Let's Argue About Motorcycles

I like Harleys....I will always own at least 1 although I currently have 2 fast FXR's, But I also like BMW's and I'm probably gonna get a Gold Wing because they are very nice bikes for running long distances on and they actually have realistic horsepower and torque numbers from the factory...Unlike the Harleys that you buy for $15,000 or $20,000 and then have to dump another $10,000 in just to make them run "fairly" well.

I'm a very good trained Harley mechanic and when I had my shop I had a dyno room and did lots of tweaking and messing around with different cams and head configurations on my bikes and I have some very fast Harleys....But they're "Harley Fast" not "Real Fast".

One of my FXR's will do 170 MPH on the dyno....But only about 130 in the real world.

I have no illusions about Harley's....But I still think they're cool.
 
Rigid frame Harley riders remind me of the Amish....No sense gettin' a tractor when there's a perfectly good plow attached to an OX that you can walk behind all day.
Then head off to the shopping center in the horse drawn buggy.

They have "personality....But they're IDIOTS!

It's always funny to see Harley guys making fun of 1940's technology. It's so ironic.

Yes, those engines are cool, but not a whole lot more sophisticated than what was on the Wright Brothers plane. (until recently anyway)
 
The other thing that must be brought into consideration when you build a fast Harley is that from the factory they handle like a truck for the most part so you have to modify the supension and some of the geometry to get them to settle down and handle the extra horsepower and torque in the twisties.
The narrow glide front ends are too flimsy and on the later models they have gone to a mid glide front end to make them more stable and it has worked to an extent.
All of the rear shocks that Harley sells are junk and are to squishy to keep the wheels on the ground where they belong so you have to toss the shocks and upgrade.

The FXR was Eric Buells brainchild and was arguably the best handling "Big Twin" that Harley ever built....It was expensive to produce and was dropped from the production line and replaced by the Dyna Glide which was and is a sorry replacement at best.
 
One of the guys had a Buel ...did I spell that right? Listening to that thing power down was like hearing a jet engine cycle off.
 
It's always funny to see Harley guys making fun of 1940's technology.

I'm a "Harley guy" but I'm also a realist! The engine was supposed to be replaced in the early eighties by the motor that was being developed on the "Nova Project" but when the "Investment group" bought Harley back from AMF there wasn't enough cash to both continue the "Nova" and upgrade the product line, So the "Nova Project" went away and Harley kept on building the Cool but inefficient V-Twin and catering to the "Pushrod Crowd" and never really did much until the V-Rod was introduced and once again Harley dropped the ball and made the engine/transmission unit too heavy to be used in a viable sport bike and instead put it in another, Too long, Too low chassis that handles like a F'ckin' truck!
 
You'd be asking the wrong guy.

Here you go: View attachment 13914

I thought about that after I clicked "submit". Thank you Mr. Duck!



Nice pics Boone. Serious hardware. I really like the one with flames. Flames are always cool. Now if we could just get Mr. Duck to show you how to post them so they aren't thumbnails . . . . .

No worries, BW9. I have no intention of giving ol Lola away. Can't bring myself to pussify her with a swingarm frame, either. It would take too much out of her personality.

So, she has a name. When will we get to meet Lola?

View attachment 13914
View attachment 13914
 
The previous owner's mother's name. Another thing I don't have the heart to change. She's been Lola for the past 35 years.

If you copied the pic, it only shows up as a box with a question mark in it for me.
 
No, it was a cartoon of some guy getting bashed in the head with a frying pan. The source website has their remote hosting blocked, so I just deleted my post.
 
Spent the afternoon of the Fourth helping my buddy rebuild his Iron Head for the SECOND time this summer,, not really a rebuild, just a tear down a replacing a few parts because a chunk broke off the inside of the crankcase, got ground up by the fly wheel then powdered aluminum got sent through the engine causing him to drop a cylinder.

View attachment 6552View attachment 6553 Rinsed everything out with kero then hit it with the air gun, getting the new rings and seals Friday

View attachment 6554View attachment 6555 Getting pretty good at tearing this thing down, notice our wheel blocks( 2 pieces of firewood nailed together)
View attachment 6552View attachment 6553View attachment 6554View attachment 6555
 
Spent the afternoon of the Fourth helping my buddy rebuild his Iron Head for the SECOND time this summer,, not really a rebuild, just a tear down a replacing a few parts because a chunk broke off the inside of the crankcase, got ground up by the fly wheel then powdered aluminum got sent through the engine causing him to drop a cylinder.

View attachment 6552View attachment 6553 Rinsed everything out with kero then hit it with the air gun, getting the new rings and seals Friday

View attachment 6554View attachment 6555 Getting pretty good at tearing this thing down, notice our wheel blocks( 2 pieces of firewood nailed together)

Is that inside the house?
 
Is that inside the house?

You've never seen old furniture in a garage?

I have a picture of myself sitting on a motorcycle in my garage when I was 18. The bike is parked on carpet & there's a couch in the background, and a dresser with a stereo system on it. And there are blacklight posters on the wall too. People always think it was taken in the house.
 
I used to rent one side of a duplex in an ex-navy housing project. There was no place to park my bike. The door to the kitchen/dining room was at ground level, and I didn't have a kitchen table.

So I parked my bike in the dining room.

Easy Squeezy.
 
I used to rent one side of a duplex in an ex-navy housing project. There was no place to park my bike. The door to the kitchen/dining room was at ground level, and I didn't have a kitchen table.

So I parked my bike in the dining room.

Easy Squeezy.

One time when I was 14, it was a hundred and fifty billion gazillon degrees outside and I needed to replace the clutch throwout bearing on my 1981 Kawasaki KX 80 dirt bike. So I put some kind of 3x3 foot sheet of plastic material on the living room carpet & brought the bike in the living room & propped it up on milk crates & was working on it when my mom came home from somewhere & started screeching about the motorcycle in the living room.

I didn't see anything wrong with it, because my dad had his ultralight's wings and all of it's control surfaces in the living room for several weeks when he was stripping the fabric and glue off of the aluminum with methyl-ethyl-keytone, stinking up the whole house.
 
Among people I run with, it is more odd to not see bikes or bike parts in the house.

I pulled the starter out of my old Thunderbird and rebuilt it on the living room carpet. With a drop cloth, of course.
 
Is that inside the house?

It is the garage/shop but we have it set up like a house or at least a man's house. Fridge for the beer, wood stove, liquor cabinet. The place is great. In the winter it gets nice and toasty, work on the bikes, drink beer, cook venison on the wood stove. Everything a man can want except for the lack of a ****ter.
 
It is the garage/shop but we have it set up like a house or at least a man's house. Fridge for the beer, wood stove, liquor cabinet. The place is great. In the winter it gets nice and toasty, work on the bikes, drink beer, cook venison on the wood stove. Everything a man can want except for the lack of a ****ter.

When I was a teenager I took over my dad's 20x8 foot lean-to shed that was built next to, but not attached to the garage. I ran electricity into it, built a wall where there used to just be a wide opening, made my own door out of plywood & 2x4's, made my own door latch out of a bicycle wheel hub & bearings, ran cable TV, a phone line & internet out there. I put up drywall but it cracked right away because the shed was built on cinder blocks and it was somewhat flexible. So I just covered the walls with blue carpet. Tiled the plywood floor, insulated the flat roof, cut a hole for a window & another one for an air conditioner. I had my computer & stereo & an old TV in there. I used the VCR as a cable box, and since it was an old TV with a knob for the volume control, I made a pulley out of wood that fits over the knob & used kite string routed through eye screws across the ceiling so I could control the TV volume from the other end of the shed.

In one corner, I built little short walls and we used a confederate flag for a curtain. That was the urinal. Except we called it the p***er. There was a piece of 3/4" electrical conduit serving as a pipe, with a funnel in the top. The conduit went outside and into the top half of a steel gas tank from an old car that was buried 2 feet underground. I'd cut the bottom of the gas tank off so the p*** would settle into the ground. It actually worked perfectly, but I ended up having to re-do the pipe & replace it with one that was bent with a trap to keep the ammonia smell out of the shed.

I got a couch, 2 love seats & a matching couch/chair thing from Goodwill for $70. They had this old "country" theme & didn't match the blue carpet but we didn't give a ****. We were teenagers & were just glad that we had a place to hang out and get drunk & smoke weed and blast music at all hours of the night.
 
It is the garage/shop but we have it set up like a house or at least a man's house. Fridge for the beer, wood stove, liquor cabinet. The place is great. In the winter it gets nice and toasty, work on the bikes, drink beer, cook venison on the wood stove. Everything a man can want except for the lack of a ****ter.

Sweet.
 
One time when I was 14, it was a hundred and fifty billion gazillon degrees outside and I needed to replace the clutch throwout bearing on my 1981 Kawasaki KX 80 dirt bike. So I put some kind of 3x3 foot sheet of plastic material on the living room carpet & brought the bike in the living room & propped it up on milk crates & was working on it when my mom came home from somewhere & started screeching about the motorcycle in the living room.

I didn't see anything wrong with it, because my dad had his ultralight's wings and all of it's control surfaces in the living room for several weeks when he was stripping the fabric and glue off of the aluminum with methyl-ethyl-keytone, stinking up the whole house.

I don't see a problem here. Your mom is crazy.

I've rebuilt lots of carburetors on the kitchen table. A perfect place, IMHO.
 

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