this is my history of harley-davidson ownership
through a lot of my life both in joy and frustration
i can't really start this story with just my ownership my first home was a trailer in fort
lauderdale florida and outside was a mustang and yes a 66 harley-davidson sportster my dad's this
was dad's second harlot his first harlot was a 56k model which was kind of the pre-personal sportster
and he had that when he was up here in iowa and the back of brakes had a tendency to just lock up
the bike would of course die for no apparent reason and take forever to start two but the
real thing was that that back break tended to lock up when you you know breathe on and you
would lock but the guy he sold it to died within a week or two of owning it so dad said there was a
large skid mark near the side of the accident his guess was that the back brake locked up on the guy
as was coming to the bike and that's probably what cost him his life while down in florida he had the
66 forester and the first day he had it he had his buddy in the back they'd been at the bar they were
out zipping down the blacktop and some evil honda tried to pass him or something so he felt the need
to go over and blow him off the road and the red and blue light show came on behind him and he was
given an improper lane change which was basically code for racing he had a lot of fun on the bike
him and my uncle would get tuned up in lauderdale and then go drive to the keys randomly at four in
the morning and sometimes dad would forget to put his kickstand down or he would slide up to the gas
pump on the side they were coming back from the keys at christmas day one year and the traffic was
horrible just two-lane road so dad basically put his bike on the center line and rode the center
all the way back up and triple traffic kind of opened up my uncle had a little bit more sense
and he just under the back so you can see that the lid doesn't fall far from the whiskey bottle dad
sold that 66 sportster when i was born and he and mom and i moved back from lauderdale back to iowa
then there's the guy that bought the sportster from dad now this guy was known for not having
really good luck he's already got one glass eye from i don't know what accident happened there
he buys dead sportster down in florida and he's going to ride it back to iowa so on the way he
happens to turn his head sideways and his glass eye goes flying out down the road and loses it
then he gets to a point where the bike died which old harley it's gonna happen so his bike died he
rolls it behind like a billboard and some bushes to hide it until he can you know get a ride back
get it fixed so while he's trying to hitch a ride to find somebody to help repair his bike he gets
picked up by these dudes beating the hell out of him stealing his money and when he finally gets
you know recovers from all that then he goes to get a ride he goes back to the bike and somebody
had stole it while it was sitting there hiding so the moral of the story is never buy a bike from my
dad it wasn't until i was 18 when i went out and bought my first motorcycle which wasn't what i
wanted it was what i could afford and dad was very unhappy about it he came out of the garage threw a
wrench down and says you bought a [ __ ] honda wasn't that a disadvantage about buying a bike
it was what i bought huh i'd never owned either so i didn't really understand at the time i just knew
i had a bike that i could afford fast forward a few months to thanksgiving break home from college
that fall and dad throws me in the truck and says hey let's go over and look at this fight outside
was this blue 77 tons of chrome on this bike i've never seen that much chrome on a bike before
with the blue painted sheet metal making a dealer but for like 1700 bucks i think back then and
i drove it home while he drove the truck home well in town kyle was this the real biker like
had an amputated leg because he got i think he broke the trike uh you know took his bike down in
his basement repainted it rebuilt the engine every winter true biker well he sees me riding the bike
follows us home gets out says holds all his hands says congratulations on your first harlot
and i said well it's his i don't know son of a [ __ ] never too old so
i was happy for dad but i was kind of disappointed myself and while the old general shovelhead flh
was getting its what fifth engine put into it and repaired i was kind of down for the count because
that was my main vehicle i had one car and it wasn't really suitable for daily driving so dad
and my uncle brought down his sportster for me to drive in the meantime the first day i'm driving to
work the front exhaust pipe vibrates off and falls so i ended up having to pull over in the dark
the middle of some back road and basically i took dad's tools out and i found a road map
so i used the road map like a hot pad to grab the exhaust pipe put it back on and try to get
it good enough to get to work where i could then wait for it to cool off get some wrenches and fix
it properly it was one of those band clamps if i remember right and it just come loose
once the general was back on the road i decided i wanted to kind of spruce up dad's bike for
him letting me use it for that time so what i started by doing was to a couple mechanical things
like i replaced the rear sprocket it was one of those where you have to rivet in place
and i also tried to repair some of the wiring that was pretty messed up especially along underneath
the tank it already shorted against the frame and caught on fire on them on the way down main
street one day so i tried to fix all that as much as i could make sure the basics were there
he had to believe a bendix carburetor on the thing and it had an adjustable main jet it had been
added it just didn't run very smooth so i spent a lot of time trying to get that thing tuned right
it actually ran pretty decent and smooth once i got done with it the one screw-up i did there
is i've been down on my hands and knees working on the carburetor while the bike was cold well
then i took it out for a test run up and down the block a few times came back immediately went to
grab the exhaust pipe to push myself up the same way and i ended up with a blister this entire palm
like an idiot i also replaced the seat on it with something a little bit nicer that wasn't shredded
one of the most noticeable changes is of course the paint job he always kind of said that he liked
the red paint on my general and i ended up using like a euro red but i put some ice pearl red flake
on it to give it just a little bit sparkle and you have to be careful with that ice pearl red because
if you get too much it'll look pink so i put just a dusting on it to get a little bit of sparkle in
the sun and he'd always mention that a lot of the modern paint jobs in chopper world were too gaudy
you know bright stripes checkered flags stuff like that that he didn't want for
you know a 70s bike so what i ended up doing is i stuck with the same sportster decals on the tank
and the harley decal on the oil tank and what i did is i airbrushed them on
the red base instead so i used the same shapes but i used a diamond tread pattern so i sprayed
it in diamond tread and then i put a couple rusty rivets where i used some root beer and tangerine
candy to kind of make it look like a rust effect and then i pinstriped an orange with drop shadows
all the way around both of them and even though it was kind of an earlier paint job it's still
one of the more prouder paint jobs then i had to get it up in the soon to be ex-wife's truck
and i had a couple planks the guy at home depot said they'd hold up well they didn't they
bowed like hell put it with a cinder block under one of the planks get a running start
jump into the back of the truck and i had too much speed and couldn't stop so i basically ended
up hitting the back window of the truck the cab and chipping that a little bit and then when we
got to iowa i backed it up at the implement shop had like a loading dock so dad you know we rolled
it off there rolled it down the ramp and it's all gravel what's that do taken out first thing
dumps the clutch and he's spinning the tire all the way out of the main road he's like well hoping
to chip that paint fast forward i don't have a harley for many years until about 2006 and
i've got the chopper shop down in florida at this time but i wanted a bike for myself to just cruise
around on so i bought this little sportster hugger it started as an 883 but the guy i bought it from
had worked at harley so he'd already gone through he punched it up to a 1200 he had new pipes on it
a new ignition new cams um thunder slide kit on the carburetor he painted it black with like a
silver skull on the tank he put on the night train rear wheel and a night train front end
and it turned 92 horsepower which is pretty good for a little sportster
bike was actually a blast it was so short that i could walk up behind it and just
sit down on it while i had it i did quite a bit of work one of the first things i did is i took
the gas tank modified it to look like an axe kind of profile and it sort of mimicked how the
sport bike has like you know kind of knee inserts painted a white and blue realistic flame job on it
i messed around a little bit with different bars like i tried going from the
risers and handlebars to clip-on bars the clip-ons weren't really great because it's like you're just
got a shot in the stomach with a cannonball and it was just hell on my back unfortunately so i
ended up going back to normal bars i even turned the mid controls but with the clip-ons in my size
it just wasn't practical but just had a blast on the bike it had a belt drive when i got it
and i hated belts and sure enough it wasn't long and the belt snapped on me out on the road
so i went to chain and sprockets and never looked back at some point i had my first
open heart surgery and after surgery i knew myself and i figured it was best to disable the bike so
that i wouldn't be riding it until my sternum was healed i took the bike apart i got rid of the rear
taillight and license plate mount and all that and just made a shorter fender with a little
double tail point i ended up putting a axle mounted plate holder and taillight
i repainted the whole thing black and i put these double chicks on like she devils and a realistic
orange flame paint job i did a baseball mitt seat with the anarchy symbol there
i painted a red anarchy symbol on the derby cover and on the oil tank to match the seat that also
matched the red everywhere i cut the exhaust pipes down to the same length try tuning them there's an
old trick with a wax pen on the exhaust pipe you go ride it you see where it's melted that's your
hot spot that's where you want to cut the pipes so i cut both of them the same length and having tube
exhaust put a nice little point on it to flatten out the torque curve and then did a black exhaust
strap which gave it kind of a ratty you know look it was all basically blacked out and blacked out
everything so this is kind of you know just right at the early stage where the the kind of murder
look is becoming popular and the industry was starting to go from the pro street anti-chrome
everything to the blackout little cafe racers really no problems to speak of it was a pretty
reliable little bike eventually after building this gripper chopper and being limited on garage
space i ended up selling that bike at a gun show actually i'll soon be posting a video
on all the choppers that i built while i had my shop my chrome customs in florida as well
and that link will be in the description of the video below so until then keep the shiny side up
subscribe to my youtube channel below and let's celebrate turning fuel and air into adrenaline