How I came to be the Harley Hummer Nut
I have been into motorcycles all my life and have owned Harleys since I
was about 20 years old. One afternoon while walking through a swap-meet,
I saw a pick up truck packed up and leaving the meet. In the back of
the truck was a pair of small motorcycles. One was complete and an
orange/red color. The other was about half there. I had never seen bikes
like these. They weren't your typical Japanese or British street bikes
and definitely not dirt bikes. They looked to have Sportster gas tanks.
Well, my curiosity got the best of me and I ran to catch up with the
truck and get him to stop. He told me they were in fact Harley two
strokes! After just a couple moments of conversation, the hook was set
and I had a phone number and date to come see him. I was to come to his
house and learn more and maybe...
So now I had some time to think about it, and as we all know, once the
lust for a motorcycle starts, it is near impossible to ignore. Less than
a week later found me at his place checking out this really cool 1959
Harley 165. It ran great and we were having lots of fun riding it up and
down his street. Now with the wheels literally set in motion, it was
just a matter of striking a deal for this great little Harley. Well as
fate would have it, he didn't want to sell just this bike, but insisted
that the two were a package deal. If I wanted that 165, I had to buy the
other one too. He explained that it was a later model and that it had a
rear suspension. To me it didn't look nearly as cool as the rigid frame
model. However, I wanted this complete one so bad that I agreed to take
the other one without fenders, and unknown to me, lots of other missing
parts.
Proud Owner: Now what?
Well, I was now the proud owner of this really nifty 1959 165 and was
having a great time riding it and showing it off. But, what am I going
to do with this other rolling basket case? I went boldly to the local HD
dealer to buy parts and put it back together...
Yeah, right! Surprise, surprise, come to find out I wasn't the only one
who didn't know anything about these fine little motorcycles. The guy
behind the counter had never heard of them and told me that Harley never
made any small bikes. Well, if it hadn't said Harley Davidson on the
speedometer, I would have thought I had been duped by the seller. So,
being a bit stubborn, I went to the other guys in this shop. One guy
said "Yeah, I've heard about them, but I think they were made in Italy.
We don't have no parts." Little did I know, that day was only the
beginning of a long, long odyssey.
I could go into great detail about how frustrating it was going from
dealer to dealer, only to find out that all the parts for these bikes
became obsolete in 1966, with the last model sold and that most
everybody had taken them to the dump or scrap metal yard! Finally, I
found a private shop that had 4 pallets of "lightweight" parts. I
thought I had hit the mother-lode. Well, when I got to see it all I was
very disappointed to find, parts book in hand, that over ¾ of it was for
the Italian Harleys. So I made a pile of all the Hummer parts and told
the guy that I wanted to buy only these parts. For the first time I
heard a phrase that I would get to know very well, "No way Dude, if you
want any of them parts, you gotta buy them all." So, over the next
several years I bought the out entire inventories of four different
shops and Harley dealers, just to find the parts I needed to restore the
rolling basketcase, that came with my 165.
During my search for parts, I had found that there had been a Harley
Hummer Club at one time. So after tracking down the founder and much
convincing, I talked him into letting me revive the old club and
newsletter. I came to find that there were quite a few members that
were very happy to have the Club back up and running. Over the next 3-4
years the membership quadrupled. We all had lots of fun trading parts,
printing stories and featuring member's bikes. But alas, I chose to move
to Colorado and build a house. I turned the Club Newsletter back over
to the founder and soon it evolved into an online club. And the rest is
history.
Now after over 15 years, I am done with most of my project bikes and am
selling all the parts I have left over to folks like you, to help your
Harley Hummer projects come together.
Check my parts list for current parts in stock.