I Bought a NEW Military Harley Davidson Dirtbike

so i just bought a very rare harley-davidson military-issued dirt bike with only 88 miles on it and it said that there's only 500 of these in the entire country you might be wondering how i got this super rare bike well i found it at a motorcycle auction and when they shipped it to us this is how it arrived so we're gonna pop this thing out of here and see what i really bought and try to get this thing running it's very possible since it only has 88 miles on it that has not ran in the past 36 years hey craig what you doing here i work here well you might as well come and help me out let's do this [Music] you ready craig i'm ready are you guys ready wow dude [Music] so the first thing i'm noticing is this doesn't look like a new bike craig what do you think man it does not look like a sub 100 mile bike does that look like a brake drum of a 88 mile bike does not the auction listing was very uh very strange the people at this auction they they know new bikes and this is this is kickstart only the rare ones had electric start and kickstarter it was kickstart only and the people were like has low compression does not run you look inside of it it's the most bone dry thing you've ever seen that makes sense why it doesn't run but they they wouldn't know what type of compression it's supposed to have and generally military bikes are made with really low compression they want to be very very reliable they keep up reliability over performance right when you do that you make a low compression engine i i this is what i'm looking at this right that's not an 88 mile exhaust let's take this thing apart let's get this thing out of here i feel like maybe i got a [Music] scam boost [Music] all right check this out the boot what do they call it is it called a boot yeah that's a hose yeah that makes sense why does that why does that make so much sense there's no way rotex made this engine and they shipped it with that on there i wouldn't think so so i actually didn't tell you guys what this bike is actually called this is the harley davidson mt 500. i got some bodies who are harley experts they know everything about harley davidson he has some of the weirdest bikes that you know they made one out of one they know everything about it i asked them about this and they were all like i know nothing about those bikes all they knew was that another company makes them harley-davidson didn't even make these bikes but they put their name on it so i don't know much about these bikes and apparently no one else knows anything about these bikes i know some stuff about these bikes you do i do how do you know i did a little homework did you call the archive guy from harley-davidson i did call the archive guy from harley-davidson so we have one more buddy i didn't call him a great call that's the archive guy at harley-davidson he actually knows everything about everything so while i'm putting this bike back together a voiceover craig it's going to explain what's up with this motorcycle the mt500 was a motorcycle that harley brought over here in an attempt to secure the military contract just like they did in world war ii with the wla now since they didn't make a dirt bike or anything else suitable for the off-road they bought the rights to this british-made bike and brought the production to york pennsylvania it was powered by a rotax 500 cc motor which made 28 horsepower and because this bike is british and austrian you'll notice the kickstarters on the wrong side rumor has it that only a few of these bikes made it in a desert storm but harley never got the contract from the us military ultimately getting beat out by one of the most reliable motorcycles ever built the kawasaki klr 650 which was converted to run on diesel which became a requirement for the military only 500 of these motorcycles were ever made making the mt500 one of the rarest and strangest motorcycles to ever wear the harley badge voice over craig needs to figure out if an italian made british imported harley-davidson with now a canadian engine is going to be running metric or standard the guy who we bought it from said that he thinks this bike came from germany we don't know what this bike was doing in germany according to the information that we got the germans never actually used this but somehow he said this thing came from germany maybe it found its way to germany and then germany to here i don't know we really have no idea so even though the story of this bike is a little bit cloudy and seems to get cloudier the more we dive into it it's still pretty interesting and hopefully we can get it to run although this bike seems to be getting worse and worse the more we look at it starting with the axle threads on the front tire yeah there's a metal there but with a little bit of finagling we got the axle bolt in without messing up any more threads the switch it's clearly the on off switch but the bottom says cev and the top just says patent pending but the switch doesn't even tell you which one's on or off assuming this is a choke this is a hole inside the frame oil tell me what that smells like to you oil that's what's kind of like gasoline damn taste it all of us motor heads taste the oil to make sure it's good yeah that's gonna taste about a couple hundred of these before you really start to refine your palette this is a cool looking bike isn't it it is it really has a lot of neat little attributes and a lot a lot of neat little things with it check this thing out i was looking at this commandos why does that say commandos that's just to remind you who you are some of the really cool things that i noticed is the big gas cap i think that's really cool the oil it's a dry sump system and the oil is kept in the the frame of the bike so that's really neat these road tax engine has a decompression lever center stand and kickstand it's drum brake front and rear so it's super simple i said i'm gonna turn the key all right that's good news two lights um three lights what is that high beam let's see what happens fuel is currently off okay let's put the fuel on up oh hold up okay the fuel line is just not connected to it and that would be this well i got the fuel on the fuel's on now oh now it's dripping out of the carburetor i'm gonna kick some four fires up three one two three four five let's see if it's getting spark look at the hardware inside this what do you guys think's inside here assuming this is the air box craig what do the filter looks like this will tell us whether this bike is 88 miles or not yeah well here's our intake you want to guess what it looks like brand new brand new non-existent that's good dan is a military protocol yeah you have to fashion the intake once you get there out of your surroundings so every engine needs at least six things to get it running one compression two spark three fuel four proper timing five i gotta push the button and six a girl that the guy who is pressing the button wants to impress all right that's good that's good that's really good uh let's pop the seat off maybe we'll see what made this tool pouch here we go pull that seat out look at the giant bolt nope look at that wow what is going on there see this gap right in between there that should be tight like this should be directly connected to this box no ginormous gap i'd be curious to hit it with a little spray kick it a few times and see what happens yeah let's do it i think it's safe to assume this thing has way more than 88 miles on it whoever had this because these things are so incredibly rare that when things started to deteriorate boots and stuff like that they they just made their own or they did without sounded like it for a second really all right so we it it runs it first of all it runs amazing it runs let's see if we can bring some stuff in there get it running and hopefully we can get it running off of its own fuel that's that's the next thing all right you ready that's running off of the carburetor see that smoke so the carb is dumping oil all right so it runs it's not a very uh finely tuned machine because the intake is hanging off on both sides and it still runs so that that's exactly what the military wants you want to be able to run no matter what that peaks breaks off it's still going to run that's awesome it does run does run pretty good let's uh let's see if we can button up some of these issues it's dumping fuel out of the carburetor right onto a really awful spot which is the exhaust but it is running off its own fuel from the from the car let's see if this thing runs let's see if we can actually get this thing to move on its own what else is in these saddlebags looking there dan kids this is where mice live so after doing some very scientific tapping on the motorcycle with a wrench and after seeing that we were missing some parts on this bike and chances are might be impossible to find we did the only logical thing that any self-respecting adult would do we sat down on the couch and started watching youtube videos in hopes to muster up the strength to get back out there and get this bike running again all right so everyone's always asking me sean what kind of gloves you wear when you ride your motorcycles these are the m1 moto 508s it's one of the only gloves on the market with kevlar this whole thing is kevlar these are actually the original prototype gloves this is the first glove ever made of this kind it's the second glove ever made and um i still wear them this is the actual glove right here that i drugged my hand on the asphalt for about a quarter of a mile all it did was started wearing through one of the threads right here but it's been like that for about three years these are the baddest gloves out there one of the toughest gloves out there it's the only gloves that i trust with my hands check them out at bikesbeardsgear.com or m1motogear.com the link will be in the description let's go back and uh let me go help craig with this bike well it's not leaking right now it's holding it's saying it's keeping fuel in yeah and we have oil in it all right so what we could do if the carburetor will come this way see if we can get uh this off there we go and then let's put these on there it's just about there not quite this is literally the most poorly cut hose i've ever seen in my life it's like we don't got a knife to cut this hose let's get a gopher to chew it off for us like a apprentice one added with a dull beaver oh started leaking fuel again oh good all right let's uh let's try to fire this thing up again [Music] it's running so lean yeah a lot of fuel dripping out of that carb i didn't see any well with all the smoke from it's burning off what's on there i have a macgyver idea dan do you have gaff there we go that's already sucked up into that engine isn't it dan inspired me he said get it out of the woods craig that's what he said that's what he said hmm it's an official military fix we read it in the manual yeah do you know what it says about official military fixes when you're stuck somewhere and they're shooting at you do whatever you have to do to get out of there craig open your eyes i'll never get over craig when i spray gasoline right in my face in my eyeballs okay so that's gonna stop some air let's get this thing outside so we get it running throw the seat on there and then just jump on it right so we did our best to put a gaff tape seal around where the intake boot used to live and hopefully this will get us out of the woods see i really want to ride this bike craig's all trying to make it right and perfect with gas tape and stuff like that i just want to just want to jump on a ride i want to make a run [Music] there we go all right first gear [Applause] pretty bad this is not bad this thing's got some pep to it i wanna try it it's freaked out for an old think it's pretty it's pretty impressive actually that's not bad right no not at all rotex knows how to make a pretty good motor let me get the seat screw then we can stop holding back so much check this out dan so you have a nice looking paint job right here underneath here nice looking green and then they painted over with this stuff it's too shiny this is too shiny for the military and they wanted to make it a little more uh i don't think the military did that no i don't think so dan does that look like a military thing to repaint something military repaint things for no reason yeah that sounds like a government thing here we go sometimes you're in the you're fighting a war and you've got to ride that wheelie to safety he's riding wheelies for safety [Applause] it really wants to idle it's getting close all right guys i wrapped up this video we got some parts we got ordered to make this thing right hold on a second i got a call it's the police department hello yeah i bought them okay uh let me let me let me let me back all right thanks we got em craig we got em guys don't get subscribed see you guys next time and don't forget to watch this other awesome video right here [Applause]

Channel: Bikes and Beards

Views: 1,311,085

Keywords: bikes and beards, sean, motorcycles, srkcycles, srk, beards, bikes, harley davidson, mt 500, military motorcycles

Id: g7Ub9Mql1jg

Length: 15min 26sec (926 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 05 2022