Category: Harley-Davidson

The Perfect Bike?

This was a blog I wrote for CSC about 6 years ago, and it’s still relevant.  Earlier this year I posted a photo showing my Harley in Baja and Gresh made a good comment:  Any motorcycle you take a trip on is an adventure motorcycle.  I agree with that.  The earlier blogs on my Harley Softail had me thinking about this question again:  What is the perfect motorcycle?

Cruisers. Standards. Sports bikes. Dirt bikes. Dual sports. Big bikes. Small bikes. Whoa, I’m getting dizzy just listing these.

The Good Old Days

In the old days, it was simple. There were motorcycles. Just plain motorcycles. You wanted to ride, you bought a motorcycle. And they were small, mostly. I started on a 90cc Honda (that’s me in that photo to the right). We’d call it a standard today, if such a thing still existed.

Then it got confusing. Bikes got bigger. Stupidly so, in my opinion. In my youth, a 650 was a huge motorcycle, and the streets were ruled by bikes like the Triumph Bonneville and the BSA Lightning. Today, a 650 would be considered small. The biggest Triumph today has a 2300cc engine. I don’t follow the Harley thing anymore, but I think their engines are nearly that big, too. The bikes weigh close to half a ton. Half a ton!

I’ve gone through an evolution of sorts on this topic. Started on standards, migrated into cruisers after a long lapse, went to the rice rockets, then morphed into dual sports.

Cruisers and Adventure Bikes

The ADV bug hit me hard about 15 years ago. I’d been riding in Baja a lot and my forays occasionally took me off road. Like many folks who drifted back into motorcycles in the early 1990s, the uptick in Harley quality bit me. As many of us did, I bought my obligatory yuppie bike (the Heritage Softail) and the accompanying zillion t-shirts (one from every Harley dealer along the path of every trip I ever took). I had everything that went along with this kind of riding except the tattoo (my wife and a modicum of clear thinking on my part drew the line there). Leather fringe, the beanie helmet, complimentary HOG membership, and the pot belly. I was fully engaged.

Unlike a lot of yuppie riders of that era, though, I wasn’t content to squander my bucks on chrome, leather fringe, and the “ride to live, live to ride” schlock. I wanted to ride, and ride I did. All over the southwestern US and deep into Mexico. Those rides were what convinced me that maybe an 800+ lb cruiser was not the best bike in the world for serious riding…

The Harley had a low center of gravity, and I liked that. It was low to the ground, and I didn’t like that. And it was heavy. When that puppy started to drift in the sand, I just hung on and hoped for the best. Someone was looking out for me, because in all of that offroading down there in Baja, I never once dropped it. As I sit here typing this, enjoying a nice hot cup of coffee that Susie just made for me, I realize that’s kind of amazing.

The other thing I didn’t like about the Harley was that I couldn’t carry too much stuff on it without converting that bike into a sort of rolling bungee cord advertisement. The bike’s leather bags didn’t hold very much, the Harley’s vibration required that I constantly watch and tighten their mounting hardware, and the whole arrangement really wasn’t a good setup for what I was doing. The leather bags looked cool, but that was it. It was bungee cords and spare bags to the rescue on those trips…

Sports Bikes

The next phase for me involved sports bikes. They were all the rage in the early 90s and beyond, but to me they basically represent the triumph of marketing hoopla over common sense. I bought a Suzuki TL1000S (fastest bike I ever owned), and I toured Baja with it. It would be hard to find a worse bike for that kind of riding. The whole sports bike thing, in my opinion, was and is stupid. You sit in this ridiculous crouched over, head down position, and if you do any kind of riding at all, by the end of the day your wrists, shoulders, and neck are on fire. My luggage carrying capacity was restricted to a small tankbag and a ridiculous-looking tailbag.

I was pretty hooked on the look, though, and I went through a succession of sports bikes, including the TL1000S, a really racy Triumph Daytona 1200 (rode that one from Mexico to Canada), and a Triumph Speed Triple. Fast, but really dumb as touring solutions, and even dumber for any kind of off road excursion.

Phase III for me, after going through the Harley “ride to live” hoopla and the Ricky Racer phases, was ADV riding and dual sport bikes. The idea here is that the bike is equally at home on the street or in the dirt. Dual purpose…dual sport. I liked the idea, and I thought it would be a winner for my kind of riding.

A BMW GS versus Triumph’s Tiger

The flavor of the month back then was the BMW GS. I could never see myself on a Beemer, but I liked the concept. I was a Triumph man back in those days, and the Triumph Tiger really had my attention. A couple of my friends were riding the big BMW GS, but I knew I didn’t want a Beemer. In my opinion, those bikes are overpriced. The Beemers are heavy (over 600 lbs on the road), they have a terrible reputation for reliability, and I think they looked goofy. The Tiger seemed to be a better deal than the Beemer, and it sure had the right offroad look. Tall, an upright seating position (I had enough of that sports bike nonsense), and integrated luggage. So, I bit the bullet and shelled out something north of $10K back in ’06 for this beauty…

The Triumph had a few things going for it…I liked the detachable luggage, it was fast, it got good gas mileage (I could go 200+ miles between gas stations), and did I mention it was fast?

The Tiger’s Shortfalls

Looks can be deceiving, though, and that Tiger was anything but an off-road bike. It was still well over 600 lbs on the road with a full tank of gas, and in the soft stuff, it was terrifying. I never dropped the Triumph, but I sure came close one time. On a ride out to the Old Mill in Baja (a really cool old hotel right on the coast a couple hundred miles south of the border), the soft sand was bad. Really bad. Getting to the Old Mill involved riding through about 5 miles of soft sand, and it scared the stuffing out of me. I literally tossed and turned all night worrying about the ride out the next morning. It’s not supposed to be like that, folks.

And the Tiger was tall. Too tall, in my opinion. I think all of the current dual sport bikes are too tall. I guess the manufacturers do that because their marketing studies show a lot of basketball players buy dual sports. Me? I don’t play basketball and I never cared for a seat that high. Just getting on the Tiger was scary. After throwing my leg over the seat, I’d fight to lean the bike upright, and not being able to touch the ground on the right side until I had the thing upright was downright unnerving. I never got over that initial “getting on the bike” uneasiness. What were those engineers thinking?
The other thing that surprised me about the Tiger was that it was uncomfortable. The seat was hard (not comfortably hard, like a well designed seat should be, but more like sitting on small beer keg), and the foot pegs were way too high. I think they did that foot peg thing to make the bike lean over more, but all it did for me was make me feel like I was squatting all day. Not a good idea.

Kawasaki’s KLR 650

I rode the Tiger for a few years and then sold it. Even before I sold it, though, I had bought a new KLR 650 Kawasaki. It was a big step down in the power department (I think it has something like 34 or 38 horsepower), but I had been looking at the KLR for years. It seemed to be right…something that was smaller, had a comfortable riding position, and was reasonably priced (back then, anyway).

I had wanted a KLR for a long time, but nobody was willing to let me ride one. That’s a common problem with Japanese motorcycle dealers. And folks, this boy ain’t shelling out anything without a test ride first. I understand why they do it (they probably see 10,000 squids who want a test ride for every serious buyer who walks into a showroom), but I’m old fashioned and crotchety. I won’t buy anything without a test ride. This no-test-ride thing kept me from pulling the trigger on a KLR for years. When I finally found a dealer who was willing to let me ride one (thank you, Art Wood), I wrote the check and got on the road…and the off road…

My buddy John and I have covered a lot of miles on our KLRs through Baja and elsewhere. I still have my KLR, but truth be told, I only fire it up three or four times a year. It’s a big bike. Kawi says the KLR is under 400 lbs, but with a full tank of gas on a certified scale, that thing is actually north of 500 lbs. I was shocked when I saw that on the digital readout. And, like all of the dual sports, the KLR is tall. It still gives me the same tip-over anxiety as the Tiger did when I get on it. And I know if I ever dropped it, I’d need a crew to get it back on its feet.

That thing about dropping a bike is a real consideration. I’ve been lucky and I haven’t dropped a bike very often. But it can happen, and when it does, it would be nice to just be able to pick the bike up.

Muddy Baja

On one of our Baja trips, we had to ride through a puddle that looked more like a small version of Lake Michigan. I got through it, but it was luck, not talent. My buddy Dave was not so lucky…he dropped his pristine Yamaha mid-puddle…

The fall broke the windshield and was probably a bit humiliating for Dave, but the worst part was trying to lift the Yamaha after it went down. Slippery, muddy, wet…knee deep in a Mexican mudbath. Yecchh! It took three of us to get the thing upright and we fell down several times while doing so. Thinking back on it now, we probably looked pretty funny. If we had made a video of it, it probably would have gone viral.

The Perfect Bike:  A Specification

So, where is this going…and what would my definition of the perfect touring/dual sport/ADV bike be?

Here’s what I’d like to see:

Something with a 250cc to 500cc single-cylinder engine. My experience with small bikes as a teenager and my more recent experience has convinced me that this is probably the perfect engine size. Big engines mean big bikes, and that kind of gets away from what a motorcycle should be all about. Water cooled would be even better. The Kawi KLR is water cooled, and I like that.

A dual sport style, with a comfortable riding position. No more silly road racing stuff. I’m a grown man, and when I ride, I like to ride hundreds of miles a day. I want my bike to have a riding position that will let me do that.

A windshield. It doesn’t have to be big…just something that will flip the wind over my helmet. The Kawi and the Triumph got it right in that department.

Integrated luggage. The Triumph Tiger got that part right. The KLR, not so much.

Light weight. Folks, it’s a motorcycle…not half a car. Something under 400 lbs works for me. If it gets stuck, I want to be able to pull it out of a puddle. If it drops, I want to be able to pick it up without a hoist or a road crew. None of the current crop of big road bikes meets this requirement.

Something that looks right and is comfortable. I liked the Triumph’s looks. But I want it to be comfortable.

Something under $5K. Again, it’s a motorcycle, not a car. My days of dropping $10K or so on a motorcycle are over. I’ve got the money, but I’ve also got the life experiences that tell me I don’t need to spend stupidly to have fun.

It was maybe a year after that blog that the RX3 came on the scene, and it answered the mail nicely.  A year or two after the RX3 hit the scene, BMW, Kawasaki, and one or two others introduced smaller ADV motorcycles.  I commented that these guys were copying Zongshen.  One snotty newspaper writer told me I was delusional if I thought BMW, Kawi, and others copied Zongshen.   I think that’s exactly what happened, but I don’t think they did as good a job as Zongshen did.

If you’ve got an opinion, please leave a comment.  We’d love to hear from you!

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Wild Conjecture: Harley-Davidson Bronx 975

You’ve got to give The Motor Company credit. They are throwing tons of new models against the wall hoping something sticks. The Milwaukee Wrecking Crew is producing a slew of modern products, only one of them called the 975 Bronx.

To my admittedly untrained eye the engine looks similar to the new liquid-cooled V-twin used in Harley’s (also new) Pan American ADV bike. The Bronx will have less displacement but I’m sure it will still have enough power to unravel a man-bun at full throttle.

The Bronx styling is ok, kind of a standard-ish, street fighter thing. It looks good to me. The big pulley on the back wheel is probably for a belt drive. I guess I could do some Internet research and find out more hard facts about the Bronx but facts don’t matter, performance numbers don’t matter, and styling doesn’t matter with this effort.

What matters is Harley-Davison’s maybe-too-late arrival and the amount of money they are spending to play catch up in the broad, non-cruiser categories. There are so many market segments now: ADV-big, ADV-small, Scrambler, Streetfighter, Sport bike, Sport Tourer, Race replica and the list goes on.

I get that Harley is trying to outlast their dying customer base. It’s a smart thing to do but exactly how much cash do these guys have to burn? The Bronx is not available for a few years yet they have to have the equipment to build the thing, right?

I’m worried about H-D. I like to poke fun at them but I cheer on their to-date-futile attempt to make a competitive flat tracker out of the long and portly Street 750 engine. I don’t want to see Harley fail. Yet they keep cranking out new models nilly-willy, seemingly without asking anyone if it’s a good idea or waiting to see if any of them are going to be popular. At the rate they are going Harley will have their promised 100 new models done by next June.

Will Harley dealerships will be able to adapt to the flood of new technology being shipped to them from the factory? The customers for these new, modern bikes will be nothing like the old guys wanting a big Hog because they can finally afford it. Harley will be competing on price, performance and quality, three areas that they never had to concern themselves with in the past.

Throughout its history Harley-Davidson has always moved forward slowly, fearfully even.  Innovations like disc brakes or fuel injection take decades to become part of their story. It was almost comically conservative: The first liquid-cooled Hogs were only half liquid-cooled! This conservative approach has served them well: They sell a lot of motorcycles to guys who think like me. Any one of these new models would be a shock to H-D’s system: The Livewire, The V-Rod, the Streets both 500 and 750. When is the last time you’ve heard anything about the Street 500? Does H-D even make it anymore? It’s like they don’t have time to promote each new model and let it find some kind of stability in the marketplace.

I love that somebody at Harley is shoving stacks of chips onto the ever-contracting motorcycle industry crap table. It means that the humans are still in charge. I hope they have the money to sustain this betting strategy because H-D needs to win. They need to succeed. The motorcycle landscape would be a much duller place without those clumsy bastards barging around America’s roadways.

The bike handles well when it’s out of control…

Gresh has some really honest, really funny videos, and the thing about the funny part is that the guy is not trying to be funny…he’s just telling it like it is and a lot of times, the truth is pretty funny.  This is a video Joe did 7 years ago on the Harley XR1200 Sportster, and the best line in it is the title of this blog.   Enjoy, my friends.

Top This

I’m a big fan of electric motorcycles. I like electrical stuff in general and I spent most of my working life as an electrician with benefits. Harley’s new Livewire E-Hog is an impressive first effort but at $30,000 dollars a copy it is a lousy deal compared to E-bikes from other manufacturers. You can easily beat the Livewire in both speed and distance for half the cost but that’s not the Livewire’s major problem.

The Livewire’s problem is industry-wide. Harley and those other guys are trying to duplicate the internal combustion experience with an electric motorcycle and they are burning a lot of joules doing it. Electric motorcycles are not direct IC replacements and their riders understand this.

For motorcycles, battery technology today is not compact enough and recharges too slowly for a rider with no fixed destination in mind. Until manufacturers can agree on a standard-sized, easily swappable battery pack we are stuck waiting for the bike. The first battery operated power tools were like this: you had to plug the whole tool in and wait. No work could be done until the thing was charged.

With standard-sized batteries (within a product line) cordless power tools have nearly supplanted the old, outlet-bound stuff. It takes only a second to swap in a new battery and you are back on the job doing whatever it is that you do. No one has range anxiety because there’s always a hot battery in the charger ready to use. Tesla is working on speeding up charge wait times by swapping the huge battery in their cars and it only takes a few minutes. When an electric vehicle can pull up to a gas station and swap in a charged battery as fast as I can change my power drill battery they will have become viable transportation.

The reality is, manufacturers are not going to standardize battery sizes. The best we can hope for is a battery changeable along the lines of the power tool situation: each battery is specific to the brand. Even that will not happen soon and maybe if you move the goal posts it doesn’t need to happen for the majority of users.

That leaves commuting back and forth to work as the ideal use for an electric motorcycle. You can have a charging source at both ends of the ride and you will be busy working or puttering about the house while the bike charges so there’s no down time. Give up on the idea of e-bikes matching IC bikes in all instances. The highest and best use of electric motorcycles is a situation where you have time to kill between rides.

I know The Motor Company is not going to listen to me, but here goes: Harley, stop making expensive, high performance electric motorcycles. I’ve seen your lighter weight electric bikes and they are so far removed from the traditional Harley-Davidson customer they might as well be electric Buells.

Harley’s marketing for as long as I can remember has been based on heritage. Timeless styling and traditional products have served you well. For a successful E-bike look to your past and the Topper scooter; it’s the ideal commuter platform to modernize (not too much) and electrify. The boxy rear section can hold a huge battery bank without looking like it’s holding a huge battery bank. It’s a classic form that simply drips Harley-Davidson heritage and the youth of America will go gaga over the styling. Keep the thing below $4000 so a normal person can afford one. You’ll have to outsource most of the drivetrain components to keep the price reasonable but you can slap the parts together in an old V-Rod factory and call it made in the USA!

Bike Mags gone by…

Good buddy Buzz Kanter, publisher of American Iron magazine, posted an interesting list on Facebook yesterday.  It’s the motorcycle magazines that have folded their tents since 1998.   I asked Buzz if I could post it here and Buzz said it was okay:

American Rider
American Thunder
Big Twin
Biker
Biker Parties
Cycle News
Cycle World Buyers Guide
Dirt Bike Buyers Guide
Easyriders
Easyriders’ Buyers Guide
Hot Bike
Hot Bike Specials
Hot Rod Bikes
Indian Motorcycle Illustrated
In The Wind
Iron Horse
IronWorks
Motorcycle Cruiser
Motorcycle Performance
Motorcycle Price Guide
Motorcycle Shopper
Motorcycle Tour & Cruiser
Motorcyclist
Motorcyclist Buyers Guide
MX Racer
Old Bike Journal
On The Road
Outlaw Biker
Outlaw Biker Presents
Quick Throttle
Sport Rider
Twistgrip
V-Twin
VQ
Walnecks Classic Cycle Trader

Buzz’s magazine, American Iron, is still going strong and it is still published every 4 weeks (I can’t imagine publishing to that kind of schedule, but Buzz, Steve Lita, and the AIM crew somehow make it happen).  The focus at AIM is on U.S. motorcycles, great writing, and great photography, and it all works.  I don’t own a Harley or an Indian and I still enjoy reading American Iron.  If you want to subscribe to AIM (and I think you should), you can do so here.

Buzz is an interesting guy.  Like a lot of riders, he’s a shooter, too, and I enjoy seeing his shooting-related posts on Facebook.  A lot of folks who are into motorcycles often have similar other interests, including shooting, cameras and photography, watches, bicycles, travel, and more.  It’s what drives the kind of things we talk about here on ExhaustNotes.

So what’s coming up?   Good stuff, my friends.  Arjiu is headed to Bonneville in the near future.  I’m doing the 2019 Three Flags Classic on a CSC RX4.   Good buddy J and I just got back from a deer hunt scouting expedition (whoa, the mosquitoes sure got us good).  And more.  There’s always more, so stay tuned!

Do you have an interesting story you’d like to share here on ExNotes?  Send it to us (info@ExhaustNotes.us), and if it is right for the blog, we’ll post it here.  Don’t worry about typos or spelling errors…our editorial crew is standing by and if there are any mistakes, we’ll fix ’em!

Want to be taller, thinner, better looking, and a faster rider?  Hey, sign up for our automatic email blog update notifications here!

Check out the Sierra Mountain Passes website from our good buddies J and Val!

S&S 96 Cubic Inch Stroker Rebuild

My ’92 Softail Harley. After losing a lot of weight.

So this all got started on a trip to Baja.  My beloved ’92 Softail started clanging and banging and bucking and snorting somewhere around Ensenada.  I was headed south with my good buddy Paul from New Jersey (not the Paul I grew up, but another one).  It was obvious something wasn’t right and we turned.   It wasn’t the end of the world and the Harley did manage to get me home, but I could tell:  Something major had happened.  The bike was making quite a bit of noise. I had put 400 miles on it by the time I rode it back from Mexico.  I parked the Harley, got on my Suzuki TL1000S, and we changed our itinerary to ride north up the PCH rather than south into Baja.  That trip went well, but there was still the matter of the dead Softail.

Here’s where it started to get really interesting.  My local Harley dealer wouldn’t touch the bike.  See, this was around 2005 or so, and it seems my Harley was over 10 years old.   Bet you didn’t know this:  Many Harley dealers (maybe most of them) won’t work on a bike over 10 years old.   The service manager at my dealer ‘splained this to me and I was dumbfounded.  “What about all the history and heritage and nostalgia baloney you guys peddle?” I asked.  The answer was a weak smile.  “I remember an ad with a baby in Harley T-shirt and the caption When did it start for you?” I said.  Another weak smile.

I was getting nowhere fast.  I tried calling a couple of other Harley dealers and it was the same story.  Over 10 years old, dealers won’t touch it.  I was flabbergasted.  For a company that based their entire advertising program on longevity and heritage, I thought it was outrageous.  Chalk up another chapter in my book, Why I Hate Dealers.

A friend suggested I go to an independent shop.  “It’s why they exist,” he said.  So I did.

Here’s my internist…Victor, of the Iron Horse cycle shop. That’s my Harley in the background.

There was this little hole-in-the-wall place on Holt Boulevard in Ontario, in kind of a seedy part of town, near where the local Harley dealer used to be.  The Iron Horse.  You gotta love a shop with a name like that. The guy who ran it was a dude about my age named Victor.  I could tell right away:  I liked the shop and I liked Victor.  I got my Harley over there and I stopped by a few days later to hear the verdict:  The engine was toast.

“What happened here,” said Victor, “is that one of your roller lifters stopped rolling, and it turned into a solid lifter.  When I did that, the cam and the lifter started shedding metal, and the filings migrated into the oil pump.  When that stopped working, the engine basically ate itself….”

An Evo motor roller lifter that stopped rolling. The needle bearing in this lifter failed, and departed for points south. And north. And east and west. You get the idea.
The cam wore a path into the roller. That metal had to go somewhere, and where it went was the oil pump.

“You’ve got lots of other things not right in your motorcycle, too,” Victor explained.  “The alternator is going south, your cam got chewed up, the oil pump is toast, the belt is tired, and you’ll probably want to gear it a little taller to reduce the vibration like the new Harleys do.”

Here’s what the failed lifter did to the Screaming Eagle cam. Note the surface on the right most lobe.
Victor showed me that my alternator was getting close to failing. Look at the insulation on the output lines. Yep, I would need a new one of those, too.
Here’s what happened when the metal dust and needle bearing bits got into the oil pump. Note the abrasions on the inner surface.
Another neat shot.   It was kind of cool to see what was flying up and down underneath me during those 50,000 miles I put on the Harley over the last 14 years.

Victor gave me a decent price for bringing the engine back to its original condition (in other words, a rebuild to stock), but it wasn’t cheap.   Then he offered an alternative.

“I can rebuild it with S&S components for about the same price,” he said, “and that’s with nearly everything new except the cases.   We’ll keep the Harley cases because then the engine number stays the same, and it’s still a Harley.   It would be a 96-inch motor instead of an 80-inch motor, and I think you’d like it.  It would be about the same price as rebuilding it with Harley parts.   You’d get new pistons, rods, flywheels, and nearly everything else.   I’d have to take the cases apart and get them machined to accept the S&S stroker crank and cylinders, and we’d reassemble it with new bearings. Oversized S&S forged pistons would go in with a 10.1:1 compression ratio, and that means you’d have to run high test.   Oh, yeah, there’s new S&S heads, a new manifold, and a new S&S Super carb. And an S&S cam.”  Then he showed me the components in a brochure, and another chart that showed the difference in power.

All the S&S stuff that would go into my new motor. I was getting excited. This was going to be cool.
Twice the horsepower, and twice the torque. What’s not to like?

It was an easy decision.   For the same money it would cost to bring the Harley back to stock, I could get it redone as a real hot rod.  For me, it was a no-brainer.   My days of bopping around on a 48-hp, 700-lb Harley would be over. The horsepower would double.  Bring it on!

My Harley was still running on the original belt drive, and I had Victor replace that, too. And as long as the belt was being replaced, I went with Victor’s recommendation to swap to taller sprockets.  That would give the bike a bit more top end and cut some of the vibration at cruising speeds.

I wrote a check and asked Victor to call me when the parts came in.  I wanted to photograph the whole deal.  Victor said he would, and I stopped at the Iron Horse frequently over the next several weeks.

The S&S manifold for my new engine.
Check out the gorgeous S&S cylinder head.
And how about this machined-from-billet piston? These would kick the Harley’s compression ratio up to 10.1:1.
And here’s the S&S cam.

I was enjoying this.  The parts didn’t come in all at once, and that was fine by me.  I enjoyed stopping in at the Iron Horse and taking photos.  It was something I looked forward to at the end of each day.  It was really fun as the motor came together.  Victor asked if I wanted the cylinders and cylinder heads painted black like they originally were, or if I wanted to leave them aluminum.  It was another no-brainer for me:  Aluminum it would be!

My S&S motor being assembled. The cases and the valve covers were about the only Harley parts left in the motor.
Isn’t it beautiful? Another view of the S&S 96-incher coming together.
Here’s a closeup of the cam and one of the roller lifters just above it.

One day not long after the motor went together I got the call:   My bike was ready.   It was stunning and I rode the wheels off the thing.  Here’s the finished bike…my ’92 Softail with the S&S 96-inch motor installed.

It’s beautiful, don’t you think?

The S&S motor completely changed the personality of my Harley.  I had thought it was quick when Laidlaw’s installed the Screaming Eagle stuff back at the 500-mile service, but now, at 50,000 miles with the S&S motor, I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, Toto. In the 14 years I had owned my Harley previously, I had just touched 100mph once.  Now, the bike would bury the needle (somewhere north of 120mph on the Harley speedometer) nearly every time I took an entrance on to the freeway.  This thing was fast!  Fuel economy dropped to the mid-30-mpg range, but I didn’t care. My Harley was fast! The rear tire would wear out in 3,000 miles, but I didn’t care. The Harley was fast!  It ran rich and you could smell gasoline at idle, but I didn’t care.  Did I mention this thing was fast?

You might think I would have kept the Harley and put another zillion miles on it, but truth be told, my riding tastes had changed and I only kept it for another year after the rebuild.  I was riding with a different crowd and I had a garage full of bikes, including the ’95 Triumph Daytona 1200 I’ve previously blogged about, my Suzuki TL1000S, a pristine bone-stock low-mileage ’82 Honda CBX, and a new KLR 650 Kawasaki.  You wanna talk fast?  The TL and the Daytona were scary fast.  Yeah, the S&S was a runner, but fast had taken on a new definition for me.

And then one day, it happened.  My wife had asked me to pick up something at the store while I was out seeking my fortune on the Harley, and when I came home, I realized I forgot to stop for whatever it was.   I could have gone out on the Harley again, but for whatever reason, the KLR got the nod instead.

The bottom line:  I had back to back rides on the S&S Softail and the KLR, and that’s when it hit me:  I had bought the KLR new for about what I had in the S&S motor.  The KLR was quicker at normal speeds, it handled way better, it was a much smoother and more comfortable, and it was more fun to ride.  That was a wake-up call for me.  The Harley went in the CycleTrader that day, and it sold the day after that.  Regrets?   None.  I’d had my fun, and it was time to move on.

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Gangsters!

My Harley Softail stories seem to be hitting the spot (how’s that for alliteration?), and I mentioned in an earlier blog that I’d tell you about my gangster whitewalls. I keep my promises.

I need to provide some context here, and that entails telling you about two other vehicles. One is what might well be the most beautiful motorcycle Harley-Davidson ever made, and that’s the 1993 Heritage Nostalgia. Quickly dubbed the Moo Glide by whoever did the dubbing in those days, it was a stunning motorcycle. It was essentially a Heritage Softail, but what the Milwaukee maestros did was they painted the thing white with black panels, they dropped the windshield, they made the leather saddlebags smaller, and they left off the windshield.

Harley-Davidson didn’t stop there. The next steps were cowskin inserts on both the saddlebags and the seat, but it just wasn’t a brown leather insert. Nope, it was from whatever breed of cows have that black and white fur, and Harley left the fur on. It worked nicely with the bike’s black and white paint treatment.  The motorcycle was stunning.

The 1993 Harley FLSTN, also known as the Moo Glide.

But wait. There’s more. The V-twin virtuosos had Dunlop add a new part number to their catalog, and that made the motorcycle a home run. The Dunlop dudes took the stock Harley blackwalls and added luxurious wide whitewalls. They (whoever “they” was) called them gangster whitewalls. You know, like Al Capone in a V-16 Cadillac or a Duesenberg.  The effect was visually arresting. Literally.  It stopped me in my tracks the first time I saw a Moo Glide. But I’ll get to that in a second.

The second vehicle (remember, I said I needed to provide some context here) was my 1989 Geo Tracker. Well, actually, it was made by Suzuki, but GM did their badge engineering schtick and they sold it under the GEO Tracker label.

A 1989 Geo Tracker. Mine looked just like this. It was a great little truck.

I saw the very first one of these to arrive in So Cal at our local Chevy dealer, when I stopped to pick up a radiator hose for another Chevy I owned that needed, well, a radiator hose.  I liked the Tracker immediately. It was small (a big plus), it was a 4×4 (that appealed to me), and it was a good-looking little truck. My stop for a radiator hose turned into a new car purchase.

As it turned out, I bought the very first Geo Tracker in southern California, and that got me on an early adopter marketing list.  I’ve probably been paid to look at new concept cars from a half a dozen manufacturers maybe ten times over the years, but that’s a story for another time.

To get back to this story, I loved that Tracker and I really racked up the miles on it.  That’s sort of the point where I’m going with this story. I got more miles out of a set of tires on that Tracker than any vehicle I’ve ever owned. I was at 78,000 miles on the Tracker’s original tires (Bridgestones, as I recall) and they were still going strong. My wife wanted me to get new tires just because of the miles. The Tracker was a small car, and in 1993, a set of tires just like the ones from the factory were $275. Nah, I told her, I can get another 10,000 miles out of these tires. I wasn’t going to spend $275 for tires if I didn’t need to.  Money doesn’t grow on trees, I said, and $275 was a lot of money.

So, let’s get back to the point of this story, and that’s my Harley. I had my ’92 Softail in at Laidlaw’s for a scheduled service, and as I recall, I only had about 2,000 miles on its second set of tires. They were blackwalls, just like the bike came with from the factory. They had plenty of life left in them. But at Laidlaw’s I saw my first Moo Glide and my reaction was Wow!

Jerry Laidlaw saw me eyeing the Moo. He knew I wasn’t going to buy a new motorcycle so soon, but he also smelled blood in the water. “We have those gangster whitewalls in stock,” he said.

“How much?” I asked.

“$350 for the pair,” Jerry said.

I didn’t blink an eye. “Let’s do it!”

Yours truly, somewhere in Baja in the mid-’90s, proving that helmet hair is a real hazard if you have any hair at all. And yeah, with my gangster whitewalls.

A Harley wake-up call…

So I had my new Harley, a gorgeous blue ’92 Heritage Softail, and it was a shockingly beautiful motorcycle.  Yeah, some of the styling touches were a little hokey, but in a good way.  I never even knew what a concho was before I bought the Softail, but I knew after I owned it.  I became a Harley-riding cowboy.  The conchos made the bike complete. How I ever made it to 40 without conchos I’ll never know. I had them now, though, and they just looked right. My Softail was a fashion statement. It made me look good and it made me feel good.   I loved that bike.

My ’92 Softail on a Baja ride to San Felipe. Good buddies Baja John and Marty rode with me on that one.   Those gangster whitewalls?   That’s a story for another blog.

There was only one problem, and it was a big one:  The Softail was a dawg. It was a 700-lb lump that couldn’t get out of its own way. I’ve already spoken about how unreliable my ’79 Electra-Glide was, but that old clunker would get up and choogy, and it would have walked away from my new ’92 Softail in a drag race.  I mean, the thing was slow. When I gave it more throttle going up a hill, it seemed like the only result was a deeper moan. It sure didn’t go any faster.

I worked in El Monte in those days and the nearby dealer was a famous one in southern California, Laidlaw’s, and I felt comfortable with them.  I knew Bob Laidlaw, their founder, and I knew his son Jerry, and I knew both to be straight shooters. When it was time for the Softail’s first service at 500 miles, that’s where I went. Laidlaw’s has since moved to a larger, more modern facility in a better neighborhood, I’m guessing at Harley-Davidson’s insistence, and it’s still a great place. But I liked the old location better. Like I described for Dale’s in the last blog about buying my ’92, the old Laidlaw’s facility had that crusty old motorcycle shop schtick, and I liked that.  You know, grease on the floor, a funky shop area, and guys who looked like their lives revolved around motorcycles and tattoos. Guys with calibrated arms who knew how much torque to apply to a 9/16 by feel alone.

I went to Laidlaw’s on an overcast Saturday morning for that first service, and Jerry wrote the service order. After completing it, he looked at me and asked: Anything else?

“Yeah,” I said. “The thing’s a dog.”

Jerry smiled. He knew. This wasn’t his first rodeo.

“They lean them out pretty good from the factory,” he said.

“So what do guys do?” I asked.

Another Jerry smile. “Well, most guys get a new cam, punch out the pipes, rejet the carb, and put the Screaming Eagle air filter in.”

“How much is that?” I asked. I could see this smoking past another $1500 without stopping to look back.

“It’s about $500,” Jerry answered. Hmmm, that wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

“So how much would everything be,” I said. “You know, the 500-mile service and the cam and carb and pipes and all the rest?”

“It’s $500 for everything,” Jerry answered, “including the 500-mile service.”

I could hardly believe what I was hearing.

“Let’s do it,” I said. I mean, I know a good deal when I see one. I hung around, as Jerry told me the whole thing would be a couple of hours. In the meantime, it had started raining, and I had no raingear. I walked across the street to some sort of an Army-Navy-99-cent store and bought a $3 rain suit.

In those days, it was no big deal to hang around in the service area and watch the techs work on your bike. The guy who was working on mine was a long-haired dude with lots of tattoos and a friendly smile. He held this giant steel toothpick-looking sort of tool that was essentially a ¾-inch-diameter rod sharpened to a point in one hand, and in his other hand he had a sledge hammer. He stuck the persuader into the end of one of my fishtail mufflers and whacked it with the sledge hammer. Then he repeated the process on the other fishtail.  With a big grin, he said, “Adios, baffles!”

Then it was the carb work and the air cleaner replacement. And then it was the Screaming Eagle cam, which actually was pretty easy to install in the chrome cone on the right side of the engine. Then he buttoned it all up.

I finished my cup of coffee, donned my el cheapo raingear, paid my bill, and fired up the Harley.

Good Lord!

It was a completely different motorcycle. It sounded way better than it had before the Screaming Eagle cam work and exhaustectomy. It had been transformed from a smothered, anemic, pathetic, wheezing sort of thing into living, breathing, fire-snorting, spirited motorcycle. It reeked raw power and it had attitude. The idle was lopey and assertive, like a small block Chevy with an Isky cam and Hooker headers. My Harley rocked back and forth on its axles with each engine rotation. It was telling me:  Let’s go!  I think I’m pretty good at turning a phrase and I’m doing my best here, folks, but trust me on this: It’s hard to put into words how complete and total my Harley’s transformation was. It kind of reminded me of the first time I ever threw a leg over a Triumph Bonneville (I was 14 when that happened, and when Laidlaw’s tuned my Softail I was 14 all over again).

So I rolled out into the rain for my 30-mile ride home and I was afraid to whack the throttle open. I thought the rear wheel would break loose on the wet pavement; it felt that powerful.  The rain and the clouds, I think, made the Harley’s Exhaust Notes (love that phrase) sound way mo better. I was there, man.

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Such a deal!

The year was 1991, and the last thing in the world I was thinking about was buying another motorcycle, and within the confines of that thought, the very, very last thought I would have ever had was buying a Harley-Davidson. I had previously owned a ’79 Electra-Glide I bought new in Texas, and that bike was a beautiful disaster. I called it my optical illusion (it looked like a motorcycle).  I wrote about the bad taste it left in an earlier blog. Nope, I’d never own another Harley, or so I thought when I sold it in 1981.

My ’79 Electra-Glide Classic, as shown in the 1979 Harley catalog. It was the most unreliable and most beautiful motorcycle I ever owned. I wish I still had it.

But like the title of that James Bond movie, you should never say never again. I was a big wheel at an aerospace company in 1991 and I was interviewing engineers when good buddy Dick Scott waltzed in as one of the applicants. I had worked with Dick in another aerospace company (in those days in the So Cal aerospace industry, everybody worked everywhere at one time or another). Dick had the job as soon as he I saw he was applying, but I went through the motions interviewing him and I learned he had a Harley. DIck said they were a lot better than they used to be and he gave me the keys to his ’89 Electra-Glide. I rode it and he was right. It felt solid and handled way better than my old Shovelhead.

Dick Scott on his ’89 Electra-Glide. The day after I took this photo in Baja, Dick died when he crashed his motorcycle.

That set me on a quest. I started looking, and after considering the current slate of Harleys in 1991, I decided that what I needed was a Heritage Softail. I liked the look and I thought I wanted the two-tone turquoise-and-white version. The problem, though, was that none of the Harley dealers had motorcycles. They were all sold before they arrived at the dealers, and the dealers were doing their gouging in those days with a “market adjustment” uptick ranging from $2000 to sometimes $4000 (today, most non-Harley dealers sort of do the same thing with freight and setup). There was no way in hell I was going to pay over list price, but even had I wanted to, it would have been a long wait to get a new Harley.

One day while driving to work, a guy passed me on the freeway riding a sapphire blue Heritage softail, and I was smitten. Those colors worked even better for me than did the turquoise-and-white color combo. The turquoise-and-white had a nice ‘50s nostalgia buzz (it reminded me of a ’55 Chevy Bel Air), but that sapphire blue number was slick. Even early in the morning on Interstate 10, I could see the orange and gray factory pinstriping, and man, it just worked for me. It had kind of a blue jeans look to it (you know, denim with orange stitching).  That was my new want and I wanted the thing bad. But it didn’t make any difference. Nobody had any new Harleys, and nobody had them at list price. I might as well have wanted a date with Michelle Pfeiffer. In those days, a new Harley at list price or less in the colors I wanted (or in any colors, actually) was pure unobtanium.

The Harley Softail I bought at Dale’s Modern Harley. I negotiated a hell of a deal. I kept that Harley for 12 years and rode the wheels off the thing.  I’ve since learned how to pack a little better.

So one Saturday morning about a month later, I took a drive out to the Harley dealer in San Bernardino. In those days, that dealer was Dale’s Modern Harley (an oxymoronic name for a Harley dealer if ever there was one). Dale’s is no more, but when it was there, it was the last of the real motorcycle shops. You know the drill…it was in a bad part of town, it was small, everything had grease and oil stains, and the only thing “modern” was the name on the sign. That’s what motorcycle dealers were like when I was growing up. I liked it that way, and truth be told, I miss it.  Dealerships are too clean today.

Anyway, a surprise awaited. I walked in the front door (which was at the rear of the building because the door facing the street was chained shut because, you know, it was a bad part of town).  And wow, there it was: A brand new 1992 Heritage Softail in sapphire blue.  Just like I wanted.

Dale’s had a sales guy who came out of Central Casting for old Harley guys. His name was Bob (I never met Dale and I have no idea who he was).  Bob.  You know the type and if you’re old enough you know the look. Old, a beer belly, a dirty white t-shirt, jeans, engineer boots, a blue denim vest, and one of those boat captain hats motorcycle riders wore in the ‘40s and ‘50s. An unlit cigarette dangled from one corner of his mouth. His belt was a chromed motorcycle chain. I’d been to Dale’s several times before, and I’d never seen Bob attired in anything but what I just described. And I’d never seen him without that unlit cigarette.  Straight out of Central Casting, like I said.

“What’s this?” I asked Bob, pointing at the blue Softail.

“Deal fell through,” Bob answered. “Guy ordered it, we couldn’t get him financing, and he couldn’t get a loan anywhere else.”

“So it’s available?” I asked.

“Yep.”

Hmmm. This was interesting.

“How much?” I asked.

“$12,995, plus tax and doc fees,” Bob answered, walking back to his desk at the edge of Dale’s very small showroom floor.

$12,995 was MSRP for a new Heritage Softail back in 1992. That would be a hell of a deal. Nobody else in So Cal was selling Harleys at list price.

I followed Bob to his desk and sat down.  I was facing Bob and the Harley was behind me. Bob was screwing around with some papers on his desk and not paying any particular attention to me.

“I’ll go $11,500 for it,” I said.

Bob looked up from his paperwork and smiled.

“Son,” he said (and yeah, he actually called me “son,” even though I was 40 years old at the time) “I’m going to sell that motorsickle this morning.  Not this afternoon, not next week, but this morning.  The only question is: Am I going to sell it to you or am I going to sell it to him?”

Bob actually said “motorsickle,” I thought, and then I wondered who “him” was. Bob sensed my befuddlement.  He pointed behind me and I looked. Somebody was already sitting on what I had started regarding as my motorsickle.  That guy was thinking the same thing I was.

“Bob,” I began, “you gotta help me out here. I never paid retail for anything in my life.”

“That’s because you never bought a new ’92 Harley, son, but I’ll tell you what. I’ll throw in a free Harley T-shirt.”  I couldn’t tell if he was joking or if he was trying to insult me, but I didn’t care.

I looked at the Harley again and that other dude was still sitting on it.   On my motorcycle.   And that’s when I made up my mind. $12,995 later (plus another thousand dollars in taxes and doc fees) I rolled out of Dale’s with a brand-new sapphire blue Harley Heritage Softail. And one new Harley T-shirt.

Motorcycle Entertainment: Monkee-Moto!

Television in the mid-1960s was nothing if not predictable. As we watched the shadows on the wall, behind us society was undergoing dramatic change. The old ways were failing, cracks formed in the smooth, comforting facade. Bit by bit it was revealed that whoever was in charge was not being entirely truthful. One of the first television shows to reflect our growing national cynicism was The Monkees: Four longhaired kids who respected neither the camera nor the situation comedy process. The Monkees broke the fourth wall so many times you felt like you were on set with them.

My favorite Monkee episode (because of the motorcycles) opens with Micky Dolenz singing Going Down. Micky was the drummer and the best singer in the band and he nails Going Down’s proto-rap feel. From there, the show falls apart beautifully with motorcycles, a chalkboard Hog reference, dust and pretty girls beating up The Monkees.

Amid typical Monkee chaos in walks The Black Angels biker gang featuring a leader who just wants to destroy somebody. 50 years ago the cliché biker image was so embedded in our culture that all it took was a black jacket to signify a hoodlum. Harley Davidson has mined that image right up to today, creating an entire sub-set of true believers. The rest of us modern motorcyclists with our high-tech, high-vis monkey suits look more like school crossing guards.

The monkees form their own biker gang called The Chickens and during a race between the bad guys more cinema magic is revealed. There is a plot to all this but it’s mostly there to keep the boys from walking off the set. At the end of the show peace and love is restored, Triumphs and Harleys get along together and you’re filled with hope for the future.

This was situation comedy television unlike any that came before. It was random. It exposed the fakery. Jack Benny’s old TV show was The Monkees spirit guide. After 2 years the Monkees show was cancelled. The Monkees became a real band and had many hits written and preformed by themselves. Which just goes to show you that living a lie sometimes leads to success.