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what is the cheapest way to extend the front end of my ‘01 Harley Davidson Sportster?

harley
warriors4christ777 asked:


I have a 2001 Harley Davidson 1200 Screaming Eagle Sportster. I want to extend the front end a little.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 24th, 2008 at 11:52 am and is filed under Harley. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses to “what is the cheapest way to extend the front end of my ‘01 Harley Davidson Sportster?”

  1. mid night rider Says:
    October 27th, 2008 at 1:59 am

    you could buy some raked triple trees, if thay make them for sportsters. or you can hack up the front end and weld it back together and ad some bondo.

    but the best choice is to leave it aloan. for it will mess up your trail and give you a crappy ride. front end geometry is very technical and hard to understand, so leave it aloan.

  2. pearlblackharley Says:
    October 29th, 2008 at 2:10 am

    new triple tree,watch the rake though,over 35-37 degrees will make you bike more unstable and harder to control.
    there are places that sells the trees along with h-d.just watch what you do.
    i started to add some more extension on my super glide also,and decided it would likely give oiling problems from an elevated motor and stability problems from over extension and left it alone.
    or you can by the whole front end and extended fork for the sportster,and go from there.
    something else i have done also for some true nuts were to machine some aluminum blocks for new bearings for the front wheel,and change the bolts to longer ones,what you actually do is simply make the forks longer on the bottom and reset the wheel into the machined blocks and add new bolts frankly i would only use cold rolled steel bolts here though.likely you can make them with a grinder and side drill just go easy and slowly to not over do the new seat for the wheel shaft.

  3. belleairwater Says:
    November 1st, 2008 at 5:03 am

    Ironheads had a shared motor/trans case so when people would only extend the forks all the oil would go to the trans and starve the engine. The new stuff I don’t know about. if you insist to extend the forks do it yourself. Get a shop manual, read the part about the forks, buy your tubes (Forking By Frank was good in the day) and get dirty. You may have to improvise some tools or borrow some but think it out long and hard because shops hate it when they get a box of parts to put together. Ask the HD shop what problems may occur if you do this. Find an older guy that is not a parts changer (Tech) because he’ll have knowledge of experience, hopefully.

  4. caveman_frmc Says:
    November 1st, 2008 at 7:07 pm

    Get some longer fork tubes. You can go 4″ over without raking the frame and it won’t effect the handling. The triple trees that are mentioned are for use with extended tubes. Using raked trees with stock tubes may adversely affect the handling. They were made as an alternative to raking the frame. As for the oil issue, I knew a guy, RIP Greg, that ran an ironhead Sporty with at least 6″ over fork tubes and no rake and he rode it for 20 years or better and never had any trouble.

    If you use raked triple trees you will need longer fork tubes. As I said before these trees are an alternative to raking the frame. So you can either go 4″ over without raking, or go longer and use the raked trees or have the frame raked. Since you asked for the cheapest I’d say 4″ over tubes would be your best bet.

  5. mixednutz_rc Says:
    November 4th, 2008 at 2:04 am

    Try going to this sight:

    They sell a tripple tree rake kit that works on most bikes.