1984-1999 Harley-Davidson Evolution Buyers Guide

Hey, welcome back to Fix My Hog, I'm Mike Roen. We've partnered with Dennis Kirk for the Evoution Buyers' Guide video. And if you think back about the Evo, very crucial, very important motorcycle that, you know, really just basically saved the company, you know. And if you think about it, in 1981, Willie G and a handful of executives, they went ahead and bought the company back for like 80 million, which, you know, doesn't sound, it sounds like a lot of money, but it really wasn't a lot of money 'cause the country was in a recession, motorcycling, you know, wasn't the top priority, and Harley Davidson really didn't have a great name at the time. So they kind of took a big chance and bought it back. And I don't know if they had a crystal ball or what, but he knew good things were coming obviously, for the economy and it really worked out well because in 1984, they released the Evo Softail and that thing was a hit and it really took off. And their whole approach was, they looked at what was going on in the motorcycle industry and they saw, you know, the Japanese motorcycles were getting faster. They were getting lighter. Everything about them was better. And instead of going head to head with 'em, they just took this completely different approach where they said, you know what, we're gonna go back to our grassroots. We're gonna go back to our heritage. And we're gonna chase that look, that retro look, but we're gonna make this company better. And they did, you know, they streamlined their production. They started sourcing parts out. They got pistons from Germany. They got, you know, components from Japan and they really turned the company around. They brought people back in. You know, if you think about it, the baby boomers back then were a lot younger, you know. They didn't necessarily want a touring bike, you know. They wanted something cool like this, you know? And so they really made a lot of good moves and the Evo was a critical part of that deal because it was so much better than the Shovelhead. So what we're gonna be doing today is we're just kind of gonna be breaking it down, your groups, problems, things to look for. And on another interesting side note, if you got time, look up the Nova project that AMF had been developing back in '76. They were developing a V4 liquid cooled engine, and they basically ran out money on the project. And fortunately they kind of did, because it would've just altered the whole course of history with Harley, had they produced that V4, we would've never got the Evo. And we can also thank AMF for developing the Evo. You know, they kind of handed that to Willie. So stop bashing AMF. They carried Harley through the tough times and it paid off in the end for Willie and everybody. So let's get started. Okay, let's get started on this Evo buyer's guide. So really what I've kind of done here is I'm just gonna try and kinda lay it out by your groups of major changes they've done, you know, production wise, so when you're out looking at an Evo, you kind of know what you're getting yourself into because for me being a flat rate mechanic, I look at older Evos as, you know, okay, well, it's gonna have these problems, this, this, and this. So, I'm not trying to be negative, but I'm trying to tell you what I feel when somebody calls and they say, look, like Dennis called me and said, hey, I got a great deal on a '88 Evo. And right away, I was kind of like, how many miles are on the bike? He goes, well, it's a gift, 10,000 miles on it. This bike's been sitting, and I was like, okay, that makes it better. But some of the things, you know, that concerns me about 1984 to 1989, they kind of had the same platform. And although it was a great improvement over the Shovelhead, just because, you know, having aluminum cylinders, aluminum heads, the rocker box maintenance, way easier than a Shovelhead, you know, much better design, That aspect of it is pretty straightforward. But if you look at the inner primary, you're going, wow, looks like a Shovelhead. Well, it's kind of based on that. It does have a five speed tranny, which is nice, but you know, what I don't like about this bike is the clutch arrangement. It's kind of insufficient, and the starter arrangement, and they kind of go hand in hand. So when you get a bike like this, you know, they did modify 'em back in the day. They did try and make 'em go fast, but they spent a lot of money on aftermarket components, you know, and they had to update the clutch. The starter was insufficient, 'cause they were putting so much compression in the motor that it was hard to start the motorcycle and putting decompressors back in the day wasn't a very common thing, you know, so things you kind of gotta keep in mind. If you inherited this motorcycle, you don't really have a choice, you know, you're stuck. But I'm just saying, if you're going out buying bikes, you get into '84 to '90 or '84 to '89, to me, it's a deterrent. But so there again, you gotta weigh your options, you know. If it's really clean like this and you're just gonna have it as your little put around own bar hopper and not rage on the thing, you're gonna be all right, you know. But for me, I'm always looking at the next generation of what's better, you know. So moving on down the line, keeping that in mind, you figure the other style about this, the Evo is this is what they call bottom end breather. So from 1984 to 1991, these crank cases design was bottom end breather. So if you're ever looking at buying air cleaner kits, you always see '84 to '91. Well, that's 'cause the crank case, it vents out of the crank case and in '92, they change it to a top end breather. So that's kind of a big deciding factor as well, you know. It's just a better design, the '92 and later. So, you know, Willie started to spend a lot of money on trying to make the product better and that's kind of what they did, you know. They just, whenever they had a problem, they kind of went after it. And so they were changing things, so. Which brings me up to 1990, you know? So the big differences there, were they put a CV carburetor on it, 'cause the carburetor on this motorcycle isn't all that desirable. So, you know, that was a big upgrade. They changed the clutch design and that was a big change, you know. They made that better. And along with that, they made the starter better. So you got a couple of big changes in 1990, which make that a little more desirable than the, you know, '89 and earlier. So when you're looking for a motorcycle, that's something you want to keep in mind. Getting back to the clutch, so 1990 to 1997, they ran this clutch for, you know, seven years. And it was a pretty decent clutch except for one thing, is it did have this absorber plate right in the center of the clutch pack. And if you're, you know, if the bike's got 50,000 miles on it, you gotta go in and take it apart and you have to inspect this absorber plate 'cause they deteriorate and you'll change your primary and you'll go, I've got little brass fittings in there and you're right. You will, because these rivets deteriorate. So, if you're somebody that wails on a motorcycle, that absorber will probably deteriorate even quicker, you know. And what happens is when it deteriorates, it puts a nice little groove in the clutch basket. If you continue to ride the motorcycle, it just starts deteriorating that clutch basket to where you might not be able to save it. Now in a lot of cases, what I'll do is I'll order an aftermarket clutch kit that eliminates that absorber. You go in with a little sanding tool and you gotta clean up all them, where it's deteriorated, 'cause you want those clutch plates to float freely, you know. If you don't, it's just gonna end up wiping out your new clutch. So big change, nice upgrade, starter upgrade, you know, they did that. So let's move on down my list here. Okay, another big change that was kind of important, it's back in 1990 up to '93. So I don't know if that works better like that. I can show it, what I'm show here is the splines. And you can see how narrow that contact patch is and you can see they're wore out. So what Harley did is they said, hey, that isn't gonna cut it. So in 1994, they went to this wide design, you know, to where you're getting more surface area. And what that's riding on is right here, fifth gear. So if you ignored your inner primary leak and you rode it till you peeled these splines off, it could damage the splines on fifth gear. So now if you bought a motorcycle with an inner primary leak and it turns out the splines on fifth gear are wiped out, you've gotta take the tranny apart and you've gotta put fifth gear in it. And that is gonna escalate, you know, the amount of money you're putting in this motorcycle. So when you're looking at a high mileage bike, you're always thinking worst case scenario to where, you know what, if you love the motorcycle, I'm gonna take it completely apart and I'm gonna spend a lot of money. You know, you kind of almost have that mindset. If you've inherited this motorcycle, you throw everything out the window. It doesn't matter how much money you're gonna spend on it because you're gonna pass this motorcycle on down to the next generation. So when you inherit something like that, it's got sentimental value, everything's off the table, money's no object. So, but at any rate, so if you have a '93 or earlier and you're in there messing around, putting a belt on it, you can't order this old sprocket. It supersedes to the Koyo new sprocket, it's gonna come with a different collar. It's gonna come with a, you know, locking plate and nut and all that. So you can't get that old sprocket anymore, but just be aware of it, that if you did buy an older bike, that's something you gotta address you know, if it hasn't been updated. So make a note of that. Moving on down the line, in 1995, they actually came out with a fuel injected motorcycle. It's the Marelli platform. I wouldn't say it was great, you know. It worked adequately at the time, but now it's old. And like you can't get an ECU from Harley. So if the fire goes out and you need an ECU, you're stuck to try and buy a known, good one off the internet. A couple years ago at the shop over the winter, we did restore a guy's Evo. We eliminated the whole fuel injection system and put a CV carb on it. It was a nice little upgrade. And if you're doing the work yourself, it's not a bad little tune up, you know. So for me, I tend to shy away from the fuel injected bikes, you know. I like a carburetor, it's way simpler. The cost is less and it's very easy to work on. So, something to keep in mind. 1996 was a big change. The thing I like about the '96s, if you look at this older bike here, and they ran these controls from '84 all the way to 1995, you know. They were all right, but you gotta figure, they're the Molex wiring harness and the controls themselves, you know, I didn't care for. So in '96 they completely changed the wiring harness. They went to the deuce style connectors, kind of waterproof. The controls are better. The brake master cylinder was better. And to me, that's a huge deciding factor. So whenever I'm looking at Evos, or somebody says they know of an Evo for sale, it's gotta be '96 and later for me, 'cause then I feel good about spending a ton of money on this motorcycle, especially if it's carburetted, and just the quality of having that better wire harness, it's such a huge deal. So if you're shopping, that's the first thing you're thinking is '96 and later, you know. This bike was a exceptionally good deal to where we couldn't pass up on it. So yeah, you know, you gotta weigh your options of what condition is the motorcycle, you know? If it's got a ton of miles on it and it's an older bike, you know, you've gotta get the thing really cheap to justify it. Okay, just checking my notes here. 1998, you know, that's the last year for the Baggers being a Evoution style motor. And it really probably was the best year. They updated the clutch to basically the twin cam clutch. And they actually did, the Softails in 1999 were still an Evoution motor. So when you think twin cam 1999, that was only for the Baggers and the Dynas. And so, be aware of that if you are shopping. '99 is still an Evo. You actually could still get an Evo in a FXR in 2000 and possibly 2001 even. But they kind of made like an anniversary edition for the FXR. They brought it back, had the Evo engine in it. So you still could buy an Evo back in 2000, you know. Okay, so you're at home, you're on the internet clicking around and you think you found yourself a motorcycle. So now you want to go check it out, you meet up with the guy and really for me, what you want to do is you kind of wanna start feeling him out. You wanna check the paperwork out, you wanna make sure that VIN number on the title and the VIN number on the motorcycle, everything's cool there because, you know, with Harley's, it's so easy to have built a motorcycle out of a million different parts and they assemble it and then they just want to do a quick sale on it. So myself, I always want a history on the motorcycle. You know, I don't know if you watched our Shovelhead video, but when I bought my Shovelhead, the thing had basically been unmolested. It was a two owner bike. I had history on the bike. That's the kind of bike I wanna buy. We got a great history on this bike. One owner, sat forever. That's the dream, you know, that's what you wanna find. So you go in, you check your bike out, you ask the guy, hey, how long have you owned the motorcycle? What have you done to the bike? What history do you know? Do you have any paperwork on it? Has somebody been into the motor? You know, get all the basics down. If it's a bike that's 34 years old and it's been bought and sold repeatedly and there's been so many fingers in the cake, that scares me, you know, the price has gotta be really reasonable or, you know, that's really what it's gonna come down to because then, you know, I'm going in all the way 'cause I want to double check. I want to babysit this thing and see what's been done to this motorcycle. And the things that concern me are, okay, you know, the motors had a zipper on it. And what can happen is these studs, you know, they've been torqued repeatedly and that can be a problem. 'Cause what happens is the case, the threads will start getting pulled out of the case half. And now you've got a big problem, you know. You're gonna try and repair the threads in the case, that's kind of hard to do. There's services where you can send your crank case out and have a machined in a time cert or something and had it put in properly. But that's a lot of cost, you know. Did the cam bearing ever get updated? Is it a high mileage bike to where they wore the cam bearing out and then the cam walked into the crank case, and then somebody discovered that and just put another cam bearing in and the crank cases is wore out? You know, 'cause on these Evos, this bike, if you can see, has the Koyo Torrington cam bearing in it. But what Harley did is later on in production, they went to a cheaper cam bearing and that can bearing was prone to failure and it'd be catastrophic, you know. If you're damaging the engine cases, at that point, most people would just end up buying aftermarket cases, which is gonna kind of affect your title again. So the other thing on an Evo, you know, they updated the lifter, the valve train on the Evoution motor, which was for the better over the Shovelhead. But around 50,000 miles, what we see is the, you know, bearings in the lifter deteriorate, then it gets run through the engine. So when you're shopping for your Evo and the guy's owned it a long time, you say, hey, have you ever put lifters in the bike? Nope, then you're like, okay, well, that's gonna drop the price down a little bit to where, you know you're gonna be going in, updating the cam bearing, updating the lifters, probably putting an aftermarket cam in it, stuff like that. So something to be aware of. Another thing obviously you're gonna wanna look for is you get your flashlight, you start looking, primarily, you're gonna wanna look, see if the bike has an inner primary leak. 'Cause it's fairly common on a Harley and it could mean a lot of things, you know. Like I was talking earlier about the front pulley being wore out, that can cause an inner primary leak. The collar on the output shaft could be walking into fifth gear, causing a leak, you know. Either way, if it's got high miles, you'll be pulling the inner primary off, but it's just gonna be a bargaining chip when you say, look, dude, it's not easy, you know, to pull the inner primary off on a Softail. You know, that's one of the things, Softail for me is they are a lot more work, you know. You get a Dyna or an FXR or a Bagger, the rubber mount, servicing the starter on those, much easier. So Softail, you know, I'm a little biased it because when I look at stuff, I look at labor and how intensive it is. You buying the bike, it might not be a big deal because, you know, that's gonna be your deal. I wanna work on this motorcycle. I wanna restore it. I don't care if it takes five hours to put a starter in the bike, you know, that's gonna be fun. So something to keep in mind, if you're pushing yourself on your mechanical abilities, Softail's gonna be a challenge, the Dyna and the Bagger's gonna be an easier motorcycle to work on so keep that in mind. But there again, look the bike over for major oil leaks. Now, this bike has the, you know, hidden shock design. And, you know, you wanna look at those shocks, see if they're leaking, you know. You wanna make sure they're functioning properly. Push down on it, if they're sacked out, if it's a high mileage bike, they're probably clapped out. Those shocks aren't that cheap, you know. And that was another thing, that was the best move that Harley ever made. They bought that patent from that guy on that hidden shock design and that was just a home run, you know. It was such a, if you look at this motorcycle, it looks cool, it looks like an old bike, like it's gonna be rigid, but it's got shocks, so. Other thing obviously, drive belt, sprockets, you know, you're gonna be looking at that. If you look at this rear pulley on this motorcycle, it doesn't bolt into the hub. It actually has nuts on the backside. So give that a wiggle, make sure that that's not loose and deteriorated because it'll wreck that hub. You're gonna want to give the spokes a squeeze. You wanna see if they're tight, if they're loose and they've been run loose, that can damage the hub where the spoke makes the turn in there. Now you're talking big money, you know. You're basically, you're to the point where you're just gonna buy an aftermarket wheel. And if they're really old and rusty, a lot of times rust will start on the inside of a spoke wheel and rust from the inside out. So just kind of always, you know, I hate to say it, but you kind of gotta think worst case scenario to where I could get upside down in this thing. So it always comes back to the price. Tires, that's kind of a no brainer. You'll be looking at 'em, they've got a date code on 'em. You can just visually look at 'em. We know these tires are shot. They're probably 30 years old or whatever. We know we're putting new tires on it. So you go in with that attitude of, you know, I'm gonna be updating a lot of things, and then you can get a dollar amount of where you're at, you know. That's why you bring your pen and paper and just start making mental notes of going down the line. So, this is like the best case scenario though, to find a bike this low mileage that's been parked. So that's kind of what you're looking for, but more than likely, you know, someone's been working on this motorcycle. It's bound to be something this old. And what happens is, you know, the inner primary's probably been off repeatedly. And if they've had the inner primary off, and say they serviced the transmission housing or they've serviced the engine, they've had to put the inner primary back on. And what happens sometimes, they don't line the inner primary to the motor and the tranny properly. Now, say they had the crank cases out of it and they put 'em back in and they didn't line the inner primary to the tranny properly, a lot of times, the potential to break the lip on here does happen. And you'll be chasing an inner primary leak you'll never be able to fix, you know, because the case is broke. So there's a procedure when you have the transmission housing out or the engine housing out, you need to align the inner primary to that in a proper sequence, otherwise, you know, you're gonna bust something. So that's why I like to buy motorcycles that haven't been messed with a lot, you know. It's a big deal, unless you know the mechanic and like I said, you know, how competent they are, but there again on an Evo, the whole production run, they had paper based gaskets. They had paper rocker box gaskets, and this bike here, I started looking on the other side, just from running it the other day. And I can see the base gasket, you know, is starting to sweat. The motor expands and contracts when it gets hot. Those paper gaskets are so old that basically you can bank on the fact that, well, we are gonna be pulling the top in on this and freshening it up. But when you're looking at a bike and you see it sweating, and you say, are they original paper gaskets? Yep, well, you know, you're gonna be in there freshing 'em up. So it's a big deal, you know. If you're buying the bike, basically you're kind of thinking restore mode. You know, you're gonna be doing the cables more than likely, you know, if they're all original. So it's just kind of common sense stuff. Get your manual, start going through it and going from there. So, you know, a project like this, it kinda can seem a little intimidating, but really, you know, like I've said in the past, you kind of just break it down into sections of what you're gonna put yourself up to and what your mechanical abilities are. And a nice thing about Dennis Kirk is, you know, once you buy the bike and you start clicking along, you're adding stuff to the cart, you got a dollar amount in mind. Now this project here, you know, we're gonna be doing a full service. We're doing the tires, the petcock upgrade, some other, you know, routine maintenance. And we're we're approaching thousand bucks in parts, which isn't too bad. And then, you know, your labor, of course, is free to you. And you're gonna feel better about doing the work on the motorcycle, 'cause you're gonna get to know the motorcycle and you're just gonna feel better if you want to go on a road trip, knowing you've covered a majority of these bases. So take your time, check out Fix My Hog. We obviously got a lot, you know, a ton of videos on the Evo and they'll find them pretty informational. So all right, thanks for tuning in.