This is a Harley-Davidson Sportster 1200 street tracker, a custom motorcycle that takes inspiration in equal parts from the classic Harley XR750 flat tracker and the influential catalogue of builds by Britain’s Charlie Stockwell.
Street trackers were originally developed to allow people to ride their flat track racers on the road, things like headlights, blinkers, front brakes, and license plates are added to make them road legal, while keeping the minimalist nature of the flat tracker as intact as possible.
Fast Facts – A Sportster 1200 Street Tracker
- The Harley-Davidson Sportster has always been a popular starting point for flat tracker and street tracker conversions. In fact back in the late 1960s Harley based the then-new XR750 flat track race bike on their production Sportster engine.
- For the uninitiated, flat track racing typically takes place on oval shaped dirt tracks, riders reach high speeds and extreme lean angles as they battle for a win or a top three finish.
- Street trackers were developed to make flat track style bikes road legal, along with scramblers they’ve become one of the most popular forms of modern custom motorcycle.
- The Sportster 1200 street tracker you see here was built between in 2019 and 2020. It has a Yamaha R6 front end, 19 inch wheels, a chain conversion, an S&S Hooligan exhaust, and a slew of other additions to the total value of approximately £8,000 or $10,000 USD.
The Harley-Davidson Sportster 1200
The Harley-Davidson Sportster is a series of motorcycles that have been in continuous production since 1957, making them the oldest family of motorcycles made by Harley-Davidson.
This bike proved its mettle racing at the Lydden Hill Bike Shed Festival event in England.
The first Sportster was based on the previous Model K from 1952, a motorcycle that many consider to be the first in the Sportster family though the name wasn’t used until five years later.
Harley had developed the Sportster specifically as an answer to the popular performance motorcycles coming out of Britain from companies like Norton, Triumph, and BSA.
As the model name implies, the Sportster was developed to be a sporting motorcycle by the standards of the day, with better performance than the larger, heavier bikes preferred by some American manufacturers.
The 1200cc Sportster has been in production since 1988 when it was released as an update to the 1100cc model. The 1200 remained in production as the top-of-the-line for the Sportster series until it was replaced by the new Sportster S in 2021, with an all-new engine.
The Sportster 1200 Street Tracker Shown Here
Due to the huge number of Sportster 1200s that have been built over the years and they oftentimes affordable asking prices on the secondhand market, they make a very popular starting point for many custom motorcycle builds.
Chain drive conversions are popular for Harley-based street trackers. The original belt drive system is done away with, and usually new 19″ wheels are fitted front and back.
The simple air-cooled 45º V-twin is famous for its good torque output, and it responds well to modifications – modifications that are typically not too complex for owners to do at home by themselves with simple hand tools.
This custom build started with a 1996 Harley-Davidson Sportster 1200, it was completely stripped down and a comprehensive rebuild began in 2019.
The original forks were removed and replaced with a modified, rebuilt pair of upside down forks from a Yamaha R6, combined with two Suzuki Hayabusa 310mm brake rotors and the original R6 Gold Spot four piston calipers.
Gold-painted 19″ wheels were fitted front and back, along with a chain drive conversion and a pair of flat tracker appropriate Maxxis DTR1 medium tires. In the rear two YSS 350mm adjustable shock absorbers were added to better match the new forks, and a Saddlemen eliminator seat unit was modified to fit.
The bike was then finished with with a S&S Hooligan exhaust and heatshield, and a top end rebuild that included new piston rings and gaskets.
The completed street tracker is now for sale out of Essex in the United Kingdom on Collecting Cars in a live online auction. If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can visit the listing here.
Images courtesy of Collecting Cars
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
