Stan Stephens still tuning at 73
He’s the veteran two-stroke tuning legend who made an art form out of power bands and he’s still going strong
It you owned a two-stroke in the late 1970s and 1980s there was one thing you wanted above all else: a Stan Stephens tuned engine. In an era defined by riders dressed in a paddock jacket and jeans screaming past in a haze of blue smoke, it was Stan’s motors that ruled the roost.
“At our peak we were tuning a humongous number of engines, there would be 30 ready and waiting for us every Monday morning,” Stan says. “I remember doing an advert at the end of a season, it showed the Marlboro series and the first ten in the 350, 250 and 500 were all on our bikes, I’d say 90% of the bikes out there were tuned by us.”
After starting out at a local shop in Tunbridge Wells, a slump in the market saw Stan become a freelance engine builder because he was more excited about building engines than working on bikes. One job saw him prepare a Suzuki T20 Supersix, his first two-stroke racer.
“I was working with a Swedish chap who was a two-stroke development engineer sent over from Porsche,” Stan remembers. “I learnt everything from him, we made our own exhausts, tuned engines and created our own race bikes. Once that project was finished I opened a dealership in Sevenoaks, but after a while I decided there was more money to be made in racing, so I opened another shop on a trading estate that specialised in tuning.” Stan Stephens Tuning was born. Coinciding with the boom in two-stroke sales, started by the aircooled Yamaha RD models, Stan saw race success as the way to build his reputation and spent an obsessive amount of time ensuring his engines were the fastest on the grid.
“I spent weeks testing two-stroke motors on dynos before anyone else really thought about doing it,”
said Stan. “Everything had to be spot on. I once did two weeks solid just testing reed valves. Different thicknesses, tapers, using backing plates, you name it.”
Driven by a fierce rivalry with tuning rival Terry Beckett, the 1980s were a time when Stan and Terry dominated the scene, something that eventually led to them agreeing to a pact. “We were spending more on development than we were making just to beat each other,” said Stan. “We were mates and eventually we said ‘let’s just stick to what we know and try to make some money!’” With two-strokes falling out of favour in the 1990s, Stan turned his hand to four-strokes, but despite one of his motors winning a TT with Jim Moodie, a lack of passion for these engines saw him close his tuning centre in 2000 and focus again on what he knew best: two-strokes. Despite attempting to retire several times, Stan is now 73, the decision to work from home catering for classic two-strokes has seen his skills remain in high demand. People call him up from all over the world asking for a Stan Stephens tuned motor like they had in the 1980s. Retirement is a long way off for Stan…