I was less than enthusiastic when Harley-Davidson finally released the Street 500, one of their two newest middleweight models meant to break into the beginner and intermediate markets. I was hoping they might divert a little more radically from their signature cruiser look, but the Street 500 felt like a less inspired, smaller-displacement, fuel-injected, liquid-cooled vanilla version of an 883 to me.
Then, as if Harley had tuned into my gripes, I learned of their plans to bring flat track racing to the masses with intentions of adding the event to the X Games and using the new Street 750 as the platform. At the same time, The Speed Merchant dropped us a line from California to say they were building a tracker-inspired Harley Street 500 to be unveiled at Born Free 6. This bike finally had my attention. The Speed Merchants’ own Denver Dan Begakis introduces us to “The Thresher.” –Gregory
In early March 2014, we were approached by Mike Davis of the Born Free Show. He asked if we’d be interested in doing something custom to a brand new Harley-Davidson Street 500 model. Having never seen one in person, it was very intriguing. The new Harley-Davidson showed up at the shop with about three months to get the job done. What you see is our version of what this model could be.
We started by removing most of the stock parts from the bike – front end, wheels, bars, rear fender, battery, rear subframe, and exhaust. I replaced the stock wheels with some Sun Aluminum rims with SS spokes laced up to some HD hubs. The front end was replaced with a set of our SM mid-glide trees, made for the HD 48 Sportster. Huntington Beach Harley-Davidson was kind enough to donate the front end to this build.
We topped off the front end with our SM preload adjusters, an aluminum number plate we made that incorporates the overflow for the radiator, and an LED driving light supplied by Lazerstar Lights.
I used our radial mount brake bracket in the front, and mounted a Tokico caliper to it. The bars are a custom set made in-house. The controls are off a GSXR 600 and 750, topped off with some Pazzo levers. Joker Machine shipped me one of their well-designed 1/4 turn throttle setups, used mainly for speedways.
We decided to mount the tank in a different position, raising it by about 4″ to provide a more traditional stance. After cutting off the stock subframe and pulling the wiring from under the seat, we started laying out the new subframe setup. Part of the new subframe houses all of the stock wiring just under the seat. The new tail section was shaped out of aluminum and matched to the line of the tank. Once the tail section was finished, we fabricated a seat pan that was handed off to Bates Leather. They nailed it with the custom tuck-and-roll design.
To change the stance of the bike, we used some tall rear shocks supplied by Ohlins USA, who were kind enough to support this build. The taller shocks provided extra ground clearance and helped to enhance the stance of the bike. To round off the rear section of the bike, we decided to modify the rear swing arm by adding some extra bracing and hollowing out the square tubing. We then made a battery box to mount the eight-cell Anti-Gravity Battery just above the swing arm.
Having a new model created some challenges like trying to find a front sprocket to convert the bike to a chain drive. Luckily, we were able to find one, and used a Super Sprox rear sprocket with a black EK 530 chain. We made a custom aluminum front sprocket cover. The rear end was fitted with a radial brake bracket with a Tokico caliper to match the front.
The last thing we fabricated was the custom exhaust. A full stainless system is what this bike was asking for. Cone Engineering donated their 2″ core muffler for this build, and we recreated the front headers to fit the bike.
The paint was handled by John Edwards of Old Tyme Custom Paint. We wanted to keep it simple, but highlight the gold on the bike. Once the color was laid down by John, we handed it over to Pacman Line & Letter Company to pinstripe and hand-letter the Harley-Davidson. John then laid some pearl over the top of it all before clearing it.
This article first appeared in issue 15 of Iron & Air Magazine, and is reproduced here under license.
Words by Denver Dan Begakis w/ intro by Gregory George Moore | Images by Mark Oblow
