The Harry Barlow Interview © 1997

Harry Barlow’s name first came to my attention 5 years ago (1992) when a guy down the road from me showed me his RD400 Earlystocks racer. Plastered in Pro Porting stickers I was informed it was tuned by Harry. I had never heard of him then, and was not to hear of him for a long while later as Harry went off to the States to make his fortune.

Harry’s name started popping up again on the Internet, then I heard he had come back to the UK. Next thing I know, Julian is on the phone having spoken to Harry and an interview is duly arranged with the tuner who probably has the best knowledge of getting more power from an RD. How does 86bhp at the rear wheel grab you? By the short and curlys for sure!!!! So where did it all start...?

Harry: "It started off with the interesting bikes back in the early 70’s. The mid 70’s spawned the moped craze. It was a big influence on everybody, because Britain was doing well with road racing at the time, especially Sheene in ‘74, ‘75. Nothing influenced the general public more about motorcycling and has never done since. Hoards of sports mopeds, especially Italian ones came out. I saved up enough money working Saturdays to buy a Garelli Tigercross. It had a big carb, so I knew it was good for power. I even thought technically then. I’d been on loads of mopeds and the Garelli was torquey and fast. That’s how I got started, technically, in how to make them go faster. Not all engines are created equal and there has to be a reason why one is better than the other. I was a design student on my way to University to do a design degree and I just had this fascination. I got books on 2-stroke tuning, scoured libraries, bookshops. I had huge collection of early books, but I gave them to another student and never got them back.

Julian: "You’ve obviously got a very enquiring mind, are there any other interests in your life or are motorbikes your whole life?”

Harry: "“;Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. I think the only way to focus... you have to be fanatical if you want to do well. Fanatical sounds like a hard word to use, but it’s almost true. You know, I get a kick out of reading stuff I’ve not read before, technical stuff, my brain is like a sponge. There is so much technical information out there now in terms of modern 2 stroke development, it’s incredible. Billions, not millions, billions, of $ have been spent on developing 2 stroke engines world-wide in the last 15-20 years. and the 2 stroke engine will be the future for this planet because the emissions now on a 2 stroke are way less than any 4 stroke. And that’ a fact. The ideal automotive 2 stroke is around 400cc per cylinder and triples are the way to go. You can utilise the exhaust tuning characteristics to enhance power. There’s a whole SAE paper on it. Back to my influences, we got side-tracked there slightly.”

Ric: "“;Where did you move on from your Garelli?”

Harry: ”From the mopeds it went to either a BSA Starfire for ฃ250, or a RD200 in bits for less. So I picked the RD200. It was absolutely dead fast when I got it, but problems with regulator and rectifier and the charging system and the main bearing wearing the brushes out. The rotor weight on the end of the crank a whopper and it just hurts the crank till it falls apart. After that I moved on to a DS7, a stolen recovered one, cheap, around £100. I threw it together, it was nice. Nice handling, TT100s on it.”

Ric: "”Were you doing your tuning work by that point?”

Harry: "“;Oh yeah that was tuned. The 200 was tuned as well. Both of them had modified ports. I didn’t know anything about transfers. In 1978 Motorcycle mechanics had an article on pipes for an RD250DX and they got 28% more power. Within 2 weeks of the article coming out I had made a set of pipes for the DS7 and it transformed it. It absolutely flew. The pipes fell apart, I didn’t even get home from Loughborough because I’d brazed them together. I didn’t know how to weld or anything then. I knew how to braze, so I brazed them and they fell apart on a regular basis. It was a rocket ship. It must’ve pulled 110-112 actual I guess. After that I moved onto a 350 YR5 top end on a 6 speed 250B bottom end with stock 250B pipes. That was an absolute rocket, very nice. Standard porting, very economical. I learnt a lot then. I knew what to do and what not to do, like if you want to keep the midrange, then don’t raise the exhaust. And I learnt a bit about transfers and the basics about carburation and pipes. That was when it really started taking off.

I started doing some tuning for Webbs Yamaha in Lincoln while I was at university. I was on a jewellery and silversmithing course at Loughborough. When I had the 350B, the carburation was terrible. It just didn’t carburate, like they don’t on a stock 400 when you take off all the airbox, you get a horrendous richness in the midrange, so I played with the needles, bored the carbs out to 29mm and I started playing with carburation. I knew what the carb did, didn’t know why, but in the goal to get a linear response across the range I started making jets in jewellery class. I was pulling out the ball bearings in the front of the air corrector hole and making jets. We had all the facilities the drills and stuff, I was cutting down 5mm brass screws and drilling them out and I learnt. You know you put them in, pull them out, go up the road and ‘oh that killed it stone dead’ and you ended up learning what worked and what didn’t work. I left university to start a business through a bike shop in Leicester. That lasted about 3 years. When that finished, about that time 7 other bike shops went down in Leicester as well. It was like bike sales peaked in the late 70’s... 79-80.. 3 years later there was a drastic fall in bike sales. Bikes were perceived as being too expense. When the first LCs came out at ฃ1000 it was like ‘Holy cow! They’re expensive!’ We were into aircooleds at that time and I was tuning a lot of LCs, thrashing LCs round Mallory Park, getting real close to the lap record. 0.8 seconds off the lap record during practice. I wish I’d road raced then, but I had no money, no brains. I could ride, but had no idea how to run a business back then, bearing in mind what I was doing tuning wise was winning races. It won National championships which is the only way you measure yourself against other people. Then I sat back for a bit working in factories and that, doing a little tuning. Then I came back in 86/87 and built my first RD drag bike with the sole idea of if I could make this bike win at National level I could do the formation of a business solely based on this fact. I’d helped people on 4 strokes in the Ultimate Streetbike Series, so I was trying to become an all round tuner, mainly doing 2 strokes of course.”

Ric: "“;You do all sorts?”

Harry: "“;God lord yeah! You’ll see in a minute in the garage, big 4 valve Suzuki in there now”

Ric: "”Your favourite’s the RD though?”

Harry: "“;Favourite’s the RD, of all time”

Ric: "”And you fell on them by chance because the RD200 was cheap?”

Harry: "”Yeah [laugh]. No, no the reasoning was that even then I was a bit of a Yamaha freak. I liked the racing TZs, they were the mainstay of the racing classes of the time. And you had the oh so juicy photos of Robert’s 500, that it had to be Yamaha. If you look back it was so stereotype at the time. You think you’re unique, but you’re one of a thousand other people who thought on the same lines with the same influences, the racing success of Yamaha. I’ve never looked back since I started tuning the 400s and getting 10 second times. It’s a big eye opener for anybody even with a big bike and when you run alongside a 1260 Suzuki and you beat them, it’s like they can’t believe you’re running neck and neck. They’re coming on you at the top end, but off the line and through the middle they can’t gain one inch on you and they’re thrashing this 1260 to death. And at the top end you got there before them and they come roaring by 10-15 mph quicker, but it’s all too late! It’s really weird. It’s a cool thing.

Harry fetched out several photo albums complete with timing tickets and took us through the drag racing years.

Harry: "“;This is the first bike...an ally tail piece, 34mm carbs, road race top end, pipes going underneath. This was in the Ultimate Streetbike Series back in ‘87. The first time out at York dragway I only went 12.85secs but the best terminal was 120mph, arecord back then! That bike spawned this with the pipes round the side. These were very effective, some of the best I’ve ever made in terms of horsepower, although I didn’t know it at the time. round the side. These were very effective, some of the best I’ve ever made in terms of horsepower, although I didn’t know it at the time. I went back to these later after I did some dyno work. At Blyton in ‘88 I got a new class record of 11.18s for 2 stroke twins. Things plataued at 11 seconds. By now the thing was making well over 70hp rear wheel. We started changing carbs around. I put 38mm Lectrons on and took it out on the street. Look at the licence plate there... It was a wild ride and I got the airshifter on... that was a buzz on the street. You could do 6 or 7 gear changes, then it was empty! But the Lectrons made it pull like a jet. This then spawned a new bike. It’s got a longer lower chassis, different pipes. This was a lot quicker, right on the limit... 11.07s. It was winning quite a lot of stuff. I couldn’t get into the 10’s though, it was a real pain. We just couldn’t get the traction. Then I wheeled out this one. Home built chassis, new bodywork, 6” Astralite rim, very trick bit of kit, it took two of us a week to build the chassis. The blown pipes were worse than the earlier ones. It was a fairy tale debut... the traction because of the big tyre took it straight into the 10’s. I was getting new records... here 10.78s. Anyway let’s carry on with the new one. It was plain sailing after I built this sucker. Look at this 10.5s, 10.4s 129.35mph. It was flying. The new pipes were working. Here it is rocketing down at 10.34s 126.4mph. Well that was a potted history of the drag racing. Sharron Lloyd took over because I was winning everything and people were moaning about it basically. No lie, coz when you dominate something the rest just get pissed off. Sharron rode the bike in the 2 stroke twin class. She was brilliant. She got down to 10.4s at 128mph an won the UK Two-stroke Superstreet Championship in ‘92 pissing off a lot of guys! Pretty impressive.“; Harry produced a copy of Superbike with the last big yellow drag bike on the cover. Harry: ”This is the article that got things going, in Superbike. The phone didn’t stop ringing for days after the article came out. The bike was influenced by Tom Turner’s bike which appeared in Superbike in November ‘86 and I was going ‘Wow! I can do something like that’. Tom holds the World Record at 9.67seconds. He reckons on his bike making 87hp at the crank. I think it was producing more.”

Harry with the record breaking drag bike.
(Picture courtesy of George Saxby)

Ric: "“;Can you tell us more about Pro Porting?”

Harry: "“;Pro Porting was started at the beginning of 1990 and ‘closed’ at the end of 1992 when I went off to the States. It grew out of the work that came through the drag racing, it was what I had planned to do from the start. I started up on the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, it was brilliant, ฃ2,000 for nowt is not to be sniffed at! I was doing everything, even tuning scooters for scooter racing. The business moved on mainly to tuning for road racing. The engines were winning literally hundreds of races in National championships”

Ric: "“;You were quite dominant in Early Stocks and Forgotten Era.”

Harry: "“;Oh yes, I was tuning all sorts of bikes, mainly 2 strokes like RGVs, TZRs, you name it, but that’s where the RDs were. One year there were about 3 bikes with my tune, the next there was about 10 or 12. Everyone came to me, it cost serious amounts of money for the tuning, but it worked. In the 3 years, the RD engines became very highly developed, we dynoed 66 rear wheel horses on the race tunes.”

Ric: "“;What made you go out to the States?”

Harry: "“;I went out there to write an article on Star Racing for Superbike magazine. I just got some compensation through from an accident, which allowed me a cushion to piss off from the shop for 2 weeks and I’d never been to the States before. I’d got on well on the phone with George and Jackie Bryce talking about tuning 4 strokes and curiosity made me want to go out there and interview them and see what they were doing out there. I went out there to see how they’d set up their business in Georgia. I arrived at New Jersey, met them there, drove down to Georgia and across to Dallas and then back home. But in the meantime Jackie said ‘How much do you want?’. I thought about it, they were offering less than I was earning here, so I took a cut in wages to learn a new skill with the thought of if I liked it over there, I’d settle over there. But that didn’t work out for various reasons. I did 3 years with Star, living in the South. Florida was a more cosmopolitan place than Georgia. I started tuning Powervalves out there mainly and did some 4 stroke work, Star were doing 4 stroke engines for road racing. And I got back in to road racing, I hadn’t done it for years and years.”

Julian: "“;When you were at Star Racing tuning 4 stokes, did you ever consider racing a 4 stroke?”

Harry: "“; Yeah, they wanted me to race a 4 stroke locally. They actually had a Kawasaki 1000 waiting for me, to work on and turn into a drag bike for myself. But I had absolutely no interest, I just could get interested in it. I wanted to bring the RD400 drag bike, in it’s last incarnation, over to the States, and I did that. At vast expense. 600 quid one way. I took that out there but there was no one to race with. It was too hot actually, in the South they race right up to midnight. They actually start at 4 in the afternoon because it is so hot. I was on my own which was really sad, because I was used to racing with a big bunch of people and having some fun and that is part of racing. Part of racing is the camaraderie, everybody having a like interest, like the Aircooled RD Club is now. But out there, having a 2 stroke drag bike is alien. It was so different there was no one to hang out with. Then I met a 2 stroke racer down in Florida, Jay Tackett. A very nice guy. Sharron and I met him at Gainsville dragwayin Florida and I met Dave Pecoraro there as well, 2 fellow RD drag racers and we’ve been friends ever since.

Julian: "“;What happened after your time at Star Racing?”

Harry: "“;I eventually moved on from Star, but things didn’t work out at the new place, so I decided to come back to England. My goal now is to have the quickest RD in the UK again, to make a 9 second run with a street tyre and then put a slick and wheely bar on it, and go for the World Record, which by the way stands at 9.67s. @ 137mph. So we’ll see! It’s a goal I’ve not achieved. I’ve had records before, which have obviously been surpassed and now it’s time to come back, and basically after my 3 year PhD at Star Racing learning all about 4 strokes, it’s time to capitalise on what I know, yet do what I want to do in life, which is run his RD into the 9’s and get some acclaim for that. That would spawn magazine articles, it’ll spawn all sorts of spin offs from that. Any time you got something that’s quickest in the world, it always generates interest and interest becomes work and the goal is to set up here completely so I can do everything. Cranks, rebuilds, TIG welding the lot. I want to be able to say if you want a cylinder created and a sleeve put in, ‘I can do it’ from the word go. The work is sporadic and the work is sparse, but if you can do everything to a very high standard, I think it’ll work as the formation of a business. It worked before. The emphasis now is living over here, going to the US maybe twice a year to go racing at Daytona. I don’t normally go racing, there’s got to be a dire reason for me to go racing if there’s not a chance of winning. I like to go out there and have a chance of winning.“;

Julian: "“;You’re not into making up numbers then?”

Harry: "“;No, there’s got to be a chance of winning for me to be interested. I’m not really a big egotist. I get the kick out of designing, building, racing and winning and doing all four things. To sit down, take a chunk of metal and transforming it with all your own ideas and start at A and get to B. The whole trip is a big trip. And selling that product is the way of financing that in the first place.”

Ric: "”So Pro Porting is still going?”

Harry: "It’s now Pro Porting International, I’m also setting up a tuning business in the States. I’m now developing some RD400 street pipes on my own RD400, my only street bike at present, these will be on sale in ‘97 when I’m happy with the looks and performance.They will be better than anything currently available and quiet to! They’ll give a better top end, but hopefully not loose out too much on the bottom and mid range. You’ll lose some off the bottom, no question, but it shouldn’t be too bad. I’m also developing an over-the-counter, reliable tune for the 400. It’ll be really torquey, work on unleaded fuel. I also want to do a ‘weekend’ tune with 50hp rear wheel. I’ll still be doing the road race tuning as well. I can do 250 and 350 stuff too. I’ve had 49hp from an aircooled 250, no problem.”

Harry's Record Breaking Engine
(Picture courtesy of George Saxby)

So there you have it, if you knew Harry before, hopefully you now know him even better. If you didn’t know him, then you surely do now! This interview only skimmed the depths of the mind of a man with the dedication to getting RD400’s going faster than any other aircooled 2 stroke twin on the planet. Harry can be contacted at Pro Porting International on +44 (0)116 287 1285.

Copyright 1997 Aircooled RD Club.
No part of this interview may be reproduced by any means without prior consent of the publishers.
Interviewers:- Ric Naylor and Julian Pugsley
Photo's:- George F. Saxby

©  Geo of K.G.B. of T & T.