On Wed, 10 Feb 2016 07:10:15 -0800 (PST), Tim
wrote:

On Monday, February 8, 2016 at 10:18:07 AM UTC-6, wrote:
On Mon, 8 Feb 2016 07:40:40 -0500, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

Yup. The Japanese invasion pretty much killed off BSA and Norton here
also. The original Indian Motorcycle Co. folded in 1953. They only
produced about 1,000 military motorcycles in WWII whereas Harley
Davidson produced over 90,000. Even Harley ran into some problems
later leading to their purchase by AMF in 1969 who ruined their quality
and reputation. Fortunately, a group of investors led by Willie
Davidson bought the company from AMF in 1981 and refocused on quality.
They also accused the Japanese makers of flooding the US market with
cheap products and claimed that domestic motorcycles and the jobs their
manufacture created was endangered. Ronald Reagan took action to
protect the domestic manufacturers by imposing a 45% tariff on imported
motorcycles over 700cc's.
( Screw the "global market" BS :-) )

We started seeing the AMF problems in 71.. Probably the worst problem
was in the 74 Sportster where the rear fork was bending and the seat
mounting bolt would wear a groove in the rear tire. The fix was
welding a couple struts in to hold it up.
The 71 and 72 Superglides had excessive flex in the fork tubes because
they were using the Sportster front end on an FL frame. They ate
seals.
In 71 they also changed the spec for the main shaft bearing in the
FL/FX transmission (did not account for thrust load) and they went
bad.
There were lots of growing pains in the early AMF years.
It was a good time to be a Harley mechanic tho ;-)

Harley was good about putting out scrap those years. A friend of mine worked for AMF and got an 80 Glide at cost. (benefit of the company) and it always smoked. Finally a dealer tore it down and it had rings missing on the back piston.

Typical UAW workers before the japs handed them their ass.

The thing always dripped oil and the speedo was way off. All from the factory.

Harleys are supposed to "drip oil". If it is excessive, back off on
the chain oiler.
Lots of guys turned it off completely but they usually did not
manually oil the chain and ended up with bad chains and sprockets.

BTW, yes the Superglide front forks. A lot of them starting cracking right below the triple tree. It's amazing how some feel that HD is still such a glorious motorcycle. Then again, the "Big four" Japanese have had models to copy HD's for years. go figure

Harley was always a state of mind thing more than just owning the most
high tech bike. The old ones also had the advantage that they did use
a lot of off the shelf industrial parts so you might find what you
needed in a feed store in fumbuck idaho. (AKA "tractor parts").

I used to have a pretty good list of parts that were generic "counter
store" items. They were always going to be less than the dealer and in
a lot of cases very much less.