The Mission Super Hooligan National Championship is an eclectic race series that features one of motorcycle road racing’s most diverse starting grids. Up to 10 different brands have competed in Super Hooligan during the series’ existence, and this year, there will two different models of Harley-Davidsons on the grid.

Last year’s class championship-winning Harley-Davidson Pan America is still a favorite choice for a Super Hooligan bike, but Saddlemen Race Development has added a second Harley to its stable. And the bike is 36 years old. Well, partially 36 years old, at least.

Travis Wyman is racing a 1990 Harley-Davidson FXR in Super Hooligan, but the bike is definitely not your father’s three-decades-old twin-cam Evo.

Produced from 1982 to 1995, the FXR is widely regarded as one of the best-handling Harleys ever made. With its rigid, triangular frame and rubber-mounted engine, the stock FXR provides superior stability and cornering for a Big Twin, which makes it a favorite among performance enthusiasts who value its sportbike-like agility. Due to overwhelming demand, Harley briefly revived the FXR platform in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, releasing FXR2 and FXR3 limited-edition models in 1999 and the FXR4 in 2000, which launched Harley-Davidson’s Custom Vehicle Operations (CVO).

Those bikes are exceedingly special and highly sought after, but they pale in comparison to the 1990 FX Super Hooligan race bike that Saddlemen Race Development built for Wyman to compete aboard in the Super Hooligan series.

The Saddlemen Race Development FXR started out as a 1990 FXR Low Rider, and it was a project spearheaded by Chris Echert, who is Saddlemen President and CEO Dave Echert’s son. Several of the Saddlemen race crew own their own FXRs, so the bike is a favorite within the company.

Chris Echert originally started building the FXR for a custom bike show in California, but his and the team’s racing duties got in the way of the project. The build was heavily influenced by Saddlemen’s development work in Super Hooligan, so Echert and company decided to take up the project again and transform the FXR into a full-on Super Hooligan race bike chock-full of high-zoot parts and fully legal for competition in Roland Sands’ high-handlebar, naked-bike series.

“I was an invited builder for the Born-Free Motorcycle Show in California, and the plan was to use take-off parts from our 2023 King Of The Baggers bikes. In 2024, a lot of parts on the Baggers bikes were updated, and we couldn’t really sell them, so the one option was to use them in-house.

“We put a lot of those parts on the FXR, but we were so focused on racing that we missed the deadline for the show. Well, then, we won the 2024 Super Hooligan Championship with Cory West, and the FXR project got shelved.

“In 2025, there we some rules changes in Super Hooligan, which got our wheels spinning. The Harley Pan America is a great bike, and we believe we have the best riders in field. We have the best mechanics, and we have a great team. A lot of people gave most of the credit to the bike and thought that Harley-Davidson built the Pan America Super Hooligan bikes. Harley definitely helped us with some tuning, but the platform itself was 100% developed by us in house.

“Last season, we thought, ‘Let’s just build the FXR as a race bike.’ Super Hooligan is open, and you can do pretty much anything you want. We joked about it, and this past December, we said, ‘Let’s get this thing running, take it to a test day, and see how it does.’ We took the bike to Chuckwalla with Jake (Lewis) and Cory (West). They rode the bike, and they didn’t really have anything bad to say about it, so we kind of got a little more serious about it.

“The plan is to run it here at Daytona and take it to some shows. But, if it does well here, maybe the FXR will be our savior in the class this season. Travis is a great rider. He does well at Daytona, so we brought him back for this round, and we’re ready to see what happens.”

Let’s take a closer look at some of the bike’s eye candy:

Underneath a lot of carbon fiber is the FXR’s original triangular frame, and the bike’s up-specced air/oil-cooled Milwaukee Eight engine is rubber-mounted just like the original Shovelhead V-twin engine in the stock FXR was.

An L-shaped, carbon fiber intake takes in air from the conical air filter and rams it into the engine’s throttle bodies. Yes, the bike is fuel-injected and has a modern ECU controlling all the combustion happening within the two huge, finned cylinders.

The full-titanium Akrapovič exhaust system is an absolute work of art, but in true “form follows function” fashion, the serpentine pipes are designed for maximum ground clearance as well as optimized, exhaust-scavenging performance.

Öhlins upside-down forks are held securely by billet-aluminum upper and lower triple clamps, while dual, radial-mounted Brembo calipers and big, full-floating rotors take care of the braking at the front, and a carbon-fiber front fender saves unsprung weight.

Because the FXR has an air/oil-cooled V-twin per Super Hooligan rules, Saddlemen built a special, large-capacity oil cooler that looks, for all the world, like a radiator. However, there is no water jacket cooling the engine on this bike.

The rearsets are custom-machined in-house from billet aluminum, and the footpegs flip up like on a streetbike, so they won’t dig in and lever the wheels off the pavement when leaned over.

The entire primary drivetrain is covered by a beautifully machined billet aluminum fabrication. Saddlemen Race Development’s Mission King Of The Baggers Harley-Davidson Road Glides, as well as the FXR Super Hooligan bike, has a dry clutch mounted on the outside of the primary drive cover. The setup enables the crew to service the clutch without removing the entire primary cover, which saves time and doesn’t adversely affect energy transfer to the bike’s final chain drive.

With the air intake on the right ride of the engine, the left side sports a large carbon-fiber scoop to funnel cooling air to the rear cylinder of the Big Twin.

The shifter linkage is also crafted from billet aluminum, and the bike’s front end is stabilized by an Öhlins adjustable steering damper. A belly pan was fabricated and installed per the rules, and its shape helps streamline the lower part of the bike.

As special and sought-after as the FXR line of Harley-Davidsons are, Saddlemen Race Development’s Harley-Davidson FXR Super Hooligan is the most special FXR of them all. It’s at Daytona International Speedway this week, and Travis Wyman and his team are ready to race it in round one of the 2026 Mission Super Hooligan Championship.

In a class featuring everything from Yamahas, to Ducatis, to KTMs, to Triumphs, plus a Suzuki, a BMW, an ARCH Motorcycle, an Irving Vincent, and a couple of Lightfighter electric bikes, the Saddlemen Race Development Harley-Davidson FXR is one of a kind and built to win.

Let’s see how it all works out on the high banks at the “World Center of Racing.”

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