Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Harley-Davidson Livewire

Yeah I'm sure your neighborhood holds great appeal to me and mine.

I highly doubt any rider gives a fugk what the KLR behind them is doing. Ever.

I hope you spent Easter with some normal people. I think you could use the exposure.

Probably.

Birdwatcher used to ride at such a high rate of speed that no Harley rated his purchase.

So I'm sure he knows what he's talking about.

Exactly so, turns out two slow-revving seriously undersquare air-cooled pistons rising and falling nearly simultaneously while attached to an actual separate and heavy transmission intrinsically ain’t THE best setup for lightweight speed and agility. Even on a Sportster ridden on the straights (which don’t count) even the 1,000cc Virago I was on at the time would walk away. He topped out at about 115, I still had about another 5mph left, we demonstrated this many Sunday mornings. He later became split pelvis guy, came off and hit the steering head on the way off,still rides tho.

But more’n anything, if you left your Harley regularly parked ANYWHERE back then, the local Outlaw club would stop by, lift it into the back of a van, and be on their way.. IIRC all they had to do was switch out the cases and Shazzam! It was a whole ‘nother Harley.

You might be too young to remember those bad old days.

I get it.

You were just too fast for those Harley's.

Thanks for the kind thought, ran down to the coast to look for spring migrants and stopped in to visit a fellow ‘Fire regular.

As to the KLR issue, you seem not to get it. If your are some knee-dragging guy who just dropped several thousand dollars on the latest high-zoot super bike and a brand-new matching green leather outfit and helmet, you absolutely DO care about that friggin’ KLR headlight shining in your rearview mirrors.

No offense, but in this and other responses here, it seems like you ain’t actually been around motorcycles all that much, not street bikes anyway.

It wasn’t just me, LOTS of motorcyclists were that way, still are.

But more’n anything it was the theft issue, else I prob’ly woulda been flogging a Sportster for a period of time. But when your bike is your only transportation, it’s gonna get parked places, and back then if it was a Harley it was just a matter of time.

I trust there were no flats. This time.

Lots of people can afford high end schit and not give two-fugks what anybody else thinks about anything they're doing. Perhaps if you lived outside a schithole at some point in your life you'd know this.

None taken.

Oh ok.

It all makes sense now.

Like a good many other young impressionable dumb asses of that era, greatly influenced by the then new movie, Easy Rider, I felt my recently purchased, used, partially Sportster-ized, Harley "K" Model needed a more 'Chopper' look so I found a shop in a not too distant city that did that kind of work. Went with a metal-flake paint job with flames and matching helmet, extended fork tubes, custom cobra 2 passenger seat w/sissy bar, and a few other minor 'gee-whiz' touches.

I drove over to the shop every few days to check on progress and soon discovered the shop was owned, managed and run by a regionally known outlaw motorcycle gang and a regular hangout for local club members, as well. One day after he got to know me, the owner/manager started asking me questions about if I'd be interested in upgrading to more extreme chopper look or to a larger engine, newer, more custom chopped Harley as he could set me up with all the parts or a already completed one. I told him I hadn't really thought about it any since mine was still pretty new to me but asked him what he had.

He proceeded to lock the front door to the shop, did the look over both shoulders thing, then opened what had been a concealed trap door in the old wood floor of the shop, and motioned for me to follow him down a ladder into an old cellar. There were wall-to-wall Harley motorcycle parts of all kinds piled up and hanging on the walls everywhere.. He shined a flashlight on a solid chromed Sportster frame, told me he could make me a good deal on it and how cool it would look on my bike. Rest of story -- everything in that cellar was 'hot', which most likely explained why my like new whole front fork assembly with wheel "went missing" the very first week it was at the shop. They did replace it though but the replacement was not in as nice condition as my original was.

Needless to say, I was beyond glad to finally get my bike finished and out of there.

The guy I originally bought mine from had been a die-hard, old school Harley owner for years but went with BMWs during Harley's AMF ownership. A couple of years later he was killed riding home from work one night on his latest BMW. He was on a narrow, two lane blacktop county road and got rear ended hard by a guy driving a pickup truck. The driver of the truck claimed the taillights on the motorcycle weren't illuminated as to why he didn't see it. They sure enough didn't work after the crash so there was no way to prove otherwise.

Well, I'll be... I think I've seen about everything now... Time to die... But I digress.


First 'big' bike I ever had was a '70 Triumph Trident.. Loved it.. Only negative was the damn carb ticklers that seemingly always either leaked or stuck down to flood one of the carbs.. The '71 I had 2 years later had the same issue..

What happened to your sedan with AC?

Amal monobloks. I had them on a 67 Norton N-15. They were fairly worn out so I replaced them with a 2 into 1 manifold and installed a single 36mm Mikuni carb.

Those were bad old days. But... What's your Virago worth now? And, have you checked the value of that same year Sportster now?

Viragos were actually pretty nice bikes. Always had the feeling they were made to a price point, and they were. Worked well though. Had an XV920RJ, just to be wierd. Enclosed chain, instead of a shaft. Looked sporting enough, but ridden in a spirited fashion, the front cylinder exhaust pipe would touch first, lifting up the front wheel. I know this for a fact. Funny, what you find out at the end of a decreasing radius right hander....

Please don't make him change his stories any more than he already has.

He gotta be exhausted by now.

LMAO.

Those old Triumph Tridents were Awesome bikes.

Ya know, if you leave for work on a beautiful morning in your compact sedan, it really doesn’t matter if you neglected to check the weather forecast that day. Because if it’s gusting to 50mph and 40 degrees out with cold, heavy rain when you get off work, it really ain’t that big a deal.
(that used to happen to me about twice a year, still does on my bicycle )

On the topic of auto theft, San Antonio used to be notorious, prob’ly nothing like the Harley theft rate, but bad. The way I understood it, a teenage punk could steal a car, drive 150 miles down the interstate to Nuevo Laredo, take the bus back, and make $400 in an afternoon.

A few years back a pawn shop guy in Laredo told me the that things had gotten so bad across the river that it was no longer safe for car thieves to deliver cars there themselves, instead they had to pay guys to actually drive those cars across the Border, cutting down on profits.

I dunno how bad car theft is here at present, I expect all the electronics we have now complicate the theft process quite a bit.

It’s not about what other people think, it’s about what YOU think, especially if you’re the guy with matching leathers on the repli-racer.

And heck, what if you’re a guy on a Bergman that just got passed up by two Beemers......

It’s called ego, ya really ain’t been around motorcycles much at all have ya?

Well anyway, off topic ;when yer test riding that CBR1000 and that Africa Twin, drive each out into the parking lot, set it on the sidestand, get off and then just kick ‘em over and observe the results. The crazy part is all that expensive plastic on the CBR confers no significant aerodynamic advantage at less than 100+mph. OTOH On the Africa Twin, ya might ding a crash bar, but that’ll only make the bike look cooler



Ya know many American Indians don’t really live in America, they live on a network of reservations because that’s what they grew up with, I suspect many gated community people turn out the same way.

Anyhoo.... in my motorcycle period before I met my ex I owned no furniture and would always get ground floor apartments so I could push my motorcycle inside at night.

Now I find myself alone again with almost no furniture, I just need a motorcycle to push through the front door. I do have a garage but it just wouldn’t be the same.