My Last Motorcycle

[John Rogers]

Sorry for the rough picture but it was taken in 1977 in the old King Dome in Seattle Washington when my Harley was entered in the "Great Northwest Truck and Motorcycle Show". It won 1st place in the Domestic Custom Motorcycle class probably as showed the judges it would start on the 1st kick. The bike, 1963 Harley Sportster was built and painted by me except for the heads flowed by Jerry Branch in LA area while I was stationed in upstate NY at the US Navy's atomic power site. The engine was bored and stroked to 80 cubic inches with S&S parts, Sifton minus-minus cams, titanium valves and dog geared transmission. Spark was provided by a John Deer tractor magnito. The frame had the hardtail added by me, Century Enterprises springer front forks and an Arlen Ness flat bottomed Sportster gas tank. Since it was a kick start I used a very large capacitor instead of a battery to run the lights all the time as required by NY and CA laws. I had a lot more pictures but my 2nd wife took all of them when she left!

[maxnine11]

Tried to fix the pic a little bit.

[LWJ]

Love it! As I am not educated on these, did a magneto charge the capacitor?

[Seahawk]

F'ing Navy guy's

Beautiful, Mr. Rogers. You are on my Pelican bucket list: Kites, guns, motorcycles, nuke school...

[John Rogers]

Thanks Max for helping, I tried but couldn't do much. There is a generator, 12 volt DC that I geared up slightly more than stock to supply electricity and the capacitor was wired in where the battery would be wired. The magneto supplied spark only with a kill switch to ground the low voltage to stop the engine. When I went into the show, the head judge asked me if the engine ran as a lot of the bikes and even some pf the trucks did not run? I said oh yeah it'll start on the 1st kick......he said I'll give you an extra 10 points if it does, so I turned on the fuel petcock, turned over the engine once to prime it, retarded the magneto and stomped it hard. I had forgotten I took the baffles out of the pipes.....whoa was it loud in that big colosseum! Got the points, still have the trophy and plaque.
John

[Scott Douglas]

Is that a picture of a picture?
I'd like to see if I can help too.

[VINMAN]

Awesome!

Love old school choppers. Will build one eventually. Had started on one back in the 80's. Got a frame and bunch of parts from Jammers Handbook. Funds got tight for awhile and sold everything.


.

[Jeff Higgins]

Interesting - I'm sure I was at that show. I would have been 17 years old, but I already had my first Sportster, a wrecked (not by me) and rebuilt (by me) 1976 XLCH. Not the one I still own today, that one was third in line (another '76, with brief ownership of a '67 in between).

My life long friend and riding partner had an older brother (who has now passed) who built hot rod Pans and Shovels, with the occasional Sportster for good measure. He would have had a bike entered in that show as well, his hot rod rigid frame generator Shovel. He dominated the Seattle Custom Auto Hot Boat and Speed Show for about a decade, bringing home top honors year after year.

Small world...