| Many of us madmen started with Sportsters. Not long ago, there wasn’t much a guy could do with his Sportster to make it sing, but now there is. So we went after a complete list of parts and recommendations for a strong, better handling Sportster.
We started with Bartels’ Harley-Davidson. Bartels’ is a family organization of performance-minded folk who believe and live by performance and speed. The Bartels family has been competing in 883 and Buell Lightening racing series, for nigh on 75 years, not really, but they’ve been at it for a couple of decades. Bill, the father and owner of the Marina Del Rey dealership, still races stock cars every weekend. Scott and Bill’s wife, Merle, run Bartels’ Performance Products. Ron Bartels is the head of the service department where we recently watched the transformation of an 883 Sportster belonging to Brenda Fox, a hard-riding woman. Using her bike as a base, we spoke to Ron first then to his brother Scott. We’re talking street performance here. No stroker kits or tearing into the bottom end. Keep in mind the kind of riding you like to do. Stoplight drag racing, in the hills flying, or all-out high speed freeway endurance runs. I’ll touch on them all. Check it out:
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Heads: You have a couple of choices here. You can have your heads flowed and shaved for higher compression or you can replace them with Buell heads and barrels. If you have an 883 don’t hesitate to go with a Factory 1200 kit, but you’ll feel real potential if you have the heads messed with. For an 883 you need to have the valves replaced with 1200 valves and the heads shaved for higher compression. | |
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Cylinders: The way to go without big bore situations is with the Factory 1200 kit, or Buell heads and cylinders. In this case Buell cylinders and pistons were added to shaved and ported heads to create a 10;1 compression situation. |
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Cams: Brenda’s bike was goosed with Bartels’ Performance 140 cams. |
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Intake Manifold: Bartels makes a flowed performance manifold that is something to consider if you’re upgrading your heads and carb. |
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Carburation: Mikuni carbs were the ticket until the Factory developed the CV carb for stock bikes. With the installation of Thunder slides and Dyna jets, the CV carb can keep up with a big bore Mikuni. |
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Front ends: Scott recommends the Sportster Sport front end with Race Tech Gold Valves to adjust the ride. You can also add a White Bros steering dampner.
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| Front Brakes: Pre-2000, the only way to go was dual 4-piston Performance Machine brakes. You could also replace the stock rotors with Harley or Performance Machine floating rotors. Now stock Harleys come equipped with 4-piston brakes, which are comparable to the P.M. units. | ||
 
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Clutch: The Factory clutch is good to 110 horsepower. Transmission: The stock transmission hangs together under any load, but if you need to shift fast, you could consider Zippers back-cut gears.
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Exhaust: Exhaust is as critical as carburation, but more difficult to tune. Scott recommends Bartels’ Performance two into one exhaust. But depending on your configuration you may want to research an adjustable system such as Supertrapp or Hooker. Gearing: This is an area of choice. Depends on what you want to do. Buells are designed to top out at 110 mph. They’ll do wheelies all day long. They’ll blast through the canyons, but the top end ends at 110. Scott likes that style, but if you want to ride the freeways and hit 130 mph from time to time you may want to look into Daytona gearing and go to chains and sprockets. You may need to slip the clutch in first and second, but you’ll ultimately get to 130 mph. |
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Ignition: Scott Bartels recommends the Screamin’ Eagle performance model. |
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Branching Out: |
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| In our effort to bring you a complete list of performance products for Sportsters we’ve broadened our scope and found a couple of other items to consider:
Vortex Heads |
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| Ride Forever, –Bandit |
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