Tom Sifton

From CycleChaos
Jump to navigation Jump to search

An almost iconic tuner of Harleys. Tom Sifton started out as a sub-dealer for Dudley Perkins in San Francisco in 1929 and became a full dealer in San Jose in 1933. But he increasingly spent his time tuning Harley-Davidsons for competition. With detailed work on the porting and valves, he was able to make the unpromising 45 into a race winner, but just how he did it remained a secret from fellow tuners and even from the factory's racing department. Spanning the years from Sam Arena to Joe Leonard, Sifton went on making side-valve Harleys go faster for decades, also working his magic on the WR racer in the late 1940s and the KR in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition, he is known for his own design of "Sifton cams."