When the first Sportsters rolled out of the Harley-Davidson factory in 1957, they were powered by the iconic ‘ironhead’ motor—which would remain in production until 1985.
The Sportster is still in production 60 years later, and the ironhead has the longest production history of any Sportster engine. In the early days, the 55ci motor offered a lot of bang for the buck, with a 7.5:1 compression ratio, a 90-degree valve angle and four cams.
In 1972, capacity was bumped up to 61ci and the compression ratio to 9:1. The extra power took the Ironhead Sportster to a heady 110 mph.
Today, there are tens of thousands of Ironhead Sportsters still on the road, and a huge aftermarket parts industry has sprung up around the engine. That makes it easy to build, tune and maintain—and the ideal platform for both budding and experienced custom builders.
Squeezing two Harley engines into one chassis is a special form of lunacy, most commonly found in the drag bike scene in the USA. In the glory days of the mid-70s, Bonnie Truett linked a pair of Sportster motors and nitro-injected them. A decade later, Elmer Trett built an even faster twin-engined bike: the ‘Freight…
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Trends ebb and flow in the custom world. And with them, the fortunes of bike builders. It might be tough at the top, but it’s even harder to stay there over the years. Japanese builder Hideya Togashi is a man with more staying power than most. He took his first Best Of Show award from…
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Jared Smith has a pretty diverse skill set. He has one foot in the digital world as a user experience and software designer, and the other in the analog realm as a custom bike builder. And he does it all under one banner: Blue Jack Studio. “What gets me up in the morning is designing…
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Harley-Davidson’s new Softail range has set the interwebs alight, which has us thinking: isn’t it about time the Sportster got refreshed too? Our ideal Sporty has a sixth gear, a monoshock rear and a much lower curb weight. But then we spot a delightful little four-speed Ironhead like this 1981 XLS Roadster, and don’t feel…
Read more »One of the greatest spectacles in motorcycling is The Race Of Gentlemen, held every summer on the Jersey shore. It’s a recreation…
Read more »The client roster at DP Customs is slammed. So there’s precious little time to admire a finished project before it goes to…
Read more »Love it or hate it, the Harley-Davidson Sportster has been an American motorcycling icon since 1957. Around 50,000 are built every year,…
Read more »Max Hazan is one of a handful of builders who operate at the intersection of motorcycles and art. It’s a rarefied field:…
Read more »Kuala Lumpur, capital of Malaysia, is not where you’d expect to find a 1960s-style cafe racer. But this Sportster-powered machine would look…
Read more »It’s AMD World Championship time. The annual freak show held at the Sturgis motorcycle rally reveals the best and worst of the…
Read more »After several years of customizing Harley ironheads, DP Custom Cycles have got it down to a fine art. This is their latest…
Read more »Motor racing has traditionally been the biggest influence on DP Custom bikes: their previous builds have sported the colors of Formula 1…
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