to allow me to inspect and fondle any products that I might be interested in. I was blown away by this level of hospitality.

I have now had occasion to test a number of their other products extensively.

The highly innovative points cover bottle opener works at any altitude in any temperature with cold and/or sweaty hands on any capped beverage bottle that we’ve tried it with. It is also a choking hazard for large bruins.


The Biltwell seat pan is super heavy duty, strategically ribbed, engineered for a lifetime of use even if you’ve got a hippopotamus riding it and it would probably withstand an assault by an angry rhino as well, although I haven’t tested that theory yet.

Photo by Billdozer

Biltwell’s risers are stout, elegant and versatile. They seem to have been designed with the idea of a perfectly angled gauge panel bolted on. One of my early mentors, a 30,000 mile a year hard tail rider, (Bait that’s you) told me that if a rigid was ridden daily in all conditions, and hard, broken risers were inevitable. I have yet to hear of a set of Biltwell risers breaking on any bike.



While on the subject of breakage and its sibling bending, I recently built an FXR for my buddy Playa. Playa selected my current favorite brand of handlebars in the style known as “Chumps”.


Playa got himself into a bit of a fracas at a fireworks stand near the Reservation boundary. In the melee his bike “Cookie” was knocked over and landed upon by a large man. Cookie’s clutch lever and perch were broken by the impact. The “Chumps” and “investment cast” risers were not even scratched.





Playa was also proven to be none the worse for the wear.

My Uncle Mike, who regularly breaks aluminum bars with either femur, has used one set of chrome molly bars through three in a row of his many dirt bikes since the big war. Yep, he can set the points and gap the plugs by ‘feel” on a WLA. He has in recent years, however, sworn off anything with poppet valves.

Brother Joel will probably be another year older this year, perhaps I will gift him a pair of Biltwell trackers. After all he has been known to frequent the same fireworks stand.



The only criticism I can offer the Biltwell company concerns the absence of the Manifesto. To shorten it up for those with MTV-itis the Panther and I have come up with some slogans.

“Biltwell: Shit that’s hard to fuck up”

“Biltwell: when you’ve broken everyone else’s shit”

“Biltwell: if you value your money as much as your hide”

“Biltwell: engineering solutions for cosmetic problems”

“Biltwell: where you end up after you’ve destroyed a bunch of other crap first”

“Biltwell: who doesn’t like rootbeer?”

“Biltwell: they’ve never given me anything for free and I’m still writing this”

The Panther wants to point out that Biltwell products are the only things she has seen me install unmodified.
With a comment like that maybe Biltwell will make some more ladies’ t-shirts in Panther sizes. Ib’n thought this paragraph should be the first due to it’s relevance."

Thanks Tom!

-Bird

Tom Rose tells us why kickers are the only option pt. 1

Ok folks, so my computer is still broke down and I have been getting by on my laptop, which is really not very useful for posting great pics of Attack choppers on this blog, when all my photos were on THE OTHER COMPUTER...but,I have been dying to get back to posting, and I have been trying to round up some new photos to post from the laptop while the main CPU goes under the knife.

In the meantime, Tom Rose has been working on an article for your reading pleasure,and further Attack Chopper education and he really came through for us bigtime. Tom wrote a short introduction to a 5 spd kicker conversion review in Iron Horse magazine years ago that I fell in love with from the first reading and I think it is just as relevant today as it was back then.

Tom's latest article is meant to be the next installment of that first article in Iron Horse, so I have posted the original here for your edification, and then the second below.





For those of you who don't know who Tom Rose is... shame on you.... you will still have to wait for the upcoming interview with him that is in the works, but i'm going to let Flynch give you a small introduction to the man and his bike

http://atlasflynched.blogspot.com/2009/09/this-is-where-it-all-begins.html

And let me just say that if it wasn't for Tom and his encouragment and insight... I don't think this blog would be what it is today.
Thanks Tom!

Tom Rose tells us why kickers are the only option pt.2

And these are Tom's most recent thoughts on the subject...

Birdman recently asked me how I could froth at the mouth so easily in my violent endorsement of kickstarting and whether there was any rationale attached to it at all.

After that conversation I put 2,872 miles of thinking into it which brought me to this:

Some time ago I walked out of a big motorcycle store in a sunny place my Granny used to call “The Land of the Mushheads” and a guy (stylish hair, glasses, clothes & body art) says “I know that bike and you must have really wanted to kick it. Bet you regret that regularly”.

My mind straight razor sharp from sparring in La La Land traffic, I thought “I ain’t been nowhere on this bike in years” and got wary. I responded slowly, mildly “Nope. Not once. I enjoy every kick”.

We exchanged pleasantries and his busy scheduled saved me and him from an extrapolitive logical monologue on exactly why my bike is still (because it could be any way I want it) kick only after approximately 130,000 have-fun miles. After I purchased my bike brand new from the man who has become my good friend “Chippy” I told him my bike would someday be kick only with no battery.

Chippy nodded and said “Uh huh” and probably wondered if I could make the payments. He was years used to 20 year old kids spouting shit that they would never come through on which brings me to the question

“WHY?”

I s’pose I’ll dedicate a paragraph per reason. Possibly I will never conclude, that way I can add paragraphs at my leisure as I develop new reasons. Got a reason I missed? Write your own paragraph and Birdman might post it.

Weight: My bike is over 100 lbs lighter than stock,, most of this weight reduction is due to the elimination of electric start components. If you do not understand that most Holy of concepts, the power to weight ratio, I suggest you quit reading this and seek rudimentary performance therapy. Remember though, you have to want to change. For many it will do no good.

Thrift: A motorcycle battery for an electric start bike costs a minimum of sixty dollars, a max currently of around $1,800 for the Thorsten Durbahn type. Those batteries have one year warranties because that is all that is expected by the manufacturer to be the useful life. Most wise old guys I know write a “put into” service date on their batteries. After one year they replace them. This practice prevents embarrassing phone calls at odd hours to immediately jeering, kickstarting relations. If I had purchased a new battery every year I have owned my bike I would be out about $2,000 – not chump change. If one wishes to prolong the life of ones battery it should be considered that the greatest load on the battery occurs while using the electric start. This would seem the time of greatest wear. This theory is borne out by my brother Joel. He has gotten up to 5 years out of batteries in his kick only Weber fed FXR.

Bling: Besides being a great place to hang your helmet (It’ll even keep it warm on a cold day) a kicker is a great place to put chrome. Some of you who know me will be surprised by this statement, but just as I put no judgments on other’s sexual preferences and no shit some of my best friends drive Ford or Dodge trucks, I accept that performance to some people involves shine. I support everyone’s right to freedom that doesn’t impinge on mine.

Safety: People who ride kick only bikes get in the habit of doing pre-kick inspections. Much like aircraft pilots they walk around and visually inspect the whole vehicle, feel its cylinder head temps, etc. Anyone disagree that this would be the ideal time to locate a loose axle nut? A tire going soft? An oil leak or frayed clutch cable? Under this same heading I’m going to bring up theft. A 7-year-old with a basic mechanical background and a Swiss Army knife can easily hot wire a bike. So can a potential thief. On the subject of kids, do you want your two-year-old climbing onto your bike clad only in a mildly soiled diaper, starting it and then dumping the clutch, propelling child and bike through the garage door? Besides the obvious damage to bike and garage, this is bad parenting – the child should never ride without boots and eye protection. If your bike’s compression is so low a two-year-old can kick it through, stop reading and start wrenching.

Recently this picture was posted of Sexy Jesse with his fingers bandaged.

Sexy Jesse was working on his inherently unreliable e-start system and he caught his fingers between the ring gear and the starter drive gear while it was energized. Those kinds of accidents don’t just happen to the Beautiful People of the world like Brad Pitt, Sexy Jesse, Shakira or Margaret Thatcher – they can happen to you or me.

Engine performance: A well tuned motorcycle starts much more easily. A hard start problem is harder to ignore and procrastinate on remedying when it is your own physical energy that is being expended. Years ago I noticed a cam grind described as “easy starting”. A six hour Dynomation computer simulation revealed what I suspected; vast quantities of power had been thrown away for “easy starting”. The cam was a turd. I have not tried all cams that allege “easy starting” but if I see a turd in a punch bowl I’m having coffee. To cam an engine based on starting performance rather than maximum running power/performance seems ludicrous to me. The market is flooded with more powerful starters and “regeared” starting systems. All of these costly, mechanically complex modifications are sneered at by those of us who are using the traditional technique of kickstarting.

Street cred: It has now been over two decades since Harley offered a bike for sale with a kicker yet they still mention “kickstarting” this or that in their well-funded advertising assaults. Why? Because nothing says “I’m in charge and owning this bike which is a PART of me – an APPENDAGE!” like the action of physically starting your bike with your own muscle. An audience always forms around a person that is about to kick their bike. The audience waits with baited breath while the owner does his pre-flight, makes some minor adjustments and then goes into the well-practiced choreography of the kicking routine. A proper kick should have the grace and fluidity of Michael Jordan’s lay-up, Baryshnikov’s leap or the gear split of an ancient long-haul trucker on Mont Eagle pass. So your bike doesn’t start on the first kick or two? (See previous paragraph on performance). Would you be embarrassed to kiss your spouse or hug your child before this audience?

Sex: So you and whomever you ride with walk out of a tittie bar with some dancers; one of them a blonde who can’t carry on a coherent conversation on the status of her or his hair or nails; the other a SABRA vet, dancing to pay tuition for a double doctorate in neurology and engineering. Which bike is the SABRA vet going to be interested in? You know she (or he) can change the ejection on an Steyr AUG from right to left blindfolded, find a lung and ventricle simultaneously with an ice pick and certainly bought her own tits. Who the fuck given a choice wants to ride with a bitch who didn’t buy her own tits?

I guess reading all of this I have come to a conclusion on the commonality of all these points. A button makes your bike an appliance. A kickstarter makes it part of you. Just like the dancers mentioned above – one can be replaced with a blowup doll, the other may drown you in your morning porridge. You haven’t invested all the time to read this if you’re going to be satisfied with a blowup doll or a sheep – unless by chance you are a sheep..

THANKS TOM! YOU RULE!


This is Tom's kickstart only little slice of Scottish engineering. Magneto powered, stripped down, 500 lb dripping wet, dual sport, combat touring, corner carving, drag racing, super slab assulting, do everything, Swiss army knive of a motorcycle, attack FXR. 200,000 miles of CONSTANT abuse and still going strong!