Big Twin Services
Words and Pics: Clink

There is little doubt that the Harley-Davidson market reached its saturation point around the middle Nineties. The Company were making money and the product was the best that it had been since moustache wax and spats were in fashion. But with success comes complacency and a kind of arrogance that is unfortunately born out of success. Riding high on the wave of fiscal reward created by the new epoch of Milwaukee machinery and the ready-to-wear lifestyle created by Harley-Davidson's grin and grip men a new breed of motorcycle dealership was created that put the sartorial elegance of the Harley nouveau before the mechanical needs of the Harley ancien. The outcome was that although you could walk into a Harley-Davidson dealership and buy everything from a brand new bike to a 'factory authorized' bandana or kit yourself out with enough designer badd-ass schmutter to make Rodney the estate agent look like a sanitised caricature of Charger Charlie the child molester, a request at the parts counter for anything made before the middle Eighties was greeted with laughter or a blank stare. All of which was great news for the people who chose to buy a life as well as a motorcycle, but for the owners of Shovelheads and ironhead Sportsters, (or god-forbid anything earlier), a showroom full of piggy banks, toilet seat covers and aftershave is about as much use as a bacon sandwich at a bar mitzvah when you need a primary gasket or a top-end overhaul set for your 1976 FXE. This reluctance to soil their hands on anything that didn't come wrapped in a bubble pack left a niche for the sort of people who knew more about the mechanical aspects of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle than the variations in Harley-Davidson T-shirt sizes.

Big Twin Services of Southport are one of these new/old bike shops that don't sell Harley-Davidson 'authorized' under-arm deodorant or bar and shield cuff links - but do sell quality service and performance products and will repair, restore or customise any Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Now in their tenth year of business, Big Twin Services have built-up an enviable reputation for mechanical excellence and quality workmanship based on their original ideal to concentrate on the mechanical and bespoke customising side of the trade and leave the baubles and bolt-on business to the people who think that Harley-Davidson invented motorcycles in 1984. Owned and run by two guys who actually owned, rode, repaired and customised Harleys long before they decided to go into business together, Ants Tomkins and Dave Francis have over forty years of combined experience of what makes Harley-Davidson motorcycles tick. With a mechanical background in the bike trade before working as a factory trained mechanic in an 'authorized' Harley-Davidson dealership for a number of years before setting up Big Twin Services with Ants, Dave Francis is one of the few people that have their fingers inside my own Harley engines both before and since his time at Big Twin.

Besides repair and routine service work and the restoration and custom projects Big Twin are also authorised agents for not only the big guns in the aftermarket and custom parts business such as Zodiac and CCI, but also the more exclusive and specialist manufacturers like the excellent Teutonic products of Forever Stainless and Roland Stocker. And for the man who must have Willie G's signature on his underpants, Genuine Harley-Davidson parts are also available to order at competitive prices. But not all of the custom and performance parts supplied by Big Twin Services come out of box or from the pages of a catalogue, many of the one-off components that go into their rebuild and custom projects, such as billet aluminium yokes and big rear wheel conversions, can be designed and supplied to individual specification.

Despite having a reputation for being able to sort out pre-Evolution Harleys and enable them keep the liquid engineering on the inside of the engine, (especially Shovelheads), the work carried out by Big Twin Services is probably more Evo-orientated these days and despite farming out the paintwork, chroming and machinework to reliable outside sources, such is their ability with the Snap-Ons that BTS are commissioned to carry out the mechanical work for other un-authorized Harley dealers such as The Trading Post. Also carried out in their new workshops are complete nut and bolt restorations and full-blown custom Harleys with bikes from BTS often appearing in the pages of custom bike magazines, their most recent projects taking the jug for best lump of Milwaukee metal at the Bentham Custom Show and the accolade of Best Shovelhead at this year's Harley Riders of Great Britain bash.

… to put it simply, Big Twin Services do exactly what it says on the sign.

Big Twin Services live at:
169-171 Hart Street, Southport, PR8 6DY.
Phone 01704 380883.