American Motorcycle Dealer AMD 179 June 2014 | Página 19

Written by Duncan Moore - [email protected] The Horsepower Inc. team at the 2014 V-Twin Expo (left to right) Laura Light, Eric Henderson, Jimmy Light and Mary Jo Light It is all too easy to think of fuel injection as being a very recent development in the v-twin market, however, Harley-Davidson has been selling fuel injected bikes since the turn of the century and Horsepower Inc. has been offering upgrades for those bikes for nearly as long ORSEPOWER Inc. came into existence in 2002 as the direct result of changes made by HarleyDavidson to its induction systems. As the Motor Company was making the move from carbs to fuel injection, owners were already exploring ways to improve the performance of the factory fitted systems. Among those looking at ways of increasing the fuel injected bikes’ potential were the machinists in the machine shop of Mary Jo Light - they were using the facilities after hours to make parts for themselves for their own FI bikes. Mary Jo was a smart enough business women to realize that the work her employees were doing H www.AMDchampionship.com could be turned into a new revenue stream, and so she set about creating Horsepower Inc., which at that time was the first company to manufacture an aftermarket throttle body and intake replacement for Harley- Davidson engines. Today Horsepower Inc. is spread over two sites the original facility in Eire, Pennsylvania, where all the machining is done using state-of-the-art equipment, and a second operation, opened in 2012 by Mary Jo’s son Jimmy Light, in Indianapolis, Indiana, where sales, customer relations, and shipping and receiving to dealers and distributors is handled. When HPI began it concentrated on throttle bodies, and now, as the business has grown, so has the range of parts it designs and manufactures. The product offering now includes not only a wide variety of throttle bodies, but also intakes and air cleaners through to complete EFI performance builds. “Our American made units provide a crisp throttle response and are flow bench tested for unparalleled dyno-proven performance. The result is that we can create increased airflow and substantial increases in horsepower and torque,” says Jimmy Light of the company’s product line. In order to produce these results each HPI big bore throttle body is CNC machined and then handported internally, a process that HPI believes is unique to their company. The bodies feature a split shaft design that is black zinc-coated to prevent corrosion, and are completed with a precision sealed AMERICAN MOTORCYCLE DEALER - JUNE 2014 19