Early Sportster Review

Hi, I'm Kevin Baas. From Baas Metal Craft, Vintage Bike Addiction. Here with another installment of Fix My Hog. Today we're gonna talk about the history of the old Sportster. Now we're gonna go from the years from 1952 to '85, which covers the Flathead K Model stuff, up to the Ironhead Sportster. We're not gonna touch on the evolution. But, we're gonna talk about the history from those years, from '52 to '85. We got some examples to show you. We're gonna walk through the early model bikes as they progressed, how they changed. And what brought 'em to the final year in 1985. So, looking at what we have here. Behind me, I have a K Model Sportster. So this is the Flathead style, side valve. Prequel to the old Ironhead Sportster. These were built, kind of more of a hotter factory, kind of a race kind of bike. There's KRs, KKs, all kinds and alphabets. And we're gonna talk about that shortly. The difference between the different models, as the years progressed. In 1952, they started with the first K Model Sportster. And they went all the way up until '56. And then in '57 it changed to the Ironhead Sportster. Now we're gonna talk a little bit about the history of the K Model itself and look over this bike. Behind me I have a 1955. This is a KH. It was a little bit of a hotter bike. And this one's actually built to race. So, it's got KR heads, which are the race style heads that have more flow to 'em. It's got KHK cams, which are a little hotter cam inside. So it's kind of a mismatch of parts that was built to kind of be more like a KR style bike, to race on the dirt track. Looking at this side. If you look at what this bike has to offer, right off the bat, you'll notice the heads. And that's kind of the biggest thing about these bikes that people really notice. It's a Flathead style motor. It's got side valves. Now these are pretty rare, you know, to see these out and about nowadays, compared to the other ones. There weren't a lot of 'em made. So the flathead, that's the first giveaway, right away. What kind of year you're looking at. The KR heads are marked in here. There's casting numbers and whatnot. These were a magneto fired. So, no battery system. You just kick only. You're only starter's with the kick. Once you kick the bike over, it starts to create its own spark, it starts to bike up. Now what's really unique about these too is they have right side shift. The reason for the right side shifting was because, when you're racing on a flat track, you're always turning left. Well, you don't want to have to put your foot up on the shifter, when your foot's out, dragging as you're turning a tight corner. So the old race style, they put everything on the right hand side. That way you could have your foot up to still shift, have the left foot down to kinda hit those corners. These are a generator run system. If they're gonna go on the street and have lights, you'd have a generator that's runnin' that. And we'll talk about that, when we get to the other side. This did have telescoping front forks, with drum breaks. And these are mechanical drum breaks. These ones obviously were disabled, because this is kind of a race bike. Internal throttle, which is kinda cool, with the Linkert carburetor. And we'll talk more about that carburetor when we get to the other side. Looking at the the old K Model style oil tank. A shorter, smaller, sleeker oil tank design. On this bike, because it is KH, not a true KR, it does have a swing arm on it. Now, because I am building this bike to kind of style itself after a KR race bike, it will eventually get one of these Bolt-On Hardtails. And the KR Models were all Rigid Style frames. They had Chromoly Swingarm, or excuse me, Chromoly rigid frame sections they would put on. And that allowed them to tailor the bike to different track situations too, with the way the Swingarm was eliminated. Got you to stick tight to the curve. These are a mechanical drum, rear brake style. So your brake pedal's on the opposite side. It operates this mechanical crossover, which pulls your brake shoes open. This one, it does have the swingarm, like I said, with shocks. The stock seats were taken off. For a race style, Bates style seat with the P-pad. And then some drag pipes for a little better flow. So this bike here, as you can see, it's got kind of a mixture of styling and years, but it kinda holds the true essence of what the K Model race bike was all about. Now I'm gonna go to the other side and we're gonna talk about a few of the things from the left side. When we talk about carburetion, and the brakes, and different things on these older bikes. These have a Linkard carburetor on 'em. So the Linkard carb is specific to those early model. Old Harley's ran 'em up until the the Ironhead Sportster eras, where they went to the later style Linkards, and Bendix, and whatnot. But this is an M53 carburetor. So it's kind of a race carb. It's M53A1, which would be a little bit bigger Venturi one, even yet. But it's a bombsight Venturi. So when you look inside the throat of this, the Venturi actually has a little three line bombsight. And what that does is supposed to help kinda get the airflow to come through, increase the mixture, and give you better performance. The carburetors are all different, just on their size of their body and Venturi size. How much air they can pull in, how much fuel they can give. And these are a pretty simple system. The old Linkerts will run on Harley's for a long, long time. You got your high speed and low speed needles, you can adjust it on the fly. So it's really, really easy to work on. They work really well. They perform well. And they are really neat on these old bikes. You know, there were so many of them out there, you could mix and match, and swap parts in the parking lot before a race. The rake, like we talked about, it's got a crossover shaft. So when you step on the brake pedal, there's a shaft that goes through to a linkage that pulls the brake. And again, that was for a race purposes. So you could have this foot off, dragging on the ground, get yourself around. If this was gonna be a streetable bike. You'll notice on this one, there's no rear taillight on this. Because this was a KH Model, it would've been a streeted bike. It woulda had a headlight, taillight, all the electronics. But this one, because we are racing it, we just eliminated the taillight. There is no headlight bolted on this one either. And we did eliminate the generator. So normally you'd have a generator and have a generator block off plate there. And a generator, once you would start this bike, it didn't need a battery. You'd kick it, kick it. The magneto would create its own spark. It would fire up the bike. The generator would start to spin. Create power now to give you lights, taillights, brake lights, and all that. These were hand clutch, foot shift bikes. Which was a newer style then, from the WRs, WLs, and all those old Flatheads. The military style, which were tank shift, foot clutch. Now with these bikes, there's so much history, we have a lot to cover. Always have your reference material. You may find a bike at a swap meet and you're wondering "Well, what is it?" You know? So I'm gonna take my reference notes here and just kind of go through a little bit of the history of the K, just from the different model years. So from 1952 to '53, they created the '52 K Model, which was a 750cc motor. They did '53s, they went a little hotter with a KK. But those are the only two years they had those styles. So '52 and '53, they did those. From '52 to '53, there were only 3,693 produced even. So less than 4,000 of those bikes were made. The hotter version then came in 1954. So this is a '55, but in '54 to '56, they went with a longer stroke model. So now we have, instead of a 3 13/16 stroke, it went up to a 4 9/16 stroke. So you got a little more hotter cams, you got a bigger stroke. Bumped you up to 883ccs. So now you're getting a little faster, a little hotter. They're starting to figure stuff out to get these things for the racetrack. In '54 to '56, there was a KHK, which was even a hotter version yet of the KH. That's why this bike here, we talked about a little bit ago, that has KHK cams in it. They're a little hotter cam. Once we got to the true competition. And you know, these bikes were actually built because they were trying to compete. In the early fifties, you know, British motorcycles were coming over here and they were taking the America by storm with racing. They were lighter, they were faster. People were really getting into it. So Harley's way to deal with it and combat 'em was to come up with the K Models. Create a nice light little mid-range, you know, bike that's fast. It works good. And the KH and KHKs and all that, were kind of building up to something bigger and that became the KR. The KR was their factory race bike. Those were a competition. They were made for 16 years. From 1953 to '68. And they're really a sought after motorcycle. Collectors from all around the world. People still race 'em. They're in a lot of museums. They're very valuable. So if you ever come across a KR at swap meet and you can get your hands on it, I recommend you do it. Now that's the other thing with the letter sequence, the alphabet we're talking about, is you wanna really know what you have when you find it. If it's just a K Model, you know, hey that's gotta be an early one. If it's a KH, KK, KR, all those mean different things that we talked about. So just understand that, when you're getting into it, if you're trying to build a period correct bike or you wanna restore one to truly stock, you don't wanna make a KR look like a K. You know, you want to have those differentiation of years and know what it should look like. Ks did go into a KRM, which was a kind of a scramble trials type bike. They did the KRTTs, which is the TT, kind of your competition trophy racing style bike. And then, up to KRTTs, TTHs, and so forth. So, a lot of different alphabet stuff in there. They all mean something different. You know, and if you're ever not sure, just get your reference material out, look online, type in what you found, and you'll find all kinds of reference on it. So '52, with these K Models, we talked about, 1952 was the first year they came out with these. And again, it was to kinda compete with the British motorcycles, the faster ones. Light. The right side shift for the racing. These are based on kind of a 45 cubic inch side valve model. Which was the WLS, which is the Army era bikes. But what you'll notice on these now is that there's no separate transmission. They came up with a whole new design here now, with kind of like the WL Flathead side valve technology, but now it's some Big Twin stuff. But then they also incorporated their own design of this one piece. A unit design, where the transmission is part of the whole motor. Which Triumphs and early bikes like that were doing. So on the '55 Model here, they updated their transmission and they put a trap door inside. And what that means is, the earlier models, you had to actually split the cases to work on your transmission. So it was a big mess and anytime you do that. Now with this updated '55, which I have here, they have a trap door style system in there where you could access and rebuild a tranny, just by taking this primary cover off. You didn't have to split the cases, take the whole bike apart to do that. So kind of another update. You know, the engineers were always working to try to make these things better, faster, lighter, easier to work on. You know, and it took 'em a few years but they were slowly working on that and getting all the bugs worked out. On these bikes, down from the '52 to '56, the Flathead style K Models, you can see that there's a wide variety. They did a lot of upgrades. They were slowly building up to the faster, stronger, lighter bikes. And in 1957, they basically took this platform and just created an overhead valve style and it was called the Ironhead. We do have a '58 Ironhead up on the rack over here that we'll show you some pictures of. But it's really similar to this bike. Except for the motor configuration, as far as the heads, the cylinders, the overhead valves, and whatnot. Same right side shift, same kick only on that one. And you know again, they were built because a lot of people raced them. Even if it wasn't a true KR or an XLR. These Ks, and KHs, and KHKs, people were taking 'em to the track on the weekends, stripping stuff off, racing them, putting all that stuff back on. And then it would be their everyday rider until the next weekend's ride. So you know, when you look at an old K Model, you're gonna see a lot of the similarities in the Ironhead Sportsters, the early ones. And see how pretty much, they use the same platform. And Harley was really good on that through the years. As they would get close to a new model year of something, they would kind of use up some of their parts. Chassis, front ends, and whatnot. Until they could, you know, introduce the full new line of a model that has new introduced parts that weren't from previous years. So we'll take a look at that '58 XLCH Ironhead. And then we'll talk about how the years have progressed from there on. From Ironheads, through the early styles, into the last year, which is 1985. Alright, so kinda wrapping up the K Model era here. Couple last things on this bike. Again, as we talked about, I'm really building this to kinda be a race KR style bike. A couple of the other things I didn't really mention but I did put on here. You'll see, in the back, it's a aluminum high shoulder at 18 inch rear wheel. So you got a little bit lighter weight there. Helps with getting the RPMs going to speed. And the front wheel has an old drum style break. And that's gonna be eliminated. It's got a steel rim drum. That's a pretty heavy front wheel. And it's gonna actually be replaced with this KR style spool hub front wheel. Which you'll notice, does not have any brakes on it at all. It's just a spooly hub. And it is an aluminum high shoulder wheel as well. So it makes it very, very lightweight. And you know, the goal when you're racing, is obviously cut down on your weight. You know, make it faster. Anything that doesn't help it go faster or it will get you to stop, you just take it off and eliminate it. So shaving weight was a big thing back in the day. And Harley started to realize that too, as they went through the years, and started to come up with better ways to cut pounds all over the bike. Now with this '57. The '69 style Ironhead that we talked about up there. This bike, we're just gonna kind of reference, just to show you a little bit of what the differences are. Because you know, the '52, the '56 K Models. Again, the Flathead style motor. You'll notice the magneto on it. Right side shift. With the, like we talked about up there, with the '58. The major changes you'll see, because Harley was still using up a lot of the similar stuff, was an overhead valve style. Gave you better compression, better flow. Your bike was faster. Higher revving. And made it a little quicker bike. So you know, generally speaking, the K Models and the earlier Ironhead Sportsters, the '57s, the '69s were very close. They looked a lot alike. They had a lot of similarities other than just the overhead valve style Ironhead motor change. So with that, we're gonna be bringing up the next genre, which is a '77 Ironhead Sportster. And we'll talk about those years and work our way up. Alright, so we what covered the '52 to '56 era. The Flathead K Model Sportsters. We talked about the '58 Ironhead, which is the '57 to '69 era. Now we're gonna start moving forward, because you know, Sportsters had kind of a wide range of years where they had models that looked kinda similar. The next generation we're bringing up here is the '70 to '78 era. Now this was a big upgrade from what you saw in the '57 to '69s. You know before, we talked about how those were basically the Flathead style lower, with a lot of Flathead stuff, but the overhead valve, Ironhead motor. What makes an Ironhead an Ironhead? You can see already by just looking at the rocker covers here. They call this an Ironhead. It's got the Ironheads, it's got the rocker boxes that go on top. And, some people do actually mistake these for a Shovelhead, because it looks like the Shovelhead motor does too. But don't mistake that. The Ironhead's kind of its own entity. But now on this bike, I'm gonna show you. There's quite a bit of changes from what we saw in the early K Model to the early Sportster era. Harley came up with a lot of new innovative designs. They're starting again, make things. Now, in this era, was more of a streetable, family cruiser, everyday driver type bike. And with the XLs, the X Models, Sportsters, there is an alphabet with that too. And we're gonna talk about that. I got some reference material to look at. So the basic FXL, they were produced from '57 to '85. Alright? In '86, that's when the evolution models came into play. The XL was more of your 883, produced in '57, '58, and '59. The XLH came out. And that was a higher compression, more of a luxury model Sportster. That was in '58 to '69. So you'll see a lot of XLHs out there. Then they had what was called the XLCH. Which is the competition hot. This is one that they built to really make it kind of a fun streetable race bike. It's quick, it's nimble, it's got, you know, all the doo-dads to make it as quick as they can. And a lot of those had the magnetos on 'em, with the earlier models. But then again, in 1970 and above you know, we're gonna show you what the changes were there. The XLCHs were produced from '59 to '69. So a 10 year span there. And then also the '58 XLCH, which we showed you on the rack. That's kind of a rare one 'cause that wasn't typically a streetable bike. It was made just for racing. So the one we had, that we showed you, we actually put a generator on, headlight, taillight to make it streetable. So a real rare one. So, looking at the '70, the '78 era. Again, we have the '77 Sportster. Just looking at some of the main changes. Starting at the rear, still a drum brake on these. Still a mechanical drum brake. So, they didn't do many changes there. See and this one is the left side shift, right side brake. Which the government required Harley Davidson to do on all their later model bikes. And at this era, you know these kind of bikes, they weren't really made to be race, race bikes. Again, they were made to be your everyday rider. You know, take it to church, and go get groceries and strap it to the back. So right side brake now, left side shift. That was a major upgrade, which holds true to today. There were some changes with the oil tank configuration, because now now we have electric start. This was no longer a kickstart bike. So these are upgraded with an electric start system. Which means you had to re-upgrade your oil tank's configuration to host a battery in there. You have switches on the handlebars. You know, start button, horns, turn signals, all that. Your carburetor was changed from the old style you saw. The carburetor was sticking out the left side with the Linkard. The early Sportsters went to the right side again. And now we have more of a stock standard, you know, Bendix style carburetor. On these are too. You'll see where the starter is, right here. And then the other thing is, where there used to be a magneto in this area, or the timer on some of the early K Models, you'll see is gone. And now we have this points cover here. And we have points built inside this. And we'll talk about that later and show you what's inside there. There's still a hydraulic front end. This one now has a juiced hydraulic front brake system, instead of the drum brake. So on earlier Sportsters we showed you, they had drum front and rear. Now with this era, they went up and decided, you know, your stopping power comes from that front brake, most of it. Let's make it a more reliable, put a disc style system on here. And you'll notice with these they still, from the factory though, they had the high shouldered aluminum rim. So they were still trying to cut some weight and make 'em a little sporty and performance orientated, even back in the day. This one now you see, you got gauges. You got a speedometer. You got a tachometer mounted on the handlebars. For ease of, you know, seeing where you're going, how fast you're going. The exhaust pipes on this one have been changed, the drag pipes. But otherwise we got our coils mounted up here now, because we do have the point style system there. And this one has stock blinkers, fender and all that. And pretty much you know, you can see the major changes we talked about on that side. Looking at the other side for our changes. Again, the major ones you'll see on this side is just that now we have our left side shift. Hand clutch still. So the old tank shift and jockey shift style's been long gone. They put that to the four speed. And this is a four speed style transmission. All enclosed, like we talked about. It's all serviceable from pulling the primary cover off. Now you don't have to split the cases. We have a voltage regulator mounted over here. So that as your generator, and this one does have the generator on it. So we talked about the other one with the generator block off plate, on the K Model. You'll see when we get a close up on this that this is actually your generator source now. So what happens is even though there's a battery on this, to power your electric start, once this gets running, this generator will kind of trickle charge the battery and service your system to keep power going throughout, to keep everything working fine. And then the front disk brake, like we talked about, hydraulic front disc brake. That was a major upgrade for these for stopping power. 'Cause again, the rear drum and front drums, they didn't give you a whole lot of stopping power. And this really upped the game. Now this bike here was picked up as is. So part of this series is not only to kinda give you the history of what these bikes are all about, show some changes. But we're gonna do some service on this bike. There's quite a bit of things. I don't know really anything about the history of where this was, who had it before me, what kind of service was done. So we're gonna go through this thing with a fine-tooth comb. And show you, if you picked up a bike like this, what do you wanna look for? What do you wanna fix? If it's broke now it's not gonna be working later when you're done, if you don't fix it now. So, we'll get to that shortly. But I do have one other era of of Ironhead Sportster I wanna show you. We had the later style that went all the way up to 1985. And we're gonna get that one on the lift then and show you the differences on that one from this era. Alright, we've covered the '57 to '69 era. The old K Model style Sportsters. We went on to the '70, '78 era. Which had a lot of similarities. And now we're moving up to the '79, '85 era, which you'll see here. This is a 1985 Ironhead Sportster. This is the last year they made the Ironhead Sportsters. So it's kind of a neat recap of all the Ironheads through the years. What was neat about the this era now is Harley Davidson was bought back from AMF. So some of the earlier models we showed you had the AMF, The '77's and AMF. But in February of 1981, some shareholders, including Willie G. Davidson, got together and they bought out AMF. And they brought the company back to Milwaukee as a hometown tradition. So that was pretty exciting. There was a lot of hype about that in '81. People were super excited. There was a big celebration. And every year now, you know, you look back at that era. This is kind of like the changing point for Harley, when they really took it back and made it great. AMF did a lot of good things for the company. You know, they saved it when they were hurting back in the day. And they stuck a lot of money into some engineering and upgrades that you've seen on these bikes. And that helped kind of spring load Harley when he took it over. To just take off with that and keep moving along. So we're gonna show you now on this one is, how is this one different from what we saw in the earlier era of the Ironhead Sportsters? Now this one ran right up to, like I said '85. In '86, it went to the Evo style Sportster. Which is a whole different ball of wax. In this one, still got some similarities. You're gonna see stuff that looks like the '77 we talked about. But now there's a few other differences. Couple of the main things you'll see is the master cylinder for a rear brake. Okay? Now obviously that tells you something. This is no longer a drum brake style rear. They went to a disc brake style hydraulic brake. Your brake is still on the right side. But now you have a master cylinder with brake fluid and that whole system. So now they're breaking down with real nice front disc brake, rear disc brake. So it was a lot more safe to operate on the roads and make it more easy to service for people, instead of having to take apart the old drum style. The other thing they upgraded, you'll see, there's a newer style starter system on this. It's a bigger starter, more reliable. These are real common starters that were used through a long line of years. And it makes it easier to work on that and get a good reliable starting bike. You'll see your oil tank here. Side saddle mount oil tank. Your battery's housed inside that. In these eras you can see, they kinda sleeked it down, made a little more tucked in. Looking nicer. This one still has a stock pipe. So you have the stock baffle pipes with crossover tube here. The original old Bendix carb. Difference here is a different air cleaner was put on. So we're actually missing the carb support. So that's something we'll have to address on this bike before it becomes serviceable on a road. Now one of the other major, major changes on this, is we talked about the generator. How the generator created power for the system. This bike has a oil filter where the generator used to be. Okay? So now, when you're looking here. On the previous models, we showed you, there was a generator that created the power. Now we have an oil filter. So what had happened is that in mid '84, they switched to an alternator system. So that alternator's actually inside the primary cover, behind the clutch. Not a really good design, because it's really hard to get at and service. If you wanna work on it, you gotta take all this apart, pull your clutch out. They did that until about '91, I believe. Then they kinda came up with a better design that was easier to service. So again, on this one, we got oil filter now where the generator used to be. No more generator, how does it get its power? There's an alternator stuck inside there, hidden. Creates the voltage, the trickle charge. And here's your battery. Tucked under the seat, like we talked about, right here. We have our disc rear brakes. Caliper and assembly there, on that. And other than that, you know, again, similar styling, just some minor upgrades. And they didn't do any major renovation changeover, until '86 with the Evolution style Sportster. Alright on this '85, you'll notice the handlebars. They kinda redesigned the styling. Give you kind of a comfortable, kinda like a super glide look. But your bars have all kinds of controls and switches now. You got your off and on button. You got your electric start. You have turn signals. You have a high, low switch, for your lights. You have a horn button. You do have again, your front disc brakes. You see your master cylinder's here. So you have nice, reliable front brake system. You have the clutch on the left side. And then again, your gauges up top so you can see everything. And this one even has some indicator lights now. So you can see if your high beam's on. You can see if you're in neutral. And you can see if you're having any power, generator issues when you're not charging properly. Gas tank. Standard kind of peanut style gas tank that Harley used for a long era. Just a good classic styling, good look to it. And just overall, you know, just a nice little reliable everyday bike. So we've given you quite a bit of information about all the different eras, from the K Models, to the early Ironheads, to the later models, right up to the last year Ironhead. Lots of stuff to go at. Again, if you have any of these models, it's always good, get a reference mat material for it. Get the manual, get the service manual for it. It'll help you. It will walk you through all the little ins and outs. There are changes, you know some eras. And maybe just a year difference could be a huge change for some of the stuff they did. So get your manual. Study it. Make sure you're well versed on which bike you have. Remember the alphabet. Know what it is between XLs, KRs, and all that stuff. And know what which one you have, if you're trying to restore a bike. Because it does make a big difference on how you're gonna style the bike and finish it off. Now that we've kind of went through those eras of the the 52K Model, all the way up to the '85 Ironhead Sportster. We're gonna get our '77 Ironhead back on the lift. And then we're gonna do some service work on it now. Now that bike was bought as is. And just like you may go out and buy one, we wanna show you what you should look at, what you should go through, what are the service points to really be concerned about, and how to fix stuff that you find that's wrong. So we're gonna get that '77 on the lift and get going on doing some repairs.