“On day five, I was having a blast on a nice twisty mountain fire road section of the course. Really just jamming along and feeling good. I low-sided in a turn and was pretty surprised to be on the ground after making it through so many sections that were much more challenging. I wasn’t hurt and picked up the bike easily since it was flat hard ground. About five seconds after I got moving, I heard a siren and immediately pulled over and hugged the hillside. An unlimited buggy in quite a hurry blasted right by me. So, what would have happened if he was 30 seconds earlier? I would hope that he saw me and had time to react, but it would have been close. Racing Baja is filled with thousands of those near-misses, and I was lucky that day.” – Bill Bryant
The Frijole 883 or “Bean 883″ as it’s translates from Spanish was conjured into being by Rob “Rouser” Galan and Bill Bryant at the Biltwell HQ in Temecula, CA. “We figured the bike should be something our customers could identify with. It also had to be something a little weird; we didn’t want to do it on a normal dirt bike. That just didn’t feel creative or challenging enough.” Bill’s first bike was a beat up Honda CR125 two-stroke. “I rode dirt bikes for years before getting into custom bikes. I still love both. I was never a great dirt bike rider, but that experience has made me a much better rider on the street when compared to guys with no dirt experience.”
The initial idea for this monster off roader came about as one might expect. “We were camping out spectating at the Baja 1000 last fall and cooked up the idea like all good ideas; drinking around the campfire.” And the idea was simple. Prep a Harley Davidson Sportster to cover 1000 mi / 1600 km in the rugged terrain of Baja Mexico. And build it to hold up for five days of flat-out abuse. But covering the distance from Ensenada to San Jose del Cabo would take some major planning. “When we decided to start this project last fall, we knew it was a foolish idea, but it would be amusing if we could actually pull it off. We did several test sessions in our local deserts and fine-tuned the bike over the winter months.”
The adventure machine weighs in at 500 lb / 226 kg making it just 6.6 lb / 3 kg lighter than a 2018 KTM 1290 Super Adventure. Albeit with a vastly different power to weight ration and suspension set up. But Bill reports that he was amazed by the bulldozer characteristics of the Milwaukee machine. “Riding the Frijole was surprisingly easy in most conditions. The tractor-like attitude of the Harley made it an animal in the sand. Even in the really deep stuff, it would just power right through and never felt like it was struggling. Through big rocks, at low speed, it was a little less predictable than a normal dirt bike and of course a lot less nimble. It’s so heavy that moving your body around doesn’t have near the effect as it would on a lighter machine. But that excess weight also makes it push right through some larger rocks.”
“I knew we were going to crash this thing several times, and Harleys due to their weight and how the foot controls are mounted are not very rugged when you tip them over. We put hours into the foot controls on this bike and brought a huge pile of extras. The bike went down several times in a wide variety of terrain, and since we had hand-made both the rear brake and the shift levers out of steel, we just bent them back when they got pushed in. I thought for sure we would have broken a couple, but we only replaced one shift lever and kept the same rear brake lever on for the entire race.”
The 2000 model Harley Davidson Sportster found on Craigslist saw quite a few revisions; “There were several baked-in compromises based on the fact that we wanted to retain the stock look by keeping the Sportster gas tank, oil tank, rear fender and totally stock frame. We didn’t want it to be a modern dirt bike with an H-D power plant. We wanted it to be a lightly-modded Sporto, built more for endurance and survivability than all-out performance” Keeping that in mind, the rear fender was slightly chopped to allow for more suspension travel, and the fuel tank raised somewhat to allow for the room needed to run the GPR steering stabilizer. The stock HD swing-arm was gusseted, and Roll Design relocated the shock mounts that hold the custom Elka’s. The front end has been swapped for a set of forks from a Honda CRF250 and the internals reworked by Precision Concepts. This is all held in place by a Gigacycle triple tree. The seat foam remained stock although it now sports a cover by Motoseat.
The 21″ front gets stopped by the factory caliper with the 18” rear stock hub and Excel rim employing a Tokico 4-piston with custom Gigacycle carrier. Both wheels run Maxxis Maxxcross Desert IT tires with the final drive being a 22 front and 65 PBI sprocket in the rear. The handlebars got swapped out for a Pro Taper Adventurer with Fastway 2” risers. The controls, in turn, are protected by a set of Cycra hand guards which got “a fair bit of beating” according to Bill. Light and a bit of wind deflection are supplied, in true Californian race style, by a Baja Designs Squadron Pro set up. The power plant remained mostly stock for reliability while the CV carb has some “Rouser mods” specially done for this build. The air filter is also a four-layer custom job while the oil cooler being one of a few borrowed parts from the indestructible XR400. Rock hits aren’t a worry with the customized Hugo Moto skid plate. The in-house fabricated stainless steel rear rack holds the Biltwell Exfil-7 while the tank bag is an Exfil-11. Visual upgrades include the paintwork handled by Hot Dog Kustoms also based in Temecula. The team used a custom Biltwell exhaust kit fitted into a shortened SuperTrapp keeping the exhaust system as light and robust as possible.
Navigation got handled in four parts with a Lowrance Elite 5Ti, an iPad mini running the LeadNav app, an iPhone also running the LeadNav app and a supplied roadbook from the race organizers. Bill favors the Lowrance as the optimal method for navigation. “As long as it doesn’t get destroyed in a crash as we did in testing, the Lowrance was absolutely the best. Leadnav is neat and works as a backup, and we used that in the chase trucks on our phones. But for the bike, the Lowrance was rugged and easy to follow.”
The Frijole turned out to be remarkably reliable in all the conditions that a Baja desert race throws at more modern rally machines. The Biltwell race report lists out just a couple of common issues with some dented rims, minor mechanical problems and the standard maintenance required. The proof of a dish is always in the taste, and with the official race results in, Biltwell’s point is well proven. Only thirty-two motorcycles made it to the finish line out of the forty-three entered. The Frijole 883 finished 14th in its class, which gave it the overall position of twenty-seventh, it also holds the record for the only H-D, not only to compete but also to successfully finish the Norra 1000.
“I love this motorcycle. We’ve mothballed this one to keep it sacred, but we are building a new one out of all the spare parts we built and paid for but didn’t use. We are going to lengthen the swingarm slightly on the new one and figure out how to mount a kickstand on it where it won’t get hung up or hurt the rider. We had an external one in the tool bag that was a hassle to use on this bike. We’ll also build this next engine to be more of a hot rod. The Frijole was built for pure reliability and did its job, but the refried version will have a little more spice!”
Images by Geoff Kowalchuk
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