High Value Guzzi Oil Filter

[helicopterjim R.I.P.]

Funny... right at this moment three moderators are reading this thread!

 

As I mentioned earlier I was going to say something but I believe Jaap, Martin and Dave are more qualified than I am to comment on where this thread is going.

[badmotogoozer]

yup.

[Martin Barrett]

Funny... right at this moment three moderators are reading this thread!

 

Luckily it's a technical thread

 

Only a fortnight to go to the shortest day (northern hemisphere) and then it's nearly spring (only if it worked quite like - I'd say that the shortest day wasn't actually the middle of the riders winter due to the delay in heat exchange to/from the earths mass but as I've no scientific evidence or conducted my own research it's just my anecdotal observation I won't)

 

 

 

 

yup.

 

I like your horse it goes nicely with this

 

Any one got any more farm yard smilies?

[Steve G.]

Actually, I'm quite enjoying this.

If I may just enter my thoughts. I was one of those Japanese bike owners during the embargo, where we saw a number of 700's running around. I clearly remember walking into the Harley dealer, and looking at the $5995 [only in USA was there $3995] Sporty. The Harley's were still more expensive than equivalent Japanese stuff. But it was for me the meager performance of HD that made me go across the street and buy a new 84 KZ 750, for $2995. Twice the bike, even now.

Regarding the opposing thoughts going on with Gary and Greg, I'll say that it's amazing how a thread on MG oil filters can go into talking about these frickin' HD shit boxes. Human nature is so cool! This great conversation should continue in the Banter forum, where it can be left alone by the forum police to go where nature intends, instead of still born killed, where I think this may end up soon.

Ciao, Steve

[Dan M]

Greg F Quote:

"The tariff had precisely zero to do with saving the company. "

 

 

Not trying to step on any toes or make any "personal attacks" but looking at the whole picture and remembering peoples choices at the time (bought a new Yamaha myself in 1983), it seems silly to me, regardless of other factors, to state that added sales and the resulting profits have no effect on a company in the midst of a turn around.

[Martin Barrett]

Actually, I'm quite enjoying this.

If I may just enter my thoughts. I was one of those Japanese bike owners during the embargo, where we saw a number of 700's running around. I clearly remember walking into the Harley dealer, and looking at the $5995 [only in USA was there $3995] Sporty. The Harley's were still more expensive than equivalent Japanese stuff. But it was for me the meager performance of HD that made me go across the street and buy a new 84 KZ 750, for $2995. Twice the bike, even now.

Regarding the opposing thoughts going on with Gary and Greg, I'll say that it's amazing how a thread on MG oil filters can go into talking about these frickin' HD shit boxes. Human nature is so cool! This great conversation should continue in the Banter forum, where it can be left alone by the forum police to go where nature intends, instead of still born killed, where I think this may end up soon.

Ciao, Steve

 

not calling Steve stupid of course- unfortunately beyond my powers to move it - Jaap please, but I think each protagonist probably has put their case* and the only way the topic would develop would be those like Steve were in the position of buying a new motorcycle at that time give their opinion and explain what they actually bought. However I doubt many that did go Harley have actually ended up here.

 

* the GW thread is an obvious exception to my train of thought

[dlaing]

You all will believe as you like. For my part, I know that then, even more so than today, most folks who were in the market for a Harley were in the market only for a Harley, and if you were in the market for a Harley, you never even considered Japanese bikes. Thus, the tariff was of no consequence to these folks 'cause it did not make the Harleys cheaper. But $3995 Sportsters, on the other hand . . .

1986 vfr700 was about $4500

1986 vfr750 was about $5200

I am pretty sure Honda's best selling bikes before, the tariff were 750cc.

It cost Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha and Kawasaki money to downgrade from 750s to 700s.

They also lost sales and profits on large touring bikes and large cruisers, unless they were building them in the USA.

The Japanese Four were not killed by the tariff, but it made them less capable of maintaining dominance.

I suspect the reason Harley ended the tariff may have been the realization that the tariff was bad for motorcycling. If it weren't for the tariff we might have thousands more people buying motorcycles today.

 

1983 Honda introduced the 750 shadow and 1985 the 1100 Shadow.

(imagine how much of a success they would have been without a tariff. All the xenophobe that would rather die than buy Japanese, weren't buying them, but somebody was)

I think the 700 Shadow was introduced in 1984

There were many people sitting on the fence of whether to buy a Shadow 750 or a Sportster. When the tariff hit, and the cc droped to 700, it helped those buyers make up their minds.

[Steve G.]

not calling Steve stupid of course- unfortunately beyond my powers to move it - Jaap please, but I think each protagonist probably has put their case* and the only way the topic would develop would be those like Steve were in the position of buying a new motorcycle at that time give their opinion and explain what they actually bought. However I doubt many that did go Harley have actually ended up here.

 

* the GW thread is an obvious exception to my train of thought

 

Perhaps you could clarify what you are talking about for a stupid shit like me.

Ciao, Steve

[dlaing]

...and the only way the topic would develop would be those like Steve were in the position of buying a new motorcycle at that time give their opinion and explain what they actually bought.

In 1985 I narrowed my shopping list to 1984 model BMW R65, Cagiva 650, and Moto Guzzi V65SP.

I bought the goose

But after years of lousy reliability, I wish I had bought the Beemer, or maybe the Lemans that was $4500 instead of $3000 for the V65.

Was the price difference between the LeMans and the V65 due partially to the tariff?????

#$^$@#&$@@!!! maybe I could have afforded a LeMans if it weren't for that tariff

Greg said something about no tariff for first limited number of bikes imported.

The lemans was nearly 50% more money than the V65.

A Breva 1100 is nearly 50% more money than a Breva 750, so I guess it was not the tariff.

I was also, looking at the interceptor 500 at that time. Glad I did not as those were not reliable either.

Harley was out of the question for me back then.

[Martin Barrett]

not calling Steve stupid of course- unfortunately beyond my powers to move it - Jaap please, but I think each protagonist probably has put their case* and the only way the topic would develop would be those like Steve were in the position of buying a new motorcycle at that time give their opinion and explain what they actually bought. However I doubt many that did go Harley have actually ended up here.

 

* the GW thread is an obvious exception to my train of thought

 

 

Perhaps you could clarify what you are talking about for a stupid shit like me.

Ciao, Steve

 

Here goes a misunderstanding

 

- Smiley indicating agreement with the above quoted poster

 

not calling Steve stupid of course - attempting to indicate that didn't think Steve's is stupid

 

unfortunately beyond my powers to move it - I can't moderate in this forum

 

Jaap please - second request to move into other forum in line with original quote request

 

but I think - personal opinion

 

each protagonist - Gary and Greg

 

has put their case - any more would be repetition

 

* - unless they have to have the last word ad nauseum - they're unlikely to revisit the thread

 

and the only way the topic would develop would be those like Steve were in the position of buying a new motorcycle at that time give their opinion and explain what they actually bought - probably could do with "who" inserted between "Steve" & "were"

 

However I doubt many that did go Harley have actually ended up here. - The premise , though could be wrong, that those who would have bought a Harley, for whatever reason, at that time would later be interested in MG V11's. Especially after we hear so much about the "lifestyle" element of buying HD.

 

I apologise if you inferred, from my poorly constructed post, that I was calling you a "stupid shit" It was not my intention to imply that.

[helicopterjim R.I.P.]

Actually, I'm quite enjoying this.

 

Human nature is so cool!

 

Numbers 3 and 5 from my top ten list of why I like the V11LeMans.com forum!!

[Dan M]

Luckily it's a technical thread

 

Only a fortnight to go to the shortest day (northern hemisphere) and then it's nearly spring (only if it worked quite like - I'd say that the shortest day wasn't actually the middle of the riders winter due to the delay in heat exchange to/from the earths mass but as I've no scientific evidence or conducted my own research it's just my anecdotal observation I won't)

 

Careful Martin, This appears to be the beginning of a global cooling thread.

[badmotogoozer]

Numbers 3 and 5 from my top ten list of why I like the V11LeMans.com forum!!

 

seconded!

 

 

Rj

[Greg Field]

Well, since some are enjoying this and may be interested in forming an opinion based on other than anecdotes from the time, here, in a nutshell, are some facts about the tariff and its effect on saving H-D that detailed research could reveal to any who are not still stuck in Ronald Reagan's "it's morning in America" circa 1984.

 

Almost all of what follows is the result of original research with primary sources (primarily the people involved, on both sides) and through searches of public records and newspapers. This work was performed in the research phase of writing books and magazine articles. It is what I consider an informed opinion based on all the foregoing, plus anecdotes of friends at the time. If you don't like my conclusions, so be it.

 

The tariff story began in the mid-1970s, when the market for motorcycles in the US began contracting and then accelerated into a death spin by the dawn of the 1980s. It is only relatively recent that the US market for street motorcycles has rebounded to its pre-1976 levels. This background colors everything that follows. It was not just Harley that was losing sales every year; it was all players. Many were losing money every year, starting much earlier than some of you probably think they did. It was a horrible time to be in the motorcycle business.

 

Refusing to face reality of the shrinking market, the Japanese kept building more and more bikes and dumping them below cost in effort to win market share against the others doing the same. We all remember this from the early 1980s, but how many of you remember them doing this in the late 1970s? It happened. It got so bad during this period, that H-D asked for tariffs from the International Trade Commission (ITC) in 1978. Milwaukee even won the case, proving the Japanese were dumping bikes. Unfortunately, H-D’s lawyers were unable to convince the ITC that H-D was damaged by the dumping, so no tariff was instituted.

 

So, from this the Japanese learned that they could continue dumping motorcycles, and the US government wouldn’t do anything about it. Harley learned from this that it would have to rely on its own resources to effect a turnaround, and not the US government. To do just that, H-D began to develop the Evolution engine and got Porsche to help design a water-cooled, modular engine concept called NOVA.

 

Things soon got even worse, mostly because sales continued dropping but also because of one man who sought to change the balance of power in the motorcycle market. This was Hisao Koike, head of Yamaha, who staked his personal honor on wresting from Honda the sales lead by the end of the 1982 model year. When the Honda leader, Kiyoshi Kawashima, heard this, he said, “Yamaha has not only stepped on the tail of a tiger, it has ground it into the earth. We will crush Yamaha.” That’s when the dumping and discounting began in earnest. Neither man gave Harley a second thought as they pushed bikes onto US shores in record numbers, at the same time their sales fell and the yen began a long climb against the US dollar that made these bikes more expensive. They smashed together like two sumo giants, and starved-to-the-bone Harley was nearly crushed between them. Ultimately, it was Yamaha that was crushed.

 

Meanwhile, in June 1981, despite dropping overall motorcycle sales every year and plunging H-D sales in particular, Vaughn Beals and a dozen others combined all their cash to buy H-D from AMF. Nineteen eighty-one H-D sales were down by 14 percent, and they were losing money on every sale.

 

To stem the red tide, manufacturing chief Tom Gelb instituted a just-in-time inventory system at H-D. Its first year of operation was 1982. During the1982 model year, H-D sales fell by a further 27 percent. By spring 1982, H-D was days from closing its doors. “A semi-recession had hit automotive earlier,” remembered Tom Gelb, “and all of a sudden in March 1982 it hit us. At the time, the Japanese manufacturers had about 18 months worth of finished inventory in the country, and they were selling two- and three-year-old bikes right out of the crate and discounting them, so the bottom fell out of the market.

“I remember we had a policy meeting, and in the next weeks we cut our production rate in half, laid off 40 percent of our workforce, and cut all the salaries of the officers by something like 12 percent and the salaried workforce by 10 percent.”

 

If all that wasn’t bad enough, Harley’s production was now below the minimum level specified in the agreements with its lenders. What that meant was, those banks were free to foreclose and seize Harley at any time.

 

Fortunately, they chose not to, and here’s where Gelb’s Japanese-inspired changes became key: They saved Harley $20 million in inventory costs for 1982. Said Vaughn Beals, “In essence, the cash freed up from inventory offset the operating loss for 1982. Absent that, I’m absolutely sure our lenders would not have supported us.” To a man, the bankers I interviewed, plus all the H-D execs (except Gelb, who is too modest to claim that he saved the company) said this was the critical point and what saved H-D. This was before the bid for the tariff even began.

 

But Beals went after the tariff anyway. Once people had been laid off, Beals knew he had to do something publicly to show that he was fighting back. On September 1, 1982, he petitioned the ITC for relief. Union men from around the US gleefully joined the bandwagon, and if they weren’t Harley men before this action, they damned sure were afterward. Here was Beals, the American Eagle, standing tall and alone against the might of Japan, Inc. It was a masterful PR ploy that whipped up a lot of emotions—not all of them positive. Beals told me he never dreamed he could actually win the case. But it would distract those who needed distracting from looking deeper to see what Harley was up to.

 

Though he denied it to me, he also planned to use the tariff as leverage to get loan guarantees of $15 million to complete work on the NOVA series of modular Harleys. Despite the denials, it is a matter of public record that Harley admitted to these actions (though they never got the loan guarantees).

 

In short, Beals went ahead with the tariffs, but the tariffs were never really part of the plan to save the company because a) he never thought he’d win them anyway, the company was already saved, and c) he would be willing to drop any tariffs he did get in exchange for not even cash but just guarantees of loans to complete projects that weren’t even part of the “saving” plan anyway. This is why I say it was a sideshow.

 

The ITC heard arguments on Harley’s petition on November 30, 1982. The Japanese made a fatal error before the hearing even started. “They had one attorney represent all four companies, which was tangible evidence of Japan Inc.,” said Vaughn Beals. “I can’t conceive of anyone dumb enough to do that, but they were.”

 

The ITC adjourned the hearing and deliberated before recommending tariffs of 45 percent on all foreign motorcycles over 700 cc (after the first 7,000 imported) the first year, with diminishing percentages in the following five years. On April 1, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed the tariffs into law.

 

Anticipating the possibility that they might lose, the Japanese had stepped up production and shipment of their large 1983 models to get them on US shores before the tariff took effect. A few months later, the Japanese reworked most of their 750s into tariff-evading 700s, and Honda and Kawasaki avoided tariffs on their larger models by shifting assembly to their US plants. As a result, the only companies that paid any substantial amount in tariffs were Yamaha and Suzuki, both of which were very minor players in the market for heavyweight motorcycles to compete with Harley. The tariff to the Japanese was no more than a mosquito bite to an elephant.. Another reason I judge it an inconsequential sideshow.

 

Despite the tariff, H-D sales fell again for 1983. (Yet another reason I say sideshow; the tariff did not result in sales increase, despite the introduction of $3,995 Sportsters the company offered that year had a measurable positive effect.) Despite this further fall below the production covenants in the loan agreements, the bankers decided yet again to hold off on foreclosure because Harley’s cash flow was positive and because Harley was making profits on practice bombs for the military, and because the bankers knew the Evo engine and Softail were debuting at the start of the 1984 model year.

 

Once those bikes hit the market, Harley was back, and Beals was a rock star. In the January 1984 issue, Cycle named him Motorcyclist of the Year for 1983, because of his winning of the tariff battle and because of H-D’s astonishing resurgence. Sales for model year 1984 were 31 percent higher than for 1983. Meanwhile, sales of all other street bikes as a whole continued in a death spin in the US, except for sales of the new cruisers the Japanese began cranking out in effort to keep up. Despite this new, direct competition by imitation, Harley sales continued to rise every year after 1985 and the Japanese are still trying to catch up by escalating the imitation.

[Guest Mattress]

I guess we don't have to buy the book now.

 

 

 

 

-------------------------

 

This agression will not stand, man..