Squeezing two Harley engines into one chassis is a special form of lunacy, most commonly found in the drag racing scene in the USA.
In the glory days of the mid-70s, Bonnie Truett linked a pair of Sportster motors and nitro-injected them. A decade later, Elmer Trett built an even faster twin-engined bike: the ?Freight Train,? which ran the quarter mile in under seven seconds.

Despite the wealth of tuning talent in Japan, no double-engined Harley has been built there?until now. Kentaro Nakano is the man who has broken the drought, by creating the engineering masterpiece we?re looking at here.
Nakano-san operates as Hot Chop Speed Shop in Kyoto, and is held in high regard in local Harley circles.

At the Mooneyes show a few weeks ago, his monstrous drag racer scooped awards from two of Japan?s biggest moto magazines?Hot Bike and Vibes. So we asked Mr. Nakano to organize a shoot for us, and he kindly obliged. ?I started the project in December 2017,? he tells us. ?It?s a tribute to the drag racers of the 1970s, using Sportster XLCH engines.?

The front engine is a 1969 vintage ironhead, and the engine behind it is a couple of years older. Both mills were thoroughly rebuilt, with help from Nakano?s friend Kazuhiro Takahashi of Sakai Boring.
Fuel is metered through S&S Super B carbs (which first hit the market in 1975) fitted with one-off intake funnels.

Nakano has also changed the timing of the engines, to create gaps between the exhaust pulses. At idle, ?Doubl...