While its competitors were hardly tortoises, the Cyclone was something of a hare and didn’t always finish the long-distance races it scorched early on. Weak points included the exhaust valve, valve stirrups, steel pistons and the frames, with breakages common enough that few Cyclone board trackers still use their original chassis. The Joerns Manufacturing Co. was under-capitalized and sold very few road machines; racing came first, and racing was very expensive. The cost of keeping a professional team going and making improvements to the engine were simply too much for Cyclone, which folded in 1915. Such was the engine’s reputation that the tooling and rights to build it passed through many hands in subsequent years, all with the intention of resuming production, but that never happened. With more development money, or a merger with a larger company, OHC motorcycles might have been fixed in the American motorcycle scene 80 years before Harley-Davidson introduced the V-Rod, but the Cyclone remained the sole production road-going OHC V-twin built in the U.S. in the 20th century. Racing wins and lap records were the proof in the pudding though, and in its short life, the Cyclone brand established a reputation as the fastest motorcycle on the planet and fixed its legend forevermore. The 1913 Cyclone racer coming up for auction was restored by well-known sculptor Jeff Decker, who said, “The Cyclone Motorcycle is the very wellspring that inspired me to begin sculpting racing motorcycles. As there are only a dozen motors in existence, with only a single complete and original race model and only one original road model still left, every single orphan part becomes the stuff of dreams.” Decker began collecting parts and ephemera for this machine in the 1990s, and his assembly and fabrication took four years to complete (2000-2004). His restoration was undertaken with the close advisement of the elders of the Cyclone clan, and he was even granted observational access to the only original and unrestored racing Cyclone left: Don Johns’ racer. As the Cyclone frame was notoriously too weak for its power, racers tended to replace it with Indian racing frames and forks, which is what Jeff Decker used for this machine: an original 1914 Indian racing frame, altered to exact Cyclone racing specifications, based on the Don Johns frame, but without the upper front and rear 45-degree bracing struts. The forks are also genuine Indian racing forks of the period, altered to exact racing Cyclone specifications. The pedal crank eccentric is an original racing item. The rims, spokes, hubs and Firestone 2 ¼-inch racing tires are all original from the period. The racing handlebars and gooseneck are fabricated in a similar style to J.A. McNeil’s factory Cyclone racer. Also as per J.A. McNeil’s and Larry Fleckenstein’s factory racers, Jeff Decker fabricated the drive chain side of lower end casting with longer reinforcement ribs, without the raised bungs for chain guard mounts. As per Don Johns’ and Blick Wolter’s factory racers, the cylinder barrels on this machine are “ported” to relieve crankcase pressure (and spew oil mist), with an oil sleeve and seven cylinder fins; standard models did not have ported cylinders, nor the additional oiling sleeve, and they were equipped with eight cast fins. The Johns and Wolters racers are the only other known machines in this race-only configuration. Even the yellow stacked gas tank/oil tank on Jeff Decker’s racer are from the actual bike on the cover of Jerry Hatfield’s 1982 book “American Racing Motorcycles.” A few years after Jeff Decker restored this 1913 Cyclone racer, he sold it to fellow arch-enthusiast Scott Hall in 2008. At that time, Decker said, “the motor started easily and ran strong.” A strong-running, racing Cyclone is an extraordinary machine, and for a serious collector of motorcycle history, its appearance on the podium in Las Vegas is an opportunity not to be missed. OFFERED JANUARY 28 AT LAS VEGAS 2023 MECUM.COM // 83
