**The Reliability and Smoothness of Classic Harley-Davidson Bikes**

This is real, all you have to do is change your oil. These bikes are pressurized lubrication, which means they don't require a filter. Most motorcycles from this period were total loss lubrication, where the owner would simply fill up on oil and run until it was gone. In fact, there are documented cases of riders driving these bikes at high speeds, such as 80 to 100 miles per hour, for hours on end to demonstrate their reliability.

The bike in question is a classic Harley-Davidson model from this era, with its distinctive straight-through exhaust and blue color scheme featuring gold stripes and cream-colored wheels. It's been well-maintained and still runs like new, with only 18,000 miles on it. The bike features a straightforward design, including a battery box, toolbox, horn, and dashboard with an ammeter and oil pressure gauge.

One of the most impressive aspects of these bikes is their smoothness. Unlike modern Harley-Davidson models, which can have a "thumping" sound due to their dual camshaft engine, these classic bikes are dead smooth. The bouncy seat provides adequate suspension, although there's no additional front suspension. Riders can expect a comfortable ride, with the bike capable of reaching speeds of up to 110 miles per hour.

**Starting and Riding a Classic Harley-Davidson**

To start the bike, simply kick it into gear and let it idle for a few moments until it warms up. This is especially important on cold days, as the clutch plates can stick together. To avoid this, riders often let the bike idle for a short time before shifting into first gear and pulling away. The bike features a "suicide clutch," which requires a bit of practice to master, but once you get used to it, it's not a problem.

Riding a classic Harley-Davidson requires concentration, as there are many complex systems to manage. The bike has brakes only on the rear wheel, so riders must be careful not to overuse them, or risk causing a fire. However, with practice and patience, these bikes can be just as comfortable to ride as modern motorcycles.

**The History and Performance of Classic Harley-Davidson Bikes**

The Henderson was an extremely popular motorcycle model in the early 20th century, known for its speed and reliability. With a top speed of over 110 miles per hour, it was one of the fastest production motorcycles on the market at the time. The bike's engine produced around 25 horsepower, making it capable of accelerating quickly from a standstill.

In contrast, the Model T Ford, which could reach speeds of up to 42 miles per hour, would often struggle to keep pace with these high-performance bikes. This made the Henderson an attractive option for those who wanted to experience the thrill of speed on two wheels.

Today, classic Harley-Davidson bikes like this one are highly sought after by collectors and enthusiasts. They offer a unique driving experience that's hard to find in modern motorcycles. With proper care and maintenance, these bikes can continue to run smoothly for many years, making them a worthwhile investment for those who appreciate the history and performance of classic American motorcycles.

**The Story Behind the Bike**

I was lucky enough to acquire this bike from an owner who had carefully maintained it over the years. He told me that he had received the bike as a gift from his father, who had used it extensively during his early days as a motorcycle enthusiast. I've spent many hours restoring the bike to its former glory, and it's been a joy to drive.

One of the most interesting aspects of this bike is the story behind its paint job. The original owner had painted the wheels cream-colored at some point in the 1950s, but the rest of the bike remained largely untouched. I've maintained the original patina as much as possible, and it adds a unique touch to the bike's overall appearance.

As I talk to you about this bike, I'm sitting on a stand, with the engine warm and the clutch plates engaged. The bike is ready to go for a spin, and I invite you to join me on a ride through the countryside. With its smoothness and speed, this classic Harley-Davidson is sure to leave a lasting impression.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwell if you've been to this website before you know one of my favorite categories of vehicles is original and unrestored and this 1931 henderson kj certainly uh fits that bill uh this is a motorcycle i got under rather unusual circumstances another guy in his 90s called me are you jay leno you like motorcycles i said yes well listen i'm getting a divorce my old lady's driving me nuts and i got to sell my bike and i said what kind of bike isn't it 31 henderson kj he bought it back in the 40s and he's 90 and he's got a divorce and i didn't want to get into the whole story i said well let me know and we worked out a price and went to arizona and i got the bike and as you can see it is a beautiful unrestored henderson kj i don't know if it's ever been off the road actually but uh he probably parked it for a while in his garage but the head's never been off the bottom's never been opened up on it and these were really beautiful machines you know the henderson kind of gets lost in the harley indian wars most of the four-cylinder motorcycles that are out there are somewhat derived from the henderson brothers henderson was the first motorcycle to go around the world in 1912 1912 a guy drove a henderson around the world they set all kinds of speed records police departments used these because they were incredibly smooth incredibly powerful you could slow right down to eight miles an hour in top gear and then accelerate to 110 if you were a cop back in the 20s and 30s and you wanted to catch a speeder this is what you used in fact it has what they call a tell-tale speedometer if you look right on here you see the white needle and then right next to it is a red needle see and that was the speed that the police officer needed to catch you if the speedlite was 45 and you said i wasn't doing 45 and the officer will go look here's how fast i had to go to catch up to you he'd take you back and that would be the proof let it hold up in court i guess so but that's the way they did it these were built like a watch these were four cylinder engines 80 cubic inches and they had five main bearings now at the time most four cylinder automobile engines in america did not have five main bearings yet this did these were built to be incredibly um reliable bosch magneto ignition starts under almost any circumstances you know this thing can sit for six months second kick it fires right up got a nice big old american generator on there makes plenty of amps plenty of power pretty straightforward motor dipstick is right here to check your oil or it looks pretty clean now normally i'd wipe it off and put it back but i just checked it so don't write me a letter uh here's your oil fill right there a transmission and a crankshaft and an engine rather share the same oil there's your schliebler carburetor you've got wide open then you've got prime when it's cold you put it up right here that acts as a choke that primes it kickstart obviously magneto ignition so if your battery is dead she'll run you have brakes front and back this here is a little gear here is for your speedometer uh center stand uh these also had reverse you could also get a henderson with a reverse gear i've got another 31kj that has reverse this one does not have it most people that used it for sidecar work that's usually all the reason he got the reverse three-speed gearbox this is still one of the nicest riding motorcycles you know if you want to go cow trailing if you're on like a dirt road or a fire road up in the woods you put this thing in second gear lug it right down chug i mean it's just a nice handling bike with these big wide handlebars uh it was not a cheap machine they were pretty expensive but the kj was the top of the line they also built a model called the kl which was a little faster you got five more horsepower this was uh 40 horsepower which doesn't seem like a lot but you got to remember a modern harley is probably only 57 or 60 horsepower and this is uh 75 years earlier and a lot lighter and with a lot of torque you know what's so funny we always think of the honda cb 750 of 1969 as the breakthrough a four-cylinder motorcycle oh my god and but people forget that the americans had it back in the 20s and 30s back in the teens actually the first four cylinder henderson was 1912. i'll get my little grease gun before you take one of these out what you want to do is you've got your grease fittings up here and you probably need to do this every couple of hundred miles i tend to do it more often than i should just because i like to save it but yeah you pump a little grease into your valve train hit each one of these this is real all you have to do change your oil there's no filter these have pressurized lubrication most motorcycles for this period were total loss lubrication which means you just filled it up with oil you ran until they all ran out these had pressure lubrication in fact there's a number of documented cases of guys driving these on the speed ovals at 80 to 100 miles an hour flat out for hours on end to show how reliable the oil system was you have a straight through exhaust on these that's the color that came in blue with the gold stripes and the cream colored wheels i think this might have been painted maybe once in the 50s but other than that she's pretty stock there's your battery box you've got your toolbox there's no suspension other than the sprung seat which actually works pretty good you got suspension on the front you got your horn people get out of the way and a really nice dashboard you got your ammeter your oil pressure gauge your on off light switch throttle you have two gas tanks two separate tanks one to run one for reserve and what you want to do is when you start one of these up what happens is especially on a cold day like today your clutch plates will stick together so you want to let it idle for a little bit on the stand and warm up and kind of go through the gears while she's sitting on the uh on the stand let's see how she starts one kick laddie one kick that's how you impress all the harley guys just kind of walk over while you're talking to him hey what's out of harley yeah i just feel like that broom just started right up they think you're superman my golly i think we're ready to go for a drive normally i like to wear a full face helmet but the talking rider wearing open face in fact michael jordan the basketball player gave me this one he's got a suzuki racing team very cool i told him he should race henderson but he went with suzuki despite that's what they call a suicide clutch they call it suicide clutch because like committing suicide every time you use one um if you're not used to it it can be very tricky especially in traffic but you know you get used to it just like anything else you put your clutch in you drop it in first gear and you pull away as i mentioned this is your advance and your when you come to light you your ignition you shut off your throttle you put your clutch in you put it neutral there's a lot of stuff to do on these old bikes you got to concentrate so it can be a little tricky okay see i'm advancing the ignition i'm giving it gas i'm running the clutch out and i'm pulling away it's a really comfortable bike you can go 75 on the freeway no problem except you've only got brakes in the back and that's not much of a break have you stand on too long it will catch fire so you got to be careful there's a lot of myths about these old bikes old timers would say at night you can see the rear cylinder glow from the heat but that's not really true i never had any anything like that the one thing you walk away from these bikes is just how incredibly smooth they are so many of the harleys in the indians had a thumping which which is cool in its own right but these were dead smooth there aren't many automobiles it is smooth as a henderson and these were the most popular four-cylinder motorcycles in the world got that nice bouncy seat as much as i like to restore old machinery it's fun when you find one that doesn't need it this bike's got 18 000 miles on it and she runs as good as she did than the day she was new you can ride it just like a modern bike as long as you don't plan on doing any stopping what a machine these were when they were new you know as much as i like to crocker and some of those bikes in the 30s those are pretty expensive and pretty hard to find the henderson was well it was an expensive motorcycle but not the most expensive but there was nothing faster a gusenberg cost twenty thousand dollars and this would catch it you know much like uh zx14 or suzuki hayabusha today this was the superbike of the early 30s there was nothing faster i mean a model t went 42 miles an hour any other cars work to go 70 or 80. this one 110. so if you're speeding in the duesenberg this is about the only thing that's going to catch you well i'm going to go back to my garage and speed into duesenberg and see if one of my friends can catch me all right hey thanks for checking out the bike see you next weekwell if you've been to this website before you know one of my favorite categories of vehicles is original and unrestored and this 1931 henderson kj certainly uh fits that bill uh this is a motorcycle i got under rather unusual circumstances another guy in his 90s called me are you jay leno you like motorcycles i said yes well listen i'm getting a divorce my old lady's driving me nuts and i got to sell my bike and i said what kind of bike isn't it 31 henderson kj he bought it back in the 40s and he's 90 and he's got a divorce and i didn't want to get into the whole story i said well let me know and we worked out a price and went to arizona and i got the bike and as you can see it is a beautiful unrestored henderson kj i don't know if it's ever been off the road actually but uh he probably parked it for a while in his garage but the head's never been off the bottom's never been opened up on it and these were really beautiful machines you know the henderson kind of gets lost in the harley indian wars most of the four-cylinder motorcycles that are out there are somewhat derived from the henderson brothers henderson was the first motorcycle to go around the world in 1912 1912 a guy drove a henderson around the world they set all kinds of speed records police departments used these because they were incredibly smooth incredibly powerful you could slow right down to eight miles an hour in top gear and then accelerate to 110 if you were a cop back in the 20s and 30s and you wanted to catch a speeder this is what you used in fact it has what they call a tell-tale speedometer if you look right on here you see the white needle and then right next to it is a red needle see and that was the speed that the police officer needed to catch you if the speedlite was 45 and you said i wasn't doing 45 and the officer will go look here's how fast i had to go to catch up to you he'd take you back and that would be the proof let it hold up in court i guess so but that's the way they did it these were built like a watch these were four cylinder engines 80 cubic inches and they had five main bearings now at the time most four cylinder automobile engines in america did not have five main bearings yet this did these were built to be incredibly um reliable bosch magneto ignition starts under almost any circumstances you know this thing can sit for six months second kick it fires right up got a nice big old american generator on there makes plenty of amps plenty of power pretty straightforward motor dipstick is right here to check your oil or it looks pretty clean now normally i'd wipe it off and put it back but i just checked it so don't write me a letter uh here's your oil fill right there a transmission and a crankshaft and an engine rather share the same oil there's your schliebler carburetor you've got wide open then you've got prime when it's cold you put it up right here that acts as a choke that primes it kickstart obviously magneto ignition so if your battery is dead she'll run you have brakes front and back this here is a little gear here is for your speedometer uh center stand uh these also had reverse you could also get a henderson with a reverse gear i've got another 31kj that has reverse this one does not have it most people that used it for sidecar work that's usually all the reason he got the reverse three-speed gearbox this is still one of the nicest riding motorcycles you know if you want to go cow trailing if you're on like a dirt road or a fire road up in the woods you put this thing in second gear lug it right down chug i mean it's just a nice handling bike with these big wide handlebars uh it was not a cheap machine they were pretty expensive but the kj was the top of the line they also built a model called the kl which was a little faster you got five more horsepower this was uh 40 horsepower which doesn't seem like a lot but you got to remember a modern harley is probably only 57 or 60 horsepower and this is uh 75 years earlier and a lot lighter and with a lot of torque you know what's so funny we always think of the honda cb 750 of 1969 as the breakthrough a four-cylinder motorcycle oh my god and but people forget that the americans had it back in the 20s and 30s back in the teens actually the first four cylinder henderson was 1912. i'll get my little grease gun before you take one of these out what you want to do is you've got your grease fittings up here and you probably need to do this every couple of hundred miles i tend to do it more often than i should just because i like to save it but yeah you pump a little grease into your valve train hit each one of these this is real all you have to do change your oil there's no filter these have pressurized lubrication most motorcycles for this period were total loss lubrication which means you just filled it up with oil you ran until they all ran out these had pressure lubrication in fact there's a number of documented cases of guys driving these on the speed ovals at 80 to 100 miles an hour flat out for hours on end to show how reliable the oil system was you have a straight through exhaust on these that's the color that came in blue with the gold stripes and the cream colored wheels i think this might have been painted maybe once in the 50s but other than that she's pretty stock there's your battery box you've got your toolbox there's no suspension other than the sprung seat which actually works pretty good you got suspension on the front you got your horn people get out of the way and a really nice dashboard you got your ammeter your oil pressure gauge your on off light switch throttle you have two gas tanks two separate tanks one to run one for reserve and what you want to do is when you start one of these up what happens is especially on a cold day like today your clutch plates will stick together so you want to let it idle for a little bit on the stand and warm up and kind of go through the gears while she's sitting on the uh on the stand let's see how she starts one kick laddie one kick that's how you impress all the harley guys just kind of walk over while you're talking to him hey what's out of harley yeah i just feel like that broom just started right up they think you're superman my golly i think we're ready to go for a drive normally i like to wear a full face helmet but the talking rider wearing open face in fact michael jordan the basketball player gave me this one he's got a suzuki racing team very cool i told him he should race henderson but he went with suzuki despite that's what they call a suicide clutch they call it suicide clutch because like committing suicide every time you use one um if you're not used to it it can be very tricky especially in traffic but you know you get used to it just like anything else you put your clutch in you drop it in first gear and you pull away as i mentioned this is your advance and your when you come to light you your ignition you shut off your throttle you put your clutch in you put it neutral there's a lot of stuff to do on these old bikes you got to concentrate so it can be a little tricky okay see i'm advancing the ignition i'm giving it gas i'm running the clutch out and i'm pulling away it's a really comfortable bike you can go 75 on the freeway no problem except you've only got brakes in the back and that's not much of a break have you stand on too long it will catch fire so you got to be careful there's a lot of myths about these old bikes old timers would say at night you can see the rear cylinder glow from the heat but that's not really true i never had any anything like that the one thing you walk away from these bikes is just how incredibly smooth they are so many of the harleys in the indians had a thumping which which is cool in its own right but these were dead smooth there aren't many automobiles it is smooth as a henderson and these were the most popular four-cylinder motorcycles in the world got that nice bouncy seat as much as i like to restore old machinery it's fun when you find one that doesn't need it this bike's got 18 000 miles on it and she runs as good as she did than the day she was new you can ride it just like a modern bike as long as you don't plan on doing any stopping what a machine these were when they were new you know as much as i like to crocker and some of those bikes in the 30s those are pretty expensive and pretty hard to find the henderson was well it was an expensive motorcycle but not the most expensive but there was nothing faster a gusenberg cost twenty thousand dollars and this would catch it you know much like uh zx14 or suzuki hayabusha today this was the superbike of the early 30s there was nothing faster i mean a model t went 42 miles an hour any other cars work to go 70 or 80. this one 110. so if you're speeding in the duesenberg this is about the only thing that's going to catch you well i'm going to go back to my garage and speed into duesenberg and see if one of my friends can catch me all right hey thanks for checking out the bike see you next week\n"