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Harley and Hailwood
Sunday shed wrap
June 10, 2026, by Guy 'Guido' Allen
Sorting a couple of the gems in
the shed
One of today's jobs was hopping into an
Uber and collecting the delightful 1974
Harley-Davidson Sprint 350 SS. It was in
the capable hands of Gassit Motorcycles in
Alphington (Vic).
The brief was to replace
the steering head bearings – a fiddly and and time
consuming job for us mortals. As it was going to be on
a hoist why not change the oil, as well?
I love it when mechanics
treat the bike as their own. Brent identified a couple
of other issues including a front tyre with a bead
that wasn't properly seated, a few globes that needed
changing and a fix-able and annoying oil leak.
Previously the steering
had a disconcerting self-centre tendency thanks to the
worn head bearings, which is now gone. That alone has
changed the handling to something that is light and
predictable. Lovely.
Our next job was to swap out the failing battery for a spare I had in the shed. There was a suspicion the charging system may not be working, however that may not be the case. We need to investigate further and I suspect the system is okay. We'll see.
In the meantime I'm unreasonably pleased with this purchase as there is something about the Sprint that pushes my buttons.
The gent who sold it to me is Gordon Forrester – a world authority on Harley-Davidson Sturgis variants. We recently visited his workshop and must bring you that story...
Our 1985 Ducati Hailwood
Mille has had a big couple of months. When we bought
it not so long ago, it started on the button without
issue.
More recently, we would
get nasty and sad noises from the starter and, if we
persisted, puffs of smoke. Not good.
Now before you launch
into 'why not just kick it over', it doesn't have a
kick-starter. Unlike the two preceding models. Despite
that, I was keen to exercise it and (after a few
attempts) rolled it back it on to my set of roller
starters (below).
This is a tall and heavy bike, with narrow clip-on style handlebars – all of which are perfect for making the exercise a nightmare.
That in turn led to
muggins unintentionally leaning on the screen and
cracking it. See above with the very attractive gaffer
tape repair.
'Boo hoo' I hear you
say, and what's the issue? This bike is a very
original low-miler with under 3000km – which I am
happy to see grow. However losing the original screen
was a blow, as you cannot buy them any more and having
parts like that on board will underpin its value when
I eventually decide to sell it. And, while I'm happy
to ride and enjoy the thing, it would be nice to
preserve as much as possible.
Original screens are
simply not available anywhere in the world, or
certainly not from any known retailer. Facing defeat,
I ordered an aftermarket version. Then, a couple of
days later, the very kind Brett from Brisbane got in
touch and offered me his OEM screen – a spare he had
kept from the days when he too had a Mille – for a
fraction of what it was really worth. His view was he
preferred to see it used and did not want to profit
from someone else's misfortune. Bless him – that was
generous.
Moving on, I left the
Hailwood with Peter Shearman who is a talented
motorcycle sparky and long-term Ducati enthusiast. He
discovered the original starter had an internal fault
that simply could not be solved – it even burned out a
new set of brushes. He then ordered a new motor from
Ducati Gowanloch.
At the same time he took
a hard look at the entire system and made a
significant change, which was to feed power to the
ignition coils direct via a relay rather than
the original system. The latter (and forgive me if I
have the details wrong) fed power via a circuitous
route that included the starter relay and ignition
switch and resulted in a 5v drop.
Peter also happens to be
a switched-on tuner. When I and old mate Falloon
dropped in to collect the bike, he demonstrated its
new ability to start if you looked hard at the button.
A slight exaggeration, and the thing was startling for
its ability to fire at first touch. I wish all my
bikes did that.
In the meantime it's such a joy to again be able to walk out to the shed, turn the key, and take the Hailwood for a gallop.
Next up is changing over
the aftermarket handlebars for originals. Then the
crappy indicators for a good set of replicas. The
latter (see above) is a big issue for Hailwood owners
across all three models of the bevel series.
The plastic bodies of
the originals literally disintegrated over time and
whatever spares stock was out there has been cleaned
out. I managed to buy a new 3D-printed batch and even
that option has since disappeared.
We'll keep you posted...
***
See Falloon's
Hailwood Mille profile
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