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.
If pushed to pick a golden age for flat track, most folks would suggest the late 60s to the early 70s. It was a time when Harley was facing a tough challenge from Triumph, and the Japanese manufacturers were on the rise too. The racing was fierce and the bikes were good looking. This (almost)…
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Harley-Davidson has just rebooted one of the world’s longest-running model lines, with the launch of the new Sportster S. But remarkably, it’s only the third major engine update in the Sportster’s 60-plus years on this earth. Before the new Revolution Max-powered Sportster S came, we had the Evolution motor that debuted in 1986. And before…
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Building a custom bike is often beset with difficulties: there can be unreasonable client demands, unforeseen technical issues, cashflow problems, and in some countries, strict regulations to circumvent. We tend to dwell on these in our reports, but sometimes the build story is only half the real story. The other half is life outside the…
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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…
Read more »Trends ebb and flow in the custom world. And with them, the fortunes of bike builders. It might be tough at the…
Read more »Jared Smith has a pretty diverse skill set. He has one foot in the digital world as a user experience and software…
Read more »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?…
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…
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