Triumph Rocket III - A
Sneak Peak at Project Silverback

By Matt Polito
Driving to the Philadelphia
airport after attending the NHRA Englishtown event, I
decided to take a quick detour to see Bob Carpenter at
Carpenter Racing in Berlin, NJ. Although the visit was
intended as a social call, it turns out that I came in just
as Carpenter was embarking on a big new project.
If you have ever been to
Carpenter’s shop you know that his business volume has
exceeded the size of his current building. His business is
efficient, smooth and organized, it's just pressed up
against the walls.
The “shipping department” has
encroached on the front office and reception area, rows of
cylinder heads are lined up waiting to get on the 5-axis CNC
machine that’s whirls away endlessly, metal racks have
multiple shelves containing neatly-sorted valves, springs
and other components ready to be at part of an enhanced
cylinder head.
Between the stacks of racks,
workbenches lined with components and boxes of stock items
are small pathways leading to the machines that make up a
full – and busy - machine shop.
And then there are the bikes.
Parked as tightly packed together as you can get them –
probably five dozen total – massed around the two garage bay
doors. They are just what you would imagine would be parked
in Carpenter’s shop: mostly Hayabusas with a number of
ZX-14’s ZX-10’s and GSXR 1000’s. Whatever it is, it is
definitely a modern, big-motor sportbike.
But there was something odd in
this sea of Japanese machines: at least six, brand-new
Triumph Rocket III’s. Even Eddie, his trusted mechanic, had
one up on a lift and was digging into the engine. The bikes
had just come in as the shipping containers were still
stacked up outside.
Carpenter had first gotten his
hands on a Rocket III two years ago and after a first round
of porting, pistons and cams, nearly doubled the horsepower
on the 2300 cc beast.
I remember talking to him
about these bikes back then and I thought it strange that a
guy whose business is so dedicated to Japanese sportbikes
would gush – gush – about a muscle cruiser. He was almost
as excited as when the Hayabusa came out in 1999.
As they say in the horsepower
game, “there is no replacement for displacement” so it made
sense that a guy dedicated to horsepower would get excited
looking at a 2300cc “blank slate”.
Carpenter instantly got
national attention with his efforts with the Triumph when
one of his client’s Rocket IIIs won the prestigious Brute
Horsepower Shootout in Daytona in 2010. The bike produced
243 horsepower and was rated the top horsepower of ANY
normally aspirated bike in the competition
So what was going on with all
these Triumphs on the shop floor?
“We have a big project going
on here,” he said coyly.
“What do you mean ‘big’?” I
asked.
“2300 cc, 800 lb gorilla big,”
he said.
While he was sketchy on the
details, Carpenter said that he was embarking on a
development project with the support of Triumph North
America.
“They noticed what we were
doing with these bikes and decided to help,” said
Carpenter. “We are partnered together on this effort.”
Code named “Silverback” (after
the dominant male in a gorilla troop), the project will take
the power bandwidth of the Rocket as far as it can go while
still maintaining a high level of streetablilty.
Carpenter hinted that he also
plans to modify one with drag racing-specific chassis
changes to take on the Hayabusa head-to-head. “These bikes
are pretty torquey sons of bitches off the showroom floor,”
he said. “With the power we are going to add to them matched
with the right chassis changes I think this bike will
compete with anything out there despite the weight.”
Carpenter further states that
his horsepower enhancing techniques are right in line with
the target market for the Rocket.
“Triumph didn’t make a 2300 cc
bike to be another cushy cruiser,” he said. “They didn’t
build this bike for people that are shy about turning the
throttle. These bikes are for riders that want a combination
of comfort and brutal horsepower.”
He advised us to stay tuned
and “beware the Silverback.”

Click
here to see the Triumph Rocket III Packages
Carpenter Racing: 856-753-1555 |