Harley's Last True Military Motorcycle

[panhead_jim]

Harley's WWII-era WLA is the ubiquitous military motorcycle, but it is not the only model the Motor Company made for the US Military. In the late 50's and early 60's Harley produced a militarized Sportster called the XLA.



Harley's Last True Military Motorcycle

[Chris Haynes]

Harley's last true military bike was the Armstrong model that was sold to many countries into the 1990's.

[panhead_jim]

Harley's last true military bike was the Armstrong model that was sold to many countries into the 1990's.

I mention that one in the article. It's powered by a rotax engine, so I don't consider it a true Harley.

[sirhrmechanic]

Ah Jim... as owner of serial number 00009... I beg to differ. Harley set up an entire factory for these bikes and they were built right in York. If the DoD hadn't specified heavy fuel (ie diesel) after HD had built all the damn bikes, there would probably be a lot of them in service.

It may be a ROTAX patent engine... and an Armstrong design. But don't let the HD employees at York try and tell you it's not an HD.

Ok... so you can redeem yourself by doing one of your great history pieces... on the MT500. Need any pictures? Mine is as new... had 500 miles on it when I got it. Now has about 1000. Carefully cared-for!

Cheers,

Sirhr

[AFJ]

Ah Jim... as owner of serial number 00009... I beg to differ. Harley set up an entire factory for these bikes and they were built right in York. If the DoD hadn't specified heavy fuel (ie diesel) after HD had built all the damn bikes, there would probably be a lot of them in service.

It may be a ROTAX patent engine... and an Armstrong design. But don't let the HD employees at York try and tell you it's not an HD.

Ok... so you can redeem yourself by doing one of your great history pieces... on the MT500. Need any pictures? Mine is as new... had 500 miles on it when I got it. Now has about 1000. Carefully cared-for!

Cheers,

Sirhr

Actually, the Harley-Davidson military single was an SWM design using a Rotax engine gearbox unit. When SWM disappeared, Bombardier-MLW, who own Rotax, arranged for Armstrong in England to produce the bike to replace the Bombardier military 250cc 2-strokes based on the Can-Am 250cc T'n'T trail bike. Harley-Davidson the bought the design and changed the sidecovers to read Harley-Davidson. the Canadian army had about 90 of the MT500s with electric start. The British army bought and used quite a few of these in a 350cc version.
H-D also ran dirt track singles with the Rotax-based engine as H-Ds in the smaller dirt track classes since they were producing the engine/gb units.

"True" (or "false") does not compute with what a manufacturer makes, and H-D produced a lot of bikes based on non-H-D designs over the years.

AFJ