1968 XLR??

Classic short-frame models

Re: 1968 XLR??

Postby thefrenchowl » Sat Mar 18, 2017 10:23 am

Hum, Paul,

Harley NEVER made a loss in its entire life, even in 1963, the lowest of the lowest post war numbers, less than 9000 bikes made (includes Hummers, golf carts and Aer Macchis...)

Some periods were more flush than others, yes...

Harley has only build stuff to order and in an orderly manner. Blanks sent to dealers in the summer, with min quotas per dealer, orders in by September, time to gear up or down for whatever orders are in the books to fulfil them in the next 12 months.

Dealers told very soon after that when they will receive their bikes, so PLEASE, sent deposits in good time, otherwise you'll be at the end of the queue.

When I talk Harley, Paul, not to spit on post 1970 bikes, but I'm always talking pre 69.

Jesse O Brien, that's 1972 and the new management under AMF thumb and it went quite bad pretty soon

Like trying to build 100,000 bikes in a factory suitable to make 10,000. Sommat got to give...

Don't think for a moment pre 69 was as bad as what followed!!!

Patrick
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I'm the one who has to die when it's time for me to die so let me live my life the way I want to...
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Re: 1968 XLR??

Postby ambike » Sat Mar 18, 2017 1:21 pm

Who among you were factory insiders, employees, or dealers ?

How do you KNOW H-D Co. never had losses ?

Jumping ahead to modern times, so many have parroted the AMF problems while turning a blind eye to the kike-ish, Social Justice Warrior frauds, and outright BS the current owners have engaged for decades.

What do I mean ?

Easy....Start with MD. Later on, deals like pushing pink tittie boo-hoos for S Komen, dog show adopt-a-pet events so more morons will wag-ass over & buy over-priced T-shirts, HOG itself !!!!! , targeted marketing for C**nts who have no business being on two-wheels ( lol ), and one of my " favs "...Sat. All-Day events whereby idiots bring their kids in to be finger-printed by a fat cop revenuer. " It's for the children. " Yeah. For the chilluns' own protection in light of open borders, liberal judges mandating catch & release for suffering pedos, muggers, rapers, & killers, and crapping on our Constitutional rights.

Such unadulterated bull crap has NOTHING to do with manufacturing motorcycles.

In modern times, Harley MoCo is equal parts chopper assembly plant, merchandising / marketing company, and subprime lender with all the insurance scams attached ( Ride Free or DIE credit life, etc. lmfao ! ) When the MooCo went Wall Street, the Middle Eastern dual-citizen gods lubing the money-printing machine blessed the boys like Sky Pilot. ( If you don't know what little country I mean, you should. ) Harley stock, like 99 % of all stocks, is highly manipulated. That's been the deal from the inception. There IS Free Lunch when : We're paying, they're consuming.

All in all, in spite of the commie-infected waste land that's Milwaukee and most of both coasts, I'm not saying H-D is all bad. Real workers do WORK. However, the most prevalent & enduring product from the MoCo owners is INFLATION. Inflation is THE silent killer. WE the people have been F'ed by the Fed. Incredibly, most keep begging for more ! I'm surprised Obama didn't hang a Freedom Medal on Harley Co.'s collective ass. Operative word IS, Collective. " Collective " is as fine a word from the yid-Bolshevik era as you'll ever hear.
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Re: 1968 XLR??

Postby curiousgeorge » Sat Mar 18, 2017 2:04 pm

WOW!
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Re: 1968 XLR??

Postby thefrenchowl » Sat Mar 18, 2017 2:08 pm

Don't hold back, ambike, just say it as it is!!!

Don't get me wrong, I couldn't give a hoot about who's in charge at H-D, then or today. Their management is of no consequence in me life.

However, they let loose the eng dept in the late 40s and they gave us the K and the Sportster, good

Then they found this guy, O' Brien and employed him to run the race shop in 1957... good

He gave us the proper winning KR and its followers...

I'm only interested by the bikes, but you've got to admit a family run business in the 50s and 60s wasn't the same thing as a corporation today...

Yes, we all want to make a living and turn a profit, but there are ways to do that humanly!!!!

The difference, maybe, between a customer who appreciate what you're selling and a stupid cow being milked till it's dead...

Patrick
Flat Head Forever
https://web.archive.org/web/20071011184353/http://www.harleykrxlrtt.com/index.htm
I'm the one who has to die when it's time for me to die so let me live my life the way I want to...
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Re: 1968 XLR??

Postby sportsterpaul » Sat Mar 18, 2017 2:34 pm

Wow Patrick, great insights. I have to say that I find most everything they did for the 1977 engine redesign was a mistake. Now that was AMF money allowing the change, but the same Harley engineers, who must have had their brains taken over by space aliens in 1970. Another fiasco was the late adoption and crazy disk brake program 1973 on. I don't think they had a decent front brake until the late model setup in 1984. And I note the -75 part numbers on the 1977 case parts that showed they wanted to release the engine in 1975, not 1977. So that gave us the kludge monstrosity brake and shift setups in 1975 and 1976.

There were also some warning signs. The 1970-71 wet clutch and cone ignition were a bad idea as well. I guess your observations explains why so many young guys are snapping up mid-sixties Sportsters, they sure run and ride nice. It always seemed to me a 900cc engine was happier than the 1000cc. Oh yeah, that reminds me of another festival of incompetence, the 1972 one-year-only 1000cc heads and barrels.

Those Pohlman Studios pictures of yours are a treasure trove when it comes to figuring out what they built. No wonder Harley cried when you would not give them back. Does anyone know if Harley has one Sportster saved brand new for every year of production? That would be great to see.

I know about auto factories "stuffing the channel" as they called it. They would pressure the dealers to order as much as they could in the slow time, with the promise of giving them the hot product when things went on allocation. For GMC, that was 4x4s in the spring. If the dealer took a lot of the dog stuff the year before, they made sure he would plenty of 4x4s come spring.

The production Sportster numbers on this very site surprised me, how sales dropped off in 1954, 1955 and 1963. Harley may have been in the black every year, but I am sure they were losing money on K-Models and Sportsters many years. Since 1969, Honda CB750s sold about 50k a year. And they had a disk brake and a 5-speed transmission. Its sure hard to finance design work when you only sell a thousand bikes. The way Harley stayed in the black every year was by starving the engineering department. Another example of the finance Whiz Kids from WWII ruining everything they touched.
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Re: 1968 XLR??

Postby mikeslemmon » Sat Mar 18, 2017 3:23 pm

try to find the KL (high cam K) article on the AMCA website maybe what shouldhave been after the W's if the Davidsons gave a damn
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Re: 1968 XLR??

Postby mikeslemmon » Sat Mar 18, 2017 3:25 pm

Kmodels have side valves CH's .start on the last .kick
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Re: 1968 XLR??

Postby thefrenchowl » Sat Mar 18, 2017 5:17 pm

No Mike, wrong again!!!

The KL was a nice design, all alloy, and the exp engineers tried to shove it down the management mouth...

However, it was a short stroke high rev bike, way too early for the average Yankee rider who wanted torque from their Harleys.

Still, they persevered on the KL but they could not make it to cool proper, so in the fall of 54, the management call it a day and ordered an OHV conversion of the K.

The management is always right at the time, and no rose tinted glasses or back looking insight from today can change that fact!!!

And since, despite my problems with it, the iron head lasted till 84...

The KL, like all nippon designs, would have lasted a few years before being outmoded!!

The iron head however was obsolete even before it was born, so it has endured regardless and unhibited ever since.

To me, it just looks like a proper 1930s european engine and that's why I like it...

So simple, so easy to assemble or dismantle, designed by motorcyclists for motorcyclist.

And if you don't care about racers, fine by me, but all that simplicity had to be there on the K to allow a ham fisted half drunk racer to repair his KR or XLR engine in the dull morning of any weekend in a grass field next to that dirt track and go out there with enough confidence to win that afternoon...

Patrick
Flat Head Forever
https://web.archive.org/web/20071011184353/http://www.harleykrxlrtt.com/index.htm
I'm the one who has to die when it's time for me to die so let me live my life the way I want to...
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Re: 1968 XLR??

Postby sportsterpaul » Sat Mar 18, 2017 5:29 pm

Mike and Patrick are talking about this:
http://www.harleykrxlrtt.com/images/0p-1953-kl-exp.jpg

If that KL would have kept up anywhere near a CB750 that appeared 10 years later, that may have been a good thing. No telling what would have happened. You know, you can just look at it and see it does not have enough fins to cool. Maybe the stylists over-rode the engineers. I love Patrick's comment that the XL "was obsolete even before it was born." It really surprised me since WWII aircraft engines seemed to teach Harley how do the do the Panhead. I assume they went back to Knucklehead tech for the Sportster due to cost, and to not overshadow the big bikes.
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Re: 1968 XLR??

Postby thefrenchowl » Sat Mar 18, 2017 5:58 pm

Image

You can't quite see it, but in the middle of the Vee, there a wide tunnel on each side for the push rods, certainly not an aid to air flow!!!

That shot about 1953. The year after, it's all finned around there but time ran out.

If you really wish, I can put on the discussion I had on a defunct forum with Herb Wagner the Milwaukee HD historian and writer about that bike and other insights of H-D engineering... He had long talks with a lot of H-D old employees in his life...

It's however a bit long!!!

Patrick
Flat Head Forever
https://web.archive.org/web/20071011184353/http://www.harleykrxlrtt.com/index.htm
I'm the one who has to die when it's time for me to die so let me live my life the way I want to...
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