While the majority of the American custom motorcycle scene is still infatuated with the long, low, drop-seat, super-wide tire, heavy-on-the-sheetmetal style of bike (not that there's anything wrong with that), there's been a small group of builders going old school. No, we're not talking '50s-'70s bobbers and choppers old school. We're talking 1916-1934 boardtracker/speedway racer old school. This olde-tyme, racing-inspired style of bike isn't just an American trend, though-it's been quietly burning overseas as well. And we were lucky enough to catch one such creation from former Swedish Speedway racer turned bike builder Stellan Egeland of SE Service.
After nearly running away with the top spot at the '06 AMD Official World Championships of Custom Bike Building in Sturgis last year, Stellan began planning an exceptionally mechanical machine that would hopefully crown him the '07 AMD World Champion. Communicating via email, we were able to get Stellan's story of how this very technically engineered Speedway bike came to be.
As soon as I came back to the motel room in Hill City, SD, after placing third in the 2006 AMD World Championship in Sturgis with my bike "Esox Lucius," I started thinking about my next bike. I have always been a fan of Speedway bikes as I had a short career in that sport (often ending up at the hospital). One of the ideas that I had was to build a Speedway bike that looked like it was from the '20s or '30s. Editor's note: In 1934 Harley came out with the light and spindly CAC Speedway Racer, a 500cc single cylinder machine with no brakes or clutch, a 16.5:1 compression ratio, and 6,000 rpm rev limit-perfect for pitching into tight turns on oval dirt tracks.
Since I love mechanical stuff and being able to look at a machine where you can see how everything works, I wanted to build a bike with as many parts exposed as possible. When I came home to Sweden I got a phone call from a guy named Thomas Grandell, who said he saw my bike in a magazine and just loved it. He said he had the same type of headlight that I used on the bike and he wanted to give it to me.
He came by to give me the headlight and we were talking bikes for a while. Thomas said his father had a lot of old cylinder heads with open valve arrangements, and if I wanted to we could go and have a look at them.
Dead man's grip: if the bike...
Dead man's grip: if the bike doesn't kill you, the woman might.
We went to his father, and he had a lot of old British bikes. We decided to cast our own set of heads with one of his heads as a reference. I made a template from bondo and went to the foundry. When I got my castings they had no cooling fins and no channels. Thomas milled the fins pretty rough, and I grinded them until they were conical like cooling fins should be. Next, I drilled the channels and ported them.