Harley-Davidson Night Rod Special Burn-Out

THIS IS an ‘08 Night Rod Special I got from another (Gypsy Joker MC) member. It was his spare bike and I always wanted one so I got this off him. I just love the look of them and always wanted to try one out. I had a Softail before, a 100th Anniversary Night Train.

The first modification to this was just the exhaust and the ignition, and I rode it like that and did quite a few burnouts and quite a few kilometres. Then the main bearing went and from there on… I didn’t have a licence, the bike was off the road, so we pretty well went from there.

The ignition was a Power Commander that Rob at Rob’s Motorcycle Repairs had lying around, and the exhaust wasn’t anything special, just a standard exhaust with the mufflers removed and the collectors removed; they were irrelevant really. I just rode it hard as it was when I bought it, until it fucking went bang.

It went around to Rob for the motor rebuild which we thought was something small but went on to a full rebuild with Screamin’ Eagle heads and cam design and timing by Neville Lush Racing. Mark Hood did the machine work and Rob put it all together and got it running well.

When it was first finished we had it Dyno-ed down at Neville Lush Racing and got 143 horsepower so I’m pretty bloody happy. The horsepower on these to start off is about 118 so it’s a dramatic change without a supercharger or a turbo. I’m thinking of putting some gas on it eventually and seeing what we can do with that.

The rebuild flowed fairly well, although I just couldn’t believe the amount of damage that I’d done to the last motor. Once we started disassembling it, that’s where all the problems were, because the heads were fucked, the cams were fucked, she was pretty well on her way out. I just used to thrash it to see if it would go: it pretty well lived on the rev limit. 

My arms are about two inches longer than they were before, from holding onto the bloody thing. It’s got so much torque it’s incredible. It pulls from 140 off the clock in no time at all. I did a take-off burnout in second gear, straight out take-off, no brakes. That would have been at least a quarter mile burnout, and I came out the other end about 140—150, and that was insane, that was a good feeling.

I’ve taken it on heaps of runs. Across the Hay Plains twice now, numerous interstate runs because we can’t ride here in SA unless we’re only two at a time so a lot of the time we’ll go interstate to get in the good rides. It’s done a few km, up to about 10,000 now.

It’s very reliable—got from Wodonga back to Adelaide in 10 hours straight—and didn’t use a drop of oil. Incredible ride.

There’s a few other changes too, like the Barnett heavy duty clutch and the CP pistons.

I put the FXDX bars on it, and chromed it as much as I could while I had it off the road. I nickel-plated the frame, chromed just about as much as I could, and got the seat redone by Skinners. I wanted to show people the difference between nickel and chrome and now I’ve got an example. I can show them: ‘There’s the nickel; there’s the chrome.’ With a lot of the bikes in the old days they used to nickel everything so this shows people what the nickeling is all about. Back in the early ’40s everything was nickel, there was no chrome, but you had a tarnishing effect. Chrome was designed to go over the top of the nickel to stop the tarnishing and to protect it. It’s pretty well lead and tin that pass through a chroming solution at the end to give it an overlay to stop any tarnishing.

I haven’t done too many big burnouts, no stand-ons, but I’m nearly through the first tyre. I lost count at about 30 tyres before the rebuild—30 rears and two fronts in 65,000 km.

I want to really thank Rob for putting in the effort he put in, day and night. Pretty incredible, what a brother to have. 

words by Steve GJMC; photos by Chris Randells