The American Dream X Story Dan Hanlon

[ChadeArndt]

I expect there are areas of the book that aren't topics for talking points, but the majority of it is great!
I can relate a lot to fighting for a goal, and not being able to do it all yourself, and having to invite snakes into bed in order to move forward.

That's how our business went.  I kept reading, and hoping for a different ending to the story I (mostly) already knew from 16 years ago.  I was so obsessed with the company then, but it's kind of come back as an almost new freshness.  It's so hard to not dwell on what might have been after watching more hands chip away at you than make half the effort to help you build.

If Excelsior Henderson were alive, I can visualize a modern KJ model along with maybe a couple of bobber X's, and perhaps a tourer with full hardbags and radio fairings.  The stylings could have been just as iconic as the resurrected Indians now with premium leather options.

I wonder if Dan has ever put any thought into having small runs of our cherished Prototype X's to see if there's a buzz to get even a small start on biker terms only.  No major corporate demands.

Having said that, Stephen Tyler's buddy seems to be doing that with A LOT of "Borrowed similarities".

http://www.diricomotorcycles.com/

[ChadeArndt]

http://www.mankatofreepress.com/news/local_news/long-vacant-factory-gets-a-counter-plan/article_cdadf50f-fe4d-5f99-996b-c29f8dc0fca3.html

Looks like there's a new tenant in our factory

[wytfut]

Yes Cambria has been in there since 2009.....
Ryan's construction was owner, but I don't know if Cambria is a tenant or owner

[2CoolWheels]

Chad,

    I too was rather obsessed with the EH, especially after reading Dan's book. What a mind boggling endeavor!
   I recently read a short book about the development of the Victory motorcycle. There were several parallels, including the time frame. They, too, dealt with problems like EH with an upstart brand. However, they had a large company to back them...Polaris. And, they already had connections with outside vendors for components. And they had skilled engineers, logistics and marketers in other Polaris divisions they could "borrow" when they ran into a stumbling block. Yet will all that, they just barely stayed in business in their early days.
   It blows me away when I think about how far EH got with everything it was up against. I will also punch George Heaton squarely in the nose if I ever meet him, LOL!

[2CoolWheels]

The Dirico story mentions their bike are built like "nothing else". Hahaha! Nothing else except HD, or S&S, or RevTech.
The Dirico is just another clone.....the very thing EH avoided, thank goodness!

[Donkey Hotey]

Though Dan never comes out and directly blames any one cause on the collapse of the company, it's astounding how fragile a start-up company can be. If I had to blame it on one thing, it was the initial unit cost per bike that killed the company. That was due to whatever breakdown in the estimating or totalling of part costs done by the manufacturing people.

However that reality came about, it forced them to stop production to get the costs under control. Shareholders won't allow that kind of thing to go on for very long. As a majority owner, he could have made that call but, shareholders rule. The 4 month delay to get costs under control caused the 1999 models to get to the showrooms too late in that model year (missed the peak buying season). That backed up unsold 1999 models in dealerships.

Model year 2000s started rolling off the line and there was nowhere to ship them. Built motorcycles are sunk costs. They can't just keep going. They can't keep the doors open without cash.

The four months that delayed 1999 production might have been all they needed to make it from Christmas, into the start of the 2000 buying season. Instead, the sequence of panic was set off that killed what could have been a great brand.

"The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay, if they'd put fifteen more miles behind her."

I still have a special place in my heart for that fat piece of crap, Fred Rau. He devoted his entire column one month to outright lies about the company and the founders. The long letter I wrote to Rider magazine pointing it out was neither published, nor answered. They nearly lost a subscriber that day.

Thankfully, Fred's drivel has largely been limited to Motorcycle Consumer News and I've long since let that magazine lapse. I see him from time to time at motorcycle events. What a self-important jackass.

[ChadeArndt]

Lot's of Harley parts on the Dirico indeed, and I never knew about the production and buying season delay.  That definitely is another brick in the wall.

I gotta check on George Heaton.  I was under the impression that John Wyckoff was the leading lying Harley stooge spreading lies.   

Rest his arrogant soul 8 years ago p.o.s.

[2CoolWheels]

George Heaton was the "behind the scenes" con man running EH Partners....supposedly to take EH out of bankruptcy and back into production. After a small down payment on the debt, EH Partners sold everything from the factory off to make a quick profit....and making it impossible for EH to go back into production. If the state of Minnesota had vetted Heaton properly, they would have found that he was wanted in Florida for running some real estate scams of some sort.

[blackheart]

In my mind I'm sure that most of your statements are correct about cost per unit being too high resulting in a non perfect business model.  What I never hear anyone say is if cash wouldn't have been the immediate issue, what about the next?  Next being a generally hastily pieced together machine.  Without a real engineering and test department, no company standards and such, they had a lot of issues to deal with had the kept going.  The idea to induce the driveline belt load through the rubber mounts is a good example, this was a fundamental flaw.  Next is lack of cooling fins on an aircooled motorcycle.  How is this engine really supposed to cool itself?  The heads must be flooded with oil to keep temps at bay, but what about the cylinders?  When I pulled the transmission cassette on 0307, I saw the better part of a tablespoon of aluminum having been scuffed off the pistons.  She seems to run fine, but I also noticed there are no more scavenging pumps available for sale.  This tells me metallic debris in the oil must be common.  To me its really sad to think with what appears to be an overall good design on the basic engine (other than lack of piston cooling jets) the omission of basic engine cooling via fins on the heads at least was going to lead to impending issues. Could it be addressed?  Yes, but that would have meant new patterns & redesign.  The other thing which was a huge oversight, why on earth didn't they counter balance the engine?? 

[Donkey Hotey]

Next being a generally hastily pieced together machine.  Without a real engineering and test department, no company standards and such, they had a lot of issues to deal with had the kept going.

Most things in the motorcycle industry are designed by shockingly small teams. Motorcycles don't get the kind of development money that a new car does--ANY of them.

The idea to induce the driveline belt load through the rubber mounts is a good example, this was a fundamental flaw.

Harley, Buell and every other manufacturer of a rubber mounted engine do just the same or worse. The engine has to move somewhere. On Harleys and Buells, the swingarm is mounted to the engine / transmission assembly. Not only do the driveline forces go through the rubber mounts; so do the rear suspension loads. Additionally: the EH rear mounts are a bushing design--just like the suspension pivots on your car. That's what they're designed to do: pivot. IE: the rear mounts don't move up and down, they allow the front of the engine to rotate around that point in the back. The front mounts are the up-and-down part of the design.

If you think Harley had a better design, consider that they also recently abandoned their concentric rubber donut front mount and went to a shear type rubber mount, just like the EH. Yes, this is for a Harley Davidson. Those rubber shear bushings go into a mount on the frame, right next to the floorboards:

Next is lack of cooling fins on an aircooled motorcycle.  How is this engine really supposed to cool itself?  The heads must be flooded with oil to keep temps at bay, but what about the cylinders?

Cylinders aren't where they heat is generated. Lots and lots of bikes out there have similar amounts of finning on the barrels. As you pointed out, the engine is really an air/oil cooled design and the oil cooler was mandatory for anybody in warmer climates. I honestly believe this was partly a styling issue. To this day, it's hard to sell the cruiser market on the idea of any kind of radiator. Look up "Harley engine heat issues" on Google. They still won't put a radiator on any of their naked bikes and it's 16 years after EH shut down.

When I pulled the transmission cassette on 0307, I saw the better part of a tablespoon of aluminum having been scuffed off the pistons.

Don't know what to say there. When I pulled 1525 apart at 5K miles, the inside of the engine looked new and there was zero evidence of any metal shavings at all. I've run synthetic since the break-in oil change. What are you using?

The other thing which was a huge oversight, why on earth didn't they counter balance the engine? ?

Because the cruiser market didn't want counter balanced engines--plain and simple. They wanted them to shake. Go back and look at a mid 90s Harley Softail or Fatboy; no rubber mounts. Those pigs had the engine solidly bolted to the frame and they shook like hell. The only models to have rubber mounts were the FL (touring) and FXR (sport touring) models.

Harley introduced counterbalancing because EH and Victory were starting to take a bite out of them. If they didn't improve their product, the competition would gladly do so. The Sportster was rigid mount until 2004 and still relies on rubber mounts to kill the vibration to this day.

Every design decision is a trade-off. There is no perfect answer or we'd already have perfect motorcycles. Do you want chocolate frosting on your salad? Knobbies on your chopper? A 12" electric fan, mounted in a plastic shroud on the side of your Heritage Softail?

[2CoolWheels]

Good information, Greg.
Another thing that was brought up in both the EH story, and the Victory story was the need to keep SOME vibration in the engine. Bikers want to feel their engines run. EH accomplished that with the rubber mounting system they used, and Victory with a counter-balance shaft. In the Victory book, they said they could eliminated virtually ALL vibration, but intentionally did not do so, for the same reasons EH went to a rubber mount and no counter-balance shaft. Neither company wanted their bikes to resemble a Honda Goldwing going down the road......a different market than the HD bike market EH was targeting. I personally, love the feeling of the engine rumbling beneath me! (I can't see much in the rear view mirrors on hard throttle, though.....LOL)

[blackheart]

Greg:

Mounting the swingarm on an HD transmits the belt loads through the swingarm directly to the transmission case, NOT through the rubber.

Yes I'm very well aware of the fact the chassis is rubber mounted onto the drive train on a typical HD.  But the fact remains AMF developed that rubber noun system in the late 70's and it works.

EH, following the advice of Gates belt, had a design belt tension.  Fact is, and everyone recommends it, dont go that tight, it destroys the mounts.

I bought 0307 several years ago & was afraid to ride it for fear of crashing the transmission as happened to my friend at about the same mileage, 7k.  Word was my bike came from a former employee of EH and was part of a severance package.  I'm not sure that's true but I did note the words DEMO were hand written behind the faux tin cover on the outer primary over the alternator stator.  It supposedly had synthetic oil in it, had the factory oil cooler too, yet shavings galore.  I had the ECM flashed, put on a jagg vertical cooler mounted up on the frame where it gets air & left the factory cooler in its' original place plumbing them in series.  We'll see how far it goes.  Runnng valvoline synthetic 20-50.  So the tranny is rebushed in aluminum bronze, new pump drive key, but no suction tube fix as this is not necessary if you dont leave it idle on the stand.

Few successful products have no development time.  I'm like everyone else here, I like the bike, impressed with the style, and really wished they'd survived.  But they did not.

My point was clear, it (EH) was a start up company & they had little to draw from.  Had money kept flowing they still had issues, big ones.

[Donkey Hotey]

Greg:

Mounting the swingarm on an HD transmits the belt loads through the swingarm directly to the transmission case, NOT through the rubber.

Sure it does. The engine and transmission don't go down the road by themselves. How do they drag the rider, the frame and everything else along? Through the rubber mounts. Twist the throttle, the rear wheel pushes forward on the transmission and engine--that are pushing forward on the rubber mounts, that are bolted into the frame. Load up the rear of the bike, with the shocks mounted at an angle and pushing rearward. Where does that load go? Through the swingarm, to the transmission and through the rubber mounts into the frame.

Yes I'm very well aware of the fact the chassis is rubber mounted onto the drive train on a typical HD.  But the fact remains AMF developed that rubber noun system in the late 70's and it works.

Not very well. The rear wheel wobbled around like there was a hinge in the middle of the frame because--well--there WAS a big rubber hinge in the middle of the frame.

They didn't fix the problems with their rubber mounting until 2009? 2010? They finally added a heim joint to keep the transmission from shifting around and allowing the swingarm to wiggle in the frame.

At least on the EH design, the weight of the rider, passenger and luggage have zero effect on the rubber mounting system. Not at all the case on a Harley.

And again: the rubber mounting system is only used on a few models. Until the counterbalanced Twin-Cam engine came out, those other models were all rigid mount.

EH, following the advice of Gates belt, had a design belt tension.  Fact is, and everyone recommends it, dont go that tight, it destroys the mounts.

That's a calculation error, not a cause of rubber mount failure. Same exact problem on Harleys and Buells, except it's the output bearing on the transmission that suffers. I think that's been a common problem on every belt-driven bike ever. I know it's an arguing point on the Buell forums.

I bought 0307 several years ago & was afraid to ride it for fear of crashing the transmission as happened to my friend at about the same mileage, 7k.  Word was my bike came from a former employee of EH and was part of a severance package.  I'm not sure that's true but I did note the words DEMO were hand written behind the faux tin cover on the outer primary over the alternator stator.  It supposedly had synthetic oil in it, had the factory oil cooler too, yet shavings galore.

Hmm...don't know what to say. No such evidence on my bike. Maybe it was one of the burnout bikes?

Few successful products have no development time.  I'm like everyone else here, I like the bike, impressed with the style, and really wished they'd survived.  But they did not.

My point was clear, it (EH) was a start up company & they had little to draw from.  Had money kept flowing they still had issues, big ones.

I still disagree. Harley--despite all of their financial might--has introduced some real mechanical turds. For almost the entire run of the Evo Sportster engine, they had an under engineered oil pump drive gear. It took Erik Buell to fix it in 2000.

Ditto for the primary chain tensioners. That engine got its last redesign in 1991 (becoming a 5-speed). Erik Buell had to finally come up with his own primary chain slipper in 2001 to fix the failures they were getting on their production bikes.

The early Twin Cam motors were another example. Look up the drive failures they had on the cam system.

Ahh...then there's the oil puking Sportsters. It's like they designed it to puke. The breathers are holes drilled into the side of the head casting. Where do they go? Into the cylinder head. Seems like a reasonable place to tap for engine breathing, right? Where do you suppose they drilled those holes? At the BOTTOM of the well where the intake valve springs are.

If you study the design of the Sportster rocker boxes, you quickly see that any oil that gets up there to lubricate the rockers and valve stems, will end up draining down into that well. It has nowhere else to go! It CAN'T get back to the crankcase! The ONLY place for that oil to go is right out the breather and all over the side of the motorcycle.

Those mental giants used that breathing system until Erik Buell...again...put a breather port in the TOP of the valve covers--somwhere the oil wouldn't pool and run out on the side of the bike.