History repeats itself: A Canadian XR750 returns home
Most of the customs we drool over on these pages have little or no history. They?re usually modified after a few mundane years of weekend riding?or transported straight from the showroom floor to the workshop, in the back of a van.
Occasionally, though, we happen across a machine with a decades-long backstory. Like this street legal Harley XR750 tracker from Quebec, Canada, which houses a tuned Sportster engine in an XR750 frame.
Builder Costa Mouzouris originally created the street tracker over 25 years ago. ?I built it for a customer in 1995,? he says. ?I lost track of it, and then found it in a classified ad about 20 years later, still in original condition. I bought it back, and refreshed it this year with new paint and cast wheels.?
Costa had every reason to keep an eye out for this Harley, because it had history even before he rebuilt it: ?The frame is a genuine 1972 XR750 item,? he says. ?It was raced in the mid 70s to early 80s by a French Canadian rider.?
By the time Costa got his hands on it, the frame was damaged?probably after several crashes. And even worse, the steering neck was no longer in line with the rest of the tubing. So Costa had to cut off part of the top tube and the front down tubes. New chrome-moly tubing and a steering neck were TIG welded in place, and arranged so that a slightly taller Evo engine would fit the frame.
The engine also came from a crash victim: this time, a 1986 Sportster XLH883.
Costa bored the V-twin out to 1,200 cc, a...
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