​​James Harper
Practical Sportsbikes|November 2017

After reading all he could on two-stroke tuning, it was time to abandon the ‘bum dyno’ and get serious. 12 years later James is getting big results from two and four-stroke engines.

Alan Seeley
​​James Harper

Mix a mad-keen interest in motorcycles, a questioning mind unafraid to challenge conventional wisdoms and solid engineering skills with the humility to accept that however much you learn there is always more to know, and you have the key attributes to becoming a sought-after specialist.

Go back 12 years and James Harper of Krazy Katt was a contract engineer and a Yamaha TZR250 3XV owner. He had spent years studying books and magazine articles on two-strokes and their performance tuning, testing some of the theory on his own bike. But James was fated to take things a step further. With destiny calling, James bought his own dyno in 2005, a Dyna Pro S125, built a workshop to house it in and got to work on the business of extracting the most from two-strokes. “I’d gone as far as I could with the ‘bum dyno’ and knew if I wanted to get serious and maybe start making some money out of motorcyles, I had to get a proper dyno,” he says.

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