I used to be much less than enthusiastic when Harley-Davidson lastly launched the Road 500, certainly one of their two latest middleweight fashions meant to interrupt into the newbie and intermediate markets. I hoped they could divert a bit extra radically from their signature cruiser look, however the Road 500 felt like a much less impressed, smaller-displacement, fuel-injected, liquid-cooled vanilla model of an 883 to me.
Then, as if Harley had tuned into my gripes, I discovered of their plans to deliver flat observe racing to the lots with intentions of including the occasion to the X Video games and utilizing the brand new Road 750 because the platform. On the similar time, The Pace Service provider dropped us a line from California to say they had been constructing a tracker-inspired Harley Road 500 to be unveiled at Born Free 6. This bike lastly had my consideration. The Pace Retailers’ personal Denver Dan Begakis introduces us to “The Thresher.” –Gregory
In early March 2014, we had been approached by Mike Davis of the Born Free Present. He requested if we’d be involved in doing one thing customized to a model new Harley-Davidson Road 500 mannequin. Having by no means seen one in particular person, it was very intriguing. The brand new Harley-Davidson confirmed up on the store with about three months to get the job completed. What you see is our model of what this mannequin could possibly be.
We began by eradicating a lot of the inventory elements from the bike – entrance finish, wheels, bars, rear fender, battery, rear subframe, and exhaust. I changed the inventory wheels with some Solar Aluminum rims with SS spokes laced as much as some HD hubs. The entrance finish was changed with a set of our SM mid-glide timber, made for the HD 48 Sportster. Huntington Seashore Harley-Davidson was variety sufficient to donate the entrance finish to this construct.
We topped off the entrance finish with our SM preload adjusters, an aluminum quantity plate we made that comes with the overflow for the radiator, and an LED driving gentle equipped by Lazerstar Lights.
I used our radial mount brake bracket within the entrance, and mounted a Tokico caliper to it. The bars are a customized set made in-house. The controls are off a GSXR 600 and 750, topped off with some Pazzo levers. Joker Machine shipped me certainly one of their well-designed 1/4 flip throttle setups, used primarily for speedways.
We determined to mount the tank in a distinct place, elevating it by about 4? to supply a extra conventional stance. After slicing off the inventory subframe and pulling the wiring from underneath the seat, we began laying out the brand new subframe setup. A part of the brand new subframe homes all the inventory wiring slightly below the seat. The brand new tail part was formed out of aluminum and matched to the road of the tank. As soon as the tail part was completed, we fabricated a seat pan that was handed off to Bates Leather-based. They nailed it with the customized tuck-and-roll design.
To alter the stance of the bike, we used some tall rear shocks equipped by Ohlins USA, who had been variety sufficient to help this construct. The taller shocks supplied additional floor clearance and helped to reinforce the stance of the bike. To spherical off the rear part of the bike, we determined to change the rear swing arm by including some additional bracing and hollowing out the sq. tubing. We then made a battery field to mount the eight-cell Anti-Gravity Battery simply above the swing arm.
Having a brand new mannequin created some challenges like looking for a entrance sprocket to transform the bike to a sequence drive. Fortunately, we had been capable of finding one, and used a Tremendous Sprox rear sprocket with a black EK 530 chain. We made a customized aluminum entrance sprocket cowl. The rear finish was fitted with a radial brake bracket with a Tokico caliper to match the entrance.
The very last thing we fabricated was the customized exhaust. A full stainless system is what this bike was asking for. Cone Engineering donated their 2? core muffler for this construct, and we recreated the entrance headers to suit the bike.
The paint was dealt with by John Edwards of Outdated Tyme Customized Paint. We needed to maintain it easy, however spotlight the gold on the bike. As soon as the colour was laid down by John, we handed it over to Pacman Line & Letter Firm to pinstripe and hand-letter the Harley-Davidson. John then laid some pearl excessive of all of it earlier than clearing it.
This text first appeared in challenge 15 of Iron & Air Journal, and is reproduced right here underneath license.
Phrases by Denver Dan Begakis w/ intro by Gregory George Moore | Photos by Mark Oblow
