So what's the general consensus on the link between Buell and HD. I was pondering this today whilst wandering around a Harley dealer. Who sees their buell as a modified harley, or a racing style harley, or a cool street fighter with a harley engine. Is the link a proud one or to be ignored.

I'm not planning on joining HOG or anything, just interested in people's opinion.

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What goes around comes around

Get your mate to kick you in the balls and see if you still want to be mates when the pain stops.

Any association with HD is purely accidental and by want of need at the time. Hate the greedy capitalist money grabbing shallow shite bags. I also detest most that ride their mega expensive tassel tractors and buy into the 'lifestyle' thing.

A generalisation I know as some of the bikes and people are good. But the company really makes my blood boil

If anyone comments on the X1 and remark about the HD 'bits' I always say I've never heard of HD

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Better to Burn Out Than Fade Away

In the garage -

2001 X1
KTM390 Duke
Ducati 950 Monster +
CCM Spitfire Scrambler

Stop sitting on the fence, Man, speak your mind

But Wot he sed.
I've long thought that EBRs are the bikes closest to what Erik always wanted to build, but he had to sell his soul to HD (and Hero) along the way...

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'98 M2 Razorback, it's a keeper.

Spot on Clive. I always deny any connection to HD when folk ask about my Tubers. When they ask about my 1125, I tell them that it's the bike that scared the MoFuCo, so they killed it out of spite I also enjoy telling people how MV shafted the wankers at the MoFuCo

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If your dreams don't scare you, they are not big enough.

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Feros Ferio

Do tell... I'm unaware of this.

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'98 M2 Razorback, it's a keeper.

On the other hand............

If HD hadn't given Mr Buell a job in their design department it's very doubtful he would ever have been able to develop many of key features of his designs, like the uni-planar engine mount system, under slung rear shock etc... If HD hadn't allowed Mr Buell to develop his streamlining for the RW750 in their wind tunnel, it would probably never have existed. If HD hadn't cut Mr Buell a deal on 50 XR1000 motors, the RR1000 would never have happened. If HD hadn't agreed to supply XL1200 motors.... Yada yada.......

If Mr Buell hadn't sold a stake in his company to HD in 1994, there would have been no S2 model. And without the S2 there would have been no S1 or M2 or S3. The S2 was an unexpected success which sold in far greater numbers than anyone thought possible or planned for.

If HD hadn't bailed out Mr Buell again in 1999 when the bikes in the showrooms couldn't be sold because they were deemed unsafe, Mr Buell's business would have sunk under the weight of recalls and technical upgrades that had to be applied to varying degrees on all his bikes from 1995 onwards. In particular, the 96 to 98 generation of bikes were getting a new recall every few weeks at one stage. The whole affair was chaos and cost an absolute fortune and model year '99 would have been the only production year for the X1, DDFI S3 and the lardy M2.

And so on.......

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Try doing this to yer fueller...........

Aye, but what have HD ever done for us?...

Still hate the feckers tho

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Better to Burn Out Than Fade Away

In the garage -

2001 X1
KTM390 Duke
Ducati 950 Monster +
CCM Spitfire Scrambler

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Feros Ferio

Well. they do say there's always two sides to a story...
OK, so there's no way of knowing, but I think he'd got where he wanted to be without HD, such is the determination/doggedness of the man; he has more lives than a zombie cat.
Then again if he'd gone straight there, we wouldn't have had our wonderfully idiosyncratic hybrid mongrel bastards to enjoy in the meantime.

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'98 M2 Razorback, it's a keeper.

Yeah, but apart from uni-planar mounting, mass centralisation and streamlining... what have HD ever done for us?

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'98 M2 Razorback, it's a keeper.

....well we never got an aqueduct

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Feros Ferio

Bought my bike back in early 98, (In those days streetfighters and mean looking chops were my thing) saw the S1 and M2 and got excited, here was the bike that I would have built had I won the lottery:
trellis frame ( grew up lusting after Harris/ Moto Martin frames/ etc...)
thunderous engine and minimalistic body work.
Having a connection with HD had no influence on my Buell crush, if anything it was negative - always felt HD was a bit 'Cheesy'. Loved the torque, the sound and the look of the engine, but the rest was well.....Bollocks. Not talking about the riders (well not all of them) but the bikes and HD culture thing

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Today my pet mouse Elvis died ..................He was caught in a trap
There are two types of people in this world, those that can extrapolate

Good thread you've started here king01 !
Reading Graeme's comments reminds me that the thing that got me interested in Buells was seeing a picture of an early S1 or M2, the ones with the curley-wurley headers
The pin-up bike of my youthful dreams was the late seventies' XLCR (IMHO the best looking HD ever), and I thought I was looking at a pic of a newer incarnation of that concept.
One thing led to another and... I'm still riding it.

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'98 M2 Razorback, it's a keeper.