Tag: 1992 Harley Heritage Softail

¿Quantos Pistones? (The Twins)

By Joe Berk

This was an interesting blog to write (and it was interesting on many levels).  As you know, I’m writing a series of blogs on motorcycles I’ve owned with the machines organized by cylinder count.  The idea is to consider all of them from my ownership perspective, rack up a bunch of (hopefully) fun-to-read blogs, and then wrap up with my opinion on which engine configuration is the best.  I’ve already done the first one on the singles I’ve owned.

A word on the photos:  I was surprised I had photographs of every bike I’ve ever owned.  In recent decades, after I had become a half-assed amateur photographer, the photo quality is generally good.  In earlier years, I was not a very good photographer, nor was my equipment very good.  Some of the photos are in black and white, and most of the earlier ones were taken with a dinky little Minolta C-110 camera.  Hey, you go to war with the army you have.

Between that first ¿Quantos Pistones? post and this one, something self-updated on my computer and my laptop went from simply taking my orders to predicting what words I’m going to type next and then filling them in, which I found to be wildly annoying.  I thought it was in the WordPress software, but it wasn’t.   It was in my Edge browser.  Google helped me; I found the offending “feature” in the Edge settings and switched it off.  I think these software weenies are changing things just to give themselves something to do.  I wish they would stop.  The folks who keep doing this sort of thing are going to have a hard time explaining themselves when they’re standing in front of the pearly gates.  I’ll be there, too, as a witness for the prosecution.

Rant over; let’s get back to the main attraction.

As was the case in the blog on singles, I am again discovering this:  Just when I think I’ve listed all of the twins I’ve owned, I remember another one.  That sure has been the case here.  I suppose I had better hit the Publish button before I remember another one.

Alrighty then:  With the above as a backdrop, here we go.

1965 Honda CB 160

Okay, I’m cheating a little.  This wasn’t my bike at all.  It was my Dad’s.  But I rode it in the fields behind our house quite a bit and I sort of considered it to be mine, and that’s why it’s on this list.

The 1964 Honda CB 160, That’s me on the bike in New Jersey, during the winter months, when I was 14 years old.

The little 160 was nice.  It was the first motorcycle I ever rode and I had a lot of fun on it.  Honda was making big inroads in the United States in the mid-1960s and they changed nearly everything in the motorcycle world.  It was a fun time for a 14-year-old kid.

The CB 160 only stayed with us for a couple of months.  Dad had been bitten by the bug.  He wanted something bigger.

1965 Honda Super Hawk

As was the case with the CB 160, the Super Hawk was Dad’s motorcycle.  But the same modifier applied:  I used to ride it in the fields behind our house in New Jersey, so I’m including it here.

Fast forward a bit, and it’s me again during the summer months on a 1965 Honda Super Hawk. We had a swimming pool, so I spent my summers in a bathing suit.

The Super Hawk, with its 305 cubic centimeters, seemed infinitely more powerful than the CB 160 (especially riding it in the fields behind our house).  Dad had the bug, though.  The Super Hawk would only last for a couple of months, too.

1966 Triumph Bonneville

Ah, this was a motorcycle.  A Triumph Bonneville.  I couldn’t believe it.  It had been my dream machine for at least a couple of years, and now there was one in the garage.  And you know what?  Dad let me ride it in those same fields behind our house.  I can’t imagine what he was thinking or why he let me do that.  I never dropped it, though.  God Almighty, it was powerful.  And the sound….it was awesome.

Mom and Dad on the 1966 Triumph Bonneville. You can see their other Bonneville (a 1965 Pontiac) in the garage. You could say we liked Bonnevilles.  No one in my family has ever been to the Bonneville Salt Flats. I probably should go there one of these days.

The Bonneville was an amazing motorcycle.  Dad and I had a lot of good rides on it.  I wish we had kept it.  On that sound comment above:  Nothing, and I mean nothing, has a a more soul-satisfying exhaust note than a Triumph.

1978 Triumph Bonneville

I was living in Fort Worth, Texas, I was single, and I was an engineer at General Dynamics on the F-16 program.  When I passed by the Triumph dealer I realized I hadn’t ridden a Triumph Bonneville since I was 16 years old, so I thought I’d stop by.  An hour later I signed on the dotted line, and I owned a Bonneville again.

My 1978 Triumph Bonneville, parked outside my apartment in Fort Worth, Texas. The colors have mostly drained from these two photos. The bike was a deep candy apple red.
Another shot of my 1978 Triumph Bonneville.

It was a great motorcycle.  There was an older guy who owned a Yamaha TT 500 at General Dynamics (his name was Sam), and we road all the farm roads in the areas around Fort Worth.  We both had hay fever and Texas had terrible pollen, but the riding was great.  My Bonneville would top out at exactly 109mph (the earlier T120 and then T140 designations notwithstanding), and that was enough.  The bike was kick start only (which made it an anachronism in 1978), but I was okay with that, too.  For awhile, anyway.

I sold the Bonneville.  I’m can’t remember why; I did a lot of dumb things when I was young.  Shortly after I sold the Bonneville, I realized I needed a motorcycle again.  You know, to be a complete person.  That led to my next acquisition.  But to this day, I wish I had kept the Bonneville.

1979 Harley Electra-Glide Classic

I used to spend a lot of time at the Fort Worth Harley dealer drooling over their new bikes.  The late ’70s were, in my opinion, the height of the Willie G styling years at Harley.  It was also the absolute bottom for them from a quality perspectives, as I would soon find out when I finally bit the bullet and bought the bike I thought was the most beautiful motorcycle I’d ever seen:  The 1979 Electra-Glide Classic.

Yours truly, with a full head of hair and a 1979 Electra-Glide Classic. I called it my optical illusion. It looked like a motorcycle.

The Electra-Glide was beautiful, but to call it a piece of crap would be insult to turds the world over.  The bike couldn’t go a hundred miles without something breaking on it.  It needed three top end jobs in the 12,000 miles I owned it (the first two were on the warranty, the last one was on me).  I’d finally had it with that bike and what some folks like to call “The Motor Company.”  Hell, the motor was the worst thing on that bike.  And the brakes.  And the clutch.  And the starter.  And the handling.  And the….well, you get the idea.  It was one of the last years Harley was owned by AMF, and when a Harley mechanic told me what that stood for, I finally got it.  I smiled inwardly when I sold the bike, thinking to myself, “Adios, MF.”

On the way down to San Diego, with the Pacific Ocean in the background. I explored a lot of southern California on the Harley. It was the most unreliable motor vehicle of any type I ever owned.

After that awkward ownership experience, I swore I’d never buy another Harley.  I didn’t keep that promise, though.

Even considering all the above, I wish I still had that ’79 Electra-Glide.  It would be worth a small fortune today.   It sure was a pretty motorcycle.

1976 Triumph TR6

Somewhere in the succession of events described above, I moved from Fort Worth to southern California.  General Dynamics transferred me to the Pomona facility.  I loved southern California and I hated GD/Pomona.  Actually, that’s not entirely accurate.  The company was okay, but my boss was a dickhead.  So I did what I normally do in that situation:  I quit and went to work for another defense contractor.  While there, I worked with yet another defense company, and one of the guys there had a 1976 Triumph TR6 he offered to sell to me for $500.  It was running, it was registered, and minutes later it was mine.

On Glendora Ridge Road on the 1972 Triumph Tiger. It was a great motorcycle.

The TR6 was a wonderful motorcycle. If there was a performance difference between it and a Bonneville, I didn’t have the asspitude to feel it.  The single-carb TR6 actually felt stronger at low rpm than the Bonneville did.  I loved that bike, too.

Another Glendora Ridge Road portrait. The Tiger had character, and I mean that in a good way.

The paint on the TR6 had oxidized pretty badly (the former owner kept it outside).  I had this idea I would restore it (see above regarding my propensity to do dumb things when I was younger).  I did a pretty good job turning the great-running TR6 into a basket case (again, see the preceding comments regarding my youthful decisions).  The paint job I paid for on the fuel tank was a disaster, and then I lost interest in resurrecting the bike.  I sold the basket of bits and pieces for what I had paid for the bike.  I wish I still had that one.

1972 Triumph Daytona

The first motorcycle I ever went gaga over was a 1964 Triumph Tiger that a kid named Walt Skok rode to high school.  In those days, the Tiger was a 500cc twin that looked a lot like a Bonneville.  God, that thing was beautiful.

One of the neighbor kids on my 1972 Triumph Daytona, also known as the Baby Bonneville. This was another great motorcycle.

Triumph kept that 500cc twin in their line for years, ultimately adding a second carb and rechristening the bike as the Daytona.  When the 650 line went to the oil-frame-configuration in the early 1970s, the Daytona (also known as the Baby Bonneville) did not; it kept the classic Triumph separate oil tank and peashooter mufflers.

I can’t remember who I bought the Daytona from (I bought it used), but I sure remember its looks.  It was a deep candy metallic green with silver accents.  It was bone stock and it was a wonderful ride.  The handing was almost thought-directed…I could just think what I wanted the motorcycle to do and it would do it.  One day, for no particular reason, I took it to the top of one of our streets that ran up into the mountains, turned it around, turned off the ignition, and started coasting downhill.  I wanted to see how fast it would go with zero power (see my previous decision-making comments); the answer was exactly 70mph.

I never registered the Daytona over the three years I owned it; I just rode the snot out of it.   I never got stopped or and I never had a citation for the expired plates.  I can’t remember why I sold it, or who I sold it to.  The Daytona was a wonderful motorcycle.  I wish I still had it.

1992 Harley Heritage Softail

I didn’t keep my promise to never buy another Harley.  A fried let me ride his ’89 Electra-Glide.  It was a big, fat porker (the bike, not my friend), but Harley was getting a lot of press about their improved quality.  I saw a blue Heritage Softail on the road one day, and I decided I need one.  It was that simple.

I covered a lot of territory on my 1992 Harley Softail. This shot was in the mud flats near Guerrero Negro in Baja, a trip I made with good buddy Baja John.

I put a lot of miles on my ’92 Softail, and while it lasted, it was a great motorcycle.  Good buddy Baja John and I rode our bikes to Cabo, we took the ferry across the Sea of Cortez, and we rode down to Guadalajara and then back up through mainland Mexico to Nogales (you can read about that adventure here).

The Harley died on me down in Mexico on another trip, and although I had regained a tiny bit of trust in Milwaukee, the dealers were still (in my opinion) basically incompetent.  When my ’92 went belly up, the dealer wouldn’t touch it because it was more than 10 years old (I can’t make this stuff up, folks), so I took it to an unencumbered independent repair shop and had it rebuilt as a real motorcycle (you can read that story here).

What kind of killed the Harley dream was me forgetting to pick up milk one day when coming home from a ride on the Harley.  My wife asked about the milk.  I realized I had forgot it, so I went back out to run to the store.  For whatever reason, I took my KLR, and it was as if I had been set free.  The KLR was just so much better, I put an ad in the local Cycle Trader the next day and sold the Harley the day after that.

While I am on this subject of Harley twins, I will tell you that I always wanted a Sportster.  One day the Harley dealer had to keep my bike overnight and he lent a Sportster to me.   That changed my mind in a hurry.  It was gutless.  I know some of my readers ride Sportsters and others ride Big Twins.  Mea culpa in advance.  If you’d like to tell me how great your bikes are and how I have my head up my fourth point of contact, please leave a comment, or send in a draft blog (info@exhaustnotes.us) with pics and I’ll publish your rebuttal.

1982 Yamaha XS 650

This was a lucky find, or rather, it sort of found me.  I was teaching a failure analysis class at McDonnell Douglas about thirty years ago, and the first evening when I connected my laptop to the projector, a photo of the Triumph Daytona (the one described above) briefly appeared in front of the class.

“Hey, I have one of those,” one of the older engineers in the class said.  I asked if he was a Triumph fanboy (as I was).  He told me that he didn’t have a Triumph; he had the Yamaha that was based on it.   He offered to sell it to me in front of the entire class.  I hadn’t even introduced myself yet.

“Let’s talk after class,” I said.

I turns out this guy had purchased the XS 650 new, rode it very little, and it had sat in his garage for several years. I bought it for $900.  I think it was a 1982 model, but I can’t say that for sure.  Being a Triumph rider, I always thought it would be cool to own one of the Japanese 650 twins.  You know…better reliability, no oil leaks, smoother running engines, better fit and finish, and all that.

I found had a good shot (at least I think it is good) of my 1982 Yamaha XS 650 Heritage Special. To this day, I don’t know how Yamaha managed to make the bars so uncomfortable.

I didn’t keep the XS 650 long enough to assess its reliability.  I did keep it and ride it long enough to find out that it had absolutely no personality, it didn’t have the bottom end torque that a Triumph did, it sounded more like George Jetson’s car than a real motorcycle (let’s see how many of you know who he was), its Phillips head screws reacted to a screw driver the same way butter reacted to a hot butterknife, and the “cruiser style” handlebars were the most uncomfortable I’d ever experienced.   As you can guess, the XS 650 didn’t hang around long.  I traded it in to lower the cash outlay on my TL1000S Suzuki.

1997 Suzuki TL1000S

Ducati was setting the world on fire with its L-twin performance bikes, and predictably, it was only a matter of time before the Japanese attempted to do the same.  Two L-Twin Japanese motorcycles emerged in 1997:  Suzuki’s TL1000S and Honda’s Super Hawk (not to be confused with their Super Hawk of the mid-1960s, as shown above in this Twins story).   I opted for the Suzuki variant in red.  I just liked the looks of it; I felt it was a prettier motorcycle than the Honda.

The Roadmaster. This thing ate miles and speed limits voraciously. I toured a lot of Baja on it. This photo was taken somewhere in northern Baja.

The Suzuki was the fastest and hardest accelerating motorcycle I ever owned.  It would lift the front wheel when shifting from second to third at over 100 mph.  I dropped it twice getting in over my head, but I never really damaged the bike or myself.  I used the TL as a touring bike, and I covered large parts of Baja with it. It was a fabulous machine and I wish I still had it.

2020 Royal Enfield INT

My most recent twin is the Royal Enfield 650 INT.  Enfield called it the Interceptor initially (which is a much better name), but they quickly changed it to the INT (my guess is because Honda threatened to sue them, as they already had a model called the Interceptor).

The Motorcycle Classics magazine centerfield showing the two Enfields Gresh and I used for touring Baja. It was a fun trip.

Gresh and I conned Enfield North America into loaning us two bikes (a 500cc Bullet and the new twin INT) for a comparo ride in Baja.  We had a great trip, trading bikes off each day and blogging extensively about our impressions.  I liked the INT so much I bought one shortly after we returned.  It’s a great bike at a great price and it has all the performance I’ll ever need, both as a street bike and as a touring bike.

So there you go.  I’ve owned a lot of twins.  To me, a well-engineered twin makes a great street bike.

You know what?  In searching for photos of my old twins, I found another single I’d forgotten all about.  It was my Triumph Cub.

I never put the Cub on the street.  I just rode it a bit in the fields behind my apartment building and then sold it.  It was crude compared to other bikes of the era, but it was nice.  It would be worth way more today than what I paid for it or what I got when I sold it.

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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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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.