Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The Harley-Davidson WLA is a Harley-Davidson motorcycle that was produced to US Army specifications in the years during and around World War II. It was based on an existing civilian model, the WL , and is of the 45 solo type, so called due to its 45-cubic-inch (740 cm 3 ) engine displacement and single-rider design.
Copy of DKW RT 125 given to Harley-Davidson as war reparations. More than ten thousand were sold in the first year of production. Model 165 165 cc (10.1 cu in) two-stroke single 1953–1959 Replacement for the Model 125, with larger engine. Hummer 125 cc (7.6 cu in) two-stroke single 1955–1959
A 1955 Model B "Hummer" at the Harley-Davidson Museum. The Hummer was added to Harley-Davidson's model line in 1955. It was a stripped-down basic model using a redesigned "B-model" engine with the old 125 cc capacity. It was named after Dean Hummer, a Harley dealer in Omaha, Nebraska who led national Harley two-stroke sales. [2]
The Type 97 motorcycle, or Rikuo, was a copy of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle produced with a sidecar from 1935 in Japan under license from Harley-Davidson by the Sankyo Company (later Rikuo Nainen Company). Some 18,000 of the machines were used by the Imperial Japanese forces during World War II.
Harley-Davidson XA opposed-twin engine runs 100 °F (38 °C) cooler than a V-twin. [4]During WWII, the U.S. Army asked Harley-Davidson to design a specification of a motorcycle much like the BMWs used by German forces, with shaft drive, a boxer engine, and several other features that made the BMWs exceptionally reliable and low-maintenance machines.
As part of war reparations, Harley-Davidson acquired the design of a small German motorcycle, the DKW RT 125, which they adapted, manufactured, and sold from 1948 to 1966. [46] Various models were made, including the Hummer from 1955 to 1959, but they are all colloquially referred to as "Hummers" at present. [47]
During World War I, all of Harley-Davidson's production was furnished to the U.S. military, so the Dudley Perkins Company survived by buying, refurbishing and reselling used motorcycles. [3] At the beginning of the Depression, Perkins reported that the company was able to sell only 15 motorcycles in 1930, but business improved as the years went ...
The flathead engine saw service in Harley-Davidson motorcycles beginning with the Model WS flat-twin, produced from 1919 to 1923, [6] and continuing in 1924 with single-cylinder export-model 21-cubic-inch (340 cc) and 30.5-cubic-inch (500 cc) singles and continued in Servi-Cars until 1973. In the domestic U.S. market, the 45-cubic-inch (740 cc ...