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INDUSTRY EXTRA
T.R.Riser
Reiser,
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For T.R. Reiser motorcycles are really in his blood. He’s a second generation rider
and racer who grew up working in motorcycle dealerships. The knowledge and
experience he has gained over those early years led him to create T-Man
Performance, a company recognized as specializing in getting the most from a
V-twin engine. AMD’s Brian Marion found out more about what it takes to reach
the highest levels of Harley performance work
Interview by
Brian Marion
[email protected]
o understand T.R. you have to start with
his father. As a kid, T.R.'s father, Tom
Reiser, was the General Manager at A.D.
Farrow in Columbus Ohio, the oldest Harley
dealer in the country and a champion racer. His
father’s racing successes included the 1968 Drag
World Championship with an ET of 9.26 seconds
and a top speed of 154.4 mph. He also had
wins in hill climb events taking National
Championships in 1964, 1992 and 1993. But it
T
Written by
Duncan Moore
[email protected]
was when his father left Farrow’s to start his
own shop, Reiser Cycle Service, that T.R. began
his motorcycle career. No spoiled child, T.R.
swept the floors all the while watching and
learning and slowly being allowed to turn
wrenches. By the time he was a teen, T.R. had
also followed his father into racing.
At 15, T.R. began competing in hill climbs on a
250 CR Sprint. After two years he had outgrown
the Sprint, so his dad put him on his 88ci stroker
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AMERICAN MOTORCYCLE DEALER - MAY 2008
61
INDUSTRY EXTRA
Sportster. The result was impressive, the first
time out on the bike he had the fastest time of
the day, going on to win the district
championship. Such was his passion for racing
that the following year (1978) he took to
campaigning a 360 Bultaco Astro as an amateur
Dirt Track racer, gaining his Pro license a year
later. In 1980 he was runner up in the Canadian
National Hill Climb Championship. And when
his father was unable to race because of an
injury, T.R. took over the gas unlimited bike
winning the final two hill climbs. The following
year they built a gas unlimited Championship
bike. Riding this bike, T.R. won every event he
entered in 1981 including the Invitational
National Championship at York, Pennsylvania,
going on to become the AMA Grand National
Champion of the Unlimited Class.
n the early ‘80s, T.R. went to work as a
motorcycle mechanic and after completing
training at Harley School, went to work as a
line mechanic at A.D. Farrow. After a few
years he decided he wanted a break from
bikes and went to work in the aircraft industry
at McDonald Douglas for one and a half years.
It was time well spent, as it was there that he
learned the skills needed to work in a machine
shop. But the aero industry held no passion
for him and T.R. was beginning to get
interested in Harley performance work but
knew he had more to learn. His answer to this
problem was to send his resume to Dan
Baisley, one of the leading cylinder head
porters. By a strange twist of fate, that
resume found its way to Danny Fitzmaurice at
Zipper’s Performance who offered T.R. a
position. T.R. takes up the story: “I began
there as a line mechanic doing engine installs,
but my interest was in head work, so I was
soon able to move to the porting room and
then to the engine build room.”
y 1991, after two years with Zipper’s, T.R.
took a job at the home office of the
Easyriders franchise. He not only ran the
Columbus Ohio Service and Performance Center
but used his machine shop experience to set up
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62
AMERICAN MOTORCYCLE DEALER - MAY 2008
INDUSTRY EXTRA
new franchises across the country with their
service and machine centers. However, this was
a period when custom bikes with only minor
hop-ups were the norm and Harley was
discouraging its dealers from offering
performance work. T.R. knew that there was a
market for performance and began doing this
specialty work on his own time. With each job
he reinvested that money into buying needed
machinery and the seeds of the business, which
would become T-Man Performance, were sown.
trip to Sturgis in 1996 proved to be a
milestone for T.R. “I won the King of the
Hill and Street Bike Shootout drag races and met
Martha Delaney, who worked for the sanction,
and would become my wife,” he says. That
marriage meant a move to North Carolina
where T.R. took a job in Greensboro at the
Easyriders franchise on a one-year contract that
allowed him to continue doing cylinder head
work. A year later he moved into the current
home of T-Man Performance and officially set up
his own shop. The facility was originally 2,800
sq ft, but it has now doubled in size. The plan is
to use the expanded area to run training
seminars for the dealers who use T-Man
performance kits. T.R. explains the reasoning for
training: “We want people to be happy with our
kits, and for them to be happy they need to
produce the numbers (engine output figures),
and that’s what we’ll assist them in doing. We
use Power Commander, Race Tuner and
A
ThunderMax, each of which has a special niche.”
It is planned that the training programs will run
during the summer months, which are
traditionally a quieter time for engine builders.
In the past this time has been used by T.R. for
research and development and to work on
restocking inventory. Alongside the CNC ported
cylinder heads, which established the business’
reputation, T-Man Performance also offers their
own cams, pistons, big bore kits and manifolds.
Additional machining services include engine
case and cylinder head repairs, engine boring
and rebuilds, an area which T.R. particularly cares
about: “When an engine leaves the shop it’s my
reputation and the reputation of the shop that
goes with it, that’s why I do all the builds.”
hile the engine builds are done in-house,
many of the other parts are brought in.
T.R.’s reasoning is that: “We try to utilize the
W
best people in our industry. There’s no sense in
me trying to make a throttle body when
Horsepower, Inc already makes a good one.”
It is this working with other companies, to
utilize each other strengths, where T.R. sees the
future of the performance industry. He
explains: “In the next few years it’s going to
take small companies working together to stay
successful. That, and customer service, after all,
in the end all we have is our name so it pays to
keep a good reputation.” Looking into the
future T.R. has no plans to diversify the product
line, but to continue improving on it,
concentrating on what he knows best. He
explains: “We’re never going to manufacture
our own engine. We do best by enhancing
what is already there. Why try and reinvent the
wheel when there’s 100,000s of Harleys out
there that we can enhance.”
T.R.takes
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T-MAN PERFORMANCE
Kernersville, North Carolina, USA
Tel: 336 993 7068
Fax: 336 993 7082
E-mail: [email protected]
www.tmanperformance.com
AMERICAN MOTORCYCLE DEALER - MAY 2008
63