Harley David – Son of a Bitch

I know, I know, four posts in two years is rubbish! I hate myself. I shall try to do better. What can I say? My multiple freelance jobs got in the way and health has not been great either, so all my blogs went fallow. This has not, I hasten to add, stopped me riding. Just writing about riding. My excuse is that when you earn a living writing books and articles, and writing long feedback reports on other peoples’ books and articles, the last thing you want to do at the end of a long day is write more bloody copy for a blog… Also, once a week I go to my club and talk bollocks about bikes for a few hours and it feels like the job’s been done. You don’t feel like writing it down after that. Anyway, I have news not unrelated to this blog, but for now I’ll just get you up to speed on the Harley, and what happens if you use one for everyday transport in all weathers for the better part of 20 years.

Have I told you about the Harley? Briefly, it’s a 2004 XL Sportster. I had wanted a Harley since I was a little grebo in the late-70s and fallen more in love while living in Japan after attending the HD ‘Open Road’ tour in Tokyo celebrating 100 years of the brand. While Harleys were still few and far between in the UK, there was already a thriving culture in Japan, presumably because of its postwar economic links to the US. Harleys suited my sensibility as a British biker, the same kind of sturdiness of design, almost agricultural, and similar classic lines. For me, they represented a way to modernise while remaining a bit retro. Having saved up a decent amount of dosh over there, I could also afford to buy one for the first time in my life when I returned home. Nothing fancy mind, no Road King for me, but a tidy little Sportster, a black one that reminded me of my BSA, then dead and in storage, as was my BMW. (I was getting to work by bicycle.) I had about three grand to spend and I was shopping around looking at second-hand options. One of the dealers I visited was looking to expand into Japan. As a favour, I put him in touch with a translator I knew in Osaka who helped international traders do business in Japan. Not being all that transactional by nature, I didn’t expect anything for this intel, but a week or so later said dealer rang me up and offered me an almost brand new Sporty for the same price as the manky Evolution one I was about to buy to return the favour. I don’t know the story on it. Might’ve been a repo, or maybe the owner either scared himself or loved the experience so much he traded up. It came from another dealership and no, it wasn’t stolen. All the paperwork was clean. And that was that. I’ve been abusing it ever since.

I don’t drive a car. When I was young, I just didn’t want one. All I cared about was bikes and I thought I was going to be young forever. Later, as a student, I couldn’t afford one. Then I moved to Japan and went everywhere by train, then I came back here and bought my Harley. I had one driving lesson one time, but recklessly told the instructor I’d ridden bikes for years, so he wrongly assumed this was a transferable skill. I was also struggling with alcoholism and addiction back then so was in a terrible state. Long story short, I hit the curb so hard and so frequently I blew out his front nearside tire. Very embarrassing. Decided cars were not for me. The workhorse bikes, meanwhile, needed a lot of TLC to get them back on the road (this did not ultimately happen until the pandemic), so the Harley was my only form of transport. I tried to keep it clean, I really did, but there is only so much you can do to preserve that pristine look. Who’s got time for all that anyway? Don’t get me wrong, I look after it. I keep it serviced, I change the oil, and make sure the brakes, lights, suspension, and tires are in good nick. The paint job and chrome, on the other hand, not so much.

Fast forward through two decades of relatively trouble-free riding. I had to change a drive belt once, and it went through a phase of eating crank case sensors, but fundamentally that Sportster was as solid as a tank. Took me to work five days a week, on weekend runs, on grocery runs, on the occasional holiday, and to a lot of parties, gigs and rallies. Only if the weather was lethal in the winter did I leave it in the garage, and that was only after I dropped it on black ice a couple of times and learned my lesson. I courted my future wife on that bike, and we really had ourselves a time. It was all good until the summer before last, which is the reason I bring this whole subject up. My sense is that these machines get to around the 20-year mark and then everything starts failing at once. I suppose this is fair enough, but a pain in the arse financially. These days I do not earn much. I’ll not be buying anymore bikes and it’s a struggle to keep the ones I do have running. As far as I’m concerned, this is still my ‘new’ bike.

It was a basic job: remove front forks, change the oil seals, and add a new pair of gaiters. Easy, until I heard a percussive crack while tightening up a pinch bolt in the bottom yoke. The ally had cracked straight through, destroying the yoke. Whoops. Cue a lot of pissing about online and with breakers to get a replacement steering head which turned out to be the wrong year, mis-labelled and accidently photographed in such a way as to obscure the external steering lock my bike does not have. It was too physically heavy to post back so I ground the bastard off and fit it anyway. Everything else was the same. So that wasted a couple of weeks and the better part of a ton.

At almost exactly the same time last year, the MOT was due, and I was painfully aware my front exhaust pipe had now rusted away to the extent that coke cans and jubilee clips just weren’t going to cut it anymore. I got a good deal on a second hand one, but we all know it wasn’t going to be that simple. The problem was taking the old one off. Those big brass studs that hold it onto the cylinder head had corroded to nothing more that tiny stalagmites (remember, stalagmites might hang from the ceiling, but they don’t), which no amount of fancy freeing oil would shift, turning a simple part replacement into a total clusterfuck, much the same as the year before. The whole cylinder head had to come off so an engineer could extract the studs. It’s never easy, is it?

This summer was no different. I had to change the tires but that was OK. They don’t last forever, especially the way I ride. Then the clutch went out of adjustment while I was about 20 miles out one Saturday. No biggie. They do this. Adjusted it and went home. Just made it before the clutch was dragging so much the bike became unrideable. Paid a mate with a van to take it to my workshop of choice (Rooster’s Bike Barn – great place, tell you later), the hope being that the thrust bearing had gone, a common issue on older Harley clutches. Replacement bearing costs about a tenner + half an hour or so to fit it. Did that, didn’t work. Turns out the rivets had gone on the spring plate and taken out about half the friction plates. So, it was up on the bench again, awaiting parts, for a couple of weeks and a bill that would choke a wide-necked animal. (Soon after I picked it up, I caught Covid so that was September wasted.) But I have a new clutch now, so that’s nice. She was running like a dream for about a fortnight until I began to suspect that my battery wasn’t holding its charge anymore. I had to keep topping it up to make sure I had enough guts to turn the starter over. (No kickstart, what fucker thought of that?) I was on verge of ordering a new battery when the bloody thing died while I was running an errand at Sainsbury’s. I had to do the walk of shame across a very big carpark and up a hill to the exit in full gear on a sunny day with half a ton of groceries on my back so I could bump start it down the road. (I’m too old and its too heavy to do all that running alongside and jumping on malarky – I need a steep incline!) Fortunately for me, this worked, and I got home. Before getting a battery, my main man checked whether the charging system was OK and guess what, it wasn’t. So now she’s back in the shop again, a new stator on order. Do you know what happens when a stator goes? It essentially becomes a heating element, like the one inside an electric kettle. It boils the oil in the primary case, which in turn melts the resin that holds the magnets in place on the rotor. If you’re unlucky, these can fall out and/or break up and take your clutch out as well. Looks like we can save the rotor by gluing the magnets back with JB Weld so I’ll only need to buy a new stator. Mercifully, my new clutch survived. The magnets just drooped a bit.

Pro tip: If you think your stator’s on the way out, open up whatever access port you have on the primary case where the oil or transmission fluid goes in and have a sniff. If it smells like a burning Scalextric car in there, your stator’s probably gone.

Now, on one hand I admit I’m lucky. I can do a lot of the work myself, and when I can’t I have a brilliant friend and mechanic on call who doesn’t charge anywhere near as much as a dealership and knows what he’s doing. I also have my trusty BSA to get me around when the Harley’s laid up, but Jesus Christ! Does it have to pack up every bloody summer?

NB. Since this post was first written, the lights have gone on the BSA. It never ends!