Growing up, I had somewhat of a disdainful, snobbish attitude towards Harley-Davidson; I looked down on the whole BIG TWIN culture, all the flashy chrome, eagles, skulls, flames, leather fringe, leather tassels, leather do-rags emblazoned with pewter studs and eagles and skulls and flames...
What I didn't realize is that all of that nonsense is just what many people who want to appear as rebels but who need the reassurance of conformity do with these bikes because they think it makes them macho and cool, but that if you strip all that away, at their core, these are capable, strong machines, especially the Evolution series.
That's how good a motorcycle the Sportster really is, that it was able to shatter all the prejudice and competition from every single other motorcycle I've ever ridden, to come out on top.
Many years ago, uncle Fester got me to try what would eventually become my previous Sportster, and I was hooked after just one ride. Suddenly, I got what these motorcycles were really about.
Since bringing it home, I have gone over every inch of this motorcycle and fixed or improved a number of things, always remembering that the dealer turned out to be such an untrustworthy scumbag that I knew I really had to address any mechanical issues myself and leave nothing to chance.
There are now just a few things left to do:
- set up the suspension properly
- repair the gearbox
- blueprint the carburetor
- good old "miscellaneous" items
Let's get to it then, starting with the suspension.
Oops. I've definitely ridden a variety of distances without knowing anything about how the suspension had been set up on this particular motorcycle.
No he couldn't and wouldn't have; that guy was the absolute worst dealer I've ever known, fuck him.
Ok, all fair points, and I get what they're saying about these settings being very subjective; like I said, I'll give myself some time to go on a few proper rides before I can tell what really works for me.
Duly noted; for now though, I am satisfied that the entire suspension system is in good shape, set correctly, and with the correct amount of the proper (fresh!) oil in the forks. Big job done.
The first thing I did was to check the settings as found on the forks and, surprisingly, they were the same on both legs.
The front forks on the 1200S are unique to this model, and while they are clearly an improvement over the stock model found on every other variant of the Evolution Sportsters in that they are a quasi-cartridge type with fully adjustable preload, and damping for compression and rebound, there is a drawback when it comes to the drain plug: the forks on the 1200S don't have one! I believe this is because Showa adapted the standard slider to house the compression adjuster where the drain plug would normally be. This means that the rare times you'll need to drain the oil.... you have to remove the entire front end off of the motorcycle. Let that sink in for a minute... ok, let's just get on with it.
You could also drain the oil by removing the bolt that lives at the very bottom of the slider and secures the damper rod, but these are likely very hard to remove most of the time, and then you're gonna have to undo the top nut to refill with fresh oil anyway, so you might as well do it this way instead.
Incidentally, this is also a very good opportunity to check wheel bearings, brake discs' surfaces, and even the calipers. Everything was in good shape so we just cleaned off some brake pad residue and left it at that.
Removing the wheel, front fender and brake calipers took about two minutes, but when it came to undoing the fork yoke pinch bolts it was a nightmare: for some reason they are Torx head bolts and they were seized solid. Confounded, goddamned Torx. The ones on the left-hand side eventually gave, but on the other side it was like beating on a solid block of β-Ti3Au. I suspect this was due to old threadlock and oxidation, not to mention that the pinch bolts are a kind of self-tapping hard steel that screws into the aluminum yokes... not a good combination. After two days of penetrating oil and applying heat with the Stanley FatMax heat gun, I tried cutting a slot into one of the bolt heads (I later replaced this with a new bolt, obviously), thinking I might have better luck with a very large flat blade insert in the impact driver, but there was no luck to be had that day. In the end, I had to get the motorcycle over to uncle Fester's garage and get him to go at it with brawn and better tools.
During the ride over to his place, I noticed a concerning behavior of the steering, which I remembered from one of the last times I rode the Sportster (almost four years ago, when I noted "I need to set up the suspension properly to fix what feels like something wrong with the front end, particularly noticeable when tackling tight corners.") so when I returned to the Monolith I thought "while I'm at it, I might as well check the steering bearings" and, well, notchy doesn't even begin to describe the state they were in. Long story short, the whole front end had to come off, and I proceeded with refreshing the steering.
Above: that little Morini has been popping up in the background lately...
A look at the outer bearing races; the marks you may be able to see actually cleaned up without leaving much of a trace at all, and the races themselves are smooth to the touch and do not appear to be distorted (admittedly I did not check these with any type of gauges). That groove along the old grease is where I tested to see if I could reach both outer races with a drift in case I had to knock them out to replace them: there is indeed enough room, so a puller shouldn't be necessary here when I'll eventually have to renew the bearings completely. Not this time though.
It's worth remembering that this motorcycle is already over 20 years old....it may not look it, it may have all sorts of fancy lights in the digital instrument panel, fancy MAP sensor, fancy ignition unit, but grease and bearings are still gonna feel time and miles.
In particular what I did was to clean all of the old grease off, inspect the neck and bearings, then since they were still in good shape I just re-packed them with fresh grease and put it all back together; whaddya know, all notchiness gone.
I learned how to pack bearings way back when we rebuilt my Norton Commando, many, many years ago: until that point I had always assumed that it was enough to smear grease on the outside of the rollers and maybe spin them around a little bit. If this is what you're doing, stop. You need to pack the grease on the inside, and there are plenty of sources to show you how it's done.
With that taken care of, I moved to the fork tubes, opened the caps (which on the 1200S remain fastened to the adjuster, otherwise on a standard fork they will fly off if care is not taken to secure them) and drained the oil. The right-hand leg had slightly less than there should have been, the left-hand one was just about acceptable but obviously the fluid was looking a bit past its prime, so definitely time to replace it:
The workshop manual specifies "Type E" H-D fork oil, and since it's unclear what the equivalent would be from other brands (and considering the original oil isn't that expensive) I am using standard Type E here. This is technically a "wet" fork in the sense that it wasn't fully disassembled and cleaned, in which case it would be considered "dry". I found about 260ccs of oil in the left-hand leg, and a little less in the right-hand leg. I added 270ccs of fresh oil for each leg (a tiny bit more than recommended in the workshop manual) and I'm satisfied that it is pretty even for both legs; also, at least I know for sure it has fresh oil, so I can forget about this for the next couple of years.
With the front end reassembled on the motorcycle, I can now proceed with setting up the suspension.
First it's the preload, and to set that I backed out the adjuster to its softest setting on both legs, lifted the bike off the ground to make sure both front and rear units were fully extended then measured the distance as specified in the manual: at the rear - from the center of the upper shock nut to the center of the lower shock nut (340mm); and at the front - from the center of the front axle to the bottom of the lower yoke (561mm). I should point out that I set the rear shock absorbers to their softest setting here, by turning the lower shrouds with a pair of channel locks (with a thick rag to protect the chrome, of course). I then gently lowered the bike back onto its wheels and measured again to see how much the suspension sagged with just the weight of the bike on them (544mm at the front, 336mm at the rear). Finally, I sat on the bike, feet up, and had my assistant measure again (524mm at the front, 316mm at the rear). With these measurements at hand, the next step is to calculate unloaded suspension minus loaded suspension. Preload should only be adjusted if the difference is not within specification. The difference in my case is two centimeters (20mm), and while technically that would fall within the 0.5-1.0 inches (12.7-25.4 mm) permitted range, it is towards the soft end of the range. I'd like this to be firmer, so I'm going to stick with the factory setting and go from there once I've had a chance to actually ride.
Below is the preload adjuster at the softest setting, you'll see that seven lines are visible:
So, I set the preload for the rear units at the second step, whereas the front forks preload is such that 4 lines are visible, with the fifth just over the stanchion cap:
The image above from the owners manual mentions the "top of slider tube cap", which I find slightly confusing as I would call it a "stanchion cap".
Considering this as a good starting point, I then set the compression and rebound damping as suggested in the owner's manual: this is a very subjective thing as mentioned below, and I think I'll only ever really get a sense of whether this is right for me or not, by riding this thing on a few trips, if and when I manage.
Here are a few things to take note of, from the owner's manual:
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