Harley sportster scrambler

Greg Hageman's known as the guy that convinced us that Yamaha Viragos can look good. But we've never seen a Harley-Davidson custom from the American builder. Which is strange; the Sportster is arguably a better (and more popular) platform than the Virago. And Greg sure knows his way around them—he's a qualified, master-level Harley technician. “I started in '99,” he tells us, “and took every single tech class the factory offered until 2011. So I was fully aware of the capabilities of what I…

Quite a few bikes have quirks that can trap the unwary builder. The strange frame curvature on the Honda CX500 is one of them, and the height of the Harley Sportster motor is another. The venerable V-twin is an unusually tall engine, which makes it difficult to get a straight line from the base of the tank to the back of the seat. And it’s even harder to create a low-slung, slammed effect. But Uwe Kostrewa has managed to pull off both tricks, and deserves a round of hearty applause. Uwe…

Think of a scrambler motorcycle, and most folks will picture a modern Triumph or a vintage BSA. Not a Harley. But David Zemla, who runs Burly Brand, decided to take a different tack. Could a Sportster be reconfigured for bombing down fire roads? After a lot of trial and error, not to mention a few wrong turns and dead ends in the build process, the answer is a definite ‘yes.’ Zemla’s 2006-model Harley XL883 had previously enjoyed a sedate life, transporting a retired teacher to and from the…

The Scrambler We Wish Harley Had Built...Introduced back in 2007, the Sportster XL1200N Nightster was a blacked-out, lowered version of the regular Sportster -- something of a "factory custom." Though it was mainly an aesthetic exercise, the Nightster garnered strong praise from riders and rev

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across some murky shots of this Harley Sportster 1200 in a workshop. It was one of the cleanest, classiest Sportsters I’ve ever seen, with beautiful paint and a perfect stance. I found out that it was owned by Bill Bryant, the driving force behind Biltwell Inc. And luckily for us, Bill's now had it shot properly so we can take a closer look. “The bike started life as a homely 1999 Sportster 1200 without much ‘Sport’ in it,” says Bill. So he decided to take off as…

Then Came Bronson was an adventure/drama television show that starred Michael Parks as disillusioned newspaperman Jim Bronson, who wanders the American West as a modern vagabond/cowboy. The real star of the show was Bronson's red 1969 Harley-Davidson XLH Sportster scrambler, with the Eye of Providen