I spent a fascinating couple of hours chatting with Stephen and Wesley Fischer. “Who may I ask is that?” I hear you ask. Well, the clue is in the header – SAC Raging Bull. This is ‘the’ Steve of Steve’s Auto Clinic fame and his son Wes. Steve has such an interesting story to tell if you have even a drop of High Octane in your veins.
From an early age, Steve has had a thing with bikes and cars. As a 15-year-old, he had the iconic poster of Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper from the movie Easy Rider, riding their Harley choppers, “Captain America” and the “Billy Bike”, across the country. This was every schoolboy’s dream back in the day, and so it was with Steve. He swore that one day he too would ride a Harley far and wide. His passion for bikes manifested in tuning and modifying bikes for his school chums. It was thus no surprise that this was the course that his life followed.
Steve is the epitome of a petrol head. Endowed with a huge affinity and understanding for things mechanical, he took his passion to the next level when he started a business in the Vaal Triangle, dedicated to tuning Alfa’s, way back in 1982. This was the original Steves’s Auto Clinic. Little did Steve know at the time, that this was the beginning of an automotive tuning success story perhaps unparalleled in the annals of South African automotive history.
When Alfa withdrew from the South African market during the turmoil of the apartheid years, Steve started to apply the lessons he had learned fettling Alfas, to other brands. With performance always a priority to Alfa owners and given his history of ‘modding’ bikes and the like, Steve tackled every new vehicle with the same questions foremost in his mind. How does it work and what can be done to make it work better without compromising driveability and reliability? “Dave, I started measuring everything!”
To ‘measure’, as Steve puts it, requires some pretty sophisticated equipment. Putting values to Power, torque, air/fuel ratio, timing, drive train resistance, engine temperatures, barometric pressure, humidity, ambient temperature and geared speeds all help to understand what is required to get a motor into as good a state of tune as possible. The heart of this is a dynamometer. Steve’s time spent learning what to do and vitally, what not to do when it comes to modifying and tuning engines, has stood him in good stead. There is simply no shortcut to gathering experience.
Steve’s Auto Clinic became a household name in SA for tuning vehicles for more power without compromising reliability. The business expanded hugely over the years, with experience gained on race tracks countrywide, in partnership with leading motoring brands. An in-house engineering facility was birthed with the ability to do performance-enhancing engineering without compromise. Gas flowing cylinder heads, enlarging throttle bodies and fitting bigger valves if required, became all in a day’s work.
Talking to Steve, I get the feeling that over time (30 odd years), as Steve’s Auto Clinic grew into an entity that he could never have imagined, he started feeling more and more as if he had a tiger by the tail. For a man who is at his absolute happiest when he is tuning a motor hands-on, SAC had become a huge, albeit successful, franchised entity that demanded too much of his time to manage, robbing him of the tuning work that is so much his happy place. And so a plan was hatched.
The work demands from the evolution of SAC also meant that Steve neglected what is perhaps his first love. Motorcycles. After almost 30 years, he has withdrawn, for all intents and purposes, from working on cars, Bakkies and things with four wheels, to focus on bikes. To this end, he has enlisted the assistance of his son Wesley who, no surprise, given the lifelong influence of Steve, shares his passion for performance-enhancing mods on bikes. Wes has proved a sponge to soak up and apply the years of knowledge that Steve has accumulated on engine performance enhancement.
The dream of riding a Harley far and wide became a reality for Steve as the success of SAC gave him the means to own his own Harleys. It was obvious from the outset that he would start to explore ways of making his Harleys run better. Over time this has probably made him arguably the top Tuner in the country for making products from The Motor Company fly. He tells me that in standard trim Harleys are generally in a mild state of tune, so extracting significant reliable power gains is possible, if you know what you are doing. This led to another step in his current activities.
It seems, from what he tells me, that many Harley owners also own BMW GS’s. Needless to say, he was asked about applying his unique tuning talents to the boxer-engined bikes too. What followed was typical of Steve. He began measuring the performance of the Bavarian twins with a view to how best to help them make more power, reliably. He is full of praise for the Boxer motor, but says that with the right tuning, significant gains are to be had. Especially on the air/oil-cooled twins. Without too much fettling they are able to extract LC-type power without in any way compromising reliability. They regularly service bikes that they have done, with around 200,000 reliable k’s on the clock.
With electronic engine mapping playing such a huge role in engine performance these days, Steve has spent a lot of time and money to understand and optimise this aspect of tuning. He tells me that no one aspect of tuning is the magic bullet, but rather a complete approach looking at all aspects of what makes engines perform better. This has always entailed making the engine ‘breath’ better. Get the mixture into the cylinder head more efficiently, burn it better and then get it exhausted as well as possible and the result is inevitably a significant power increase, without stressing the engine unduly. Sounds simple, yet to achieve this in a seamless way without detracting from, but rather enhancing ride-ability, is the dark art.
The other pillar of success on which SAC was built, was the relationships that it fostered with its customers. It is no different from Steve’s current motorcycle endeavours. He listens to what his clients want and then delivers on his promises. This sometimes means managing clients’ expectations realistically. Steve believes that clients should get value for money. Just bolting on hugely expensive go-fast goodies often leaves clients disillusioned and frustrated. It is making everything work in perfect harmony that is the key. Measuring and understanding how to make everything best work together is what results in what we bikers refer to as a ‘sweet engine’.
What we are going to do is ride some of the bikes that Steve has done and see for ourselves. I am particularly interested in the BMW’s. Steve is already widely supported by Harley riders who have got wind of the magic he makes with the big V-Twins. What isn’t appreciated is how he can make your airhead go like an LC, and your LC perform like a 1250 Shift Cam. The cost of upgrading your bike is significant, so why not let Steve and Wes do their thing for a smidgen of the cost of a model upgrade?
For example, I was able to see and hear the results of gutting and rebuilding the innards of a GS exhaust. Obviously, the pipe exhausts better, but it looks and sounds spectacular too. No need for a massively expensive slip-on when your stock pipe can be made to work and sound this good. I am really excited at the prospect of walking this road with Steve and his crew. 40 years of performance enhancement knowledge counts for a huge amount in my book!
For more information visit: www.sacragingbull.co.za
