Tina's Sportster - Last of the Ironheads.

There's a popular myth in some circles that the Harley Sportster is a girls bike. Smaller than the big twins and cheaper by half, the poor Sportster has come to be seen as Harley's entry level bike, the cheapo bottom of the range taster designed to get punters onto the ownership ladder which will eventually lead them to shell out for a more lucrative Fat Boy or Road King.

But I'm here to tell you the Sportster is about more than that. Much, much more. Back in the fifties Harley's big twins were under attack from lighter, faster foreign imports like our very own Triumphs and BSAs which would run rings around the lumbering Panheads and then shoot off into the distance, metaphorically kicking sand in the face of the obese and dated Duo Glides and Hydra Glides. Lots of US bikers, including the early patch clubs, responded by dumping as much weight as possible from their Harleys, resulting in the "bob jobs" or early choppers. Those old enough to remember Lee Marvin and Marlon Brando in "The Wild One" will have spotted Marvin's bobber big twin, a much cooler looking bike than Brando's Triumph. But it was Brando's bike that had the racing trophy bolted to the headstock, and it was Brando who ripped up the streets of the small US town, raising hell and stealing the local hardbellies while Marvin and his heavies lumbered around in the dust, stalling engines and falling off.

And out there beyond the confines of cinemaland the world was going the same way, and Harley were under attack. Some kind of response was necessary before things got too embarrassing and sales began to plummet, and Harleys design engineers were drafted in to come up with something newer, lighter and faster. And oh boy did they very nearly get it so very wrong. For the first response from the Harley camp to the Triumph Thunderbird and BSA Road Rocket was - a sidevalve. It seems incredible now, but back in 1952 Harley Davidson thought the best way to reassert their position at the top of the performance heap was to put out the Model K, a brand new, lightweight twin with modern brakes and suspension. Thrilling in every respect until your eye drifted up to the cylinder heads where the technology dipped back into the early 1930s. Yup, it had sidevalves. And this despite the fact that Harley had been using overhead valves on their big twins since the launch of the Knucklehead in 1936. It took several more years of embarrassment before the penny dropped, and in 1957 Harley finally got the message, stuck the valves up on the heads of the Model K and re-launched it as the XL Sportster.

And while its birth pangs may have been rather prolonged, the new Sportster was worth waiting for. With a unit construction engine and cast iron heads and barrels, the new bike pumped out enough raw torque to finally take on the faster British twins without looking silly. For 1958 Harley upped the compression ratio and began to prune weight, and the bloodline was established. These early Sportsters were of 54 cu. in. displacement, which translates to 883cc. It's by no coincidence that the baby of Harleys current range is an 883, a nod to the iron XLs which led the counter attack against cheap imports and helped secure a solid domestic market for Harley Davidson.

Early Sportsters broke Harley into a new high performance market and were as different to their traditional models as the V-Rod is to the current air cooled twins. Some rivalry used to exist between riders of Sportsters and big twins, the flagship FLH Electra Glide having come to represent the antithesis of a high performance road bike and becoming the object of sneers from XL riders who called it a "garbage wagon". The Sportster went on to establish itself as the performance Harley with high profile appearances in the hands of folks like king stunter Evel Kneivel. Developed as the XR750 racer it became a world beater in the hands of Jay Springsteen who dominated US flat track events in the early 70s and claimed the coveted "No.1" plate for Harley Davidson, (who then used it for several years as an advertising logo indiscriminately applied to all their models).

But as the years rolled by and serious performance became available at bargain basement prices from Japan, Harley once again shifted focus to the big twins and the Sportster became increasingly sidelined. No longer able to hack it as a high powered road burner, Harley tried various re-launches including the H model tourer, which came with panniers and a backrest. Still the iron head Sportster soldiered on, and still it had a fiercely loyal fan base who refused to let it die.

Eventually the bell of destiny had to toll time on the ironhead and in 1986, two years after the big twins, the Sportster finally received a major redesign and emerged blinking into the sunlight as the all new 883 Evolution alloy engined model we have come to know and love. And while the Evo is a much better bike technologically there are some who still lament the loss of the old ironhead; Harleys almost still born prodigy which took the world by the throat in 1957 and shook it into submission. If any bike can be said to have street soul, it has to be the ironhead Sportster.

But there are still some out there who call the Sportster a girls bike. And in this particular case I have to admit it's quite true. This is Tina's ironhead, and Tina is most definitely a girl. But (and I hope she won't mind me saying this) she is quite certainly no ordinary girl, and this is no ordinary bike.

Tina has been riding bikes for a long time, and first took to the road seriously with an old Yamaha XS250SE custom, a bike on which she covered most of the roads of Britain and loved dearly. It got ridden so hard she more or less wore out the poor thing. The old Yam is in fact currently languishing in the back of her garage with a rebuilt engine by yours truly waiting to be fitted, and may yet see a new lease of life. But the old XS250 is likely to remain a running memento of Tinas biking apprenticeship, as the Sportster now quite definitely has the first place in her affections. Before we leave the old Yam though, I must tell you that Tina doesn't like rear suspension and felt much happier on the XS after she'd had it strutted. She reckons any kind of rear suspension makes the bike bounce around too much and is a fierce advocate of rigid frames.

After the little Yam wore out Tina looked around for a replacement, and settled for a while with an XS650, a logical progression from the 250. But the 650 proved a major disappointment. Tina reckons it was slow, sluggish and overweight. Not an opinion shared by many XS650 owners I know, but as I said, Tina is no ordinary girl. So after a brief and unsatisfactory partnership it had to go, and Tina was again on the lookout for something to suit her.

Tina lives out in the Vale of York with her partner Nigel in a stunningly pretty little village you may see on a picture postcard. With beautiful scenery and access to some of the best biking roads in Yorkshire right on their doorstep, they have a bunch of great local biking mates which includes Long John, builder and rider of the worlds most elegant Triumph chopper. It wasn't too difficult then, for Tina to put word on the jungle telegraph that she needed a bike to replace the disappointing XS650 and see what turned up. And what turned up was this ironhead Sportster, owned at the time by a local biking mate called Curly. Curly is something of an entrepreneur and is one of those blokes who is on a mission in life to own an example of every motorcycle ever built. There's not much he hasn't tried, and he tends to change his bikes as often as some people change their underwear (that'll be every year in my case then).

Curly had tried Sportster ownership but simply couldn't get along with it, and he kept burning his leg on the rear exhaust pipe. Initially sceptical, Tina was finally persuaded to have a go on the Sportster by Nigel, himself a shovelhead owner. When she finally reappeared the grin inside her helmet went from earlobe to earlobe. Here at last was a worthy replacement for her XS250 (and somehow I don't see Harley Davidson using that endorsement in their sales brochures). A deal was struck, as we say in the trade, and the bike became hers.

But as you may have gathered by now, Tina is not the kind of lass to be satisfied with a stock bike of any kind. So after a brief but rewarding few weeks on the road to get the feel of the bike it was trundled off to Long Johns workshop for a few refinements. The initial brief was simply to tidy the bike up, sort out a few tatty details and put it back on the road as quickly as possible with a few subtle changes to suit Tina's taste. The Sportster tank went in the bin to be replaced by a twin cap mustang (why do so many people bin Sportster tanks? I know they're small but aren't they the most gorgeous looking stock fuel tank ever??), and the clocks were replaced with a mini speedo to clean up the front end. The paint detail on the tank top was applied by John to match Tina's own Celtic design, a copy of which will be appearing as a tattoo on her back before the season ends. The stock seat, though thin, was still too tall. Not being one for excessive creature comforts diluting the riding experience, Tina specified a small seat. Now John shares my view that comfortable seats are not brought about by upholstering a seat base the size of Europe with foot thick foam, and that the secret of a comfortable seat is to have it arse shaped. You may remember the seat on his own Triumph chop was made by taking a fibreglass mould from his own arse cheeks and covering it in leather. John adopted a similar strategy for Tina's seat, and the resulting solo seat fits her perfectly and is apparently seriously comfortable. Not than anyone else would find it so, particularly if their arse was the size of mine. The seat is also so low profile it almost disappears into the lines of the bike. I normally hate the lines of solo seats as they tend to flatten out the side profile of the bike, losing the upward swoop over the rear mudguard. This one is thin enough to make the lines work and it succeeds in capturing that "cut down from stock" look that Tina wanted for the bike.

The bulk of the changes John has wrought, though, are much more subtle. Casting a creative eye over the bike he spotted things which jarred with the basic lines of the bike, such as the original ignition coil mounting. Moving the coil to between the cylinders balances the left side of the motor visually, and allows two matching swoopy HT leads to enhance the symmetry of the vee twin. Moving the horn from its stock mounting has had a similar effect, and one of the results of all this relocation is to liberate the classic triangular space forward and above the motor. Tina's partner Nigel collaborated with John on the project; "When we first got it all bolted back together we thought we'd left something out, as there seemed to be so much space on what had looked a cluttered bike" he told me. This quest for simplicity also resulted in the air cleaner, made from a tea strainer supplied by Tina and located onto a new backplate made by John's dad with a rubber ring cut from an old inner tube. Total cost; 50p.

The only disagreement over styling occurred when Tina came home from work one day to find the two blokes busy working on the air cleaner. In a moment of inspiration fuelled by a lunchtime pint they'd begun marking out the backplate to receive a black "Ace of Spades" logo, and Tina put her foot down. "It's my bike and I'm not having the bloody Ace of Spades on it!" End of that little styling exercise, but if you get chance take a look for the three circles scored on the backplate that show where it would have been. Personally I think it would have added a nice styling touch, but I didn't tell Tina that. The air cleaner lives on the motors only non standard part; the bike came with a rare "shorty" S&S Super E carb fitted, which stops the air cleaner sticking so far out it pushes your right knee into the opposite lane of traffic. Nigel openly covets the carb, which would go nicely on his own Shovelhead chop, but Tina is keeping it.

The only minor styling detail the lads aren't happy with is the fuel pipery complicated by the necessity of using two British style fuel taps on the Mustang tank. This will be modified during the bikes next visit to the workshop, but right now Tina's too busy racking up the miles to worry about details like that.

And what a great bike this proving to be for covering the miles, as Tina is currently using the bike daily for work as well as scooting about the countryside to various shows and rallies every weekend. The old ironhead provides just the right balance of power, torque and classic engineering to work properly and capture the heritage of the Sportster range in a way no Evo 883 can quite manage. Take a squint at that engine and you're looking at real piece of biking history. First registered in '85 this has to be one of the very last ironheads and still carries the old style generator and clutch that had seen the design reign throughout the sixties and seventies. It may be a little more idiosyncratic and need more tinkering than a modern Sportster, but isn't that one of the qualities which make a bike into a relationship rather than just something you wheel out for a run every now and then, and take down the dealers to get serviced?

Tina has some plans in mind for the bikes next visit to the workshop over the winter months, not least of which is to junk the rear suspension which she still views as a an excessive and un-nescessary aberration. At the moment she plans to have the bike strutted, and didn't seem keen on my suggestion that she should go for a full blown hardtail. She likes the overall looks of the bike as it is, you see, and simply wants to bin the bouncy springs. Fair enough. She has no plans to alter anything else, though there has been talk of adding a heat shield to the rear pipe after Curly's experiences with a succession of burns on his right leg. Tina has never had that problem, possibly because she's a better overall shape than Curly. Or at least she hadn't had the problem until the day we took the photos, when the Sportster's hot rear pipe finally made an impression. If it does it again a heat shield will have to go on, though Tina doesn't really want to clutter the lines of the bike up any more than she has to.

Nigel reckons that Tina will want to trade the Sportster for a big twin once she's had chance to have a decent blast on his Shovelhead, but she's determined to hang on to the Sportster as she's finally found a bike here that does everything she wants, looks great and fits her to a tee. Can't say fairer than that. And as to being a girls bike; well as I said up top, this is no ordinary Sportster, and Tina is no ordinary girl.

Dr.Rod.