52 cmm ✪ September 2012

WITHOUT WHOM...

PowerhouseAutomotive

53www.classicmechanics.com ✪ cmm

You can almost sense the happyfrustration at PowerhouseAutomotive. Here is a relatively

new company, built solidly on no-nonsenseYorkshire principles, that knows how tomake a bike fly, but for some reason inmodern classic circles, is better known formaking a bike stop well.Like many of us, you may have

searched the likes of eBay to find thosebrake calipers you needed for yourproject, only to find the ones you get backare knackered, corroded and very second-hand. Well, Powerhouse Automotive offersa service where you send in the gummedup brakes and receive a professionallyoverhauled set in return. Perfect for thoseof us who want a quick turnaround. Infact, the service seems a little too perfectif the huge pile of calipers that sit in theparts washer are anything to go by.But this wasn’t what Powerhouse

Automotive was originally set up for.Owner Lawson Smith explains: “We set upin September 2010, and the name showsthat we were originally going to befocused on engine tuning and dyno work.

Soon this busy market began to tail off. Atfirst you’d have a three-week wait to get adyno slot, but not anymore. We’ve recentlymoved and there’s been no rush to getthe dyno installed! It’s just not asimportant as it used to be.“We try and focus on engine rebuilds,

cylinder head porting specialist things,really. We’re not competing with the top-end performance tuning houses but justtry and do everything we can do – and doit well. We do machining and generallyrepair and fix things that most maindealers can’t do. What we can’t handleourselves, like media stripping or powdercoating, we know good subcontractorswho can. We have high standards sowhen we sub stuff out we want good jobsdone by the best people.”Today Powerhouse Automotive does

plenty of servicing and performance work,as well as a dash of classic stuff as seenby what is currently in for fettling: anFJ1100 motor awaits a full rebuild, a1990s ZZ-R1100 is in the middle of anitrous power boost, while a SuzukiSP400 lump awaits restoration. W

ords:

Bertie

Sim

monds

Pho

tos:

CMM

A relatively new company, Powerhouse Automotive is big inall things braking, but can’t half make a bike ‘go’ too.

54 cmm ✪ September 2012

So what’s the story with the nitrous?Lawson says: “We get a few club racerscoming in for head work on their bikes,road riders want more power, and carpeople too. We’ve become known for ournitrous work. I first had it on a Rover SD1Vitesse. It had a 4.6 litre big valve head,different fuel injection – it was an old330bhp 1980s car with 370lb-ft oftorque. Then I added more than 250bhpof nitrous to it... it soon makes yourealise how quick something can be.“We’ve fitted systems to lots of cars

but there are a few bikers who go for ittoo. I work closely with Trevor Langfield,from Wizards of NOS. He was a dragracer who was using American stuff, buthe soon decided he could do better. He’sa fascinating character who sadly lost aleg while riding at the Isle of Man, heknows his stuff and we’re both madYorkshiremen really.”This particular mad Yorkshireman was

late into bikes. “I had a protectivemother, so got into bikes in my mid-twenties,” says Lawson. “Fiddling andfettling came naturally as my father wasan engineer. I dismantled a Suffolk Punchlawnmower at 11 and this eventually led

to both a career in the RAF as a graduatemechanical engineer and working at afriend’s bike shop at weekends. I lovedthe 18 years in the RAF, playing with allthe toys and working with people of suchhigh calibre, but I was enjoying theweekend work and wanted to be ‘hands-on’ again, as more of my RAF time wasengineering management: hence startingup Powerhouse Automotive.”Joining Lawson at Powerhouse

Automotive is Dave Cattell, who is the 20-year-old apprentice. Interestingly, it mustbe a happy ship, because while Lawsondeclares Dave is ‘…a real find, a good ladand doing well on his apprenticeship,’Dave says Lawson is the best boss he’sever worked for, as: ‘...in winter he letsme put a reptile heater in the parts

washer.’ The reptile heaters were left overfrom Powerhouse Automotive’s ‘securitystaff’, two boa constrictors.But let’s get back to the bikes, the ZZ-

R1100 is a classic 1990s machine, nowcheap as chips but as hairy-chested asever, power-wise and more so with aPowerhouse laughing-gas boost. Lawsonsays: “This ZZ-R is jetted for a 50bhpboost and has a bottle of nitrous thatgives around 1min 20sec of boost – intwo to three second bursts. When peopleask is it safe, you have to remember mybackground is in aeronautical engineeringwhere the safety factor for parts isaround 20%, it has to be that low or theywould not get off the ground. In goodsvehicles it can be as high as 700% andfor cars and bikes around 100% so the

I hada protectIve mother,so gotInto bIkes In my mId-twentIes.FIddlIngand FettlIng came naturallyas my Fatherwasan engIneer

Dave Cattell, top boyscout leader andapprentice at PowerhouseAutomotive loosens offsome seriously tightcaliper bolts

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components are all much stronger thanthey need to be for reliability. So tuningengines is all about trimming away at thatsafety factor. For the limits of what youcan do, a good rule of thumb is that youwant no more than 25% extra poweroutput over the standard bike so it willnot put undue stress on the engine. Myown Kawasaki ZX-12R runs 60bhp boost,giving me 230-240bhp at the wheel. It’ssmooth power and makes theacceleration in third gear, feel likesecond, and so on. It makes for apractical performance increase and wecan do the refills too.”And then there are the little things that

nitrous can help with. Dave explains:“Having the nitrous oxide bottles heremeans you can easily free off stuckcaliper pistons. Compressed air is around100psi, but with this we have 600psi orclose to 800 on a warm day. We’ve onlyever had one set of pistons that havestuck after a blast of nitrous.”Which begs the question, just how bad

are the calipers that some people sendin? “It depends, but some are so bad,you can see that the pistons have beenattacked with molegrips and the pistonsthemselves are chewed up,” says Dave.“Once a guy brought us some that heswore came off a bike that had recentlypassed an MoT and yet in truth there wasno way in the world they had.”

This pile of calipersawaited thePowerhouse teamwhen CMM arrived –but we have tostress they CANmake a bike go fast,as well as stop. But,brakes are bigbusiness of late

When you’re trusting your life tobrakes, you want a good job doing –this caliper is spotless and only good-quality pistons and seals will be usedin the final rebuild

When he’s not pulling apart RD350F2/N2calipers, Lawson could be plumbing inNOs systems which can add 60 or morebhp to a bike

56 cmm ✪ September 2012

Lawson says: “The way the brakebusiness has taken off is interesting. Irealised brakes are such an importantpart of the bike, people often want to gofaster and we can do that, but peopleforget about brakes. I advertised kits ofbrake seals for caliper rebuilds andrealised people often want somebodyelse to do what can be an awful jobwithout the right tools, we tried it andcame up with a reasonable valuepackage and it’s mushroomed. To behonest, we’re now sick of seeing boxes ofcalipers come in, but it’s good business!”So what’s hot or not in the world of

caliper overhaul? Lawson explains: “I’dsay that the Tokico six-pot calipers arethe most common we get coming in.These were popular brakes in the 1990s.You found them on Kawasaki ZX-7Rs,ZRX1100s, ZX-12Rs as well as Suzukislike the TL1000R and various GSX-Rs.With more pistons moving in the calipersyou’ve more chances of one piston ormore sticking.“Many people get annoyed with the

Tokicos and upgrade or swap to theNissin four-pots which can slot straight in,but there’s nothing wrong with a well set-up set of Tokicos. We think we found theproblem. On the Nissins the overallanodised coating on the calipers evenextends to the recesses where the

pistons sit, but on the Tokicos it’s simplymachined aluminium. This means thataluminium oxide forms around the dustseals, which increases the pressure onthese seals until it simply grips thepiston until it seizes. We get far fewerNissins in to strip, but a well looked afterset of Tokicos are great brakes. They justneed regular cleaning and looking after.”Lawson adds: “Another thing is that the

Tokicos are a ‘spongy’ caliper. You’ll alsoget more lever travel with them than on theNissins, but we’ve found a fix for that too. Iused to swear by EBC’s pads, but we havemoved on to using SBS pads and thesegive a much firmer lever on the Tokico six-pots. I’ve used them recently on theZX-12R and they’ve been great. I did a twoweek trip to Spain and France and theywere brilliant. These pads give a firmer feelto the lever and with no brake fade.”One thing that Lawson and Dave insist

on is the use of good-quality parts whenrefurbishing brakes. “We use the bestquality OEM specification parts to rebuildbrakes. I saw some very cheap brakeseals on eBay recently and decided toorder some, both from eBay sellers and abatch of samples direct from Taiwan, totake a look and the difference in the sizeof them was amazing. They couldn’t makea seal if they tried. Also, we try to reclaimas many brake pistons as we can, but

often it’s not possible, so we have a firmthat machines a good quality alternative.We’ve also got a fork rig which helps usloosen overtight bolts.”Whatever job they get to do, there is an

efficiency and appetite about PowerhouseAutomotive that is catching. Lawson says:“I like it when we get ‘my era’ of bikes in,old GS Suzukis, Kawasaki GPzs, YamahaRDs etc. We can do full restorationrebuilds, as with the single-pot Suzuki, aswell as renovating wheels, forks, redoingengine finish etc. And yes, brakes too. Weenjoy breathing new life into things. Welove to get a scabby chunk of metalcoming in only to see a sparkly new-looking one going out of the door.”Amen to that. ✪

Examples of Powerhouse’s brake refurb: can you name what bikes they are off? Early Triumph calipers were re-badged Nissins, we canspy blue-spot Yamaha calipers from R-series machines or Fazers, as well as more modern radial-mounted Tokicos

Freeing off a piston or two is easy whenyou’ve got some NOs on hand. Just mindyour fingers…