Leanings

LEANINGS

One year with a Sportster

Peter Egan

ONE YEAR WITH A SPORTSTER? OKAY, a year and then some. More like a year and a half.

I held onto the metallic-blue, wire-wheeled, belt-driven Deluxe 883 just as long as I could, and then common decency forced me to call Milwaukee and ask the guys at the red brick Harley plant if they’d like their long-term test bike returned.

“Why, yes,” they said in that faraway tone of voice common to people who are reflecting on events that happened to distant relatives sometime before World War II, “we were kind of wondering what happened to it.”

So last Thursday, it finally went back. I loaded the Sportster into my old Chevy van and cruised over to Milwaukee, greeted at the outskirts by the mingled smells of hops and malt. Nice to have a motorcycle factory in one’s own state, I reflected. Breweries too; industries that reward us for putting up with daily life.

I suppose there were two reasons I was so slow in returning the 883 to its rightful owners. First, I liked the bike. I liked riding it, and I enjoyed having it in the garage to look at.

Second, I was slightly ashamed of the low number of miles I put on the odometer-a mere 2500-and kept thinking that a winter thaw would allow me to make a quick weekend trip or two and put on another thousand at least. But the thaw never came.

Why so few miles?

The answer, I guess, lies partly in the design of the Sportster, as well as in my tendency to share summer motorcycle duties with four bikes of my own. I racked up about 10,000 miles of riding last year, and the Harley absorbed only a quarter of it.

The strange thing is, I rode the 883 much more often than any of my other bikes-almost daily-but mostly on short trips. A quick run to the hardware store, a 10-mile cruise to eat lunch at a little joint next to the Indianford Dam, and so on. Electric starting, a warm-blooded nature and Schwinn-like maneuverability made the Harley a useful part of daily life.

So the Sportster makes a great local runner. Why no long trips and extended mileage?

Shortcomings of the Sportster’s seat and peanut fuel tank have been repeated so many times there’s not much point in flogging that particular horse, but they certainly have something to do with it. The Deluxe 883 seat is not all that bad for the rider, but the rear seat is a temporary perch at best. And as a married guy with a wife who loves to take motorcycle trips, all of my long-mileage riding is done twoup. Unfortunately, the Sportster is primarily a solo bike.

The 2.2-gallon gas tank, of course, is just too small to be useful as anything but a reminder that short-track racers used to put Hummer tanks on their KRs to keep weight down. My 883 typically went on reserve between 78 and 84 miles and staggered into the nearest gas station on fumes at around 100.

Watchdogs of the Sportster image will argue that the small tank and seat are part of the classic lean style, but I would be happier if Harley offered the small tank and seat as options, and sold the standard bike with a real fuel container, like the optional 3.2-gallon tank or, better yet, the old XLT tank, and a good two-up saddle.

Another common complaint with Sportsters has been their modest performance, at least for a bike with 883cc of displacement. I personally found the Sportster quick enough to be fun, with a rewarding level of lowto-midrange torque-at least if I rode alone. In the company of other bikes, however, the Sportster handles well but gets blown away on horsepower. Another reason for the low accumulated mileage. If you want to take a Sunday-morning ride in fast company, you take a different bike.

Or you uncork and modify the Sportster. This is a process for which it begs, and for which Harley and many aftermarket suppliers offer fat accessory catalogs. Add cams, a carb kit and headers, however, and the basic Sportster begins to look less like a finished product and more like an opportunity to build yourself a motorcycle, at considerable cost.

Many motorcyclists, of course, find this challenge irresistible, and I confess to being among them. I would much rather have a bike that invites wrenching and tweaking than one that defies you to improve it.

My purist sportbike friends roll their eyes when I extol the virtues of the 883, but I remain unrepentant. I guess more than anything else, I like its gait on the highway. The rhythm and sound of that 45-degree V-Twin always entertains, even when the road doesn’t. It’s an agile, fun, personal bike. And, at the entry level, it doesn’t cost much.

Can it be made into a fast, comfortable, all-purpose motorcycle? Maybe or maybe not. But for the past three years, I have had next to my favorite reading chair a stack of catalogs that make the exploration of this question look like a lot of fun.

So much fun, in fact, that yesterday I finally quit talking about it and put a deposit down on my own Sportster. A plain black 1992 standard 883. My wife, Barbara, went along with me and performed the ritual writing of the deposit check (her handwriting is better, and it’s my birthday this week).

The dealer, Rudi Kutter, sat down in his office with us and began filling out the paperwork. “I need to know the check number,” he said.

Barb looked down at the checkbook and said, “It’s check number 883.”

Rudi looked up and said, “What?”

“It’s 883,” Barb repeated.

We passed the check around, and indeed it was.

Through great force of character, everyone in the room resisted the temptation to quote Bogart’s famous last line from Casablanca. We just smiled and let it go.