The bike of Theseus.
If you’re looking for a pavement pounder with all the accouterments, look no further than Harley-Davidson’s Electra Glide.
From the storage space of the side bags and top case to the wind
protection of the iconic batwing fairing, the company’s first
electric-start motorcycle has been the choice of many touring
riders since 1965. However, if your roads are narrow and curvy instead
of long and straight, the Electra Glide doesn’t provide many benefits.
To help the hefty Harley carve the local Austrian canyons, Wolfgang Mayerl transformed a 1986 Electra Glide into a barebones roadster.
As a full-time mechanical engineer, Mayerl has been moonlighting as a custom motorcycle
builder for three years. Long before Mayerl Motorcycles, the Austrian
native always tinkered with bikes and built his first moped at the age
of ten. Looking for a challenge, Mayerl specifically chose the Harley
tourer because he didn’t “know anyone else who has radically rebuilt an
Electra Glide.”
While the Electra Glide is rarely considered the perfect specimen for a custom
project, Harley-Davidson radically rebuilt the Electra Glide into the
Super Glide in 1971 and later reshaped the Tour Glide into the FXR in
1982. Pairing big twin power with the handling characteristics of the
smaller Sportster created the FX line, and Mayerl Motorcycles borrowed a page from the Motor Company’s playbook with its build—The Who.
First off, Mayerl ripped off hard bags, top case, batwing
fairing, crash bars, and fenders. With the bike stripped to its essence,
the Austrian builder added USD forks from a GSX1300R Hayabusa and a set of Öhlins rear shocks to the reinforced Electra Glide frame. The Who also borrowed aluminum disc wheels from a Harley-Davidson V-Rod with Dunlop D407 tires to provide more grip on the mountain passes.
Turning to the powerplant, Mayerl replaced the aging 80 cubic-inch (1340cc) Evo with an S&S Cycle
113 cubic-inch (1850cc) engine. A legendary S&S teardrop-shaped
Super G carburetor matched the blacked-out motor and a Mayerl created a
custom exhaust for the build. Next, he updated the transmission to a
six-speed gearbox with a Barnett clutch and Dyna 2000i ignition.
Mayerl hand-shaped the cafe racer
style bodywork from 1.3 mm steel sheeting and radically shortened the
front fender compared to the tire hugger originally on the Electra
Glide. Using his mechanical engineering ingenuity, the garage builder
repurposed the tail section as an oil reservoir, fashioned the oil
cooler as external fork springs, integrated the rear lighting into the
backend, and consolidated the electronics.
Topping off the build with a set of wide flat-track
handlebars, Mayerl ensured that the former tourer would enjoy a new
life in the twisties of Austria. According to our colleagues at Bike
Exif, it seems like Mayerl is targeting a KTM for his next build. We severely doubt that he will turn the Ready to Race machine into a mile-muncher, but we can’t wait to see the results nonetheless.
