Overall Rating++I know, I know, why on God's green earth would anyone swap a motor on an old Sportster? Well, I could be wrong, but I'm guessing somewhere in this world there are at least another hundred (or two) people who, when faced with the choice of selling their perfectly set-up bike for peanuts, or going through major surgery to keep what they've built from scratch, might just follow me down this dark path.
Let's get one thing straight: I love my Sportster. It was the first (street) bike I ever bought. Fresh out of college, I got this puppy slightly used with under 10k miles, and the fat FXLR tank already installed. Along the way, as a magazine editor, things happened; some good (Ohlins 13-inch shocks, GCB inverted frontend, Performance Machine 17-inch wheels and floating brakes, one-off Corbin seat) and some bad (beach bars, overbuilt motor, chin fairing). But all told, if it weren't for the motor threatening to implode and the beach bars putting my hands where my elbows should be, I'd ride it all the time. Add to that the basic limitations of the old H-D four-speed transmission (geared for about 70), and the fact that if you blow the transmission up, it costs more than the bike is worth just for the replacement parts.
Fortunately for me (and you out there at home), and unfortunately for the racing world, the AMA (in its eternal wisdom) phased out Sportster racing in the late '90s, and there are supposedly a good number of five-speed race motors out there in need of a good home.
As my dad (Bill Bartels) ran a fairly potent Sportster race team in the '90s, I had an inside track. In fact, he even tossed in his race mechanic, the legendary Earl Kellerman, to do the swap. Earl told me that he used to do these all the time, as the four-speeds worked out better on dirt tracks, so he had done these before with no problems. As we both soon found out, there are differences between street and race bikes. Follow along, and if you want to engage in this particular version of insanity, hopefully we can help you not repeat the mistakes we made. If you don't have to order parts and wait for them on several occasions (like us) you'll probably pound this out in a weekend. Good luck, fellow mad scientists.
| RATING GUIDE |
| ABILITY | +++ | TIME | ++ |
| TOOLS | ++ | COST | +++ |
This is our donor. Check out the sweet orange and white powdercoat; it's sure to match anything with that. | 
Here's the (willing) victim. It too has powdercoated covers, only in black. Yeah, the bars are lame. | 
This is Earl. He's an 80-years-young force of nature who's been working on racebikes since before the XR750. He's also the one guy who hates my bars more than anyone else in the world, as he banged his head on them about 20 times. As you can see, the bike has been secured to his lift, and we've started the disassembly process by removing the seat and detaching the battery leads (negative first). |