Quote:
Originally Posted by crustychief
Nice bike! I remember my old sportster, hardtailed, branch heads, big cam.. it rode like a jackhammer but it was fun!
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Thanks. This one actually has heads that were reworked by Branch Flowmetrics; I sent them off in the early '80's to have him port and cc them. It has Andrews R5 cams as well, which have enough lift to where the tops of the guides have to be relieved, so they were by no means one of the popular "bolt in" applications. It also hase the Wiseco forged pistons, at 10:1 compression. Short of stroker wheels, that's about all a guy can do to a road going Ironhead, and it still only makes roughly 70-75 thundering horsepower. At roughly 500 pounds, this thing is far from quick and nimble.
Ironically, considering the new Sportster's current status as the "beginners'" or "ladies'" bike in the Harley range, these things were considered to be real fire-breathing monsters when the design was relatively new in the late '50's through the late '60's. For "expert" riders only, only hairy-chested he-men need apply. A 900 twin was heady stuff in a sea of 500 singles and twins, 650 twins, and maybe 750 twins. When they were all pushrod, long stroke motors that "reved like a bread dough maker" (I love that analogy), this thing was king. My, how times have changed.
Funny, too, Paul, in that the outlaws would simply buy the cop bikes when the cops had used them up. It also took a little more dedication, and a lot more mechanical aptitude to ride a bike in those days. IMHO, that's one of the things that went drastically "wrong" - the newfound reliability, and with it, accessability of motorcycling. It's opened it up to a whole new breed of chromosexual poser. "The wave" used to mean "sonnofabeech, yers is runnin' too!!!"....