I am:

1. •Born 1957.
   

2. •I have a wife and a teenage daughter.
   

3. •I live in a duplex house in Helsinki, Finland.
   

4. •I work in the creative position for an international company.
   

5. •My hobbies: working out in the gym and Harleys. The latter is no brainer.
   

6. •I listen to all kind of music. Heavy, Soul, Rock, Blues and Country & Western. With a modern technology it is easy to carry with me, where ever I go.
   

7. •Since our riding season is quite short, my yearly mileage is around 3500-4000.
   

8. •My riding history is not long. I bought my first bike 1998, when living in California. It was Suzuki Intruder 1400.
   

9. •My first (and present) Harley-Davidson I bough year 2000.
   

10. •I am not a motorcycle mechanic, but the Harley I have built and maintained by myself without any earlier experience on engines or fabrication. Yet I have got help from my more skillful friends, when meeting a problem.

You've made a hit to Jokke's Harley-Davidson related web-pages, which have been active since spring 2005. These are totally unofficial hobby pages of American V2 motorcycles and there is no connection to any dealership or distributor. I am showing here photos of my Softail, which has been 10 years long project, and XLH 883 Sportster, which I recently purchased. This is a condensed version of my Finnish site, of which you can see a navigation bar on top of the page. On the Finnish site I am sharing maintenance tips of 2001-2005 Softails and some building projects made by myself. Those are too long stories to be shared here in English. If you are interested, try Google Translator. Translations may turn out hilarious.

Photo taken in Kalajoki, Finland year 2004.

Photo taken when I was 50 years old, 2007. Basically I look the same today. Perhaps I’ve got couple of more wrinkles below the bald.

Overall owning a motorcycle was a summary of coincidents. I bought my first bike for the commuting when living in California 1998. It was Suzuki Intruder 1400. It was ok, but since locals had Harley-Davidsons as a majority brand, I decided to buy one, when my assignment was extended in year 2000. The other reasons were the value and history of the brand and also the social aspects. You feel to belong in the family more stronger as with Suzuki. Also I noticed in California that with Suzuki I had to explain why I end up with that brand. With a Harley this was not necessary.

I didn't service my Suzuki, but with the Harley I kind of got interested of that too, though I didn't have any earlier experience of maintaining engines, cars or motorcycles. I've already learned a lot of 88B engine, yet not being a guru.

Of riding I have to say that it is very relaxing to go new places and find new small curvy roads. Finland is not California but we have here a lot of paved country roads, which are just wonderful to ride. After the ride the bike is covered with dead insects, since we have here a plenty of bugs seeking for motorcycles to hit and die.

The bike is 2001 Harley-Davidson Softail Standard, which I bought in August year 2000 when living in the greater Los Angeles area. I moved back to Finland with it 2001. During the off-seasons I’ve added, changed, taken off, molded and also made parts for it. I think it is now quite finished.

I’ve made some tune-ups for the engine. There is SE air filter, SE Performance Heads with SE roller rockers, SE adjustable push pods, SE 203 cams and SE 95 cylinders with SE flat top pistons all installed by myself. I also mapped the EFI with SE Race Tuner. The pipes are Supertrapp SuperMegs 2:1. The law in Finland says that the noise level has to be below 103 db (A). Mine is 102.5 db, so very pleasant sound and street legal here in Finland.

Very nice and cool morning in Keilalahti, Espoo, Finland. Helsinki, the capital of Finland lies on the other side of the bay.

2001 Harley-Davidson Softail Standard and old tugboat on the background.

So I included the old tugboat in from different angles.

I’ve changed the rear wheel to 5.5 inch with 200 mm Metzeler tire. It is possible with the 2006 model 20 mm wide belt.

Tugboat, Harley and me. My friend Vesa took the shot.

Small saddle bag is handy for rain suit and spare gloves. The licence plate mounting system is my own design. Made of billet aluminum and hand polished.

Küryakyn mirrors and WildOne wo560 handlebar. The riding position is quite convenient for long rides.

The sissy bar with the luggage rack is made for Softail Deuce. With some additional work it fits also for Softail Standard.

2008 off-season I installed Softail Deluxe’s footboards. They allow more options for riding position than foot pegs.

Russ Wernimont’s front fender gives more attitude for your ride. I polished the lower fork sliders by hand.

Also rear fender with integrated struts comes from RWD.

I like grey - blue combination with a grey engine.

Supertrapp 2:1 SuperMegs pipe. It is very easy to adjust sound level with the discs.

V-Twin is a very beatiful engine. My reason to get H-D.

Someone may say that compression releases are not needed with SE Performance Heads, but they do help starting the engine and at the same time save the battery life.

H-D’s own 2” Tachometer with Arlen Ness’ holder. This tach takes its pulse from the data link, not under the dash.

The original mounting bolts were made of galvanized steel. I replaced them with polished stainless steel. Custom Plus.

This switch is needed for grip heaters. Harley’s originals didn’t last very long time, so these are generic made by Polly. From Custom Chrome Catalog.

Rear light holder with the gasket is also my own design. Red reflector is there just in case that Chinese made LED-light will not last. LED signal lights from Kellermann.

Official dyno-result for the local ”DMV” with the Supertrapp exhaust pipe. The max power is quite close what it should be. The max torque leaves behind. The reason might be the pipe or me as the tuner. Yet the max torque comes out in the right rpm, which makes the cruising very convenient indeed. The target was not to make a racing bike.

If you have something to ask about my bike(s) or if you like to give a comment about these pages, please do so. Send me an e-mail to the address below. I’ll try to answer to you as soon as possible.

October 18 2010, I bought for myself a project bike, XLH 883 Sportster. I went to one of our dealerships with a friend of mine in the south west coast. I’ve been looking for Sportster or Dyna for a while. There is nothing special in the bike. It was a good purchase in our very pricy markets, but not a bargain. It will be a starting point for a project I am going to make. Let’s see how it turns out during the years.

I am still going to keep my Softail as a riding bike. So busy times to get the bike ready before the season are hopefully over from now on.

So this will be a bobber in the future. Nothing which hasn’t been done by somebody earlier. I had also a ”cafe racer” dream, but perhaps for the next bike.

Just before Xmas I ordered a major amount of parts for the project, seat pan, rims, spokes, tires, rear fender etc. Let’s see...

Very basic bike as you may see. 26 000 km driven (16 000 miles). 2000 year model and in very good condition as far as I can tell. Everything was operating well. The Harley as it should be. I’ve seen also bikes with the same age and mileage in really bad condition. Yet the asking price has been around the same.