https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/mot...cvid=ea8612826666474fa964780d01107836#image=1
For a Sportster, this is a pretty-good looking bike. Sure, parts will fall-off, excessive vibration does that. No never owned one, but my Daytona Bike Week buddy has two Ironheads, though this is an Evolution Sportster, which was stopped in production at the end of the '22 production.
This is a good looking bike! For me, anyway, though I'm not too-sure about riding that thing w/o asbestos pants. No apparent use of mufflers, either, so be prepared to have equipment violations, and erosion of your hearing capacity.
Just for comparison, here's a Sportster a friend of mine did for a customer. A different intent for its use, but bikes like this are what keep bikes interesting.
Another use, Sportster as a cafe racer.
Then a flat tracker, or maybe a motard.
And finally, a turtle-tank, what they once looked like from Milwaukee. This is the Ironhead Sportster, which was the placement of a new-design OHV top end on a Model K flathead bottom end, which had a unit-construction crankshaft and transmission. From 1957 to 2022, with the switch to an Evolution-design engine in 1986, and available in 883cc or 1200cc. From 1957-1971, the Sportster was 883cc, and then 1,000cc in 1972. Another of my friends bought a new Sportster in 1972, but the Milwaukee Marvel couldn't best my Kawasaki Blue Streak 500cc two-stroke triple in acceleration or top-speed.
If you're old-enough to have been around when this body style was current, then you probably know that Willie G Davidson used the integrated seat/fender next on the '71 Superglide, considered to be the first H-D 'custom' in their line-up. This seat/tailpiece and a Sportster front end on a Shovelhead, with a very memorable red, white, and blue paint-job, was a very distinctive bike. One of my riding friends in S.W. MI bought one new.
You can see the Shovelhead Night Train has a step in the seat while the Sportster doesn't, but I consider them to be the same style.
One year at Daytona Beach Bike Week, my buddy and I attended the big auction, hosted at Stetson University in Deland. It was cold, windy, and raining, which probably held-back some fair-weather bikers. Going through the vendors, we came across a guy who had several Sportster seat/fender combos. I tried my best to convince my buddy to buy one of the seat/fender pieces, but he wasn't in the mood, though he owns a '70 Ironhead. Anyway, while we were poking around, we happened to run into somebody who had a good chat with us, and then he needed to be someplace else for business, but I grabbed a pic. Next year, again at the auction, I got him to sign an 8" X 10" picture, taken the year before.
You can see he's gotten a lot of use out of his Motoport ballistic nylon riding jacket. I had the same one, and when I bought a new riding jacket, a Tourmaster, I sold mine to another forum member. Mine wasn't as sun-bleached as Dave's though. I watched him depart the auction on his KLR600, with a shower from lowering clouds keeping the Daytona/Deland streets wet.
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