For the love of a hardtail bobber

When Les Field decided to build himself a custom Harley-Davidson^®, he had some very clear guidelines in mind

Words: Jeremy Pick
Photos: Les Field

“The build was inspired by my late father,” says Les. “He was a passionate Harley owner with a ’57 FLH and I inherited a love of motorcycles from him as well as the ethos of ‘if you can’t buy what you want, make it instead.’ So when I was running through the build in my mind I knew it had to be based on a Harley-Davidson, with an extended hardtail drag frame, a motor with a good power-to-weight ratio, and gold coloured with the race number 91 on the side in tribute to my father’s race career.”

The bike was destined to be a homage to the drag bikes that the senior Mr Field, an ex-Rolls-Royce toolmaker with a love of drag racing, would build and race back in the day. “Father passed away five years ago, and he was a complete petrolhead as well as a natural-born motorcycle talent,” recalls Les. “At one point he held the 1000cc class record on a Vincent twin, back in the days when they were just obsolete old British iron and hence cheap to buy. He also had a 5.7 litre methanol-burning 500+ horsepower V8-powered motorcycle, which he used to take the UK speed record for the standing quarter. The starting procedure was, fire it up on rollers, sit back and open the throttle until a flame would shoot out vertically from the Holley carb four feet into the air, then as soon as the flame died down he just leaned over and went for it. On drum brakes. You just don’t get people like that these days!”

A well-equipped workshop – plus the early years of stripping and building race engines with his father – meant Les had few worries about the mechanical challenges involved. With the concept firmly in mind, the quest for the build components began.

A suitable donor bike soon turned up. It had been built to order by Sledhead Custom Cycles in Wales for a man called Ronnie Powell, using their proprietary extended drag frame fitted with custom oil and fuel tanks and an 883 Sportster^® engine. Ronnie was no longer using the bike and so a deal was struck. With the basis of a bike now in hand, Les stripped everything back to the bare frame and the build went under way.

With a good power-to-weight ratio a priority, the ’96 Evo engine was soon upgraded to 1200cc, the heads skimmed and ported by Tewkesbury-based Bod’s Speed & Custom and mated to a low-ratio Harley-Davidson 883 five-speed gearbox to ensure a good standing start. The front forks were supplied by Paughco, the rear fender was turned down from a 1930 Ford Model A spare wheel cover and the handlebars were sourced from a 1922 Harley-Davidson Type F. With a hardtail frame and springer forks, limited suspension was provided by building in an air ride system fitted to a custom seat base. Les fabricated new exhausts himself, fitted new electrics and lights, upgraded the brakes, fitted forward controls with custom brass linkages, and mated up a modified internal throttle system to the bars.

With the bulk of the mechanical work done, the metalwork was treated to a unique golden colour by Jake’s Custom Paint, created by building up coats of gold leaf paint on a black base followed by four coats of candy red and seven coats of clear lacquer, each coat being smoothed off by hand. The custom 91 numbers in homage to his father were the final touch, and three months after the project started, ‘91’ was finished.

The result? “The bike is now just how I wanted it – I was after an old-school bobber that resembled the old grass track bikes from back in the day, but with the reliability of an Evo engine rather than a leaky Shovel because I like to be able to do 200 miles a day and know that I’m going to get back home again,” explains Les. “I didn’t want comfort, I wanted the bike to be as raw and visceral as possible, with all creature comforts removed – basically an engine, a throttle and the open road.”

Now, every time Les takes the bike out – often to pursue his semi-professional passion for photography – it draws an appreciative audience the moment it stops. ‘The 91 Bike’ even has its own Instagram account with 32,000 followers.

“I work from home as an IT manager so the bike is my mental health saviour,” says Les. “When you have been sat at home looking at a computer screen all day you need to be able to get out on a bike in the fresh air and you don’t want creature comforts, you want raw and visceral, and that’s exactly what I’ve got. I can feel every cycle of the engine and every bump in the road and that’s exactly what I was looking for – man and motorcycle as one, vibrating together!

“It’s the exact opposite of all the sports bikes and tourers I’ve owned in the past, it handles like a dirt bike and bucks around – it is a hardtail with a springer front end and a rigid mounted engine after all – and if I go through a tunnel and open it up, my eyes start shaking and I get blurred vision so I have to roll off the power to be able to see. It’s exactly what I was after, and I absolutely love it!”

Of course, no custom bike is ever truly finished and Les is already looking to obtain more power by taking the motor to 1275cc. Then the quest begins for Les’s dream ‘factory’ bike – an original Harley-Davidson 1957 FLH, the last year of the factory hardtail, in barn-find patinated condition – but the little hardtail Sportster will be a lifetime keeper.

“Father gave up motorcycling soon after I was born,” says Les. “The last bike I saw him riding a bike was a Ducati I took round to see him when I was in my 20s – after not being on a bike for 20 years he spun up the back wheel, pulled a wheelie and just shot off up the wet road. You just don’t get characters like that around anymore, and I know he would have absolutely loved ‘91’!”

---

Tags: