just seen a Harley Sportster with a chain final drive - that's not normal, is it?
oh right. I don't much care, just don't recall seeing one with a chain before. It had a non age-related (NI) plate, and a custom paint job, so not obvious it was old.
The trouble with chain drive sportsters is that they insisted on putting on the weediest chain they could find and making the chain run as long as possible.
The fact a bike from the early '80s is indistinguishable from their current line-up is evidence (as if we needed it) beyond reasonable doubt that Harley haven't got an annual R&D budget of more than a few hundred dollars. Shame Buell have gone under. At least they resembled modern bikes. In the loosest possible sense.
Got to admit I can't tell one from another except for obvious things like Springers, Electra Glides and Sportsters. Periodically they seem to hog out (hah) the engine for a few more cubes and bolt some more shiny bits on. I think you have to be a Harley aficonado to tell one model year's bike from another, as if it matters. That said, I couldn't tell you whether a Blade or Gixxer Thou was a 2009 or 2006 model, just by glancing at it, either. The ones that appeal are the basic Glides, in that they seem to be a palette for you to work on. More than once I've idly considered a Buell, but the fact that they seem to have been the most chronically unreliable and badly built bikes of recent years[1] have made it, er, a Fuell's errand. [1] With the possible exception of recent BMWs.
Many years ago I decided to buy an 883 Sportster and even though it was slow and unreliable it was great fun to ride. Even now I'd be tempted to buy a 1200 Sportster and tune it to **** then change it to a classic flat track style just for the hell of it. There's something about a bike that makes me laugh when you start it up in the garage and pictures on adjoining walls in the house shake.
I owned an early '90s Sportster and it was a hoot to ride but the chain was just too long and too feeble to do anything but stretch like nicker elastic. Even more depressing was the rate at which the bastard thing ate rear tyres and I could wear holes in the exhausts on roundabouts faster than Des changes religion.
And me. Its especially amusing to make children burst into tears at zebra crossings. http://tinyurl.com/2drwvnz
My XS2 spat a baffle out of its Dunstall Decibel silencers and damaged the shed in my parents garden badly enough for me to be shouted at.
I had a ride on a demonstrator White Lightning once - I seriously considered emptying my savings account and selling stuff to buy one. It sounded lovely, though admittedly it had an aftermarket exhaust on, and it seemed to handle OK, too. It was nice to see it gently shuddering on its sidestand at idle, but it felt pretty smooth to ride. I never did because I'd always intended to do the odd trackday and I'd read stories about their unreliability. Not just the 'bits falling off' stories: Loctite & lockwire would sort that; but 'exploding gearbox' stories. The sort of problem you can't ride home with.
I like the look of that, it has style. Probably a crap bike in reality but it looks like a work of modernist art.
