I've been thinking about getting a Harley Davidson Fat Boy for a few decades now!
But let me explain how I got there...
The bike bug got me when I was 12 years old.
The husband of an cousin of mine had a bike shop in Chicago back then. He started out with specializing in salvages. He would sit behind the police scanner/radio to hear when and where a motorcycle accident happened in or around Chicago. Once he picked up on one of these misfortunes he'd hop in his pickup truck to rush there. While the riders of crashed bikes were still in shock from the accident, sometimes even laying on stretchers, he made them offers to buy their bikes. Then he took them bikes home to his shop to fix them and later sell them with profit.
He also had specialized in Kawasaki motorcycles like the Z900 and the Z1300.
He used to "soup up" Kawasaki Z 1300 bikes with turbochargers and nitro injection for example, which was crazy especially at that time in the 70ties. He sold an turbo/nitro bolt on kit for these bikes nationwide and had become the US customizing/tuning expert for Kawasaki in the US with lots of recognition in motorcycle magazines and trade fairs and so on.
He also manufactured custom parts for the Z 1300 like an elongated swing arm, custom handlebars and so on. Really nuts these things... the Z 1300 even in stock setup was an powerhouse compared to other motorcycles at the time.
But with these brutal motor customization's they had so much power that only very experienced riders could handle them even.
The motorcycle tires at that time almost looked like mountain bicycle tires of the present and the frames of motorcycles weren't as stiff and stress resistant as modern tech.
Let's just say this was really wild up to a level that is unthinkable today! Hahaha!
He also was affiliated with some motorcycle club people. He wasn't patched in or by no means a "hangaround" with any of the MC's but he was very respected in these circles and at any given time when I went by his shop the place was packed with those hardcore bikers drinking their beers and shots and talking bikes and ladies and, as I learned much later, they were also "taking care of all kind of businesses" too occasionally.
So Arpard, had some stage III tuning sets for Harleys as well and also customized handle bars, swing arms and crazy long front wheel forks chopper style.
I would've loved to "help" a little in the shop but besides some little cleaning tasks and getting cold drinks for the guys I was told to stay out of the way. But he and the other guys there showed me some stuff regarding working on bikes and he even let me practice a little welding in his shop.
Arpard had explained me how he started modifying, tuning bikes by optimizing gas inlets, headers, manifolds and camshafts on these. He gave me the big tour on how he optimized the turbocharger operation and used the NOS (nitro injection) to get the turbo up to ~90,000 revs in actually milliseconds. I had a basic understanding of combustion engines since I was 8 or 9 years old but Arpard taught me so much about engines and motorcycles in this muggy, hot Chicago summer that I felt like an little expert when I got back home. Actually I put my new learned skills to work right after I got home and all the kids in the little village I grew up in brought me there mopeds and dirt bikes for some special Lucky treatment! Jeez... good times!
That final infection with the bike bug was actually a bitch ride (sitting in the passenger saddle) with Arpard on one of his heavily modified Z1300 (Turbo/Nitro).
He took me for a cruise in Chicago going south on Cicero Ave. At a red light we stopped a goat (Pontiac GTO) showed up beside us letting his motor rev a little. He clearly wanted to race Arpard.
Arpard, 6.3 ft tall, 3 dan in Karate, worked some doors on the side as a youngster, said with his deep, rusty voice "hold on...". So I held on to Arpard and my dear life while he opened that Z 1300 up "a little" and all hell broke loose blasting down Cicero like he was clearly trying to obliterate the sonic barrier!
I even slipped off one of the footrests and was absolutely terrified because in my mind I had already flown off of the bike and the guy with his Goat behind us would certainly finish me off be rolling over me. Hahaha!
Then Arpard hit the brakes hard because we were coming up to an red light and I hit my face on Arpards steel back hard.
The goat guy rolled up to the right of us, nodded respectfully and then he took a right, and we rolled further down Cicero Ave for a while and rode back to Arpards shop as if nothing had happened.
That was that for my little boy brain and little pumping heart. The bug had got me good!
The feeling of power with seemingly no limit, the dark growling of the bike turning into a loud screaming as the revs went up (not much of an exhaust silencing going on if you have a straight pipe behind the turbo), the sheer bodily sensation while being scared to the level of terror I had never experienced before, I really almost shat my pants, was so impressive that it stuck with me up to the present. It was this, to me perfect, bonding of aesthetics and raw power that made these bikes so irresistible to me.
All this had turned me into a bike nut for good!
Over the years I had different Kawasaki bikes, but my first real motorcycle (had some little 50 cc dirt bikes before that) was an quite ugly Yamaha ZX 550).
When I started riding motorcycles as a teenager in the early 80ties riding a bike was all about aesthetics for me. Sure, power, speed but most importantly aesthetics. Ok... budget limitations had "forced" me to trade one of my cars for this "special" Yamaha... but after this bike I bought an 750 cc Kawasaki Zephyr which was like an homage to the late 70ties Z series bikes from Kawasaki.
Kawasaki Zephyr 750
Later I upgraded to an Kawasaki Zephyr 1100.
This bike had substantially more hp than the 750 cc machine but still wasn't really sporty compared to other bikes of this era.
So I started working my way through the "stages"... hahaha! Stage I and stage II had given me e little more power, she was now "dynoed" at 117 hp (before 93 hp) but still my thirst for more raw power wasn't stilled. Just as I was planning for an stage 3 "everything done to it" besides changing natural aspiration the owner of the Kawasaki dealership where I bought these bikes talked to me while I was in there picking up the bike after some service was done to her.
He told me that he's absolutely fine with making another couple of 1000 Deutsche Marks on me for that stage III idea I just couldn't shake but he suggested that I should test ride one of the ZX9R he had sitting there in his showroom.
I said, ooof... "these things are the epitome of ugly..." in Germany we called these "Joghurt Becher" (yogurt cups) because of all the plastic on these, "but anyways alright I'll give it a shot".
And a shot it was...
As I drove off the lot with this monster everything felt eerie familiar and comfortable. Up to this date I had never taken one of these out for a spin. I let her roll a little at low revs and then when I reached the first Autobahn ramp I could reach I shifted down two gears and turned on throttle grip as I was used to it from my beautiful but powerless Zephyr... the bike immediatly gave me massive slip on the rear tire and at the same time the nose of this black beauty rose up towards the clear blue sky. I shifted up one gear another gear and slowly the nose came down more and more... another gear still at almost full throttle and this was the first time I took a look at the speedometer... Jeez this little bitch was going like hell and I saw 220 kph (136 mph) the pointer still rising fast... traffic got more dense and I had to close the throttle soonish after this... the pointer showing 270 kph (167n mph).
I played around with my new friend a little then drove back to the dealership, bought this fun factory of a bike, thought to myself aesthetics are overrated anyways and that was that.
I was a sports bike guy now. I sold the 1100 Zephyr to a friend who still owns it and puts a few hundred miles on her every year.
After this one I bought a new Kawasaki ZX9R in 1998 with even more horsepower and less weight which I made up for because I had gained a few pounds. ;-)
All along I always played with the thought of buying a nice Harley cruiser to accompany my daily rider ZX9R for the more laid back riding every once in a while.
Back in 2004, just at the time I was getting serious about buying one of these Harley Davison Fat Boy thunder bikes additionally to my Kawasaki ZX9R for cruising, I was shot out of my daily rider Kawasaki ZX9R saddle and everything in my life was changed at an instant.
Some, pretty much careless, woman took my right away on an bypass road around Idstein, a smaller city in Hessen Germany, and I hit her car with about 44 mph.
I couldn't even hit the brakes just a little because she drove right in front of me while looking me in the eyes. Who knows what she was thinking while she looked right through me. There may or may not have been a mobile phone involved also which I cannot confirm because of possible insurance issues on her side.
I hit her car on the side at about the b pillar position and things went pretty shitty for me because I didn't go over her car to fly or skid another 40, 50 or 60 meters but was squashed between little bitch and careless womens car. The impact pushed the car away giving room for the bike to then hitting the car with the side... me in between.
I'll spare you the gory details... hahaha! but that accident really turned my life upside down and I'm still having lots of issues due to this accident and the injuries that I suffered from this haven't left me a single day without pain since then.
I lost a lot back then and one of the most hurtful deprivations from this was not being able to ride a motorcycle anymore. One of the many injuries from this accident was some torn nerves in my left leg and lower left back so my left leg is paralyzed from a little over the knee downwards.
So, if I want to ride a "normal" bike I would need something like an hydraulic or electronic shifter because I can't raise my left foot for manually shifting gears on a regular bike.
I looked into this though and there are a few solutions for this available in the market but it always felt wrong to get a bike with such additional gadgets.
On a Harley Davidson Fat Boy, as with many other Harley's, you've got an double shifter pedal where I can operate shifting up and down the gears just with my heel!
Harley shopping journey...
I was checking the market for used Fat Boy's for almost a year now and what used to be some romantic thought about riding bikes again will become a reality soon!
I started thinking about this in terms of a project bike. So I looked at older bikes that weren't customized at all with lower mileages somewhere in the range of up to 20 k miles.
Not so easy as I found out over time! Most privately sold bikes either didn't fit my general requirements (no accident in bike history and around/below 20 k miles) at all or were heavily modified/customized, mostly not in a good way.
My budget for this was/is 16K €.
What I learned was the following...
Scams...
Around 40% of the ads you can find in popular online car/bike sale online platforms are either fake or straight up scams.
Over and over I had the same scam mo especially with bikes that seemed to be too good to be true! Like low mileage and specials at an absurdly low price.
The scam goes something like this...
"The Bike is not in Germany at the moment! This is no issue though! You can send the money for the bike to an shipment company with an trustee service, they'll deliver the bike and pay me the money for the bike when they pick it up. I'll pay for the shipment and give you another 10-20% price deduction when you buy"
They placed a little story around this also like... "I was in Germany until recently but had to move to Denmark (or some other European country) and took the bike along for the move. It still has German registration but to get it registered here I would have to pay a lot taxes and customs. I'd rather sell the bike so it can go to a "good" new home.
Of course there is no legitimate shipping company with trustee service behind these offers but llc's or other legal company forms, mostly in East-Europe Poland or Hungary for instance) that simply take the money and never get you "your" bike that wasn't ever actually owned by the guy that put up the online ads. They would use bike pics and bike descriptions they stole from other online ads for example.
In some cases I've used reverse image web searches and voila, often I could find the bikes with their rightful owners.
Private sellers with much to high price ideas...
This category seemed almost the most absurd in general!
Either higher mileages, heavily customized in a way that wasn't my taste at all, accidents or "drops" in bike history or even accidents/drops that weren't made transparent by the owner, odometer manipulations, and prices that were mostly beyond bike prices at either official Harley Davidson dealerships or independent motorcycle traders.
Even when they had acceptable, higher quality customized bikes most of the sellers seem to assume that they'll get back what they invested into an customized rear fender, bigger rear tire or special paint jobs. Of course these things are expensive but much like with cars, the things that you change or customize can only be priced in at a fragment of the original cost.
I did about 10 price negotiations with private sellers but none of them resulted in a deal in the end.
Either I could prove undeclared accidents in the history of the bikes or odometer tampering, by using the VIN (vehicle identification number) and free online VIN checkers that are able to show/find such issues. At least for bikes that were imported from the USA (around 50% of the bikes in the German Harley Davidson market are US imports), or other issues with the regarding bikes.
In one case of an 2004 Harley Davidson Fat Boy I was really close and the negotiation went fine but in the end we couldn't close this deal because of an 500 € discrepancy between my last offer and the price the seller wanted.
When I say last offer I mean it.
In general I don't like to fleece anyone in the deals I make. I'm looking for deals that leave both, seller and buyer at least content with the result of a deal. Maybe I do not get the best negotiable price and my counterpart won't get as much as she/he expected but the deal should make both happy. Deals that are tainted by one or the other feeling cheated or outsmarted are bad imho.
Official Harley Davidson dealerships or independent bike dealerships...
Here also you can find a wide range of dealers that either have absurdly overpriced bikes to relatively fair prices.
Of course since dealers must give you a 12 month guaranty on everything they sell they'll have to calculate for possible losses from guaranty, human resources, shop/office rent, tools and inventory and all this is priced in for the bikes they offer.
So when you check German vs. other European or US bike prices you can find that other European bikes are almost priced identical to Germany but the price difference between Germany and the US always accounts for additional shipping cost, customs, taxes and higher labor prices here in contrast to the US.
The result is, in average you can see an 20-40% higher price here in Germany than in the States.
Best time to buy in general is most certainly Winter time. Lesser buyers and in some cases large inventories at the dealerships make for some pressure on bike prices in this time of the year.
This goes for all sellers be it private or commercial.
I found that the prices for Harley Davidson Fat Boy's were pretty stable in the above 10k area for manufacturing years 2004 and up.
Since I favored the 103 cui motor with double cams and abs on the bike over the older 96 cui motor, mostly no abs, smaller back tire and so on I concentrated on bikes younger than 2010.
You can find lots of numbered "special edition" bikes too. These special edition bikes are mostly only interesting for collectors I guess. For me this was no important option that I would be willing the pay a premium price for.
In early November of this year I felt that my selection process had taken me too long already so in the end I made a short list of my candidate list that left me with 2 bikes to compare. Everything that breached these conditions got kicked out of my list.
No Go conditions...
- older than 2010
- more than 25k miles
- more than 16k € asked
- fender bender Ok but more than that is a no go!
- heavily and not aesthetic customized bikes
- private sellers
These here were the last two standing...
Stock bike, first registration 2017, fresh German safety inspection, below 10k km on the odometer.
I don't like the color too much though...
and
This one! heavily modified with custom back end, changed handlebar,
Below 30k km, first registration 2015.
I decided to buy the second one!
Since I would've changed the back end on the other bike anyways to the general looks of the second bike, changes that would've cost me around 2-2.5 k €, and I didn't like the dual color design of the other bike in contrast to that imho cool black and chrome look of "my" bike,
Very clean looking and besides the handle bars nothing on this bike seems to be too "flashy".
Chrome wheels...
Unobstructed view on the rear tire and license plate holder on the side...
Abs unit and double pedal shifter...
Fuel gauge...
Shortened front fender and ox head headlight...
Bike front from the left...
From the back looking down...
So this has happened... hahaha!
Now I'm hoping for a mild and dry December!
I just transferred the money to my HD dealer for my new bike so that "little bitch" (yep, my bikes and cars have names) will be with me in the first December week.
I've been stacking sats and hodling Bitcoin for some time now and for getting this bike I sold a little Bitcoin before the recent slump... but it still hurts to give hard earned and long hodled Bitcoin for dirty fiat! Like physical pain... Hahaha!
So, how do you like my new used bike?
Let me know down in the comments!
_Cheers!
Lucky
He also had specialized in Kawasaki motorcycles like the Z900 and the Z1300.
He used to "soup up" Kawasaki Z 1300 bikes with turbochargers and nitro injection for example, which was crazy especially at that time in the 70ties. He sold an turbo/nitro bolt on kit for these bikes nationwide and had become the US customizing/tuning expert for Kawasaki in the US with lots of recognition in motorcycle magazines and trade fairs and so on.
He also had manufactured custom parts for the Z 1300 like an elongated swing arm, custom handlebars and so on. Really nuts these things... the Z 1300 even in stock setup was an powerhouse compared to other motorcycles at the time. But with these brutal motor customization's they had so much power that only very experienced riders could handle them. The motorcycle tires at that time looked like mountain bicycle tires of the present almost and the frames of motorcycles weren't as stiff and capable as modern tech. Let's just say this was really wild to a level that is almost unthinkable today! Hahaha!
He also was affiliated with some motorcycle club people. He wasn't patched in but very respected in these circles and at any given time when I went by his shop the place was crowded with those hardcore bikers. He had some stage III tuninig sets for Harleys as well and also customized handle bars, swing arms and crazy long front wheel forks chopper style. I even helped a little in the shop whenever I could and he showed me some stuff and even let me practice a little welding in his shop.
So, yeah that bike bug thing that got me was a bitch ride (sitting in the passenger saddle) with Arpard on one of his Z1300.
He took me for a cruise going south on Cicero Ave. At a light we stopped a goat (Pontiac GTO) showed up beside us letting his motor rev a little. He clearly wanted to race Arpard. Arpard, 6.3 ft tall and with his deep rusty voice said "hold on...". So I held on to Arpard and my dear life while he opened that Z 1300 up "a little" and all hell broke loose blasting down Cicero like he was trying to obliterate the sonic barrier!
I slipped off one of the footrests and was absolutely terrified because in my mind I had already flown off of the bike and the guy with his Goat behind us would certainly finish me off be rolling over me. Hahaha!
Then Arpard hit the brakes hard because he was coming up to an red light and I hit my face on Arpards back.
The goat guy rolled up to the right of us nodded respectfully and then he took a right, we rolled further down Cicero for a while and rode back to Arpards shop as if nothing had happened.
That was that for my brain and little pumping heart. The bug had got me good!
The feeling of power with seemingly no limit, the sheer bodily sensation while being scared to the level of terror I had never experienced before, I really almost shat my pants, was so impressive that it stuck with me up to the present.
Back in 2004, just at the time I was getting serious about buying one of these thunder bikes, I was shot out of my Kawasaki ZX9R saddle and everything in my life was changed at an instant.
Some careless woman took my right away on an bypass road around Idstein, a smaller city in Hessen Germany, and I hit her car with about 44 mph.
I couldn't even hit the brakes just a little because she drove right in front of me while looking me in the eyes.
That accident really turned my life upside down and I'm still having lot's of issues due to this accident and the injuries that I suffered from this haven't left me a single day without pain since then.
I lost a lot back then and one of the most hurtful deprivations from this was not being able to ride a motorcycle anymore. One of the many injuries from this accident was some torn nerves in my left leg and lower left back so my left leg is paralyzed from a little over the knee downwards.
So, if I want to ride a "normal" bike I would need something like an hydraulic or electronic shifter because I can't raise my left foot for manually shifting gears on a regular bike.
I looked into this though and there are a few solutions for this available in the market but it always felt wrong to get a bike with such additional gadgets.
On a Harley Davidson Fat Boy, as with many other Harley's, you've got an double shifter pedal where I can operate shifting up and down the gears just with my heel!
Harley shopping journey...
I was checking the market for used Fat Boy's for almost a year now and what used to be some romantic thought about riding bikes again will become a reality soon!
I started thinking about this in terms of a project bike. So I looked at older bikes that weren't customized at all with lower mileages somewhere in the range of up to 20 k miles.
Not so easy as I found out over time! Most privately sold bikes either didn't fit my general requirements (no accident in bike history and around/below 20 k miles) at all or were heavily modified/customized, mostly not in a good way.
My budget was 16K €.
What I learned was the following...
Scams...
Around 40% of the ads you can find in popular online car/bike sale online platforms are either fake or straight up scams.
Over and over I had the same scam mo especially with bikes that seemed to be too good to be true! Like low mileage and specials at an absurdly low price.
The scam goes something like this...
"The Bike is not in Germany at the moment! This is no issue though! You can send the money for the bike to an shipment company with an trustee service, they'll deliver the bike and pay me the money for the bike when they pick it up. I'll pay for the shipment and give you another 10-20% price deduction when you buy"
They placed a little story around this also like... "I was in Germany until recently but had to move to Denmark (or some other European country) and took the bike along for the move. It still has German registration but to get it registered here I would have to pay a lot taxes and customs. I'd rather sell the bike so it can go to a "good" new home.
Of course there is no legitimate shipping company with trustee service behind these offers but llc's or other legal company forms, mostly in East-Europe Poland or Hungary for instance) that simply take the money and never get you "your" bike that wasn't ever actually owned by the guy that put up the online ads. They would use bike pics and bike descriptions they stole from other online ads for example.
In some cases I've used reverse image web searches and voila, often I could find the bikes with their rightful owners.
Private sellers with much to high price ideas...
This category seemed almost the most absurd in general!
Either higher mileages, heavily customized in a way that wasn't my taste at all, accidents or "drops" in bike history or even accidents/drops that weren't made transparent by the owner, odometer manipulations, and prices that were mostly beyond bike prices at either official Harley Davidson dealerships or independent motorcycle traders.
Even when they had acceptable, higher quality customized bikes most of the sellers seem to assume that they'll get back what they invested into an customized rear fender, bigger rear tire or special paint jobs. Of course these things are expensive but much like with cars, the things that you change or customize can only be priced in at a fragment of the original cost.
I did about 10 price negotiations with private sellers but none of them resulted in a deal in the end.
Either I could prove undeclared accidents in the history of the bikes or odometer tampering, by using the VIN (vehicle identification number) and free online VIN checkers that are able to show/find such issues. At least for bikes that were imported from the USA (around 50% of the bikes in the German Harley Davidson market are US imports), or other issues with the regarding bikes.
In one case of an 2004 Harley Davidson Fat Boy I was really close and the negotiation went fine but in the end we couldn't close this deal because of an 500 € discrepancy between my last offer and the price the seller wanted.
When I say last offer I mean it.
In general I don't like to fleece anyone in the deals I make. I'm looking for deals that leave both, seller and buyer at least content with the result of a deal. Maybe I do not get the best negotiable price and my counterpart won't get as much as she/he expected but the deal should make both happy. Deals that are tainted by one or the other feeling cheated or outsmarted are bad imho.
Official Harley Davidson dealerships or independent bike dealerships...
Here also you can find a wide range of dealers that either have absurdly overpriced bikes to relatively fair prices.
Of course since dealers must give you a 12 month guaranty on everything they sell they'll have to calculate for possible losses from guaranty, human resources, shop/office rent, tools and inventory and all this is priced in for the bikes they offer.
So when you check German vs. other European or US bike prices you can find that other European bikes are almost priced identical to Germany but the price difference between Germany and the US always accounts for additional shipping cost, customs, taxes and higher labor prices here in contrast to the US.
The result is, in average you can see an 20-40% higher price here in Germany than in the States.
Best time to buy in general is most certainly Winter time. Lesser buyers and in some cases large inventories at the dealerships make for some pressure on bike prices in this time of the year.
This goes for all sellers be it private or commercial.
I found that the prices for Harley Davidson Fat Boy's were pretty stable in the above 10k area for manufacturing years 2004 and up.
Since I favored the 103 cui motor with double cams and abs on the bike over the older 96 cui motor, mostly no abs, smaller back tire and so on I concentrated on bikes younger than 2010.
You can find lots of numbered "special edition" bikes too. These special edition bikes are mostly only interesting for collectors I guess. For me this was no important option that I would be willing the pay a premium price for.
In early November of this year I felt that my selection process had taken me too long already so in the end I made a short list of my candidate list that left me with 2 bikes to compare. Everything that breached these conditions got kicked out of my list.
No Go conditions...
- older than 2010
- more than 25k miles
- more than 16k € asked
- fender bender Ok but more than that is a no go!
- heavily and not aesthetic customized bikes
- private sellers
These here were the last two standing...
Stock bike, first registration 2017, fresh German safety inspection, below 10k km on the odometer.
I don't like the color too much though...
and
This one! heavily modified with custom back end, changed handlebar,
Below 30k km, first registration 2015.
I decided to buy the second one!
Since I would've changed the back end on the other bike anyways to the general looks of the second bike, changes that would've cost me around 2-2.5 k €, and I didn't like the dual color design of the other bike in contrast to that imho cool black and chrome look of "my" bike,
Very clean looking and besides the handle bars nothing on this bike seems to be too "flashy".
Chrome wheels...
Unobstructed view on the rear tire and license plate holder on the side...
Abs unit and double pedal shifter...
Fuel gauge...
Shortened front fender and ox head headlight...
Bike front from the left...
From the back looking down...
So this has happened... hahaha!
Now I'm hoping for a mild and dry December!
I just transferred the money to my HD dealer for my new bike so that "little bitch" (yep, my bikes and cars have names) will be with me in the first December week.
I've been stacking sats and hodling Bitcoin for some time now and for getting this bike I sold a little Bitcoin before the recent slump... but it still hurts to give hard earned and long hodled Bitcoin for dirty fiat! Like physical pain... Hahaha!
So, how do you like my new used bike?
Let me know down in the comments!
_Cheers!
Lucky