Girly bike Harleys?

C

CharlesW

The Rainmaker
A friend recently told me that Harley riders considered Sportsters to be "girly bikes".
Is this true?

As an outsider, the Sportster has always struck me as a true motorcycle. No extra bags, windshield, big flared fenders, tassles on the handlebar grips.
Just motor, tank, wheels, seat, handlebars, minimal fenders, how much more basic can a motorcycle be?

I happen to ride a Honda, but the Sportster is the only Harley that ever had any appeal to me.
(Well, maybe the XR750.:))
 
CharlesW said:
A friend recently told me that Harley riders considered Sportsters to be "girly bikes".
Is this true?

As an outsider, the Sportster has always struck me as a true motorcycle. No extra bags, windshield, big flared fenders, tassles on the handlebar grips.
Just motor, tank, wheels, seat, handlebars, minimal fenders, how much more basic can a motorcycle be?

I happen to ride a Honda, but the Sportster is the only Harley that ever had any appeal to me.
(Well, maybe the XR750.:))
Click to expand...

I happen to know a bit about harleys and I have to say statements like that are backed by just plain ignorance of the mechanical workings of harley engines.

while sportsters are typically a lower priced introductory bike they have an extreme amount of potential for horse power.

I'd like to point out a few things within the scope of my knowlege but I do not claim to be an expert on anything.

for one, the seat height on most sportster models is higher than most big twin Harleys therefore the center of gravity in not really conducive for most female riders.

secondly, take a look at the valve train geometry on a sportster engine as opposed to a big twin Evo engine, Try drawing a straight line through the center of the camshaft and up the pushrods to the Valves on a big twin Evo. If you do this you will find some pretty hard angles there. I believe that in building big twin Evos for high horse power one must rely more on torque by increasing the stroke of the crankshaft in conjunction with taller cam grinds and larger valves and of course higher compression. But the hard angle of the pushrods really limits the duration and valve overlap that can be achieved here thus keeping the power curve in the lower RPM's. I am not taking away from their potantial but just saying they are somewhat limited in terms of reliability when hopped up.

If on the other hand you will draw that same line through the camshaft(s) on a sportster engine up through the push rods to the valves you will find that all three components are almost perfectly situated in a straight line because there is actually four individual camshafts in a sportster engine. this straight line geometry enables reliability at extreme RPMs, thus with all of the same performance Mods mentioned above excluding the stroker crank. one can build a sportster engine using the shorter stroke crankshaft and run high lift and long duration cams to achieve a better degree of valve overlap increasing the efficiency of the scavenging of fresh air and fuel mixture.

All this combined with all the other mods such as high compression, larger valves and shorter stroke, we are now making real horsepower combined with reliability at high RPMs instead of relying mostly on the torque created by the longer, RPM limiting stroker crank.

I am talking some seriously scary high speed horsepower here. It would take a special breed of girl to be able to handle a sportster like this.

There is a fellow named Mike Magaro here in the Harrisburg area who built his Sporty as described above and this bike is a good bit qiucker and nearly as fast as a hyabusa...Mike Magaro's sporty is no girly bike.

(END RANT)...TD

Oh I forgot to mention that with some crank case machining for rod clearance there is no real limit on bore size either. A lot of Sportster enthusiasts have been known to use 1340 cc. or larger pistons on sporty engines. (END RANT ... Honest) TD.
 
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I THINK THEY ALL ARE JUNK, Oil leaking overpriced pieces of JUNK.:notme:

I like to see the office boys after they get out of work and add the leather go from goofy to BAD A// in a matter of seconds. I wish I was able to be so special. NOT !

I also don't appreciate getting up at 2-3-4 am and peel'in one of the non helmet wearing wanna be bad boy mopes off a tree he just hit at 80 mph.: wow:

It must be the heat here today gettin me started...:surrender
 
TD...you might not be an expert but you could have fooled me had you not said so... I would ride a sportster in a minute..I like the smaller bikes as I am not that big a man, at least in height and weight...LOL
 
:rofl
tuscarora dave said:
I happen to know a bit about harleys and I have to say statements like that are backed by just plain ignorance of the mechanical workings of harley engines.

while sportsters are typically a lower priced introductory bike they have an extreme amount of potential for horse power.

I'd like to point out a few things within the scope of my knowlege but I do not claim to be an expert on anything.

for one, the seat height on most sportster models is higher than most big twin Harleys therefore the center of gravity in not really conducive for most female riders.

secondly, take a look at the valve train geometry on a sportster engine as opposed to a big twin Evo engine, Try drawing a straight line through the center of the camshaft and up the pushrods to the Valves on a big twin Evo. If you do this you will find some pretty hard angles there. I believe that in building big twin Evos for high horse power one must rely more on torque by increasing the stroke of the crankshaft in conjunction with taller cam grinds and larger valves and of course higher compression. But the hard angle of the pushrods really limits the duration and valve overlap that can be achieved here thus keeping the power curve in the lower RPM's. I am not taking away from their potantial but just saying they are somewhat limited in terms of reliability when hopped up.

If on the other hand you will draw that same line through the camshaft(s) on a sportster engine up through the push rods to the valves you will find that all three components are almost perfectly situated in a straight line because there is actually four individual camshafts in a sportster engine. this straight line geometry enables reliability at extreme RPMs, thus with all of the same performance Mods mentioned above excluding the stroker crank. one can build a sportster engine using the shorter stroke crankshaft and run high lift and long duration cams to achieve a better degree of valve overlap increasing the efficiency of the scavenging of fresh air and fuel mixture.

All this combined with all the other mods such as high compression, larger valves and shorter stroke, we are now making real horsepower combined with reliability at high RPMs instead of relying mostly on the torque created by the longer, RPM limiting stroker crank.

I am talking some seriously scary high speed horsepower here. It would take a special breed of girl to be able to handle a sportster like this.

There is a fellow named Mike Magaro here in the Harrisburg area who built his Sporty as described above and this bike is a good bit qiucker and nearly as fast as a hyabusa...Mike Magaro's sporty is no girly bike.

(END RANT)...TD

Oh I forgot to mention that with some crank case machining for rod clearance there is no real limit on bore size either. A lot of Sportster enthusiasts have been known to use 1340 cc. or larger pistons on sporty engines. (END RANT ... Honest) TD.
Click to expand...

I would rather saddle up a pig than ride that junk...:rofl Whats the difference between an idiot and an idiot on a Harley ? 25-k and a big ego.
 
You havnt riden one ever proubably, but at least not lately I have 45000 on mine and all I do is change fluids and it has never leaked a drop of anything. And my buddies dont either, and I dont know of any of them that have had anything major go wrong. So if you want to buy american iron that holds its value then you know where to go.
 
njcarting1 said:
:rofl

I would rather saddle up a pig than ride that junk...:rofl Whats the difference between an idiot and an idiot on a Harley ? 25-k and a big ego.
Click to expand...

sounds like you got some serious resentment issues with bikers.some of the nicest most genorous guys are harley guys, and not the geek wannabees either. The bikers I speak of are the true motorhead dirt under the nails construction working car repoing blue collar dirty denim and jailhouse tattoo wearing type, These guys continuously raise money for charities such as kids with cancer and american heart association and many others. they are people with feelings and just like all breeds some of them just talk the talk and dont walk what they talk. That resentment will burn a big azz hole in your soul Bill you may want to take a good honest look at it brother.:)
 
jking said:
You havnt riden one ever proubably, but at least not lately I have 45000 on mine and all I do is change fluids and it has never leaked a drop of anything. And my buddies dont either, and I dont know of any of them that have had anything major go wrong. So if you want to buy american iron that holds its value then you know where to go.
Click to expand...

+1 on that, I think it was somewhere around 1972 harley was going belly up so to save an American heritage, Ronald Reagan set up a deal with a Japanese basketball manufacturer called AMF to buy the company and rake the profits for ten years only on the condition that they sell it back to employees and shareholders after ten years and that they did.

But what would/could a bunch of Japanese basketball stampers know about motorcycles? With the deal they had , why would they care about quality? they immediately cut the quality control and the research and development departments to a bare minimum and stepped up production quotas to make the maximum amount of money possible. This is how Harleys became the oil leaking pieces of junk that Bill is speaking of.

While it did save the company from certain demise, it also gave harley this bad reputation. You double the production in any industry without hiring more workers and they will produce junk 100% of the time, it is simple.

In 1982 harley was once again an american company but no longer an american icon. They were given a big black eye. So they then revamped the R&D department and QC departments and set out to make the most reliable machines they possibly could and they have succeeded at it. Harleys are now one of the most reliable machines on the planet and deffinately hold a better value than any other brand of bike including BMW.

I challenge any of you to do some homework on this subject and prove me wrong. TD :D
 
Hi Guys, I am going to add this and then stay off of this thread (if I can). You have"all" been so kind in regards to my best friend passing away.

Today I showed up at the funeral and to my delight there were fifty men holding US air force American flags. These men stood there proudly honoring Rodney and their country. They stood there for aproximately four hours and did not say as much as one word the entire time. I was so moved by this that I had to wipe tears from my eyes.

Forty nine of the fifty were sporting Viet Nam Vet M.C. colors. And they all rolled in on guess what? You Got it HARLEYS. There were aproximately three thousand men and women in attendance.
 
I must say around here Charles i have heard the same comments about the sportster being a girls bike. I have been hearing that for years.
 
a guy on a sportster is really xxx ..they are for girls .. kinda like a guy driving a MIATA CONVERTABLE..oh yea xxx .. another thing is these guys hanging out at starbucks on harleys .. where i come from if you had a hog you hung out at a biker bar and changed oil in your living room .. i really have to laugh at some of these guys riding harleys nowadays .. pathetic
 
bigron62 said:
a guy on a sportster is really xxx ..they are for girls .. kinda like a guy driving a MIATA CONVERTABLE..oh yea xxx .. another thing is these guys hanging out at starbucks on harleys .. where i come from if you had a hog you hung out at a biker bar and changed oil in your living room .. i really have to laugh at some of these guys riding harleys nowadays .. pathetic
Click to expand...


GOT THAT RIGHT...:rofl:rofl:rofl:yay:wow::howdy
 
Man, it's a good thing I'm not after a Harley.
It would really change my lifestyle.
1. The Sportster is the only Harley that looks like a motorcycle to me.
2. I would have to give up women. (The xxx thing)
3. Might even have to become a monk since I don't care for men.
4. Can't go to Starbucks. No big deal since I have never been in one.
5. Gotta go to biker bars. Don't drink so why am I going to the biker bar?
6. Have to quit changing my oil in the garage.
7. Probably won't have a bed partner after the first time my wife sees me changing oil in the living room.
8. I guess losing my bed partner won't be a big problem since I will now be xxx.
9. Losing my bed partner means she will throw me out.
10. She throws me out, the divorce will mean I lose the house and at least one car.
11. Maybe she will even take my girly bike.
12. I will be so messed up, I will have to get on a government program to even exist.
13. Once everyone finds out she took my girly bike, my xxx friends will abandon me.
14. I will no longer be welcome at the biker bars.

I had no idea how wonderful my present ignorance of all these facts really was.

Thanks to all for enlightening me. :bigups
 
CharlesW said:
Man, it's a good thing I'm not after a Harley.
It would really change my lifestyle.
1. The Sportster is the only Harley that looks like a motorcycle to me.
2. I would have to give up women. (The xxx thing)
3. Might even have to become a monk since I don't care for men.
4. Can't go to Starbucks. No big deal since I have never been in one.
5. Gotta go to biker bars. Don't drink so why am I going to the biker bar?
6. Have to quit changing my oil in the garage.
7. Probably won't have a bed partner after the first time my wife sees me changing oil in the living room.
8. I guess losing my bed partner won't be a big problem since I will now be xxx.
9. Losing my bed partner means she will throw me out.
10. She throws me out, the divorce will mean I lose the house and at least one car.
11. Maybe she will even take my girly bike.
12. I will be so messed up, I will have to get on a government program to even exist.
13. Once everyone finds out she took my girly bike, my xxx friends will abandon me.
14. I will no longer be welcome at the biker bars.

I had no idea how wonderful my present ignorance of all these facts really was.

Thanks to all for enlightening me. :bigups
Click to expand...

That is hilarious.:rofl:rofl
 
jking said:
You havnt riden one ever proubably, but at least not lately I have 45000 on mine and all I do is change fluids and it has never leaked a drop of anything. And my buddies dont either, and I dont know of any of them that have had anything major go wrong. So if you want to buy american iron that holds its value then you know where to go.
Click to expand...

THATS ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE.

1- My buddy just spent 30-k on a new bike and the thing has been back to the dealer more than his total ownership. The clutch cable broke on his ride home from the dealer.

2- Investment wise they are a sink hole as far as worth goes. You buy a new bike and drive it away you have lost several -k already just like a car. This is from the owner himself at my local dealer. The 25-k is worth 16-18 -k after you drive out and then back in again. The difference is after time the bike will not depreciate it will appreciate like most others do not.

This said I myself would not spend the money and have a 3 month window to ride such an item. Then after taking the hit with the big purchase price,high insurance,registration,and such wanna wait 10 years to maybe get 18-20 grand back on my 25-k spent. This is after a cash sale, not including financing costs that most people have also. The the chrome, pipes, and other related items "you gotta have to stay cool"

Charles was right, Get a street rod, you will be different. You will never have the same as the other guy. You also can get what you paid for the thing all day long any day you choose.

Call it what you want,toy,fad, but never a good investment. :howdy
 
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