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I'm a relatively new guy here. I posted a couple of weeks ago asking for help identifying the tranny in my new to me bike.
I'm new to Harley's but not to motorcycles. I have a small hobby shop where I restore older British and Metric bikes. I've been riding for over 50 years.
I picked up this custom softail that had been in an accident as a project. The owner had moved the fender down on the springer because he didn't like the look and the first time he put on the brakes hard the fender hit the tire and locked it up.
The forks were bent and the bike took a hit on the left side that scraped things up a bit.
I was able to fix the forks and replaced the damaged parts and here is what I have now.
The paint is very nice with real silver leaf inlayed striping and nice candy green.
The bike is pretty nice and runs and rides perfect now that I have it on the road.
It's really a special construction motorcycle. It only has 3800 miles on it since it was built.
I paid $4000 US dollars for it and have another $500 into it. I think I did pretty good. I usually don't mess with damaged bikes because I've been burned before...but this one just looked too good not to go for it.
Looks nice but the front fender needs to be mounted to the ft leg or whatever needs to be done so you can get it closer to the tire, it looks like a dirt bike now, lol. I can't tell but yes, if he mounted it to the rear leg the tire would hit it occasionally as the tire will move with the front leg. Mine is about 3/8 off of the tire and causes no problem. BTW, I really like the chrome tail, Hyper charger, pipes, custom seat, stretched tank and painted dash, you've got more then $4k in mods, killer deal bro.
EDIT: BTW, what size is your rear wheel and tire? That could be another $3500 alone!
ANOTHER EDIT: They make brackets that will allow you to mount to ft leg, here is an example...
The forks are the older style 88 to ? I think they are from a 93. This style fork has brackets on the front fork leg that the fender mounts to. If you look at older springers from the 90's you'll see the fender looks just like mine. They mounted it high because the pivot of the axel is faster than the front legs so the fender doesn't move at the same distance as the wheel. Later springers mounted the fender off the brake bracket and thus the axel. This was because people complained that the fender looked like it was from a dirt bike just like you said. It is mounted correctly for the fork vintage.
Thanks for the positive comments. The rear tire is a 180 not a big fat one
The picture below shows how the fender is mounted. This is consistent with the early (88-?) Harley springer fender mounting. The mounts are fixed and welded to the front fork legs. The inset is how the previous owner relocated the fender to get it closer to the tire...which resulted in the fender hitting the tire.
I did quite a bit of research on the fender mounting. If you search for early year springers late 80 thru mid 90's you'll see them mounted high like this.
It's a double edged sword. Doesn't look good so take it off. Then get road spray in the face the first time it rains. The newer ones don't look as bad.
I wonder what this bike is worth? I know I got a good deal on it, really hard to figure out value by looking at other bikes for sale. Harley's seem to run all over the map price wise. Any thoughts on this?
Yeah, like I said you've got at least $3k in mods + $5k bike but you'd only get about $6 because of the 180 rear. Maybe $6500 if you lower your fender, lol. (Did you look on ebay?) BTW, on your blown up picture, is the ft end compressed with the orange strap? I'm just trying to figure out why you're loosing space? Can you post another picture of your ft axle rockers? In 1971 I built a '69 Triumph and built my own brackets mounted to the front legs less than 1/2 inch off the tire?
EDIT: I been doing a little research and I see what you mean. This front leg must move in more than 1 direction because you'd think the fender would stay parallel with the tire? I'm sorry but that's bad enough that I'd have to put another ft end on it!
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