Harley Davidson Nightrain

   As previous postings will attest, I am a longtime fan of Harley-Davidson motorcycles.. I have owned eight or nine of them in my life. I will admit to owning a few Honda's, Yamaha's, and Kawasaki's in my day, but since the mid 1990's I have been loyal to the Harley-Davidson brand.
   This posting is to showoff my Harley Nightrain.. It is a 1999 model that I purchased in the year 2000. It had been a show bike for the previous owner in Houston and had never been on the street. The wheels are the main focus of this bike and they are called Triad for the three spoke look. The previous owner bought them from American Wheel Company of Minnesota. 

   Note the grooved lines in each spoke on the wheels. The same design is on the brake rotors and main drive pulley.

     When I purchased the bike it had less than one hundred miles on it, so the 80 cubic inch engine was basically brand new. The previous owner was concerned only with the look of the bike and I had to do some work on it before committing it to street use. A set of Cobra turn-down shorties was leaking around the exhaust ports so I decided to get rid of them (they were also so loud they drowned out the voices in my head). I replaced them with a set of Harley-Davidson Screamin' Eagle pipes.

   Forsaking the blacked-out look of the Nightrain, I started using up some of the chrome left over from my custom FXST softail. I chromed the transmission cover, the cam cover, pushrods, regulator cover, and the oil tank. On a whim, I bought the hyper-charger but never felt any improvement in the performance of the bike. It did become a constant conversation piece as everyone wanted to know about it. I also sent the carburetor to the Dakota Kid in Sturgis for a complete rebuild. That really improved the performance.

   Naturally the pegs, control boxes, and grips were replaced with chrome ones, and I also installed a chrome mustache bar. I rode it about thirty miles with both feet up on the bar and when I exited the highway both feet were asleep. I had to rely on the hand brake to stop until I could get some feeling back in my feet. After that I would only put one foot at a time on the highway bar.

   The straight across handlebars of the Nightrain were the first to be replaced when I got home with the bike. I installed a set of eleven inch pullbacks at the same time as the chrome boxes and control switches. Now I don't have to ride 'hunched over' to reach the bars. I have always been a fan of Harley's skull series, so I have the skull on the gas caps, primary cover, cam cover, and the back of the sissy bar.

   The mirrors are from a Harley Duece...  If you look close you can see the back of my clock on the left hand control box. I love the 6-inch headlight of the softails...It has that old school look to it.

       I had a LaPera seat on the bike in the early years, but Momma kept complaining about having a sore butt after long rides. I have taken a seat from a Softail Custom and had it reupholstered with buttons and also Harley orange piping around the edges.

     The Nightrain had a bobbed rear fender on it for a while, but on rainy day rides I would come home with dirt and water slung up on the back of my denim jacket. I replaced the bobbed fender with a fender from a Harley FatBoy bike. The taillight is called Aurora and I bought it from J&P Cycles in Iowa.

   I have a Memphis Slim windshield that keeps the breeze and bugs out of my face. I love it since it takes all of fifteen seconds to install it, or remove it.

      Before I retired, I worked about thirty miles from my home and the small Harley bag on the back was just the thing for essentials such as a rain jacket, or my lunch box.

   
  In the final photos you can see my wife and I at a Harley-Davidson bike rally in Oklahoma.. In the bottom photo is my Nightrain being judged as "First Place" in the cruiser category. The old girl is still a looker as well as a great bike on the street. 
   Thanks for Looking !!