14 minute read
Harley-Davidson Sportster XLH
Harley Sportster
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WHAT IS IT?
A rare, original example of the most important Harley-Davidson model ever.
Most Harley-Davidson owners like to
put their own stamp on their machines. On older Harley’s original exhausts will have been ripped off and thrown away an age ago to emphasise that signature sound. Handlebars are changed, paint schemes too, and while some owners will strip stuff off, others will add all kinds of gee-gaws and knick-knacks, and others still will customise and chop their steeds.
Mark Green’s 1979 XLH 1000 Sportster is unusual as it is about as original as it gets. It has spent most of the last 43 years in upstate New York, carefully stored, mollycoddled, and rarely ridden. With just over 10,000 miles on the clock since it rolled off the Pennsylvania production line in 1979, this may be the most original late-1970s Sportster in the UK. This model was made for a single year only, which makes the survival of this bike in original trim all the more remarkable. Mark said: “As soon as I saw the pictures, I knew I had to have it.”
The exhausts are something that marks out the 1979 models as unique. The siamesed pipes are straight off the gorgeous, if flawed, XLCR Café Racer – a model that didn’t sell to the people it was targeting. Back then, if you wanted a café racer, you built one; you didn’t buy it off the showroom floor.
Harley claimed that the siamesed exhaust optimised horsepower and increased torque – which may have been true, or H-D may just have had a lot of café racer systems left over and needed to do something with them. As the pipes only lasted a year on the XLH, you decide. The XLH and the XLCR might have looked very different, not least the chrome and trim of the XLH compared to the all-black finish on the XLCR, but under the skin they were very similar. The XLH also uses the master cylinder from the café racer to pump the twin front discs.
The XLH has what Harley called a ‘high flow air cleaner’. This air filter housing is the size of an oven tray big enough for a Thanksgiving turkey and one of the first things to get binned by a new owner, so seeing one surviving intact is a rarity. The real reason for the big exhaust and air cleaner may have been that the old iron V-twin was mechanically noisy and US law required it to be quieter. One attempt to reduce the noise was made by paying careful attention to the cams and valve operation, with everything matched. The compression is reduced to 8:1, using thicker head gaskets. The ‘custom’ version of the XLH, the XLS, had front-mounted highway pegs, and bending your leg around the airbox was a challenge.
There are stainless steel disc brakes, which were smaller than most and gripped by simple but stylish calipers, with the nine-spoke aluminium alloy wheels. The riser-mounted drag bars were a new fitment in
1979, and the electronic ignition was also introduced on the ’79 XLH. The Sporty had been given a right foot shift in 1977. Also in 1979, Harley got round to tucking the oil tank and battery under the side panels, and this makes the XLH very skinny for a 1000cc motorcycle. The headlight is small, but the amount of light it chucks out is adequate, particularly on high beam.
With a tiny petrol tank, big mudguards and a stepped seat, the Sportster should look out of proportion, but miraculously it doesn’t. The ride is hard, and while the forks can be seen and felt working up and down, the rear shocks can’t. The controls are heavy. There is clutch and brake pull that will beef up your wrist muscles, and Mark described the clutch cable as being ‘like a hawser’ (the giant rope used to moor a ship, I’ve just found out). There is a uniquely Harley arrangement for the indicators that only stay on when you keep your thumb on the button. The ignition key and choke are tucked away below the tank.
One of the major problems with a Sportster that remains a constant is the electrical charging system, which isn’t helped by the location of the voltage regulator. Harley, realising it needs to be cool, stuck it right at the front of the frame down tubes, just behind the front wheel.
As well as collecting lots of rainwater, it also gets clogged up with mud and road grime, which clogs up the cooling fins, which causes it to overheat. The XLH has a long front mudguard making a feeble attempt to protect it.
You either like Harley-Davidsons or you don’t, AMFera Harleys even more so. A UK-based friend in the 1980s swapped his 750LTD Kawasaki for a late 1970s Sportster and kept it until it took him five hours, a stock of metric and imperial spanners, and a triplejointed wrist to get a mudguard off.
He then moved to California and bought another AMF Harley, winning ‘best rat-bike’ at the famous Sturgis motorcycle rally, beating dozens of trailered in machines. When asked at the presentation how long it had taken him to get the bike into the condition it was in, he said, in broad Liverpudlian: “Not long. I’ve just been riding it a lot, that’s all.”
He still has Harleys.
1979 HARLEY-DAVIDSON XL1000 SPORTSTER
ENGINE: 997cc ohv V-twin POWER: 61bhp BORE/STROKE: 80.9x96.8mm COMPRESSION RATIO: 8:1 CARBURETTOR: Bendix PRIMARY DRIVE: Triplex chain FINAL DRIVE: Chain GEARBOX: Four-speed wet multiplate clutch IGNITION: Electronic ELECTRICS: 12v alternator FRAME: Tubular duplex cradle SUSPENSION: Front, telescopic forks, rear twin shock swingarm TYRES: 3.75x18 front 4.25x18 rear BRAKES: Twin front 292mm disc, rear 292mm disc FUEL CAPACITY: Two gallons WEIGHT: 528lb/240kg TOP SPEED: 108mph
The Sportster 1958-1981
Harley-Davidson’s XLH Sportster was launched in 1958 as an 883cc/54 cubic inch V-twin with high compression pistons, and this engine was replaced in 1972 by a bigger 997cc/61 cubic inch 997cc mill.
The first Sportster used a K-Series side valve engine as a basis, even down to the flat head’s 883cc capacity but with new ohv top ends. The original 40bhp ohv motor was only just about capable of keeping up with the British 650 twins then dominating the sporting scene, despite having an extra 250cc. To take them on, Harley upped the compression of the Sportster and produced the XLH with a whopping 55bhp. They also took the step of pursuing the sports market still further, producing the XLCH, which had the 10-litre petrol tank stolen from Harley’s tiny two-stroke, the 125cc Hummer. It might have been no use for travelling further than the distance between gas stations, but the XLCH created a look that has endured ever since.
By 1959, the XLCH – C for ‘Competition’, as it was a stripped-down version – became a fully equipped street-legal hot-rod, and the XLH too came with performance upgrades, being equipped with high-lift intake cams. It was designed to stomp the opposition into the dirt of the ovals and in main street drag races.
The XLH had been given the tiny XLCH/Hummer tank and an extra 3bhp in 1968, a new set of front forks, and could reach 114mph, which it had to, as the British had not been resting on their laurels, and the Triumph Bonneville, Norton Atlas and BSA Spitfire and Lightning Rocket among others, which were all more than capable of seeing off the older Sportster. The Trident and Rocket 3 triples were on their way and the Japanese had some serious competition brewing, too.
Harley-Davidson did not concentrate entirely on making the Sportster sporty. In 1961, it became one of the first manufacturers to put 12v electrics and an electric start on its bike. The introduction of the electric start was a very welcome addition, as the kickstart only gave the rider around one-and-a-half revolutions of the engine, making them notoriously hard to kick over. The kickstart wasn’t completely ditched until 1980, when it was still offered it as an option.
Harley continued to push the idea that the Sportster was a performance bike, setting a world land-speed record in 1970, when a Sportster-engined streamliner made it to 265.492mph.
As the British faded, the Japanese made motorcycling a little more respectable, and BMW sewed up the big tourer segment. In the USA, HarleyDavidson had the grunty and aggressive market to itself. As a result, in 1974, nearly 24,000 of the latest 1,000cc Sportster rolled off the production line. It was just 30 years after the end of the Second World War, and as much as a segment of British riders derided
SPECIALISTS
Green Eye Motorcycles Search Green Eye Motorcycles on Facebook or email greeneyemotorcycles@ gmail.com Warrs, Harley-Davidson dealers since 1924 www.warrs.com Hogparts – stockists of classic Harley parts www.hogparts.co.uk
the Japanese bikes as ‘Jap-Crap’, many Americans called them ‘rice-rockets’ and swore never to ride one.
Following the takeover of Harley-Davidson by AMF in 1973, there were many attempts to upgrade the range. In 1978, the Sportster line-up included the café racer-styled XLCR, a factory café racer adaptation of the original Sportster.
Though unsuccessful at the time, the XLCR, which had a revised frame with the shock absorbers set much further back, is now one of the most sought-after Sportsters. It was made at a time when Harleys were deeply unfashionable outside the USA, considered suitable only for police officers and hoodlums by those who didn’t understand the big twins.
Build quality could be questionable, so the affection in which it is now held is mostly because it looked great, especially as a poster on a teenager’s bedroom wall.
For some reason, Harley also launched a XLT touring version of the Sportster for the European market, making about 1000 bikes with screens and Electra-Glide saddle bags and a 3.5-gallon fuel tank from the 1200 Superglide. By 1979, the Sportster had become the smallest displacement Harley in the lineup, still at 1000cc.
AMF’s sale of the company in 1981 saw changes, not just to the engineering of the big V-twins, but to the image Harley-Davidson presented to the world, and ultimately the arrival of the Evolution V-twin, which was a better engine and as such welcomed by buyers, but it did lack the almost agricultural charm of the old iron head engines.
WANT ONE?
Fancy a classic MoT and tax-exempt original spec Harley-Davidson Sportster of your own for less money than you might expect? Contact Mark Green at Green Eye Motorcycles on 07531 001060 or email greeneyemotorcycles@ gmail.com The engine
These iron Harley-Davidson Sportsters are big old bruisers. The staggered beat of its 45-degree V-twin engine is a major part of the Harley riding experience. All the bits are hung out in the open, where everyone gets to see them. Harley didn’t use plastic in the 1970s and there’s metal everywhere.
Sportsters perform with a kind of chugging tractor-like pull occurring at every engine speed; a power that smaller, if more powerful, motorcycles can’t duplicate. The basic layout of a late 1970s Sporty is essentially the same as that introduced in 1958. There’s still an enormous roller bearing crankshaft with a single crank throw. It’s a unit engine and transmission, with a triplex roller primary drive chain on the left side of the engine. Like a lot of British bikes, the difficulty of keeping the oil out of the clutch resulted in the use of a wet, rather than dry, clutch. And again, like a British twin, the four-speed, right shift gearbox has its own oil supply.
On the right-hand side of the engine is the timing case, filled with four separate cams linked to the crankshaft by gears. A gear-driven generator is mounted in front of the engine and the starter is at the back. On top of the aluminium cases are the two giant black cast iron cylinders and cast iron heads with rocker boxes bolted on top of those.
The frame
It’s an unsophisticated design. Harley lived in a world of its own and knew who it was selling bikes to, and that market was traditionalist. There was no using the big iron engine as a stressed member or wrapping it in a trellis. Just take the engine and bend some tubes round it. Harley claimed the frame was derived from the XR750 racer and it did have the rear section from the café racer, which stiffened things up a little.
The steering head’s job is to hold the forks and have somewhere to hang the ‘bars and clocks off, and the swingarm pivot is mounted high and a long way back. Despite all this, thanks to the massive gobs of torque from the engine, you can hustle a Sportster along quite effectively – just not the way you might ride a British twin or Japanese four. Riding a Harley fast requires a different skill set. Having good quality Japanese Showa suspension makes a big difference.
By 1979, the Japanese were getting into their stride and for Harley to expect its 1957 engine to compete with Z1000s and the like was wishful thinking. Even so, nobody else was making a bike that came close to the experience of riding a Harley, though Yamaha, ever the innovator, decided to take the HarleyDavidson style head on with a few V-twins of its own, which were good motorcycles but as much like a Harley as an Aldi ready meal is to a 12oz flame-grilled rump steak.
The AMF years
In 1969, the AMF corporation (American Machine and Foundry) bought the HarleyDavidson motorcycle company. Prior to this acquisition, AMF manufactured everything from ten-pin bowling lanes to armaments, tennis rackets, and other recreational items. AMF kept Harley alive financially for the next 12 years. During the 1970s, with the American economy in a recession, Japanese bikes like Yamaha and Honda were proving to be very popular with consumers, but AMF, which could have bailed out, kept Harley-Davidson going until the end of the decade.
AMF’s arrival saved Harley-Davidson from bankruptcy, and while the AMF years were arguably the least enervating period in Harley-Davidson’s history, they were instrumental in the legendary company’s survival.
There are plenty of fans of the AMF-era Harleys. AMF might have been a sporting goods manufacturer, but that wasn’t all it made. Production moved to its huge factory complex in Pennsylvania, where, as well as motorcycles, AMF made bomb casings, propane gas tanks, Harley-badged electric golf buggies, and snowmobiles. It also continued selling the Italian-made Aermacchi-based singles made for the US market until 1978.
The bikes it did produce had a mixed reputation, and the workmanship and reliability of the AMF-era Harleys caused concern among some owners of the machines. The big advantage for Harley was good old American patriotism. As the only American bike in production at the time, it was a Harley or nothing if you wanted to fly the stars and stripes. For a single year, the XLH could be had with a Confederate battle flag on the tank, an edition that is now quietly ignored.
Even though the competition from British, Italian, German and – most importantly – Japanese manufacturers was intense, Harley-Davidson survived thanks to AMF’s deep pockets. It remained as the top-selling brand of heavyweight motorcycles in the USA and the country’s only indigenous bike maker throughout the 1970s.
In 1981, AMF sold Harley-Davidson back to investors from the original company, including Willie G. Davidson, the grandson of the company’s co-founder, William A Davidson.
Although some people believe that AMF-era Harley-Davidsons were not as well-made as models from before or after this tenure, that is far from a universal view.
There are many people who have owned, or still do own, AMF-era Harleys and are very happy with their 1970s classics... and if they are still running 50 years on, there can’t have been that much wrong with them.
Harley-Davidson itself recently used the old AMF paint schemes on a range of Sportsters, so its reputation cannot have damaged the brand much. The years that AMF owned Harley-Davidson were, at the very least, interesting times.
