American Motorcycle Dealer AMD 226 May 2018 | Page 31

WHEN YOU JUST CAN’T
HAVE ENOUGH INCHES
by Timothy Remus
f you look at the size of the R&R Cycles
operation in Manchester, New
Hampshire, it’s hard to believe it all
started with a small home-based
motorcycle shop. It was Reggie Jr. who
started working on motorcycles, polishing
parts mostly, in his mother and father’s
basement in early 1992. With a knack for
wrenching on motorcycles, Reggie was soon
doing way more than polishing. “One thing
led to another,” recalls Reggie, “and pretty
soon I was rebuilding engines. Of course, all
that engine work required more tools and
machines.” First came a milling machine,
followed by a Superflow bench. Before long
they had three dynos in Dad’s garage: one
for tuning, one for racing and one for
development work.
I
King of the hill, the
155 inch Billet Beast
Of course, and as everybody reading AMD Magazine
knows, running what was essentially a sophisticated
hobby shop is one thing, turning that shop into a
commercially viable business, being forced to make
a profit each month, is something else.
In early 1995 Reggie Jr. and Reggie Sr. took the
plunge and bought a building in Manchester, NH, -
a big jump, so they left the then-current tenant in the
building initially, and took over less than half the
space. “As time went on,” explains Reggie Jr., “we
just kept growing, taking over more and more of the
available space. Eventually we had the whole
building. This was during the peak of the custom bike
building craze, and we were selling over 200
complete engines per year.
“Not only were we utilizing all the available space,
we needed even more square feet, so decided to add
to the building. We took possession of the new space
in September of 2008, just as the crash hit. All of a
sudden the phone simply stopped ringing, and there
we were with a much bigger monthly nut to crack.”
Two shops in one
Obviously, R&R did survive the crash, and went on to
become a very successful small business. Today that
business is a two-part operation made up of both a
conventional “Harley shop” at the front and a very
sophisticated CNC and engine assembly shop at the
back. The Harley shop is where mechanics do
everything from installing R&R’s big bore kits, to
mounting tires and fixing electrical problems. The
CNC and engine assembly area is a whole other
animal. A group of CNC machines hum along, doing
a variety of automated jobs. On a given day, one CNC
might be doing the initial machining on a series of
raw cylinder head castings, while another is
enlarging the cylinder cavities on a set of new cases,
so they will accept the spigots of a pair of 124
cylinders. The third machine is likely cutting a shaft
that’s scheduled to become part of an R&R flywheel
assembly.
www.AMDchampionship.com
Junior and Senior hangin’ in the showroom at R&R
In addition to assembly work in the engine room,
Reggie Jr. is the de facto manager at R&R.
Behind the showroom is R&R’s “front shop”
where bikes get everything from complete
engines to front end overhauls.
AMERICAN MOTORCYCLE DEALER - MAY 2018
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