The 100,000-square-foot Vance...
The 100,000-square-foot Vance & Hines Racing facility was already beginning to fill up with stock when we visited last year, and the company already has another 100,000-square-foot building under construction next door. Business is obviously good for company CEO (and multi-time motorcycle dragracing champion) Terry Vance.
The V-Rod components are made inside the Vance & Hines Racing facility in the Indy suburb of Brownsburg, Indiana, a massive 100,000-square-foot building that houses the R&D unit for VHR, as well as the manufacturing and warehousing facility for the company’s performance exhausts — i.e., sportbike, off-road, and dragrace (with another 100,000-square-foot building under construction next door…business is obviously going well for VHR). The engine assembly/testing room is filled with numerous customer and team Pro Stock powerplants in various states of construction; naturally, many engines and their components had strategically placed shop rags to conceal proprietary technology during our visit. “Most horsepower is made on the intake side, so a lot of our development technology goes into that area,” said Krawiec. Adjacent to the engine assembly room are four self-contained engine dynos, with three containing each type of engine VHR works on: Harley-Davidson V-Rod in one, Buell in another, and four-cylinder (Suzuki, Kawasaki) engines in the third.
A 385-horsepower V-Rod PSM...
A 385-horsepower V-Rod PSM engine ready for work on one of the VHR dyno cells. Note the machined-from-billet engine cases, cylinders, and cylinder heads, as well as the lack of water jackets on the cylinders; because the engines only run for a minute or less at a time, there’s no need for a cooling medium.
A customer’s four-cylinder...
A customer’s four-cylinder Pro Stock engine set up on one of the VHR dynos. Vance & Hines puts just as much work and attention to detail in their customer engines, and they aren’t brand specific.
A Buell (basically an S&S...
A Buell (basically an S&S Racing design) push-rod engine ready to go on the VHR dyno. Rags cover the intakes; a good majority of the horsepower is made there, and VHR wants to protect its secrets.
The engine assembly room and the R&D unit are endowed with the latest high-tech CNC machining and fabrication equipment available, enabling custom application components to be designed and manufactured in-house. “We’ll go head-to-head with any NASCAR race shop as far as our CNC fabrication facilities,” boasts Krawiec. And as you’d expect, Krawiec and crew keep a very clean house (unless they’d spent a week cleaning and detailing the place before our visit…doubtful considering how much work looked to be underway inside); you could practically eat off the workbenches and floors.
The engine assembly room of the Vance & Hines Racing facility, with some of the dyno rooms visible in the background. Note that tarps and rags cover most of the engines under assembly; like any top racing company, VHR is very protective of its speed secrets.
The race shop’s abilities aren’t just limited to the NHRA Pro Stock machines. “We’re a high performance shop,” said Krawiec. “We don’t just do dragracing stuff. We are heavily involved with Supercross cylinder head work, AMA roadracing. We used to even do some import car cylinder heads years ago, but we’ve pulled back from that because we’re focusing more on the motorcycle side of things now. It’s not just dragracing for us.”
The collection of NHRA “Wally”...
The collection of NHRA “Wally” trophies (traditional trophy given to each winner of an NHRA event class) in the Vance & Hines Racing offices looks to be getting out of control…
Yet dragracing is obviously where Vance & Hines’ reputation as major league speed merchants was — and continues to be — built. The NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle category currently has four “brands” competing in the series, and the rules are constantly juggled in an attempt to maintain parity among the participants. Initially, the Screamin’ Eagle Harley-Davidson V-Rods were struggling to make the field when they first appeared, so not much attention was paid to them. But they quickly became a force to be reckoned with as the Vance & Hines team’s development began to pay off, and soon the V-Rods found themselves saddled with increasing amounts of weight ballast when it became apparent that the bikes had an advantage (of course, the V-twins already are given a massive displacement advantage over the four-cylinders — 160 cubic inches/2622cc versus 101 cubic inches/1655cc — and the V-Rods are allowed four valves per cylinder while the Buell and fours can only run two, but that’s another story).
“Because we’re that much heavier than the other guys” — the Vance & Hines Harley V-Rods were slapped with an additional 20-pound weight penalty after both Krawiec and Hines dominated the 2012 season-opening Gatornationals at Gainesville, Florida in March, making them 45 pounds heavier than the Buells, and 65 pounds heavier than the four-cylinder machines — “our transmissions take a lot of abuse. It’s mostly drivetrain wear components that we have to service. The clutch isn’t really a concern, it’s mostly the stress you put on all the gears. We change out our transmissions after 25-30 runs regardless, because we’ve had them break at 35-40 runs, so we don’t push the envelope.”
In addition to the race shop,...
In addition to the race shop, the Vance & Hines facility at Indy also handles the manufacture and warehousing of its high performance exhaust systems, such as sportbikes, off-road, and dragrace setups.
Of course, pushing the performance envelope is what the Vance & Hines Screamin’ Eagle Harley-Davidson team shoots for whenever they head to the track, and they’ve been doing a lot of it lately. Krawiec won his second NHRA Pro Stock title in 2011 (teammate Hines has won three), and at the Gatornationals in March, Krawiec flirted with becoming the first rider to break the 200 mph barrier after reportedly exceeding the double ton in testing. Unfortunately, he didn’t set the speed record during his dominating performance in Florida — he led each round of qualifying and won four elimination heats in addition to winning the final, making him only the second racer to achieve the maximum 150 points for a weekend since the NHRA began awarding points for qualifying — but Krawiec did set the new ET record of 6.750 seconds during the third round.
Needless to say, when it comes to NHRA Pro Stock motorcycle dragracing, the Vance & Hines legacy — in both the bikes throughout the field, as well as the record books — isn’t going to fade away anytime soon. SR