Ok...winter project time is approaching...considering doing a FIREBALL upgrade, however $$$ maybe an issue. So I thought of just going the CLUBMAN route to get a bump in performance and keep my cost down a bit. Tom, I'm familiar with the upgrades involved in the FIREBALL conversion...could you educate me on the CLUBMAN level please.
The Clubman head mod is basically a porting job with high-quality big valves and our custom valve seat angles, and some valve stem seals for oil control. It is essentially the same port and seat angles as the Fireball, and it can be upgraded to a Fireball head later on, since the porting is already done to it. The valves are not the same as the Fireball, because the Fireball uses different valve gear that requires a modern valve stem cut for modern valve locks, so we use the Kibblewhite big valves that have the old Enfield style retainer cuts for those original valve locks, and use your OEM valve springs and parts. This keeps cost down.
The Clubman with stock valve gear imposes a lift limit to no higher than the stock valve lift, if you want to keep the valve stem seals on there. And it also imposes a 5000 rpm rev limit, because the stock springs really can't control those valves at higher rpms.
If you want to rev higher, you can install the Hitchcock competition springs.
If you want more lift, you will have to remove the valve stem seals and use competition springs.
The intended arrangement of the Clubman set-up was for a budget system that gave very good results for the money.
It is intended to be used with re-phased stock cams which obviously will have the stock lift height, so the head needs no special springs to handle high lift or deal with aggressive cam profiles, since the re-phased cams are stock cams with only a valve timing adjustment. And you just re-phase your own stock cams, so there are no cams to buy, and that keeps cost down. However, you can increase lift height and rev range with the Shotgun Rockers and Hitchcock competition valve springs, if you remove the valve stem seals.
You will need to buy a piston like ours and have it installed in your barrel(preferably alloy barrel), because you need a high compression piston to work with the re-phased cams, or your compression will be too low. So, at this juncture, we recommend moving to the big bore 535 and the high compression piston to suit the other mods. Since this can stress the bottom end, we recommend using our Ace piston, which is the lightest weight of all forged 535 hi-comp pistons for the Bullet, and will place less stress on the bottom end than other choices. And it's the same piston we use on the Fireball.
Include a VM32 or TM32 and a free-flow kit, and you are in business at a reasonable cost.
If you can do the bottom end rebuild with better bearings and a better rod, that would also be a good decision for reliability/longevity.
In the tightest budget scenario, where you kept your cast iron barrel and had it bored for our uncoated piston, re-phase your own stock cams, and bought the Clubman head mods, and a Mikuni VM carb with rubber manifold kit, and you already had a free-flowing exhaust of any kind, and were going to keep the stock bottom end as it comes from the factory, you could get the whole Clubman performance package for just over $1k. If you already had a carb and manifold, it would be under $1k(plus your labor to install it on your bike).
This is a lot of bang for the buck. And there is a clear upgrade path to the full Fireball kit at any time, without obsoleting anything except the valves and springs. Everything else would be compatible to full Fireball upgrade.
I have been rather shocked, actually, that more people have not taken this Clubman route. It's amazingly good for the cost of it.