The Electrically Equipped Harley-Davidson Sport Model
The Electrically Equipped HARLEY-DAVIDSON SPORT MODEL
"Great Distances Can Be Covered In a Single Day by Riders of the Harley-Davidson Sport Model, Because This Machine Can be Driven Continuously Without Fatigue."
For a motorcycle engineer, it was a fabulous opportunity. The world's biggest motorcycle company wanted an all-new motorcycle, something lighter and quicker, more comfortable and quiet and easier to ride. The state of the art in engine design had just taken a quantum leap because of the research in aviation. All of a sudden an engineer knew so much more than any one had known just a few years be fore, that a motorcycle could be drastically improved.
That was the position of the engineers at Harley-Davidson in 1916. World events had an enormous effect on motorcycles at the time and those in the near future. The war in Europe had forced aviation and aircraft engines to be developed from the barely flyable to high performance. Motorcycle engineers were learning about overhead valves and camshafts and better oiling and ignition systems all from the air wars. The demand for fuel was hurting the quality of gasoline in this country as refiners turned out more low quality gasoline. This kept combustion pressures down on cars and motorcycles, even though engineers knew of the benefits of higher compression.
If the war increased the possibilities for motorcycle design, the economy and Henry Ford limited it. Ford was an important man to the motorcycle industry because motorcycles were competing against cars as basic transporation in the first part of this century and no one made more cars cheaper than Henry Ford.
Equipped with lots of clean paper, a rapidly growing body of engineering knowledge, and all the freedom they could ask for, the Harley-Davidson engineering department created the most unusual new motorcycle in the company’s history. It was introduced in 1919 and called the Sport Model, the letter designation was WJ for the electrically equipped Sport Model, or just W for the magneto-equipped.
The Sport Model didn’t break new ground in design so much as it assembled ideas that were being tried and fit them together in a neat, lightweight package. Instead of making a V-Twin or a Single, the designs Harley-Davidson and the other big American companies had always produced, the Sport Model engine was an opposed Twin, a configuration that was being used by several motorcycles of the day. The opposed Twin engine was much smoother than a Single or VTwin, and this was important because Harley intended to spin the engine faster for more power than was typical for 1919.
Steve Kimball
As a Harley-Davidson brochure of the period explained,“The perfect balance of the opposed cylinder motor means that there is no vibration at any speed.”
Unlike the current opposed Twin motorcycles, the Sport Model engine doesn’t have the cylinders sticking out the sides of the motorcycle. Cylinders go fore and aft and the entire engine is mounted extremely low for the lowest possible center of gravity. Engine and transmission are housed in the same case, with the transmission mounted directly on top of the engine, primary drive is through helical gears operating a multiplate wet clutch. The only chain on the motorcycle is the final drive chain and it’s housed in an oil bath full enclosure.
For a company that had become the world’s largest manufacturer of motorcycles by selling mostly V-Twin motorcycles of around 61 cubic inches, this was a drastic departure. With a bore of 2.75 in. and stroke of 3 in., displacement works out to 35.64 c.i., or 584cc. According to the factory literature, “This motor develops well over 6 horse power.” With its three-speed sliding gear transmission in high gear, the Sport Model could hit a top speed of about 50 mph. That works out to about 3200 rpm, a fast engine speed for 1919.
As important to performance as a high speed engine was light weight. The word plastic wouldn’t have meant any more in 1919 than the word television. Aluminum pistons were five years away and any other aluminum parts were unheard of. Motorcycles were made of iron. Even so, the Sport Model weighs 264 lb. That’s measured on a certified scale. For comparison, that’s less than any of the current 250cc dual pupose bikes. It’s about on a par with a current 185cc street bike, or a large two-stroke enduro bike. The Sport Model doesn’t weigh 264 lb. because there was nothing more to add, it weighs 264 lb. because there was nothing more to take out.
Besides the light weight, there is the low center of gravity, supposedly about as high as the axles. This extremely low center of gravity makes the Sport Model feel lighter than an equivalent 264 lb. modern motorcycle. Just pushing it around for the photos, it didn’t take any steering effort. It’s about like pushing a shopping basket, or almost as if the motorcycle was built to be pushed, or pulled or carried. And considering the roads of 1919, it probably was. Traveling anywhere outside a major city meant riding through mud and sand and rocks and following narrow trails in dirt roads. Today this would be called off-road riding. In 1919 it was motorcycle riding. And that’s why the special solo motorcycles like the Harley-Davidson Sport Model were built.
Harley-Davidson wasn’t the only company that knew what roads were like. So did Indian, and at the same time the Sport Model was introduced, Indian was coming out with the equivalent sized Scout, which also had a unit construction engine and transmission and had a more conventional V-Twin engine and maybe a little more speed.
That didn’t keep the Sport Model from becoming the biggest selling solo motorcycle within a year after its introduction. Of course some of Harley-Davidson’s success wasn’t due just to the machinery. During WWI Indian committed a larger share of its production to War Department motorcycles, and that allowed Harley-Davidson to take over more dealers. That made the Milwaukee brand a bigger motorcycle company when the war ended and helped the Sport Model get off to a good start.
Big motorcycles, the 61 c.i. models, were often equipped with sidecars, which made them useful competition with cars as transportation, though they cost just as much. The idea of the small machine was for solo use. “It is the snappiest, liveliest motorcycle ever built,” according to the brochure from Harley-Davidson. “At the same time it is the quietest and most economical, the easiest starting, the sturdiest, and by far the most comfortable.”
With a pitch like that, how could a young man not buy a Sport Model? One who couldn’t turn down the motorcycle was Leon Landry, a 14-year-old Massachusetts youth who plunked down the $335 for a magneto-equipped Sport Model in 1919. It was his first motorcycle. Three years later he was a HarleyDavidson dealer. With his friend Bill Lang, who also had a Sport Model, Landry stripped his bike of such unneeded parts as fenders and seat post and equipped the Harley for hillclimbing. Both Lang and Landry were successful in the local hillclimbs and Landry was successful as a motorcycle dealer.
“I’ve always been partial to that model,” recalled Landry, now retired. “I lost track of mine. It’s somewhere in New Jersey now, but the owner won’t sell it.” So Landry looked around and found another Sport Model, this one a 1920 model with electrical system built by Harley-Davidson. It had sat in a field for 15 years in New Hampshire and was, like most pieces of equipment left to sit in fields for 15 years, well rusted. But at his dealership in Florida Landry started work restoring the bike, building the parts that couldn’t be bought. A few changes had to be made. Aluminum pistons were fitted. He couldn’t find the original single headlight that came with the electrically-equipped Sport Model, so his bike got Kay-Bee spotlights, a common modification of the period.
According to Landry, his original Sport Model was competitive with the Indian Scout 37 in. machine in hillclimbs and flat track races. Sport Models weren’t used in most competition because they didn’t fit the classes of the period. Racing classes were sanctioned for 30.50 in. machines (500cc) or 61 in. motorcycles (lOOOcc). The AMA’s Class C rules didn’t exist then, so the racing machines were works bikes, most equipped with four-valve heads on the Singles or a pair of four valve heads on the Twins.
Sport Models were successful in cross country events and hillclimbs. A Sport Model was the first motorcycle to climb Mt. Baldy near Los Angeles when it carried Jack Fletcher up the 10,080 ft. mountain on July 10, 1919. Soon Hap Scherer was setting a new Three-Flags record for small motorcycles with a 64 hour run for the 1716 mi. of almost roads. Harley-Davidson had never competed in the major long distance trials like the Three Flags, but the Sport Model was ideally suited for such competition. Its 28 in. seat height was about 4 in. lower than most other motorcycles, which made it easy to handle the lightweight machine on the roughest roads. The “double bar trussed frame” used the engine as the lower stressed member, a style then known as “keystone construction.” The sprung fork used trailing links and a coil spring at the steering head.
According to the factory claims, the Sport Model would get 50 to 90 mpg of gas and 800 to 1200 mpg of oil. Servicing was easy. The valves could be ground without removing the cylinders from the engine or the engine from the frame. Even the cylinders could be pulled without removing the engine. Although the Sport Model was equipped with a hand oil pump, it wasn’t needed for normal operation, the automatic oiling system taking care of all engine lubrication.
A look at the stories in Harley-Davidson’s owner publication, the Enthusiast, illustrates the kind of motorcycling done in the Twenties. “Cheaper to Ride a Harley-Davidson than to Walk,” proclaimed one headline. “Girl Motorcyclist Makes Long Trips on Sport Model,” said another. “How I Cut 11 Hours off the Boston to Chicago Record” explained another Sport Model record. Motorcycle adventurer John E. Hogg wrote,“Caught in A Desert Death Trap.” Another head: “Six Motorcyclists Go Coon Hunting.” Or, “Motorcycling in Hula-Hula Land.”
Motorcycles were for the adventurous. But cars were for transportation. In 1910 a Ford Model T roadster cost $900. By 1919 an improved version of that same car cost $500 and over half a million were sold. The next year the price of a Model T dropped to $395 and nearly a million were sold. When a Sport Model with generator cost $380, a 61 in. VTwin Harley cost $418 and a Model T cost $395, it became harder to sell big motorcycles.
In his speech to dealers in November, 1920, Walter Davidson told the H-D dealers, “We might as well all recognize that the so-called prosperity that we have been enjoying has come to a very sudden stop.” The post-war economic boom was over. Deflation was occurring in prices for a variety of products, but sales weren’t picking up. Henry Ford was blamed, in Davidson’s speech, for the difficulties experienced by the motorcycle industry because he was selling a car that “has no features” and must be sold on low cost alone. Ford depended on a great volume of sales and this meant people who would have bought motorcycles for transportation were buying cars.
Most of the 143 known motorcycle manufacturers in this country built bikes before this period. This is when most of them went out of business. In such a harsh economic climate, the Sport Model did not succeed. It became “The most popular solo motorcycle in the world,” almost immediately, according to the factory claims. But it was out of production by 1923. Henry was selling Fords for $265 then, making $50 profit on each one and selling about 2 million. Harley-Davidson sold its last Sport Model in England and New Zealand and elsewhere that conditions demanded a lightweight, durable motorcycle. For the U.S. H-D offered the 61 in. V-Twin and the new 74 in. model, a bored out 61, with prices of $285 and $310. A sidecar cost $98.
Leon Landry wasn’t the only person to learn to ride a motorcycle on a Sport Model during this period. A lad named William H. Davidson also had his first ride on a Sport Model. His father, William A. Davidson was in charge of engineering at Harley-Davidson and in 1942 young Bill became President of the Harley-Davidson Motor Co., a title he kept until 1971. Landry, as a dealer, knew the Davidsons and so when he finished his restoration project on this 1920 Sport Model, he gave the motorcycle to Bill Davidson.
It’s not in the Harley-Davidson museum at York, Pennsylvania, though. This Sport Model is kept at the HarleyDavidson headquarters in Milwaukee. It’s part of a smaller museum, of sorts, a museum that only has two motorcycles. It’s the Styling Department museum because the two motorcycles are kept in the same area with the stylists, where they can look at it, the most unusual HarleyDavidson built. The other bike is the XLCR, the unusual cafe racer-style Sportster.
The Styling Department, of course, is run by another William Davidson, this one known as Willie G. When he works on the design of a new Harley-Davidson, he can occasionally look back at the motorcycle that taught his father how to ride, and the motorcycle that taught his grandfather what to design. SI
