What do you do with a Harley Davidson you purchased from New Orleans after the flood? Well, since it probably already saw some water and mud, why not just go all out and get it ready for full time use in those same conditions and turn your Harley into an ATV?
This started out as a 1996 Dyna Wide Glide. The engine and everything else were completely rebuilt and the whole thing turned out pretty well, it looks like any custom ATV would look, except of course, it’s a Harley Davidson. The Dyna weighs 600 pounds stock and this ATV conversion only goes 710 pounds so the extra weight shouldn’t hurt too much.
Since HD is looking at trike designs, maybe they could look at a future in quads, too. After all, there’s all this talk about catering to a younger demographic, maybe this is an answer. Hmm …
todd says
He said they used the Harley frame too. I think that means you could register it for the street (or keep it registered if it alredy was).
The only time I’ve seen something in the Vehicle Code (California at least) pertaining to modifications requiring re-registration or sign-off is when you switch engine numbers. This would be one of those gray areas one could exploit…
-todd
kneeslider says
When you think about it, this should be street legal. That is obviously a Harley with some extra wheels added, not something built as a quad from the start. You can convert a Harley into a trike, why not a quad? I think there’s just enough wiggle room in that crack in the door, you might get through it.
I think keeping an existing registration would be easier than getting it registered, so if someone could come up with conversion kits like this, we might see a bunch of these on the street, using any number of motorcycles as the base vehicle. Interesting to think about. Of course, some bureaucrat would have a fit but I don’t see anything wrong with the idea.
Diesel says
What about the BMW Quad? That was originally a bike and it can’t be registered in the U.S. I doubt it uses the stock frame though. Also the eBay description for the Harley Quad stated that all or most of the frame except the neck was used and the neck is where the numbers are. I hate to be a party pooper, I would love to see a legal quad. In an old biker mag there was this old bumper car that a guy built a frame for and powered it with a Sportster motor and got it legalized.
Sid says
Registered or not, it looks a lot like a regular quad when you’re goin’ down the road, which means the Po-lice will pull you over.
It looks well built. I like it, too.
Toybreaker says
Looks cool. If it was in az would not be a problem keeping it registered.
GenWaylaid says
Does anyone know WHY quads aren’t considered street-legal?
Is it simply because they have too many wheels to qualify as a motorcycle and not enough safety bits to qualify as a car, and somehow no one got around to making another category?
Richard says
And the winner is…. “not enough safety bits”.
When the DMV sees 4 wheels, they think of it as a topless car, but it doesn’t have seat belts, or a roll bar, or doors, or a sufficiently sturdy frame, etc., so they won’t allow it on the road.
Mark Koontz says
I left Harley (PDC) about 1 year ago. They were looking at quads too but I never heard just how they were going to sell them. Off road? I doubt it.
BTW- They had tried to make a 2 in-the-back, lean machine, 3 wheeler work before they switched to the present “patent” version. It was a modified FLT. But to no sucess.
BTW2- That bike (?) you see in the patent picture was kind of a joke around there. There’s no profit margin in it… Well maybe as a CVO???
I think the patent was just to give the lawyers something different to do.