We all know that not so far down inside the engines of the bikes we ride is a tethered animal waiting to get out: stifled to meet the requirements of emissions legislation and the noise abatement society.

Despite appearances to the contrary, riders of American Vees like a little high performance now and again and there are two ways of getting to the traffic lights that little bit quicker next time. One – the easy way – is to supplement your American Vee with a Japanese hypersports bike, but that is often seen as cheating, while the other is much, much more fun and involves getting your hands dirty with carb mods, tuned exhausts, ignition upgrades, turbo and superchargers and nitrous oxide injection. But where, in all that lot, do you start. What gives what, and at what price to your pocket, or indeed to you bike's overall usability.

These are the questions we intend to to answer, because someone's got to make sense of the massive amount of information out there. By talking to the people who do this for a living, and by going through the theory and comparing it to the practice we're going to explode a few myths and hopefully not engines.