Harley Davidson E-Book

Kurt Burke

• Herausgeber: Vyiha Publishing
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Harley-Davidson are two words that evoke the search for freedom as well as the “Made in America” tradition. The unique sound, the popular chopper handlebars and the famous logo have all become part of the American pop culture if not of the entire world. This book brings together the history and the mechanical evolution of the company's engines. It continues describing the main motorcycle model families and digs down to describe the most famous models Harley has ever produced. A final chapter is dedicated to the successful brand's phenomenal rise in the twentieth century and how Harley Davidson has become a symbol of freedom and rebellion. The book is fully illustrated with pictures of the bikes.

Leseprobe

Contents

Introduction

The history

The engines

The model families

The most famous motorbikes

The brand culture

References

Introduction

IHAVEstarted riding a motorbike when I was in the military in Japan. It was a long time ago. It was a lonely night and here it was, a motorbike left against a wall. Without thinking too much I start riding it and, as many newbies, I gave too much gas and almost lost the control with an embarassing wheelie. I managed to stop the bike just a couple of inches before the wall nearby. I was scared but excited. I tried again, with more attention. This time I was able to go straight and turn at the end of the alley. I was in love. I turned my head and looked at the tank, the Harley Davidson writing was on it.

My relationship with the Milwaukee company started like this, unexpectedly but in a powerful way. Since that day, I always rode, as soon as I had the chance and I realized that there is no such thing as a bad motorcycle ride. The difficult part is explaining Harley Davidson’s allure and why so many people think so strongly in it. Riders try to describe the heightening of the senses on two wheels, the feeling of power during a roll-on, the exciting sensation of counteracting centrifugal force during cornering.

But there's also simple mistique of Harley Davidson’s motorcycles. Every time one motorcycle passes by, people's attention are captured. Riders can't avoid mentioning how much in touch with the surroundings they can be on their Harley Davidson.

And then there's the freedom factor, one of the toughest idea to explain since it is pure emotional value. I could try to compare motorcycling to other thrill seeking, such as flying or sailing. However, the comparisons will always be inadequate because the environments of these activities are totally different. It is something one has to experience on one’s own.

Chapter 1

The history

HARLEY-DAVIDSON, a name one definitely has heard of when it comes to motorcycles. Harley Davidson, or simply Harley, has been a company that manufactures the world's most famous and finest motorcycles since the year 1903.

It all started in a small basement in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during one of the toughest eras for survival. The industrial revolution had brought unimaginable growth in technology and wealth. Milwaukee had an active manufacturing economy at that time, with mills forging and bending tons of metal every day. Horse-drawn carriages dominated the busy city streets, but electric-powered trolleys had started to appear. Yet, the primary mode of transportation was horsepower and those who didn't have horses walked or rode bicycles. Most city streets were in cobblestone and the remaining, in gravel and dirt.

The primary mode of transport between cities was rail, which was expensive and limited in its reach. But people had the clear desire to go places, see and experience what the country was all about. That historic need served as an impetus for Harley Davidson. Inventors of the era were trying to make traveling easier. Steam engines were widely used by railroads and ships, but gasoline-burning internal combustion engines - that developed in the late 1800s - ware starting to become more popular. Inventors saw tremendous potential in these crude machines. They realized that gasoline-powered carriages always drew a crowd even if ownership was strictly reserved for the rich or the inventors who built them.

An equally rare sight was a motorized bicycle. The first models featured a leather belt connecting the motor to the rear wheel. In Milwaukee, Harley Davidson's founders began experimenting on this basis using a gasoline engine.

The four founders of the company (from left to right): Arthur Davidson, Walter Davidson, William S. Harley, and William A. Davidson

The founders of the company were Arthur Davidson, Walter Davidson, William S. Harley and William A. Davidson. The way the four came together and devoted their time for their vision is a typical example of American enterpreneurship. Arthur Davidson and his next door neighbour Bill Harley were lifelong pals and worked for the same Milwaukee metal fabricator when they were in their early 20s. Arthur was a pattern maker, Bill Harley was an extremely bright apprentice draftsman. But most importantly, both were after-hours tinkerers, hobbyists and inventors. They were fascinated by the idea of building a motor-driven bicycle. The major challenge they wanted to overcome was to design a gasoline engine from scratch like only a few others did until then.

At one time Bill Harley had been an employee of a local bicycle manufacturer, so he knew the hardware. Arthur had experience in making patterns for gasoline engines. For additional help, they enlisted one of their co-workers, a German draftsman with a working knowledge of gasoline engines and some familiarity with European motorcycles.

Evenings were spent experimenting and building in the Davidson family basement at 315 North 37th Street.

After 2 years of experimentation, the founders were progressing but needed more expertise with the mechanics. They decided to approach Arthur's brother Walter, a railroad machinist living and working in Kansas. Walter was planning to visit Milwaukee to attend a wedding, so the timing was just right to solicit his help. Apparently, Arthur and Bill succeeded in capturing Walter's imagination and when Walter got back home, he familiarized himself with the blueprint and decided to remain in Milwaukee to help them finish the first bike.

Help with the project came from other sources as well. One of Bill Harley's neighbours, Henry Melk, had a home machine shop and made his lathe available to the men. When they couldn't configure their first carburetor then, Arthur consulted an inventor friend from childhood, Ole Evinrude. Ole later went on to great fame and fortune with the outboard boat motor company that still bears his family's name.

The makeshift operations finally produced positive results, and the first engine was completed and mounted to a bicycle frame. But it was soon proved too small to generate enough power to move a bicycle with a passanger and so they returned to the drawing board. They determined that the traditional ''diamond'' bicycle frames lacked the necessary strength so they decided to adopt a loop design that would then become standard for their vehicles.

As the development proceeded, they found themselves in need of more space. They decided to build a small ten-by-fifteen-foot wooden shed in the backyard devoted exclusively to the project. The words HARLEY DAVIDSON MOTOR CO. were painted on the front door. It was the first time those names were put together.

While working in that small shed nights and weekends, the young inventors wouldn't have envisioned what was to come. The founders never could have imagined that their enterprise would turn into a treasure respected by enthusiasts all around the world.

The shed where the four founders created and tested their first engine

1903/04 | SERIAL NUMBER ONE

SERIAL NUMBER ONE was the very first motorcycle produced by Harley Davidson. It took a lot of experimentation to determine whether a truly viable form of transportation could be created. Performance was the most important element back then, and the founders achieved this through ingenuity, engineering knowledge and entrepreneurial spirit.

The beauty of this motorcycle is in its simplicity. The curvature of the front down tube follows the front wheel and then surrounds the circular crankcase. It didn’t have any fenders and it was a minimal device – an engine and a set of wheels. It had a pedal system, by which the motorcycle was pedalled to get the engine started.

Serial Number One’s engine consisted of a single cylinder with an atmospheric valve. Its gas tank capacity was one gallon. Serial Number One was in black colour and now resides in the company's museum on Juneau Avenue.

Serial Number One at the Harley Davidson Museum in Milwaukee

1908-1920 | THE FIRST YEARS AS A COMPANY

IN 1908, Harley Davidson’s fifth year of production, the racing heritage had begun. Young motorcycle companies of that era had to go to great lengths to convince customers that two-wheeled machines were worth owning. Speed was one thing, but reliability was a much bigger issue. If a person was going to retire his horse or bicycle in favour of an expensive motorcycle, the last thing in the world he wanted to worry about was to see the motorcycle itself to break down.

By the mid-teens, motorcycle racing had evolved into a popular spectator sport. With speed and performance being proved and publicized each weekend on tracks or endurance runs throughout the country, names likes Harley Davidson, Indian, Excelsior-Henderson rose to the top as popular favourites. In pictures from around that time, one can see riders wearing jerseys similar to those worn by their race teams, with ‘’Harley Davidson’’ embroidered across the front. It was evidence of a following, one that endures to this day. Those were the first indications of people wanting to be associated with Harley Davidson. The brand was taking in emotional meaning.

Because the founders were so visibly involved with the motorcycle community and spent so much time with customers, they quickly realised the value of this camaraderie. Customers had a great time riding together. The founders through their commitment to riding, instituted a spirit of shared experience that riders still appreciate today, 100 years later.

The need to prove reliability was the likely inspiration for the industry’s first race events: endurance runs. These were long-distance affairs through and over woods, sand, steep inclines, river crossings, and all kinds of rugged terrain that tested both riders and machines.

At the start of an endurance run, participants were given 1,000 points. They then rode to various checkpoints. Judges would deduct points for early or late arrival. At the end of the run, the rider with the highest points went home with a trophy and the winning brand won some valuable marketing advantages. It was an endurance run like many held in that time that helped to establish the young Harley Davidson company and its young founders as industry leaders.

Walter Davidson, the president of the company, was a talented rider. In an endurance event through the Catskill Mountains in New York, Walter excelled. He bested more than 60 competitors in the race and not only finished the race but he did so with a perfect score. This achievement says a lot about the kind of person Walter was and the motorcycle his company built.

After the event, Walter revealed that, unlike most of the other racers, he hadn’t bothered to carry spare parts. This fact showed how much faith he placed in the vehicle, though it was just an unmodified stock motorcycle. Word spread far and wide about the sureness of Harley Davidson’s motorcycles - and the endurance racer - Walter Davidson.

With the increases in horsepower that resulted from the introduction of twin-cylinder engines, such as the first V-Twin in the 1909 catalog, speed became Harley Davidson’s new focus. This intrigued motorcyclists and general public so to increase the popularity of board tracks quickly. It must have been amazing in small town America to see racers on bikes, hitting speeds in excess of 100mph on these special tracks. The large oval-shaped circuits, lined with boards and banked steeply like bicycling velodromes, allowed for these very high speeds. However, they also increased the possibility of danger and accidents.

Board track racers were the daredevils of their time and drew huge crowds. They rode on the high-banked tracks in very tight packs, on 61-cubic-inch, 8-Valve, V-Twin racing machines, without brakes. These racers had total loss oil systems, meaning that once the oil flowed through the engine, it wasn’t recirculated and the wooden tracks could get very slippery. Maintaining the tracks was also a great challenge. Over time, the boards tended to rot or splinter. All these issues caused injuries and deaths.

Harley Davidson's founders decided to steer clear from them and rather contuining on dirt-tracks.

One of the many board tracks active at that time

However, while the company stayed away, privateers took to the board tracks on Harley Davidson motorcycles, bringing popularity to the name. The publicity or the fiercely competitive battles between company sponsored teams convinced the founders to formally re-enter the racing game in 1914. Under Bill Harley’s direction, a new racing department sponsored teams that soon cleaned up in major events across the country.

By the late 20s, a movement to increase safety by reducing speeds gained pace. The company launched the Peashooter, a single-cylinder Harley Davidson racer with a 21-cubic-inch (350cc) or 30.5-cubic-inch (500cc) engine: one of the most beautiful motorcycles they’ve ever created. By this point, board tracks were disappearing and dirt-track racing was becoming the dominant style. As the origin of Harley Davidson was right from dirt tracks, it did not take long for the company to gain a great reputation.

The 1929 introduction of the DL, a street model, signalled the beginning of the peashooter’s short but successful career ushered in the era of Class C racing. This racing was meant for the everyday rider. Owners could ride standard machines-like the 45-cubic-inch side-valve WL models to the track, remove the headlines and just race. Their WLs and WRs, or Flatheads as they were called, soon became the kings of the Classic C circuit. Flatheads were also known as side valve engines, with their design differing the typical overhead arrangements. In the Flatheads the valves were alongside the piston, allowing therefore the head of the engine to be virtually flat.

The Flathead name was derived from the terminology commonly used in the engineering department. Later engine models came from street lingo that still described the upper parts of the engine. ‘’Knucklehead,’’ for example, was purely a street name meant to describe the gnarly look of the rocker cover which was supporting the valve mechanism at the top of the head. ‘’Shovelhead’’ and ‘’Panhead,’’ were also street names. The company then used the name ‘’Evolution,’’ internally for an engine, and then developed it as an official name. There have been some other street names for this engine, but none of them were as interesting as the past ones. ‘’Twin Cam,’’ has clicked as the name for the variation of the Evolution engine, which is a combination of the internal and external term. But more to come on this in the next chapter.

Going back to how much racing was important for the beginning of Harley Davidson, it’s worth mentioning that one of the most intriguing aspects of the early racing history was the lack of information about the hardware. Because motorcycles used for racing weren’t standard machines, a lot of them weren’t built or kept detailed records of. The racers and the race teams, of course, modified in fact their bikes. There was a lot of trial and error there. Those were experimental vehicles, and Harley Davidson was extremely open to innovation coming from their customers.

Racing became therefore significant to engineering and it was not only important to marketing and brand support. The camaraderie among dealers, factory, customers and competitors brought the riders to a place where everyone could enjoy the events.

More and more riders were using Harley Davidson motorcycles in endurances. An endurance is a time/distance event with a miles-per-hour average that must be maintained. The prescribed speed can differ depending on how the run is set up. The rider arrives at checkpoints when judges clocked how long it took him to get there, and determined whether or not he maintained the required speed average. To avoid getting lost during the run, maps were usually given to each riders at the beginning of the event. They were often taped to the top of the motorcycles' tank.

Hill climbing-races were also common at this time. Motorcycles were driven directly up the face of steep inclines. This type of race established itself as one of the most colourful element of the sport. Each racer individually attempts to gain the top of the hill in the fastest time. Successful hill climber must have been very skilled riders and their machines were exopected to be highly modified to sustain the slope.

It was soon becoming obvious that it was simply human nature to seek situations that challenge the riders' competence. The mere fact that motorcycles existed was soon understood as means that have to be raced. Events such as hill climbing and board track racing were the extreme sports of their respective eras. They became popular because people liked watching and talking about them and the local Harley Davidson dealers did a terrific job of supporting the riders and promoting the events, including hosting tie-in events at the dealerships. Hanging out with the dealers before the race has its roots right to these times.

1921/25 | RIDING THE WAY

THE 1921 introduction of the WJ was another revolution. The WJ was a unique engine. Harley Davidson had been producing V-Twins for quite some time by then. Suddenly the motor company introduced a so-called "flat twin.’’ Rather than forming a V, the two cylinders are opposed along the same axis. The WJ and the later XA army model, have been the only two Harley Davidson motorcycles with flat twin engines.

The introduction of this motorcycle was indeed a departure for Harley Davidson. The frame, the tank shape, the forks, everything on this motorcycle was new and different. The cylinders and heads were lost under all of the covers, manifolds and housings. Even so, it was a radical design for Harley Davidson in those days.

The WJ

With the WJ, the company was looking for a smooth engine that would attract new riders. It proved to be not as fast as the other models of its time and did not have their classical beauty. However, it demonstrated the company’s willingness to branch out and to keep many ideas on the drawing board.

By 1920, Harley Davidson was the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world and saw fit to advertise its leadership position widely. Arthur Davidson was a natural marketer and the driving force behind their sizable investments in advertising and promotional materials, which were always artistically designed, are highly collectable today. Advertising and promotion communicated their role as the industry’s leaders with a brand that people aspired to own and feel good about being associated with.

It became clear that Harley Davidson’s motorcycles were not mere commodities. They stood for something more powerful than, and something beyond hardware. In the 1930s, Walter Davidson made a more concerted marketing push that probably had something to do with the diminishing practicality of owning a motorcycle for transportation purposes. Automobile mass production had become so efficient that cars were now becoming affordable. Understandably, many people preferred being protected from the elements.

But for those riders whose interest extended beyond basic transportation, the apparent logic of owning a car may have been precisely what kept them on their motorcycles. They preferred to ride and they knew that a car could never give them as much pleasure as riding a Harley Davidson motorcycle. The company’s challenge, then, was to find new customers.

At the onset of the Great Depression, which posed a threat to Harley Davidson’s future and forced many smaller competitors into extinction, company management and the dealer network placed more emphasis on promoting rider gatherings. Club rides communicated the fun of motorcycling. The company also worked closely with dealers to build traffic in showrooms, increase owner satisfaction, fuel positive word of mouth and expand parts and accessories offerings.

The founders’ early philosophies and their flexibility in reacting in the ups and downs of this business were great. Their ‘close to the customer’ philosophy would not only protect the brand during future market slowdowns but would serve them well through the Depression and World War II, their turnaround in the 1980s, and in their current success today. By keeping their riders excited and involved, the company was able to keep motorcycling alive and to attract new generations of riders.