The letter I just wrote is below.
Hello Christopher,
I am the person from the US Royal Enfield Community Forum with the screen name, "ace.cafe".
My actual name is Tom Lyons, and I am the owner and principle of the US based Ace Performance Bullets, which is a world leader in engine performance product development for all forms of Royal Enfield motorcycle engines.
I am located in the US, but I feel that it is important that you understand who I am and what we do, because I feel that I could be invaluable toward your efforts in developing engines for performance in the future models. Given the stipulation in the listing that the position requires a self-starter, good time management, free reign for innovation, and no "micro-management", it seems to me that it could be possible to work with me over here, given the level of expertise and ability that I can bring to the table. That is how we work already.
I have been involved with specializing in Royal Enfield performance for about 10 years, and have actively been providing performance products to the general Royal Enfield consumer market for about 8 years. During this time we have introduced a plethora of products and kits for all three India-manufactured Bullet 500 singles, these being the 500 Iron Barrel Bullet, 500 AVL, and 500 UCE/EFI. Our primary specialty is engine performance with an accent on the breathing aspects, particularly cylinder head breathing and inlet systems and exhaust systems, as well as combustion efficiency. Our cylinder head and other performance modifications have become quite well known and accepted on a worldwide basis, and we have product spread over 5 continents worldwide. We understand all the aspects of making power, and we know techniques that work for emission control, and we know how to deal with sound emission issues too. But we are primarily involved with power and speed results.
Our expertise includes product development from the conceptual stage, research and development, designing to a price target, designing for manufacturability, prototyping, testing, manufacturing or modifying, marketing, sales, shipping, product technical support after the sale, and service. I have done all these things personally, and also have overseen some procedures that were done by other outside contractors in certain circumstances. I work closely with a select group of colleagues which fill certain roles that we may need at times. I liaise with outside contractors and outside vendors at times. Essentially, all aspects of analyzing needs, producing products or modification packages to suit, and bringing said items to market, and supporting them with technical support, are within my daily requirements.I have a partner near New Your City who handles our engine building and bike building for customers who do not do the work themselves.
Another aspect of my role in the performance market for Royal Enfield is customer education on a variety of internet forums, on which I have spent many many hours helping the owners of Royal Enfield motorcycles to understand their machines, and instructed them how they work, and how modifications are to be employed to achieve results, and even general troubleshooting by internet to help them keep the bikes going. This has helped greatly to make the customers feel confident in their ability to carry out mods from someone that they know and trust, which paved an open pathway for my modifications and products to enter the market with the least number of objections, even though our products were on the higher priced end of the scale. Our products are perceived to be the top of their categories, and people are willing to pay more to get the best. This is the market niche which we primarily fill, and it is done via close communication with the general market and our direct customers. Our reputation is sterling, and we are known worldwide as the best performance provider for Royal Enfield available anywhere.
Some of our highlights over the years have been:
1) Ace Fireball 535:
We have produced one of the most popular and potent performance kits for the Royal Enfield Iron Barrel Bullet 500/535 called the "Ace Fireball 535" kit. There are more than 40 of these complete Fireballs out in the world so far, and we have them in Australia, India, Tasmania, South Africa, England, Scotland, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Mali, and of course many in the United States. Well known for a wide power band and ability to "Do the Ton" in top speed, and accelerate approximately equivalent to any of the old British 650/750 vintage twins such as the RE Interceptor, or Triumph and BSA twins with the nimble lightweight single cylinder platform, reliability and longevity of 50k miles has been proven out over the years, 70-75 mpg(US gallon) at 70 mph highway riding, very smooth and progressive power delivery, are all hallmarks of our Fireball product. Stellar reputation in the marketplace.
2) Ace Super Fireball:
After achieving success with the Ace Fireball 535, we felt that we were capable of reaching for a higher power level with our next project. With the availability of the reproduction Bullet "Big Head" castings coming on to the market, which are newly made copies of the old Royal Enfield Fury "Big Head" performance cylinder head, we decided that we could work with that and make a more powerful version of our Fireball. An inherent limitation of the Bullet design was limited room in the timing chest for cam lobe sweep, which always limited the valve lift capacity of the engine. We analyzed this and embarked on a development project to produce custom high-ratio roller rockers into the Royal Enfield head design, using the existing shaft mounting system in the Big Head, giving the potential for increasing valve lift from a previous maximum, of .420" valve lift, to .609" valve lift, a lift increase of 45% more than had ever been previously attained in a Bullet. This was part of a package which included our redesigned inlet and exhaust ports, with a raised inlet port that was able to flow a much higher volume of air into the engine for more torque and higher rpm breathing, for a power output beyond anything ever seen on the street for a 500/535 Bullet. Power output similar to a Norton Manx 500. This package has been adapted even further with some special tuning techniques for race track use, and is currently on the fastest Royal Enfield Bullet 500 with the traditional 84mm x 90mm bore and stroke dimensions on the British Historic Racing series The only faster bikes than this on the track are short stroke models of Seeley G50 or Molnar Manx short stroke racers which are much more costly, and of course Steve Linsdell's Bullet racer which is also a short stroke engine and is not available for anyone to buy and own whatever he has in there. We also have one of these heads on a race bike in the Australian vintage racing circuit, with one of the top riders. Our products are highly competitive and can be ordered and purchased by anyone. This is the highest performance Bullet cylinder head kit that can be bought anywhere in the world. It stands alone.
3) Ace GP Head kit: After developing the Ace Super Fireball Big Head package, we felt that it was very expensive and exclusive, so we wanted to make a similar package that could be done to the normal Chennai-made Bullet 500 cylinder head. So, we produced some specialized CNC billet aluminum alloy clamshell type rocker boxes which eliminated the standard Bullet rocker system and replaced it with an updated shaft type roller rocker system with the same high-ratio lift advantage that was in our Ace Super Fireball package. We installed the same type of proprietary Ace valve gear and similar high port modifications for similar levels of air flow and lift, and we introduced this package as the Ace GP head conversion kit for the Chennai-made Bullet 500 heads. This way, everyone could access the performance level that was exclusive to Ace products, even if they couldn't afford to buy the Big Head casting. There are currently 5 of these kits in customers' hands out there today.
4) Ace AVL 500 performance kit: With all of this excitement revolving around the vintage type Bullet Iron Barrel product line, the AVL owners were wanting to get in on the act, so we got started on a kit for them. We followed a similar pathway as with the previous kits, with a porting job, larger valves, Ace valve gear for controlling the valves at higher rpms, and added a re-shaped combustion chamber to improve over the mediocre AVL D-shaped combustion chamber that was standard in the AVL head. This was quite successful, adding more torque and hp, allowing a higher compression ratio than before, allowing higher revving with more valve control, and providing the "Ton-Up" performance that the AVL owners were wanting, but had difficulty attaining because the factory valve springs were not capable of controlling the valve motion at rpms more than about 5800, which was a well known phenomenon. So, we solved all those problems, gave them the power they wanted, and that AVL kit has been a moderate success in small numbers(2), but nevertheless achieved the goals set.
5) Ace UCE/EFI Continental GT Billet head: With the advent of the newest UCE engine platform, and subsequently the Continental GT 535 variant, we began to get requests for performance upgrades on those engines. We analyzed the needs, did some basic modifications such as we did with the AVL heads, such as the combustion chamber mods which were basically the same as the AVL chamber work, but it was found that the same limitations of the rocker arms and blocks as was found with the Iron Barrel 500 were also present with the UCE rocker system. Not enough valve lift, and poor flow. We found that the Ace GP Head type clamshell rocker boxes with the shaft rockers inside were still quite expensive, and we looked for another answer. In this case, we decided to design and manufacture an entirely new cylinder head for the UCE and Continental GT which could provide much more advanced features than we could do by modifying the existing OEM cylinder head, and still hit a similar price target to the consumer as our previous top-line cylinder head modifications for the other engine platforms. So, toward that end, we have done that, and a prototype has been produced, and we are about to go to production on the first consumer production run in October. So this is where we have gone beyond working on the factory castings, and we are producing our own complete cylinder head with our own complete design from a clean sheet of paper. However, we do retain the same basic look and style as the original, and position the inlet and exhaust ports in the same locations, and the sensor locations too, in order to allow very easy customer installation with a simple head swap, Power Commander mod for the ECU, and free flow exhaust silencer. This is currently getting a lot of attention from the Continental GT owners, and we have a good line up of interested buyers already.
6) Ace Magnum Cams: Our Ace Magnum cams are a departure from the standard way of thinking about Royal Enfield performance cams. We use a very different approach to the camming of this engine, using techniques with dovetail with the design and flow characteristics of our cylinder head ports to make a nice match. Our cam lobe centerlines and overall timing scheme is different than any other cams on the market for the Royal Enfield Bullet. This cam set is the one which we use in all the Ace Fireball engines, and can also be used on other modfied Bullet engines, including 350 Bullets. This cam set provides high torque and broad powerband with extended high rpm performance which peaks near the typical rpm limts that we set for the power curve, with saving the integrity of the bottom end of the engine in mind. Highly effective design which is unique in the industry.
7) Ace 535 Piston: This piston solved one of the most costly problems that plagued Bullet performance enthusiasts prior to our entry into the market. The other available pistons were very commonly failing, seizing, or causing detonation which eventually destroyed these other pistons, wreaking havoc in the aftermarket to the point that users were afraid to do big-bore kits or high compression pistons, for fear of blowing the engine. It came to our attention that there was insufficient knowledge in the Enfield community, and apparently also in the Enfield parts purveyors, about how to determine how to set suitable compression levels for the fuel's anti-knock rating in the types of combustion chambers involved. So, we proceeded to make an improved piston design for the Bullet, using the correct compression ratio that would suit our Fireball with the Magnum Cams profile, and took the time to instruct our customers how to set compression and test with a compression tester, to ensure safe limits for precluding detonation while getting high torque. As a result, this piston has the best reliability record of all pistons available for the Bullet, with only 2 failures in service, both of which were user error by not following our instructions.With proper boring/honing according to our instructions, and setting compression according to our method, there has never been a failure of our piston in actual road service. This took some time to work with the market, but we eventually turned things around, and get people to realize that our kit was safe, and our methods were sound, so people then were able to confidently re-enter the performance RE market, and the rest is simply history as we have moved forward with the same kind of attention to detail with all the rest of our products.
8 ) Ace/Carrillo Bronze Bush Big End Bearing kit: Faced with the obvious reality that the OEM floating bush big end bearing in the Iron Barrel 500 was not exhibiting a high level of reliability ,due to flaking of the babbitted surface coating of the bush, it was determined that an improvement was needed. A replacement roller bearing kit from Alpha was available which worked well, but it was costly. We needed to keep the costs of bottom-end rebuilds lower, to make funds availbale for customers to afford our cylinder head products. So, to this end, we worked with the premium steel connecting rod company Carrillo to create a combination package that used one of their premium steel connecting rods for the Bullet, and our new design of floating bush that would withstand the expected duty without experiencing the flaking problems of the OEM bush. Ace and Carrillo engineers worked together on this project, yielding a CNC machined monolithic bronze floating bush that had no surface coating to flake off, and was a suitable bearing material for the application. Considering different thermal characteristics, a new bearing clearance dimension was determined, and a combination Carrillo rod and Ace bronze floating bush were made as a dedicated set that must be used together. This eliminated the very weak OEM aluminum alloy connecting rod in the stock Bullet engine, along with the problematic flaking floating bush, and replaced it with our high performance and high reliability parts that cost several hundred dollars lower than the comparable Carrillo/Alpha roller bearing package that most people were using.There are now a number of these in service, some of which have about 2 years of use so far, and there have been no failures in service. The result is high performance, high reliability, and lower cost, for the performance enthusiast to rebuild his engine's lower end, freeing up more budget to be spend on the power producing mods in the upper part of the engine.
9) Ace Gemini Twin Performance Head modification for vintage Royal Enfield Twins such as Interceptor, Constellation, Super Meteor, and their Brockhouse "Indian" counterparts:
Not to be left out in the cold, owners of the Royal Enfield twin cylinder 700 and 750cc bikes soon came to us for working our exclusive "magic" on their twins. We then applied similar techniques on a Super Meteor twin, with high ratio roller rockers and full porting work, with our Ace valve gear arrangement. This was very successful, and the bike is currently on the road on one of the Scottish isles, with a 130mph top speed capacity, and great acceleration too. Wonderful road bike operating on pump fuel, with great performance and vintage appeal. I list this to showcase that we are not just for single cylinder engines, and that we have scope for all types of platforms in the RE stable.
There are many more innovations that we have done here at Ace, but it is just too long to go into every one of them here on this paper. I list the bigger highlights here. If more info is desired, I'm happy to provide more insight into what other things we have done, and how we did them, so you can see how we engineer new innovations. The things we have done are largely unique in the market. We do things differently, and better, because we know how, and we know why.
I hope that this letter helps to illustrate the kind of person I am, and the kind of work that I have done, and can do, along with any necessary colleagues and contractors which may be needed in the task. Knowing what I know about the Royal Enfield market, and particularly the performance arena, I really honestly feel that there is nobody else who can match my level of qualifications for the job of engineering a potent and high quality result for your engines. I cannot move to the UK, but I believe that after reading my credentials here, that some way can be found for us to work together to achieve your desired goals.
Please feel free to contact me at this email address for any further discussion.
ace.cafe@yahoo.com
Thank you,
Tom Lyons
"Ace"
Ace Performance Bullets
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