I use to ride a 96 f/b until I outed it nearly two years ago.

I bought a royal enfield as I only ride on mostly shortish journeys and wanted a small bike to sit in the corner of my garage this is a very nice bike but due to reliability I bought a 883r sportster.

OK I'm not a girl and it's a baby Harley thought to be gutless and good for street only,lacking anything over 65 therefore motorway's are no goes.
I will only keep it a couple months and want to up grade due to lack of power and the valves will burn out as it's got short shots and no other mod and o yeh
The small tank is useless as I will only do 60 uk miles out of it and will be constantly filling it up.

Well in reality it rides a lot better than I expected,it doesn't like 5 gear under 55mph
And sits at 70 purring along with no effort at all.
Not as comfortable in legs as my old fatboy and the seat in low all in Which can be adjusted to suit my 29'' legs in time.
it's not heavy it's more retro (what I wanted) than laid back cruiser and hopefully have better tyre choice.
Overhaul I'm not disappointed, I'm please with it and glad to be back to HD
Even thro it's not a big bore softail or glide.
It's horses for courses and suits my needs and the twin stoppers work really well.

I ask why is it frowned upon to own an 883 sportster ?

 

I don't think it's frowned upon really. There might be some childish teasing though.

 

Yeah, now the Street's are the "make fun of" bikes. Kidding. As long as you enjoy what you have who cares about anyone else's opinion, anyway? Most of it's well intended ribbing anyway.

 

Probery not just wanted to rant and be honest I'm happy with it.

rant was Not related to this forum and I'm very sure there are some mean sportsters with very happy bunnies ridding them from both genders.

 

Sportsters have been put down and degraded for years. When I got my ironhead 35 years ago, one of my Dad's riding buddies told me that I wasn't going to be riding with the 74's and it wasn't a real Harley anyway.


What kind of reliability problems did you have with that Royal Enfield? I always liked the looks of those bikes.

carl

 

I ride an 05 883C. Love the little thing. But it has the bigger 4.5 tank, I can go 160 miles to a fill up.

 

It's silly electrical that looses power and near to total break down.
It's great fun to ride brakes aren't up to much but it is what it is and goes on for ever on a tank full (enfield)

 

Typical sportster jokes usually come from people that don't own a harley or even a bike. At least that is my experience. Sportster's around here get much respect. I heard plenty of girl jokes when I had mine but not a single joke from anyone that owned a harley.

 

Long time ago I was told the Sportster was the sports car of the Harley line up. For a short time I had an 883 low and I found that it had a lot of get up and go. Even though I like sports cars, I am too big for one and that's how I felt when I occasionally gave my Springer a break and rode the 883. I also felt like a big jockey on a small race horse. to each their own.

 

I've had my sporty for 17 years. Like Lotaluck said, most of the snide comments came from non-HD riders.

Usually I get more comments along the line of "Cool Bike", or "What year is that?", or "Did you build it?", and the occasional "Can I ride it?"

Mine is a 1962 XLCH Ironhead Sportster with a lot of custom work done to it. (see photo below)